The use of Storybird to learn writing narrative text.

1. STORYBIRD AS A MEDIUM TO LEARN
WRITING NARRATIVE TEXT
by
Hayati Wasistyo Adi
2201414067
Monday, at 11 (105)
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
UNIVERSITAS NEGERI SEMARANG
2017

2. 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Writing is one of skills in language. There are many of students find
difficulty in writing. One of difficulties is writing narrative text. Narrative
text has special elements like orientation, complications, and resolution.
From that reason, writing a narrative text should be well organized.
According to my experiences in high school era, the teacher had
difficulty to teach how to write a narrative text. She only asked the students
to write a narrative text freely without any limitation. Previously, the teacher
has explained about narrative text to the students. Nevertheless, they still
could not fully understand what the teacher asked. They thought the way of
teacher taught was very boring and confusing. It could occur because the
lack of creativity from the teacher. She only used traditional method to
explain the materials to them. She asked the students to write narrative text
like examples in the book. As the result, the students did not interest in class.
They also wrote their narrative text disorderly.
Teaching students to write a narrative text could be more interesting
with the use of internet. In the 21st century, students are very familiar with
internet. They can operate and use for their daily life. Internet has many
advantages for the students. They can use internet to learn or look for
materials. It will help the students to get more knowledge out of the school.
Internet also provides many websites. One of those are story making
websites. It can help the students to write a narrative text. The teacher can
make writing narrative text more interesting with the use of the website.
Creating narrative text using digital tool like internet called digital
storytelling. Digital storytelling appears as a new form of documenting
one’s experience through multimedia video creations, blogs, podcasts,
activities on social network or other story forms. (Conrad, 2013)
One of digital storytelling tools which is easy to use is Storybird.
Storybird is a website to write a story in the internet. This website also
provide the story with many artworks or pictures which help the author to

3. write the story more attractive. When the story is published, people all
around the world can see and comment to the story. By using this method,
it is hope that students will be motivated to write a narrative text and
improve their writing skill.
1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic
The following are the reasons of choosing the topic:
1) Writing is one of difficult English skills. The students do not really like
to write even a story. The simple way to engage the students to write is
writing a story or narrative text. It will increase their imagination to
write a narrative text.
2) The students are familiar with internet. They can operate many websites
there. When the teacher use internet as medium of learning, there is no
problem.
3) The students like study using media. The conventional method of
teaching how to write narrative text seems boring. The new method like
using Storybird as medium to write a story is hoped can make the
students more interesting in learning.
2. OBJECTIVES
The objectives of this essay to find out the strengths and the students
weaknesses of the use of Storybird as medium to learn writing narrative
text.
3. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
There are some researchers conducted similar topic with me about using
Storybird to teach the students write narrative text.
The first was a study conducted by Menezes (2012). The author
stated that Storybird is an extremely engaging collaborative story writing
website that embodies three ideas – creating, reading, and sharing. She also
described implementation and outcomes of some activities that used

4. Storybird. The first one was implemented in two Primary Schools. He paired
up students from two classes in different schools in the region. They had to
write a story together. The second one was developed in a language class in
a Basic School. The class was divided into groups. One group of students
started the story and then the next day, the rest of the students read what the
first group wrote, then the second group added to it and so on until the end
of the story. All the students participated actively. Students loved seeing
how the story that they started went on and ended.
According to Giacomini (2015), Storybird is one of tools for
teaching creative writing in English language class. Students were not only
highly motivated to write in English by technological device, but they were
also in control of their learning experience. Bringing technology into the
classroom may not be a good idea for all teachers due to the fact that some
teachers may not be as computer literate as their students. Nevertheless, it
is a brilliant decision to overcome certain fears and undertake the challenge
of innovation in teacher classes not only for their students’ benefit but also
for their own.
Nordin (2010) aimed that storytelling is one of methods for human
society and a common practice in every culture which is used most in
education. Teachers can use digital storytelling as an engaging learning
activity to students. Storybird described itself as “collaborative storytelling”
which is a website that allows the users to create a story and publish it in the
internet. The special feature of Storybird is allowing a teacher to combine
text with images. Three aspects which is going to lose students’ engagement
too much text on a page are the length of story is too long, and the story is
repeating the same thing. After implementing Storybird in class, the
students should be able extend learning time. The students who have
internet access at home can review or preview the materials. The author
aimed that if the Storybird is used in a class, it will help students develop
their creativity and also help students to learn by using internet. Students
will also have fun during learning. A teacher must find different ways to

