StoryToGo

Exploring storytelling in its many forms in this digital age

Tech Tips

A Children’s Yoga Adventure Story Created in Elementari

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Lori Yearwood created the most beautiful, calming, and relaxing animated adventure story today using Elementari – a platform designed to allow children, youth, teachers, schools, and adults to create interactive, animated stories. Lori’s story is crafted to give kids at home a relaxing yoga experience that takes them on a virtual adventure to a day at the seashore.

A Children’s Yoga Adventure Story to the Seashore

Watch, read, listen, and enjoy!

As you watch, read, listen, and enjoy the story above, wait for the flashing white arrow. Click on it to turn the pages. If it does not appear, then click the left arrow on your keyboard to flip the page. Also, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for things to click on within the story iteself.

Elementari

We were fortunate enough to ‘virtually meet’ and learn about Elementari from one of the founders, Nicole Kang. Nicole kindly participated in our new vlogcasting series on Sustainable Funding Solutions for Media, Educators, and Technologists. You can watch the premiere episode of the vlogcast featuring Nicole and Elementari, below.

Elementari is currently helping teachers and parents, who are looking for ways to keep kids learning during the COVID-19 school closures, by giving them free premium access to their interactive storytelling platform to help kids learn how to read, write, and code.

Request Free Premium Access

Lori Yearwood as Phoenix Rising

Aside from being one of the Founders of StoryToGo, Lori Yearwood is a children’s book author and has a newer not-so-secret identity as a yoga and exercise instructor. You can follow along with her yogi adventure at PhoenixMoments on Instagram.

Resource App for the Visually Impaired : Be My Eyes

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It makes us so happy to be able to highlight a FREE App that is of great use to the global community of the visually impaired, and uplifting to its volunteers. This app is accessible in more than 150 countries and in over 180 languages. The resource App Be My Eyes provides a connection between its approximately 113,800 blind/low vision and 1,919,500 sighted members. The blind can activate a call within the App using the VoiceOver accessibility feature. The call rings on a randomly selected volunteer’s phone that is matched based on language and time zone. The two are then connected via live video for the volunteer to help with a variety of possible scenarios. It is completely anonymous and users have said they feel relief knowing they are not bothering the same person over and over again for help, encouraging them to use it more.

A testimonial from the Be My Eyes App
Actually App user quote from the Be My Eyes press resources.

I myself (Lori) am a volunteer on the App and I recently answered a call where the visually impaired individual was about to put a big salmon in the oven, but couldn’t be sure that they had set the oven to the correct temperature. The individual held the phone up towards the oven where I was able to see that it read 420 degrees, instead of the 425 it was supposed to be. They adjusted the oven again and it was then 430 degrees. One more try and it was just right! The whole call took about 1 min and the individual on the other end was beyond grateful and thanked me for the work everyone is doing on Be My Eyes.

Visually impaired man video chatting to check the expiry date on a milk carton.
There is no way to check the expiry date on a product without the use of your eyes. Here, a visually impaired App user demonstrates making a call for help with that. (Image courtesy of the Be My Eyes press resources.)

There are stories featured within the App each week, sharing the many different ways the blind have used Be My Eyes for assistance. Some great examples include: reading the numbers on a blood pressure monitor, checking the colour of a tie, a call from a video transcriber to get context of the footage, distinguishing between shampoo and conditioner, helping to convert a PDF file into Word format, enabling a download to a phone where VoiceOver could read the document later, finding dropped items, and many other conundrums that many of us might take for granted.

With so many volunteers a call gets answered within a maximum time range of 30 seconds. As a volunteer you will not receive a call very often. Please consider becoming a part of this loving helpful community, but more importantly, spread the word within the visually impaired communities as human connection is so very important.