On Monday I shared free five apps that I recommend for making videos on iPads in elementary school classrooms. You might have looked at the list and wondered which one(s) you should try. If so, here’s my basic break-down of how these apps can be used by students and the ages that they are appropriate for.
One Frame Videos
These are these are the type of videos that I recommend making with K-2 students to get started. Like the name implies, these videos will feature just one picture or drawing and a student’s voice. Draw and Tell is a great app for this because kids can draw a picture and then record themselves talking about the picture. A simple way to introduce this app is to have students draw pictures of their families and then talk about the people in the picture. Chatter Pix Kids is a simple app but in this app students take a picture with their iPads and then draw a mouth on the picture before recording themselves talking. You can see a great example of Chatter Pix Kids being used by Kindergarten students (with a little help from their teacher) in A Health Meal hosted on Next Vista for Learning.
Audio Slideshow
This is a step above making one frame videos, but the basic concept behind it is the same. Students assemble a series of images and record themselves talking about the images. Shadow Puppet Edu is a good app for making this kind of video in elementary school classrooms because the app contains an integrated image search tool the will provide students with pictures from high quality services like NASA, NOAA, and the Library of Congress. I have personally used this app with students as young as second grade.
Animated Stories
This moves students beyond simply making or selecting pictures and talking over them as in the first two project types. In this project students will write a story and then animate it before possibly adding their own voices to it. Toontastic 3D is my go-to iPad app for doing this with students in third through sixth grade. Students can choose from a huge library of pre-drawn characters and backgrounds to use in their videos or draw their own characters and scenes to use in their videos.