5. motive his or her students to learn, and the usage of Storybird can encourage
students’ creative thinking and bring more fun into his/her classroom.
The followings are explanation cited from Zakaria (2016). She
conducted a research about students’ experience using Storybird. She took
a sample from 15 student from secondary school. They were introduced
about using Storybird and asked to write a story using it. After that, the
author interviewed the students to get information about their experience
using Storybird for the first time. As the result, they agreed that Storybird
is a great tool in helping them to improve their writing skills by reading
other online stories shared by other Storybird users. They also prefer
working collaboratively as they share their feelings and thoughts with their
friends in gaining more ideas to write and to choose suitable vocabulary.
Wertz (2014) shared her experience when she and her students use
Storybird for teaching learning. Once students had written a first draft. After
that, she modeled revising her initial draft by adding more details and
descriptive words that would help the readers visualize her story. She used
the images from Storybird as inspiration. The students then worked
collaboratively to add imagery to their own stories and edited for grammar,
spelling, and word usage. Once their story were finished, they published
them to the Storybird website. Then she captured pages from the digital
storybook and imported them into iMovie. In the next activity, each student
and the author sat together. The student read each page of the storybook
while the author recorded her student’s voice reading. The final product was
a movie file including the student’s recorded voice reading each page of the
digital storybook. Those files were burned onto DVDs. The use of Storybird
allowed students to create, publish, and share their words with their families
and friends.
In a similar vein, Ramírez (2013) investigated writing skill
enhancement when creating narrative texts through the use of collaborative
writing and the Storybird. He conducted a research by participating two
groups of learners who were undergoing a training course to take the First

6. Certificate in English (FCE) exam. The activities for seven meetings in the
classroom were pre-test (instructions week), treatment (feedback,
consolidation and reinforcement activities), and post-test (presentation final
project). The first group was hold on October to November 2010, and the
second group on March to April 2011. The findings revealed that the
collaborative writing supported with Storybird encouraged learners to create
narrative texts and improve their positive attitude towards the production of
stories.
4. ANALYSIS
Based on the literature review in the previous section, Storybird is proven
to be a great medium for students to learn or teach how to write narrative
text attractively. StoryBird is an online resource available on the internet.
Once students log into our StoryBird account, they are able to start making
our stories. They can also read other people’s stories. Creating stories are
very easy to do. Students only should pick an artwork that they like and will
be able to create a story with that artist’s work. Students can also work in a
group with StoryBird’s collaborate settings. One nice feature of StoryBird
is the ability to drag and drop. It makes making a story very easy and fun to
do.

7. Students have the ability to favorite your stories. They can also work
with others on the same project and email the link for the story or embed
our story in blog like WordPress and share their stories on popular social
networks like Facebook and Twitter. They don’t have to worry about being
a good artist because all the artwork is already available. The navigation of
StoryBird is very easy to use. Everything is easy to find and there are
multiple categories such as Active, Content, Format, and Ages.
The most obvious use for Storybird in the classroom is that it aids
teacher-student editing. Teachers are able to check on the progress of their
students' work. It is also a good tool for peer editing. This editing helps

