Apps for Digital Storytelling
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Explain Everything Classic (check pricing)
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Explain Everything Interactive Whiteboard (check pricing)
7 Additional Story-Telling Apps
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Steller is a free storytelling app developed by Mombo Labs
Several additional apps to consider are listed at the end of the document.
Animoto Video Maker
Animoto has been around a long time on the computer. The app is even more powerful because of how quickly and easily images and sound can be strung together, helping. Additionally, this app helps students understand the power of images, requiring them to think critically about the images they choose and what information, tone and emotions are conveyed by those images. Captioning and choice of music add to the impact of each student’s work.
BaiBoard
BaiBoard - Collaborative Whiteboard is a free virtual whiteboard app that allows students to make multi-page whiteboards while collaborating with others in-person or remotely. It can also be used to write on and share PDF files. Students simply create a board (using a passcode, if desired, for added security) and add content, guided by the easy-to understand icons at the top of the board. They then can send invites to others (who at the time of this review must have access to an iPad or Mac computer) who can view and/or make changes to the board or PDF document. Boards can also be exported and viewed in many ways -- including email, Dropbox, Evernote, and Facebook -- as well as opened in ArtStudio and other apps. Multiple users can work on a board at the same time, communicating with one another via an in-app instant message feature. The whiteboard can include a a blank background or a background grid, making it handy for shared math work.
Book Creator
This app is $4.99 and it is my all-time favorite book creator app.
The simple way to create your own beautiful iBooks, right on the iPad. Read them in iBooks, send them to your friends, or submit them to the iBookstore.
It is now available online as well.
Chatterpix Kids
Chatterpix Kids for iPad: A great app for your students!
The ChatterPix Kids App is a great, easy to use, FREE app where you can take
any photo and MAKE IT TALK.
In this app you take a picture of an object or select an image from the website www.Pics4Learning.com (this site has safe, free, copyright friendly images for students to use in creating projects in the classroom---easy to get to by posting some QR codes around your room) draw a line where you would like the mouth to be, and then record what you want your object to say. The app creates a video of your object talking.
Here is a link to a VERY SHORT example of my collie, Meg, speaking:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7830581/ChatterPix%20Video.mp4
Once the initial novelty of this is experienced (!) the real ed experience begins. You could take a picture of a plant and have the child animate the plant to describe how
a plant grows. You could have a photo of an animal and have the animal talk
about their habitat…and so on…anything you want the child to teach to another
child or to demonstrate understanding.
This app is FREE.
Doodle Buddy FREE
An easy to use drawing program to create pictures for your publications.
Doodle Buddy for iPad – Paint, Draw, Scribble, Sketch
Dragon Dictation
Dragon Dictation FREE
Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. FREE
Explain Everything Classic (check pricing)
Explain Everything Interactive Whiteboard (check pricing)
Here are some videos that show of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b00ZeszvjP4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU2tUmRN8SI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrPLDWDE0HE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMttsHd0M8M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdzTSeRYkwg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lupVle5m-iY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1St3sBZERqU
I’m thinking that kids can make slides, upload to an email account and then grab the slides into a slideshow. Once the slides are there, kids can record their voices on each slide and there will be a class slideshow.
And here is some info from an article:
There are very few paid apps for the iPad that I would say is a “must-have” app for schools. However, Explain Everything is one of those apps. We have put Explain Everything on every iPad we have deployed in our school is has been consistently the most used app outside of the camera on an iPad. Explain Everything is an app that allows students to create, collaborate, communicate and consume content at any age.
Explain Everything Interactive Whiteboard
Explain Everything is essentially an app with a whiteboard type screen that allows users to record audio (and now video), write, and move objects all while recording in real
time. The end products can be pictures, videos, are even template
projects. Explain Everything allows users to annotate any object on the
iPad with the touch of their finger. It makes it easy for kids and adults to
capture their screens and share it with virtually anyone.
Explain Everything can be a cost effective solution and/or replacement for interactive whiteboards (IWBs). The screen and finished videos can be mirrored to a projector using the iPad’s AirPlay capabilities (using Apple TV, AirServer, or Reflector). Many of the functions that IWB software provide can be found in the Explain Everything App at a fraction of the price.
EdPuzzle
Use EDpuzzle's tools to enhance your flipped video content, as well as your in-class lessons and lectures. Teachers who choose the highest-quality videos (or create their own) and add voice-overs, interactive quizzes, and audio notes can create a much more interactive experience for their students and one that encourages students to not just be active viewers but reactive viewers who critique what they watch. If you're using others' content as a starting point, EDpuzzle’s search will suggest high-quality videos from sites such as YouTube, Khan Academy, TED Talks, and Vimeo. However, be aware that editing the video won't alter it in any way. Remember to preview all video content for appropriateness.
To take learning a step further, have students use the platform. In the hands of students, the videos can be annotated and reconceptualized in ways that move students from passive consumers into critical remixers of online learning content. It could even give students the opportunity to improve on what's already out there in the vast sea of online learning videos.
