Go Beyond Paper & Find an Audience!
Publishing Tools for Elementary Students
Shadow Puppet Edu - Free App
There are lots of ways to use this app in the classroom and Shadow Puppet features some great ideas on their Pinterest page and blog. Students can describe what they learned during a field trip using pictures they’ve taken with their mobile device, or document the steps they took during a science experiment with a combination of images and narration.
This app is a must have for teachers looking for a creative way to have their students tell a story or recount events from an important school event. Try including your Shadow Puppet creations in your students’ digital portfolio!
With Shadow Puppet EDU videos creations can now be up to 30 minutes long and include 100 slides of pictures. Users have the ability to add images from NASA, Flickr Creative Commons, and the Library of Congress’ archive without leaving the app. This high-quality app was chosen by The American Association of School Librarian as a 2014 Best App for Teaching and Learning.
Completely free for classroom use, Shadow Puppet EDU is a great choice for teachers looking to integrate multimedia into a variety of activities! Learn more about Shadow Puppet EDU by visiting their website.
3rd grade students worked together to develop a story, take photos and record the narrative as a group.
A kindergarten student shares her art project and tells a
story about it.
Toontastic - Free App
Making cartoons with Toontastic is as easy as putting on a puppet show - simply press the record button, move your characters onscreen, and tell your story. Toontastic records your animation and voice as a cartoon video to share with friends and family on ToonTube, the app's global storytelling network for kids.
30 Hands - Free App
30 Hands is a storytelling app that allows students to use images to tell a story. They can take their own pictures from within the app, access the iPad camera roll or draw their own images. Students can then narrate over the images. You can delete and rearrange your images. The recording stops between each slide allowing for more collaboration and planning. The final video will save to your camera roll. This is a tutorial made by 30 Hands - similar one is available inside the app.
Adapts easily to use as a "paper slide" video - students can still draw their images, then take pictures of them with the iPad, bring them into the app and narrate without some of the "shaky" videoing.
Classroom Applications:
Share Research/Facts
Student Writing/Publishing
Book Talks - book cover and draw pictures of favorite scenes in books
Share Classroom Activities/Events
Cause and Effect of Disasters (Flood, Tornadoes, Tsunamis)
Tellagami - Free App
from Samantha Morra at EdTechTeacher.org
With Tellagami, begin by creating and customizing a character. Although there is not a great deal of variety in virtual appearance, just enough options exist to personalize your character. From there, you choose a background either from a few in the app itself or your camera roll.
After you customize your character and background, you can choose how you want your character to talk, either by recording your voice or typing in text. If you record your voice, you have 30 seconds. If you choose text to speech, there are male and female voices with a few different accents.
Some quick ideas you might try:
- Have your character tell a story.
- Pick a person in history and have them introduce themselves
- Use a plant cell as the background and have the avatar name and discuss the function of each part of the cell.
- Recite a famous poem or speech
- Read a poem they wrote
- Take a trip or go back in time and describe where the location/time period
- Speak in Spanish, French, Mandarin or any language
You can also save them to your iPad Photos, which is what I like to do. From there, Gamis can be combined together in iMovie or incorporated into other apps like Explain Everything. (Greg Kulowic has some great examples of this, as “appsmashes.”) Your only limit is your imagination!
For more ideas visit Tech Tips Technology Tips for Elementary Teachers
Adobe Voice - and Adobe Slate - Free App
Adobe Voice allows students to narrate a story over an array of digital images. They are designed to be 60-90 seconds in length. You simply say a sentence while holding down the record button, then choose the image/picture you want to display while that recording is played. Repeat.
Adobe Slate Create a story with a magazine-type layout. Add images and text. I would use this app with upper elementary to middle school students
Students can create
- Self Introductions
- Create a dictionary (vocabulary, grammar or script)
- Flashcards - create a deck focused on a specific genre and share link with peers
- Digital Storytelling
- Cultural explanations
- Journal of field trip
- Descriptive language practice
- Document a series of steps
- Book Trailer
- Portfolio Show
- Assessment
- Create a campfire story...have students sit in a circle, have each one record their piece to the story and pass to the next person.
ChatterPix - Free App
Features:
- 30 seconds to record.
- Add stickers, frames, or text.
- Send movie to the camera roll.