8. students become better writers by critiquing others. Additionally, Storybird
is able to be shared to people across the country and the world. Much like
Tikatok, this site allows students to be creative in the re-telling of a series
of events or story. This could also use this as a reward tool. Students could
create a Storybird on their own topic and the teacher could print it for a
keepsake.
Storybird is a free website. It gives low-income students an
opportunity to participate in a creative experience. Also, it focuses on story-
making as a collaborative process. The students makes the process of
collaborating, or "taking turns," very easy. It allows for teachers, friends and
family to edit and help the author throughout the story.
Storybird also gives the option of keeping a story private until the
student is ready to share it. For many students, this feature makes them feel
creatively safer. The artwork is enough to inspire students to create stories
even if they come to the website with nothing in mind.
Students could also find another class from another state or country
to work with. Pair up students from the two classes and have them write a
story together. Each child will bring their own style to the story while
working together. Each class can work on them when they have an
opportunity so the stories don’t have to be worked on at the exact same time.
Once the stories are finished, Skype the other class and have students take
turns reading stories. Each pair could read the pages they wrote from the
book.
On the other hand, one of the biggest limitations to StoryBird is that
students cannot download their stories for free. Currently the fee to
download one story is $1.99. Students are also unable to have the pro-
version of StoryBird without upgrading. Students also are unable to use
artwork from their own gallery or artwork from multiple artists. If they pick
one artist’s work, they can only use that artist’s work. It is also very difficult
to search for artwork. You can type in key words or illustrator names but

9. there is not much variety in what comes up. With such limitation in artwork,
students may end up frustrated.
5. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATION
StoryBird is a great online resource to help students on the creativity track.
Let them be the creators of their own stories with StoryBird. Creating stories
are very easy to do. Students should only pick an artwork and they will be
able to create a story with that artist’s work. For free, teachers can create a
class on StoryBird and their students can create stories. All the artwork is
available to use already with more being made every day. Students can share
their stories still with many social networks, and you can embed or share
the link of your stories still. Although, Storybird asks the students to pay if
they want to download, I still recommend students to use Storybird to learn
writing narrative text. Teacher can assess the students’ works in this
website. So teacher doesn’t need to download it.
6. References
Åberg, E. S. (2014). Children’s story making with digital technologies:
Tool-mediated activities in a preschool class. Thesis. University of
Gothenburg, Sweden.

10. Giacomini, L. (2015). Using “Storybird” in young learners’ creative writing
class. English Teaching Forum, 53(4), 35-37. Retrieved from
https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/english-teaching-
forum-volume-53-number-4
Menezes, H. (2012). Using digital storytelling to improve literacy skills.
International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in
Digital Age (IADIS), 299-301. Retrieved from
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED542821
Pop, A. (2012). Enhancing English language writing and speaking through
digital storytelling. The 7th International Conference on Virtual
Learning ICVL 2012, 453-458.
Ramirez, Y. E. H. (2013). Writing skill enhancement when creating
narrative texts through the use of collaborative writing and the
Storybird studentsb 2.0 tool. Colombian Applied Linguistics
Journal, 15, 166-183.
Robin, B. (2016). What is Digital Storytelling? Retrieved from University
of Houston studentsbsite:
http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/page.cfm?id=27
Studentsrtz, J. A. (2014). Bitstrips and Storybird: writing development in a
blended literacy camp. Voices from the Middle, 21, 24-32.
Studentsst, M. (2013). The Storybird has flown the nest. the literary
platform. Retrieved from
http://theliteraryplatform.com/magazine/2013/03/the-storybird-has-
flown-the-nest/
Yueh, N. (2010). Studentsb 2.0 and graduate research Storybird.
Educational Psychology ED, 1-6.
Yuksel, P., Robin, B.P., McNeil, S. (2010). Educational uses of digital
storytelling around the world.

11. Zakaria, S.M., Melor, M.Y., Nurhuda, M.N., Parilah, M.S. (2016). Students’
experience of using Storybird in writing ESL narrative text.
Scientific Research Publishing, 2109-2120.
http://www.northamerican.edu/~edtech/?p=2131