Story Lines

Review by Kathleen Czap

Price: Free

When you launch the app, it brings you to the home page.  It explains that Story Line “starts with someone picking a well known quote or figure of speech. A friend illustrates the phrase as best they can. A third friend titles that pictures, a fourth illustrates the title and so on.”

There are tabbed post it graphics on the bottom to create a story line. When you select “create”, there are two options: you can link to your Facebook to play with friends or you can Pass-N-Play, which would allow kids to pass with friends. As a teacher, I have students use the pass-n-play mode. You can chose the size of the story. It can be three, five, seven or nine links in length.

The first slide has yellow lined paper and allows you to type 140 characters, much like a tweet. The creator is prompted to enter a famous quote or saying. There is a fortune cookie that provides suggestions, but, the fortune cookie has very complex quotations so I recommend kids make up their own or use something provided by an adult.

Once the quote or saying is typed or selected from the fortune cookie, the next player illustrates the saying or quote. The following player would illustrate the picture and so on. As a digital storytelling tool, it allows for a student to create a title and book cover, illustrations and captions.

Likes: Allows for creativity and exploration with famous sayings.

Dislikes: The fortune cookie does not have “child friendly quotations”. You have to sign each link or page of the story.  You can only draw with black ink for illustrating

Recommended Age: 12+

Overall Rating: B-