Title: Storehouse
Cost: Free
Platform: iOS
Storify is one of my favorite tools on the web – the app is a little glitchy – for taking content (images, videos, Tweets, etc.) and putting them together into a story. Storehouse takes a similar approach and gives users the chance to combine text with images and video in order to create a tale about a topic of interest.
For teens the Storehouse apps is a great way for them to take those images and videos that they take on a device that’s in their pocket or under their arm, and turn them into something that helps to tell about their lives, places they’ve been, events they’ve participated in, and so on. It’s a great tool for giving teens the chance to go beyond the image to the story behind the image.
The app is pretty simple to use. The first step is to tap on the + icon on the top right. That opens up the screen for adding images and videos that are either stored in your iPad photo library or in Dropbox or on Instagram. (Teens will have to connect your Dropbox and Instagram accounts to Storehouse if they are going to import photos from those services.)
When the library that’s going to be used is open, the next step is to tap on the images or videos that will be used for the Storehouse story and they are quickly added to the story in progress.
Then, just give the story a title, Storehouse will select a cover image for the story but it’s easy to change that. And, it’s possible to crop images at any time too.
The images are imported into the story in the order in which they were selected, but once agein it’s easy to drag them around to put them into the order you want.
At the top of the screen is a button for adding text and a button for adding new media. If you select the text button teens can add either a header, “normal” text, or a quote. I do have to say this is where I got confused. The text is always entered above the photos that have been imported. Here’s the trick. Once text is added, the photos need to be dragged to where they should appear in the story – above or below a particular piece of text – and that creates the flow of the story. It’s easy to do once it’s clear what is required.
At any time in the process the story can be saved as a draft. Even if the story is published it’s possible to go back and add or change images, videos, or text. Once a story is published it’s can be shared on Facebook, Twitter or via email. Unfortunately, Storehouse stories can’t be embedded into web pages. That’s a feature that teens would probably like to see so that they can add them to Tumblr and other websites easily.
Here’s a video from Storehouse on how the app works.
Teens have lots of stories to tell related to the videos and images that they take on devices. Let them know how they can use Storehouse to do just that.