Pop! Creating Stories with Zooburst

I recently wrapped up a project with our third grade classes using Zooburst, “a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books.” The site has been around for a while–in fact, it was named an AASL Best Website for Teaching and Learning way back in 2011–but this was my first time using it. It was very easy for me to create a class and student accounts using the Premium account, which costs $10/month or $50/year. With young students, this was absolutely necessary since they don’t have email addresses.

Once each student had an account, it was simple for them to start working. The students were learning about different African countries and were tasked with writing a story about an animal or animals from the country they’d been assigned.

Zooburst creates pop-up books. When you turn the page, the images on the page pop up in 3D. The images can be rotated, resized, or moved anywhere on the page. Students can either select an image from Zooburst’s media bank or they can upload their own. Additionally, with a premium account, teachers can create a custom database of images for students to use.

Once the images are on the page, students write a narrative for the page itself, as well as add dialogue for each character, if they choose. They can also customize the background and the page color, and they can add background elements. And finally, students and teachers can comment on each book. The books can be embedded into a website or simply emailed home to parents.

Check out our third graders’ books here!