Edpuzzle
Go to www.Edpuzzle.com
Click Login, select teacher and then select log in with Google this will keep your school email linked with EdPuzzle. Below are some short tutorial videos on how to use Edpuzzle
Overview of Edpuzzle
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwRQQ_gfvSomuZJaBLRshQ
How to crop a video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OYH83NiZGA
How to add questions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs2JYeoAx4w
How to add audio to an existing video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzotjrWX5qo&index=4&list=PLKl8fZYdu71ELGkrGIdbGrwqvFguEp5S
How to import a video you made
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6gG7FSUvSg&index=7&list=PLKl8fZYdu71ELGkrGIdbGrwqvFguEp5S
Educreations FREE
Educreations turns your iPad into a recordable whiteboard. Creating a great video tutorial is as simple as touching, tapping and talking. Explain a math formula... Create an animated lesson... Add commentary to your photos... Diagram a sports play...
With voice recording, realistic digital ink, photos and text, and simple sharing through email, Facebook or Twitter, now you can broadcast your ideas from anywhere.
My Story - Book Maker for Kids FREE
By HiDef Web Solutions
Create and share ebooks by adding drawings, photos, and stickers. Then record your voice on every page and share your story with friends, family and classmates. We’ve made My Story super teacher friendly by adding multiple authors and syncing across multiple iPads through a free Bright Bot account! So now you can have all your classroom iPads in sync! Of course this is a great app for the home as well. $3.99
ShowMe FREE
Interactive Whiteboard
A great interactive whiteboard app.
Pic Collage
Millions of people use PicCollage to create quick photo memories with friends and
family, or make poster-worthy collages of their favorite bands and brands. Add
cool stickers, fun fonts, web images and Youtube videos!
Puppet Pals FREE
Puppet Pals allows you to create a show (or story) using puppets and scenery.
Here is YouTube video that will demo this app.
Story Buddy 2 LITE FREE
Story Buddy’s update now allows you to create multiple stories on one iPad. It looks similar to iBooks now with a shelf, thus allowing multiple students to be able to create individual stories on one iPad. When the app opens, students can continue creating the piece they started without interfering with other students’ work, or having to wait for one student to finish publishing.
Story Kit FREE
Meant as an app to read stories, it has the capability for you to create stories. You can use photos or draw your own illustrations and write and record text. Here is a slideshare on Storykit with an example of a story.
Story Press
Storytelling is an art and performing this art is a lot easier with this interactive digital storytelling app. You will be interviewed by the app about your life; all your answers will be recorded and will be compiled together to make them your life’s story.
Tellagami
With Tellagami, students can create quick animations that liberate them from the physical world and remove concerns about appearance and general physics. Tellagami allows them to create an avatar and custom background, as well as to have the avatar speak with the student’s voice or via text-to-speech. Students can place their avatars in all sorts of interesting places like a plant cell or next to George Washington. They can have their avatar sit on a library book shelf or stand on the ocean floor.
Toontastic FREE
Lights, Camera, Play! Toontastic is a creative storytelling app that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family around the world. 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.
Toonastic Jr. Pirates - for iPad FREE
This colorful, pirate themed app invites children to create their own cartoons by using fun-tastic characters and scenery in a quick and easy way. Cartoonish pirates, mermaids, ghosts and princesses all add to the cast of characters that will have children creating their own cartoon in just minutes. Children can create stories alone or with others by using a feature called “Story Share”, which enables your child to connect live (with parental assistance) to a friend or family member to create a story together online. Toontastic also has an “All-Access” app we encourage you to download. FREE
VoiceThread FREE
What's a VoiceThread anyway? (8 pages)
Click the link above to view and participate in the VoiceThread. Making comments is really simple and you can delete and re-record as many times as you like.
If you are viewing this on iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and you have the VoiceThread app installed, tap here to view this VoiceThread on your device.
0b7c7cb528237a5c2fd953f98ec5555f_3819769
http://voicethread.com/support/howto/Whats_New/
Create and share dynamic conversations around documents, snapshots, diagrams and videos -- basically anything there is to talk about. You can talk, type, and draw right on the screen. VoiceThread takes your conversations to the next level, capturing your presence, not just your comments. Anyone can join the discussion from their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC -- anytime, anywhere.
FEATURES
* Add images and videos from your camera or photo library.
* Flip through pages and annotate them while you narrate.
* Sharing is as easy as sending an email.
* Use your VT account if you have one -- just sign in and all your threads will be there.
* Access the extensive catalog of content created on voicethread.com.
REMEMBER:
For free apps you can always check Apps Gone Free
To check for prices and quick reviews check AppShopper
Idea Sketch
Ideament lets you easily draw a diagram - mind map, concept map, or flow chart - and convert it to a text outline, and vice versa. You can use Ideament for anything, such as brainstorming new ideas, illustrating concepts, making lists and outlines, planning presentations, creating organizational charts, and more!
7 Additional Story-Telling Apps
Steller is a free storytelling app developed by Mombo Labs
Replay
Essentially, if you want to be able to make a multimedia Facebook album to share with your friends, Replay allows you to assemble photos, videos, music, and a variety of different fonts, and edit it into a single, sharable file. It’s about as nostalgic as you can get while using an iPhone.
