iPad

Making Pictures Talk with ChatterPix & YakIt

samanthamorra Leave a comment

Updated from my 2014 post

ChatterpixYakIt

If you have access to iPads in your classroom, a great activity with your students is to make pictures talk, create animations that anthropomorphize objects, or use personification to demonstrate understanding. It’s a great activity anytime of the year.

Two fantastic sets of free apps for creating talking pictures on iPads are ChatterPix /ChatterPix Kids and YakIt / YakIt Kids. With both sets, the “non-kid” versions provide additional sharing features such as uploading to e-mail and social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, while the “kid” versions only save to the Camera Roll.

Chatterpix

ChatterPix Kids & ChatterPix

ChatterPix Kids and ChatterPix from Duck Duck Moose are simple, elegant, and useful apps. Duck Duck Moose is now a part of Khan Academy. Both apps allow students to take a picture or use an image saved to Photos. With a swipe of their finger, students can draw a mouth on any image. There is one button to press to record, and the mouth then animates with the recording.

Features:

  • 30 seconds to record.
  • Add stickers, frames, or text.
  • Send movie to the camera roll.

YakIt

YakIt Kids & YakIt

YakIt Kids and YakIt from Freak’nGenius are similar to ChatterPix Kids but have a few more features which make them slightly more complicated to use but add more to the final product.

These apps have the same features as ChatterPix Kids and ChatterPix plus:

    • Several different types of mouths. Spend a little time aligning the points of the mouth and chin to create an interesting effect.
    • More stickers. Create different types of faces on imported objects.
    • Change the pitch of the voice. Instead of a standard recording, make some audio tweaks. While this may seem like a very simple change, I have found that being able to change the voice brings out more from our introverted students.
  • Multiple scenes. Rather than just one image, string together several different talking pictures.

Blending with Other Apps

Since all of these apps save to the camera roll, they are great for building and blending with other apps to create something that exceeds the possibilities of just one app.

Here are some examples:

2nd Grade: Who Should Be On a Coin

Face on coins & Chatterpix

Face On Coins Booth + ChatterPix Kids

6th Grade: What Pi?

YakIt Smash

Garageband + YakIt + iMovie

Creating talking pictures or animations offer amazing possibilities in the classroom. These two apps are so easy to use, students can complete a simple project in a short amount of time or make more complex projects that can lead to collaborative videos, ebooks, or websites. Not only are these apps fun for students, but they also allow them to think, create and demonstrate understanding.

Two Free Google Apps that Bring Out the Best In an iPad

samanthamorra Leave a comment

This first appeared as a guest post on FreeTech4Teachers.

Many of us using technology in the classroom find ourselves caught between two worlds: Apple and Google. Apple’s iPad is a fantastic tool in the classroom which provides students with various opportunities to consume, create, and communicate. Similar to a swiss-army knife, it is only limited by how we choose to use it. At the same time, Google apps provide students with cloud-based services, from search to document creation and sharing, that work seamlessly on iPad.

So, what are some of the best ways to experience Google on the iPad? Let’s take a look at two apps from Google: Google Search and Drive.

Google Search

Usually when you think of Google you think of searching first. The Google Search app has a nice clean interface: a search bar, a history button, a voice search button, an apps button, and Google Now cards. Most of the features are pretty intuitive. While, I like the apps button because it provides access to many Google apps and sites from one place, my favorite part about this app is Google Goggles.
With Google Goggles, you can take a picture with the iPad camera, and Google Search will scour the internet for that picture. This is a great feature that taps into two of iPad’s strengths: mobility and image capture.

 

Google Drive

The Google Drive app offers some great features on iPad. You can create docs, sheets and folders, as well as open, edit and collaborate on any doc or sheet that you started from another device. There are also two great features that bring out the best in your iPad: speech-to-text and supporting workflow.

Speech-to-Text

I have tried speech-to-text on other apps and sites with minor success; however, it works really well when creating documents in Drive. The best part is that because it syncs with the cloud! This means that you could be on the same document from a computer as well as iPad, talk into iPad, and the text will also appear instantly on the computer. This is an amazing feature – especially for students who struggle with writing.

Workflow

Another powerful feature of Google Drive is how it supports workflow on iPad. You can upload video and images from the camera roll right into your Google Drive. This is a great way to get an important video or image off of iPad and onto your computer or another device. It is also a great way to collaborate. You can gather class images and video in Drive and then share or merge them together on a single device. Google Drive liberates your creative masterpieces from a single iPad.

A final great workflow feature in Drive is “Open In…” Any file, in any format, can be stored in Google Drive. This feature gives you a variety of options for how you want to open that file and use it on iPad. For example, you could open a PDF from Google Drive in iBooks, Evernote, Subtext, or any other app that might allow for PDF Annotation.

Google and iPad compliment each other beautifully, and together can make a great tool for learning and teaching.

 

Exploring IFTTT.com

samanthamorra 1 Comment

(I just read this tweet from Holly Clark (@HollyEdTechDiva) about a site called IFTTT and had to check it out.)

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IFTTT stands for “If this then that” and is pronounced like “gift” but without the g. It’s a site that allows you to connect online services.

I decided to try to make the recipe like the one on in Holly’s tweet which connected FourSquare to Google Calendar. It was so simple! After you sign in, the site walks you through the steps to make a recipe with a trigger and an action. I was able to do another recipe with the iPhone/ipad app just as easily. This time I connected new Facebook status with the calendar.

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What really makes this powerful is that Evernote, DropBox, and GoogleDrive are all a part of the services included. RSS feed and email also makes this pretty powerful. There is even a recipe gallery that you can explore.

Here are some interesting recipes I plan to check out:

  1. Save Gmail attachments to a folder in Google Drive named with the sender’s email address. 
  2. Copy photos I’m tagged in on Facebook to Dropbox
  3. Twitter favorites to Evernote

I plan on playing with this site some more, but I can see it as a great introduction to coding for students. When teaching Scratch and basic coding, I would often go over “if then” statements. I can really see students having fun creating on this site and gaining a better understanding of “if this then that.”