ZooBurst ( http://www.zooburst.com/ ) is a digital storytelling tool which lets you create a 3Dpop-up book.
The creation of the story is very simple and there is an option of a free account. Here is my first attempt:
To get started, you just click "New Book" and then "Build" button, choose the title for your story, find the right images by typing some key words and getting the images from the ZooBurst gallery, or you can upload your own images. Then you add text bubbles to your characters, which appear as exclamation marks until you click on them to read them. You can change the background colours. You can create more pages. When you have told your story, you save it.
Pro account gives you some more attractive options, like adding sound to your stories, but you can create great stories with a free account, too.
There are two things I liked about ZooBurst:
- you can easily embed your story
- Instead of just enjoying the book by reading it and looking at the illustrations, your readers can choose Webcam mode to experience your book in Augmented Reality: the button turns on your webcam and you see yourself as if in a mirror, with a part of the story you were reading when you turned it on. You can print the mixed reality scene, too.
ZooBurst seems like a tool my students would love. I'll definitely use it in the classroom.
