Registering with Little Bird Tales (LBT) is quick and easy; the focus on small learners means that privacy concerns are respected: the site contains no ads, merchandising, or external links, and only requires a valid email to sign-up. LBT also offers a teacher account, which is accessible via an email request (teachers should provide the same email used to sign-up). Before working with students, teachers should be aware of the technical specifications, such as supporting browsers, image file size, and storage capacity—the FAQ page addresses these points fairly well.

Once an account is activated, creating a digital tale is fairly simple. Click on "create a new tale" to construct the tale cover. Users can either draw an image—using the built-in art pad—or upload a saved image (note: minimum image size is 600x420 px). Add a title, submit author information, and a record an audio introduction to finalize the tale cover. Users should also test microphone quality for volume and clarity before proceeding with new pages.

Each subsequent page follows the same procedure, and the size of the final project is only limited by the tale box capacity in your account. The main difference from the cover page is that students can enter text for their product—an ideal feature that reinforces reading and writing, while providing students a "script" for their sound recording. Page order can be easily rearranged at any time by dragging each page into the desired order in the sidebar found on the right.

Users can resume editing their tales by logging back in, selecting "My Tales," and clicking on the notepad icon. Other icons on the "My Tales" screen include a play option (to see the video in progress), an email icon to share the video, and a trash icon to delete the tale project.

Once the video tale is completed, users proceed to step three in order to share the tale via email—regardless of whether users choose to keep the video private or make it public. Users who choose to make the video public can do so by clicking on the account homepage (house icon) and selecting "public" under the cover page image (note: Little Bird Tales moderates all videos before they become public).

Pre-planning is a helpful first step in creating your video project. Gather all images and video clips and save them in a desktop folder. If a particular soundtrack serves the needs of the project, make sure the sound clip or song is in .mp3 format. Finally, on a piece of paper, sketch out the storyboard for the video—in particular the placement of text in the video. Animoto offers a handful of different account types that vary in price from personal to business.  The "Professional" account priced at $22/month ($264/year) is the most common and offers HD quality videos, more than 25 professional fonts, and pre-built storyboards.

After users open an account, the first step is to upload photos and videos via three options: from files on the computer, from Animoto's own collection of photographs, or from another website. Uploading images and videos from the computer allows users to select multiple files and conduct a batch upload. Once images and videos are uploaded, users can click and drag images at will in order to construct a desired sequence. Other features allow users to spotlight certain images or videos for a more focused display during the final presentation, add text slides, rotate and/or duplicate images, and delete any unwanted selections. It is worthwhile to note that one of Animoto’s biggest drawbacks is the limit placed on text entries. Text restrictions may prove to be frustrating for users, but one simple way to bypass these limits is to create a PowerPoint slide with the desired text, save that PowerPoint slide as a .jpg image, and then import the file as a picture into Animoto. Step two directs users to add a music file, or soundtrack, to the video either through Animoto’s own selection of songs or your own .mp3 files. Users can also select at which point the music begins. The final step is the editing process and finalization, where users can establish the speed of transitions, the design template, and select whether the video is short (30 seconds) or full length. After all selections are made, users go to the final section where the credit information is provided for the title of the video and the creator(s). Here is where Animoto users will find a second frustration: once everything is ready to go, users select “create video” and the process of finalizing the video can often take quite a while. Nevertheless, Animoto emails video creators once the video is finalized . . . so you don’t have to wait around. (Update: Animoto’s site updates may have fixed the speed delay in finalizing videos.)

Registering is a breeze, needing only a valid email address. I created a flowchart in LucidChart to detail the steps for getting started with the tool. Many of the boxes are hotlinked—run your mouse over the textbox, and if a hand appears there is a link to explore. (Make sure you have popups unblocked to view the included links.) The tour, examples, forums, and tutorials are appropriately helpful and clear. If you believe that this is a tool that would suit your educational pursuits, there is an educational version that is available free of charge to K–12 teachers and students. For the more tech-savvy, there is also an integrated function between Google Apps and LucidChart. In an email exchange with David Grow of LucidChart he stated,

“For K–12, we are committed to always providing LucidChart free of charge so there is no expiration. Also, an educational account is essentially the equivalent of a paid Team account which has all of the premium features! We are eager for more teachers and students to be using LucidChart.”

I cannot stress enough that with a tool like this, it will take you a bit of time to feel as though you are a “master,” but you can feel functional almost immediately. The drag-and-drop-style features make it quite intuitive. I created the Getting Started flowchart to demonstrate my own willingness to create and play a bit in the pursuit of encouraging more teachers to do the same.

The first step, once activation is complete, is to create a room and set privacy stipulations (an important consideration for school policies). After setting up the room, users arrive at a blank canvas—a plain whiteboard. The menu items on the right include a pointer/selector, various geometric shapes, and writing tools: drawing, text, highlighting, and stamping. Also to the right is a microphone button to start an audio conference and a space below for text messaging with other group members. Horizontal buttons along the top include the usual word processing and photo editing features: cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, delete, flip horizontally and vertically; additional tools include lock, unlock, clear page (and all pages), take snapshot, equation editor, shared pointer, page background (with numeric color value), and page draw mode. At the bottom of the screen, users can select line color, fill color, and line thickness. To write on the whiteboard, users can either use the text button or the pencil button for freestyle writing. Shapes can be brought to the front for layering purposes, by right-clicking the object (text or shape).

In many ways, Scribblar merges the skills of word processing with the purpose of whiteboard instruction and planning. Users can also build graphic organizers easily and the "alpha/wolfram" button, in Beta mode, has potential for future social studies table elements. One limitation, however, is that all operating features are controlled through a mouse or trackpad, not with the keyboard. In addition, an "arrow" button is missing and currently users would use a pencil button. Another limitation fails to make the best use of the Web's potential: hyperlinks, interactivity, and multitasking tools/features—which classroom tools such as SmartBoard put to good use—are underdeveloped in Scribblar. Flip horizontal button does not seem to work well, and some objects can't be flipped vertically or horizontally. Lastly, text font options only number between 9‐12 fonts (serf and non-serif) with bold, italics, and underline buttons, while the stamp tool is limited to six options. The current version of Scribblar is perhaps of better "curriculum" use in a math classroom than a history classroom. Still, the ability to import images, such as maps and graphs, help Scribblar serve effectively in a social studies classroom if careful planning takes place first. For example, in the right section (where the list of participants is listed), under the assets tab users can click on the "+" to add a feature or image (file types: PowerPoint, .pdf, .jpeg, .gif, .png—maximum file size is five MB.) Users can also download a file and decide whether to add the item to the whiteboard after upload is complete (only the first five pages of a PowerPoint or .pdf file will be converted in addition to pictures, maps, and other visuals . . . but not audio or video files). Other features in the assets tab include adding a webpage snapshot (it takes about a minute to appear in the "Assets" panel; it is worth noting, however, that adding a webpage snapshot as a background may produce a repetitive image that can be fixed by resizing the target window and then re-taking a snapshot). A great feature is the ability to add a Flickr image because you can search online and immediately paste to whiteboard as an item; also useful are the abilities to create a numeric list for ranking, to use the snapshot button in order to preview the whiteboard in an html window, and to print the whiteboard by right-clicking canvas and selecting the print option. In all, Scribblar offers great potential for online collaboration, planning, and teaching. Classrooms separated by distance would benefit greatly, as well as inter-disciplinary collaboration within a school. Most importantly, Scribblar extends learning outside of classroom hours and is thus well positioned to provide teachers and students flexibility and an online pace for increased engagement in the history curriculum.