Create Multimedia Reference Stories with Qwiki Creator

Last week in North Carolina I gave my popular Best of the Web presentation. In that presentation I included the multimedia reference site Qwiki. In case you haven't seen it before, Qwiki publishes narrated, illustrated, interactive reference entries. To use Qwiki, enter a topic in the search box or select a topic from the featured topics on the homepage. Then watch, listen, and read the Qwiki entry for that topic. Below your chosen Qwiki you will see a selection of related Qwiki entries. You can also find related materials by clicking the "Q" symbol that appears at the end of the Qwiki play bar.

Yesterday, through Steve Dembo I learned that Qwiki is now offering Qwiki Creator. Qwiki Creator (still only available by invitation) will allow users to create their own multimedia reference stories. Using Qwiki Creator you will be able to develop your story using videos, images, maps, and text. To lend your personality to the presentation, you can narrate the story. And like the already existing Qwiki entries, you will be able to make the story interactive. Qwiki Creator is also promising to be optimized for iPads.

A sample Qwiki is embedded below.

View Gaza Strip and over 3,000,000 other topics on Qwiki.

Applications for Education
Qwiki Creator has the potential to be a great way for students to organize and share information that they create on their own or information that they discover through research. I would love to see Qwiki Creator used as an alternative to the traditional book report assignment. Students could narrate a summary of the book and also add visuals that they think illustrate key points or characters in the stories that they read.