Replay is free in the App Store.
Steller
A storytelling app that puts a lot of emphasis on the elegance of a final product. Steller allows users to piece together photo essays and make use of various cropping tools as well as a large number of headers and classic fonts. Steller can make looking through an album feel a lot more like thumbing through a great coffee table book.
Steller is free in the App Store.
Storehouse
If you’re someone who likes to use a variety of photo sharing and editing clients, but prefers ease of use and simplicity, then Storehouse is a great app to download. It takes a page out of Snapchat’s story-telling function by allowing you to put together a timeline or a collage of photos with linearity in mind. Storehouse also allows you to explore content put together by other users.
Storehouse is free in the App Store.
Heyday Photo Journal
Users play a far less hands-on role with Heydey Photo Journal, and interact with it simply by using their phone as they normally would. Heyday takes the locations you visit and pairs them with the photos taken that day in order to reproduce an editable album. Instead of making you think more about how to keep track of memories, Heyday does most of the work for you.
Heyday Photo Journal is free in the App Store.
1 Second Everyday
If you’re more into the Boyhood-Richard-Linklater style of storytelling, 1 Second Everyday is probably the app you’ll want to use. Instead of having users make involved photo albums or tell stories with video clips and text banners, this app allows users to film one second of their day, which can be revisited by day or edited into a single reel. It’s a sweet way to look back on a year, if not a slightly melancholic one.
1 Second Everyday is $0.99 in the App Store.
Lightt
Lightt is everything you wish Instagram was and everything Snapchat will never be. It allows users to edit photos and video clips using a huge number of filters and settings and then share the finished product on social media (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter) or even email it. There’s something heartwarming about how simple it is to share clips of your life on Lightt.
Lightt is available for free in the App Store.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Top 10 tips for using Book Creator
1. Interactive Pictures.
Through regular updates, Book creator has changed quite a bit in the last year. One of the best additions to the app though has to be the ability to mask sound clips - that is, to make the sound button invisible in iBooks. The genius of this is that you can make pictures (or even parts of pictures) interactive!
2. Audio Feedback.
The applications of the audio masking feature are vast but one that has worked particularly well for us has been the for teacher feedback. Use Dropbox or email to seed a staff photo to the students that they can reuse throughout their project. Then as elements are added to the ebook, they can come to you for audio reflections on their work, effort or even presentation.
3. Hyperlinking.
Any image can have a hyperlink tagged to it which creates a wealth of possibilities. These links can direct you either to a website or to a specific page in the ebook itself. One clever student in my class took the initiative herself to hyperlink her contents page using relevant images.
4. Importing Content.
Book Creator is friendly towards content coming from the Camera Roll. As such content made in other apps like Morfo, Puppet Pals, Explain Everything etc can easily be embedded to enhance your ebook further. Remember, if an app does not support exporting to the camera roll, use the built-in screenshot tool to take an image then crop it directly in the Photos app.
5. Scanning Content.
Another helpful reminder would be that children’s work can be scanned as jpg files and added to Dropbox. This makes it possible to download directly to the camera roll and insert into ebooks. This is great as it means that the iPad does not have to dominate an entire project but be used a the tool to present handwritten work. Audio/typed reflections or even video reflections can then enhance a piece of work further!
6. Direct Their Style.
Most students will have little experience creating ebooks and as such can get a little carried away with the style options – and using as many as humanly possible! Try to steer them away from this as it can be distracting and even detrimental for the reader. Particularly look out for “rainbow books” where every single page is a different, bright primary colour! Remind students that backgrounds are better being paler, softer colours to make the content stand out.
7. Drafts and Dropbox.
Another newer feature of Book Creator is the ability to save to Dropbox during a project and then download back to Book Creator to continue working on it. This is especially helpful if students are not using their own iPads as it negates the need to use the same device every time! Be warned though – you must ensure that the device is kept on and Dropbox open until the file upload completes or the file can corrupt and will no longer open in Book Creator (though it will still be safely on the original iPad of course!)
8. Merging Books
Another helpful addition to the app when it comes to dealing with the logistics of iPads in the classroom. If a student forgets their device, all is not lost! Have them start a new book on a separate device and upload the draft to Dropbox at the end of the session. When they return to their own device, they can now download the extra pages they made to Book Creator. Whilst looking at the main ebook file, click on the + symbol and choose Combine Books. Now, just choose the ebook of the extra pages and they will be added to the end of the original book!
9. Desktop Viewing with Readium
Upon completing an ebook project in 2012, it was a little disappointing for those without iPads at home that they couldn’t take their work away with them. Thankfully the latest update to Book Creator has addressed this issue. Email your .epub to your PC or Mac and open the Google Chrome browser. From here, access the Chrome App Store and download the free Readium app. This will enable your ebook file to be opened on a desktop with full interactive content!
10. Speak To The Source
Red Jumper Studios, the developers of Book Creator, are excellent at responding to feedback and helping with issues that arise whilst using their app. Visit this link to find out more: http://www.redjumper.net/bookcreator/support/
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