Storyboard That - Werewolf Story from Petronius

Happy Halloween, everyone! Thanks to Keith Toda, I recently learned about Storyboard That, a website in which, as the name suggests, you can make storyboards. Since most of my teaching is based in stories (often Greco-Roman myths, original contemporary stories, or original scripts based on films used for Movie Talks), I was eager to use a tool that combines the text of a story with visuals. Not only does this satisfy my creative and visual side, but also provides an additional support for my students' comprehension of the text. 

In Latin II, Keith recently made a storyboard for the story that we are currently reading (about Aeneas and his journey from Troy to the Sibyl). I really liked how his storyboard turned out, so yesterday I decided to check out Storyboard That for myself. 

Here are pros and cons I've found so far from using it over the past day:

Pros:

• Easy to use (with some degree of a learning curve)
• Lots of options for graphics. It comes with tons of backgrounds, characters, symbols, et al. Characters can show emotions, motion, face forward/backward/to the side, and more.
• Lots of culturally-based graphics like ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the European Middle Ages.
• Lots of options for customization (e.g. changing colors, sizes)
• Lots of options for exporting (.pdf, PowerPoint, image files)

Cons:

• The free version is severely limited, so I bought a subscription.
• The subscription is pretty expensive (You can buy a teacher membership for 12 months for $71.88.)
• Perhaps it was my connection, but the website is pretty slow at times.
• I wish there was an easier share option. Maybe I haven't found it yet, but all I've been able to do is share the link to my storyboard.
• Some tools could use some refining to make them faster to do (copying and deleting cells, adding images).

My first storyboard with Storyboard That was a slightly condensed version of the werewolf story in Petronius' Satyricon. In case you are not familiar with the story, the characters Encolpius and Ascyltos attend a lavish dinner party hosted by the decadent freedman Trimalchio. One of the guests, a freedman named Niceros, tells a story about how, when he was still a slave, he went to the house of his girlfriend Melissa one night while his master was away. Along the way, Niceros and his companion, a soldier, stop by some graves along the road. The soldier stops to relieve himself beside the graves (a fairly common practice in antiquity), but then undresses, places his clothing beside the road, urinates around them, turns into a wolf, and runs off. Niceros tries to pick up the clothes, but they have turned to stone. Niceros eventually reaches the villa where Melissa lives (she is also a slave), who tells him that a wolf had attacked the livestock on the villa, but another slave managed to wound the wolf with a lance. Frightened at the fate of his companion, Niceros returns to the site of the clothes and finds blood there instead. Niceros then returns home where he finds the soldier in bed being treated by a doctor.

Here is the storyboard I created:

Click image to enlarge

I must confess that I am proud of my portrayal of "circumminxit." 😜

A subscription to Storyboard That is expensive, but since my curriculum is mostly stories anyway, I plan to make full use of it and create storyboards for every story that we read in Latin I this year. I hope to have an updated review in the spring after I have used this service more. 

Enjoy my favorite holiday!

Cum fratre