Story Builder App for iPod Touch

We were recently given the opportunity to review our very first app for my beloved iPod touch.  We received the Story Builder App by Mobile Education Tools.

Story Builder is designed to help children accomplish the following goals:

1.  Improve paragraph formation
2.  Improve integration of ideas
3.  Improve higher level abstractions by inference. 

Extensive use of audio clips promotes improved auditory processing for special needs children with autism spectrum disorders or sensory processing disorders. Story Builder offers a rich and fun environment for improving the ability to create a narrative.

• Record feature allows students to record narrative in their own voice
• 3 levels of play
• Simple and intuitive interface to record narrative
• Recorded answers are stitched together to create complete narrative
• 50 distinct story lines to create narratives from
• Over 500 audio clips of questions to guide narrative
• Optional question text and answer introduction reinforcement

When I first downloaded this app I wasn't sure how the kids would respond, but Emma (9) really enjoys this app. She and her 12 year old brother, Ryan have had a lot of fun making up stories and listening to them. I like how it teaches a child to use complete sentences and how to put a story together.  It can get silly pretty quickly but the kids are learning and having a good time and you can't beat that. She will ask to play it quite often.

There are 3 levels of play.  

In Level One, 4 questions are asked. Students answer questions about the picture on the screen.

In Level Two, 7 questions are asked. Students will need to make inferences about what happened before and after what is on the screen.

In Level Three, no questions are asked.  Students make up any story they wish.

To make a story, students press the record button and answer the question in a complete sentence. Once all of the answers have been recorded they can play back their story. The app keeps one story at a time in the memory.  If a child doesn't like their answer they can just hit the record button again to record a new answer.

Completed stories can be e-mailed to share. You need Quick Time in order to play the story which is just the audio though one accompanying picture does come in the email.

Story Builder is associated with SmarTots which you can access through the app.  SmarTots will send you an e-mail telling you how many minutes have been spent playing Story Builder (and other SmarTot apps you may have) along with an activity you can do with your child.  This is a nice optional feature.

You can purchase the StoryBuilder app for your iPod touch, iPhone or iPad for $5.99.  Visit the Mobile Education store for more fun educational apps like Sentence Builder and Preposition Builder.

REQUIREMENTS
- Compatible with iPhone or iTouch
-2nd and 3rd gen iTouch require external speaker/microphone combo
- Recommended device - HF-IPHONE3MICBK from www.accessorygeeks.com
- Requires 4.1 software update

Read what others are saying about StoryBuilder and Rainbow Sentences for iPad on the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.

disclaimer: I received the StoryBuilder app free in exchange for an honest review.