Top 5 Creation Apps

Hi everyone!  This is Sherri from The Techie Chick.  It's almost time for school to be out for the summer... Yippee!  Time to spend with family and relax by the pool or at the beach and, like many of you, I can't wait!  Summer break is a great time to rejuvenate and gear up for the new school year.  It's also a perfect time to find, play, and become familiar with new apps.  As the tech specialist for my schools, I love using apps with students which allow them to be CREATIVE!  Below is a list of my Top 5 Creation Apps and a few ideas on how to use them for any subject area.  You can even app smash them together!

#1 PicCollage

This is one of my favorites because of its versatility!  It is also easy to use and students pick up how to create with it quickly.  With this app, students make digital posters by adding text, photos, web images, stickers and backgrounds.  You can arrange them "freestyle" or by using a premade layout. You can even search for pictures from within the app.  I recently used this app with a 2nd grade class studying weather.  Students each created 4 poster on thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards.  Each poster contained a title, their name 2-3 pictures and information about that type of weather.  They also created a Wild Weather title page.  We printed the posters and each student made their own booklet.  They loved it!

Check out the examples below for ideas. 

And you can see MORE examples and ideas {HERE}!

 

#2 ChatterPix Kids

Bring your pictures to life with the app ChatterPix Kids!  This is an awesome app with endless possibilities.  Your students will LOVE it.  With this app all you have to do is add a picture, record your voice and the app will create a movie that looks like the picture is talking!  I have used this with famous Americans and Black History Month. Students drew a portrait of their famous person and then created a recording in the first person.  "I am George Washington..."  It is SO cute!

Other ideas?  Find a picture of the Sphinx and have it talk about Ancient Egypt.  Maybe the Great Wall can tell about China or a cube can explain 3-D shapes.  A frog can tell you about its life cycle... the possibilities are endless!  Click {HERE} for more ideas and instructions on using this app.

#3 Skitch

Skitch is the perfect app for labeling, filling in the blanks or highlighting text.  All you need is a picture.  Then you can add text, arrows, highlighting, lines, shapes, symbols and emojis.  You can even blur part of a picture.  Some ideas for this app include completing a form or diagram (great for Venn diagrams) or labeling a map or drawing (parts of a plant, planets in the solar system, parts of a cell, etc.).  Check out my regions of Virginia below.

This is also a great app for app smashing.  I have used this with drawing and "make a scene" apps where students create a picture, save it to the camera roll, and then label it.  In the following example we used the Make a Scene: Farmyard app and then labeled it in Skitch.

#4 TeleStory 

Another favorite is TeleStory... Be a STAR!  In this app you will star in your own movie.  There are 4 different types of movies students can create - The News (which includes weather and a reviewer/critic), Star Adventure, Eye Spy, and The Band.  Be a news reporter, travel into outer space, be a detective or part of a rock band.  I've used this app with several grade levels from 2nd through 6th graders and the ALL loved it.  Second graders were news reporters interviewing and reporting on famous Americans.  Fifth graders did biography news reports and sixth graders created videos using lots of figurative language for a PBL unit.  Students could interview a character from a book, create a book review, be a weather forecaster, travel to space to talk about the planets, be a detective for scientific investigation write a poem and perform it as a rock band, and on and on!  Check out these cute news videos {HERE}!

#5 Shadow Puppet Edu

Make a digital storytelling audio book/video using Shadow Puppet Edu!  It's so easy to use... choose pictures from your camera roll or search within the app to become the "pages" of your book.  Add text to each page if you'd like and background music.  Then begin your recording.  When finished, share or save your video to the camera roll.  This is great for fluency practice or to explain a math skill.  Students can use pictures they find online, take pics with the camera, draw their own and use the camera to capture them or use a drawing app to create pictures for their book.  Create a book about 2-D shapes, animals of the rain forest, a place they are studying, a fictional story they have written... you get the idea. Take a look at this cute video on the white tailed deer.

I hope at least one of these apps have sparked your creative imagination!  Have fun exploring.