Creating stories using web tools is fun and engaging for student while also teaching them new skills. Best of all you can embed them in blog posts to grab readers; including something a bit different makes reading posts more interesting.

Web Tools For Creating Stories

To make the task easier we have Alan Levine‘s 50+ Ways to tell a story. This excellent resource documents how each of more than fifty Web 2.0 tools can be used to create a story using images, audio, and/or video. It has been broken into the following sections:

1. How to come up with Story ideas
   
2. Example of a simple story board
3. Finding images, audio and video for your story
   • Refer to Copyright and the use of images post to gain a better understanding of copyright
4. A review of each Web 2.0 tool – he has reviewed more than fifty tools for creating a story
5. Examples of the same story created using each of the 50+ tools, with both linked versions and embedded versions

My favorite section is examples of the same story created using each of the 50+ tools because he has a simple review of each and you can check out the example to see if it fits your needs before using it yourself or with your students.

Embedding Stories in Blog Posts

Once you have created your stories it is embedded into blog posts using the same procedure for embedding any HTML code. Here are the steps:

1. On your blog dashboard, go to Write > Post
2. Completely write your post adding all text and images including adding your categories, tags and post title
3. Make sure you tell your readers that you have embedded an object below as many feed readers such as Google Reader may remove it.
4. Click on Save and View this Post to do any final edits on your post
5. Go to the story you have created and copy it’s embed code
6. Go back to the post you are writing and click on HTML Tab
   
7. Paste the embed code for your story into your post where you want it to appear then immediately press Publish. (Don’t click on Visual Tab to change back to Visual Editor before hitting Publish)

FINAL THOUGHTS

Would love your feedback:

1. If you are currently using web 2.0 tools for creating stories – Can you please share your favorite web 2.0 story tools and why you like them?
2. If you use Alan Levine’s 50+ Ways to tell a story – Please let us know how you go?
   • What worked/what didn’t work?
   • Would love to check out what you and your students create — just leave a link and I’ll drop past and leave a comment.

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