Check out Hackastory — It’s a Curated Tools Website for Digital Storytelling

Sometimes, digital storytelling can grow a bit stale with the tools that are currently available for your students. If your staff is anything like me, they crave a constant stream of new and advanced apps and websites that will let them do the “thing” the last app or website wouldn’t let them do for their story.

On a recent hunt, I came across Hackastory Digital Tools. I had used this resource in the past, but had forgotten to bookmark it. Shame. With some free time on my hands, I revisited the site and can happily say that I found 3-4 new apps for my students to use to ramp up their multimedia presence on the site.

Here are three of the apps that my students found most promising.

1. JamSnap
If your students are starting to stick their toes into the shallow end of the multimedia swimming pool, suggest they use this app the next time they want to add more than one picture to a story. Take a picture using the app, or select a photo from your camera roll, and then add any environmental sound that was present at the taking of the photo, or embed a portion of an interview of the subject in the photo and BOOM – your photo now has an additional dimension.

2. Timescape
For stories that span the globe, think the international story you are trying to localize, Timescape is a great tool to show the bigger picture. Once photos and descriptions are added to a customized map, readers can spin the globe and interact with the different locations that the writer has plotted.

3. Flourish.Studio
Looking for a simpler way to visualize your data? Just upload a spreadsheet with data relevant to your story and watch it bloom into a great multimedia representation of your information.

And if you want to know more about how these tools are being used by professional publications, check out the resource compiled by Hackastory’s curators. Tools Used by Newsmedia