iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

digital storytelling

Adobe Voice Provides a Great Way to Create Narrated Picture Stories

by

Screen Shot 2014-05-08 at 11.52.38 AM Adobe Voice is a new iPad app that makes it easy to create beautiful picture stories. Like other picture story apps, Adobe Voice allows you to record your voice, import pictures, and write text to create a short video. What makes Adobe Voice better than a lot of apps similar to it is the huge gallery of more than 25,000 images, icons, and music tracks that you can use if you don’t have media of your own to use in your story.

To create a story with Adobe Voice you start by select a story template (you can change templates at any time). After choosing a template you construct your story by recording your narration for a frame then adding an image or text to the frame. You can import your own image, take a picture, or select one of the stock images provided by Adobe Voice. To find a stock image or icon you simply enter a search word and then select from the search results. In that regard it is similar to Haiku Deck’s image search tool. If you decide to add text to a frame, the text will automatically resize as you type. Music is automatically added to the background of your narrated Adobe Voice story. You can change the music by tapping the edit option and selecting a different track.

Screen Shot 2014-05-08 at 12.47.14 PM

Publishing and sharing your completed Adobe Voice story requires you to either register for a free Adobe account or sign-in with a Facebook account. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to save your stories directly to your iPad’s camera roll. (Of course, I may have overlooked something, but I didn’t see any direct save option in any of the app’s settings).

Adobe Voice is currently a free iPad app.

Helpful Options Added to Storehouse – A Free iPad App for Visual Storytelling

by

Screen Shot 2014-04-24 at 10.05.32 AM Storehouse is a neat iPad app that I initially reviewed a couple of months ago. It is an app for telling stories through collages of your pictures and video clips. The basic idea behind Storehouse is to create stories by combining images, text, and video clips on a blank canvas. The latest update to Storehouse introduced two features that I thought it needed from the beginning. First, you can now embed previews of your stories into a blog or website. Second, you can now allow commenting on your stories. The commenting feature could be useful for giving students feedback about their stories.

To create stories on Storehouse you can import pictures and video from your iPad’s camera roll, from Instgram, from Dropbox, and from Flickr. You can arrange the sequence of the media by dragging and dropping it into place. You can add text above and below each picture or video clip in your story. Completed Storehouse stories can be shared via email, Facebook, and Twitter. Stories published through Storehouse are given their own URLs for online viewing. You can see my sample story here.

More Storytelling Fun With Foldify Zoo

by

foldify_zoo Foldify is an iPad app that has been popular for a couple of years. Foldify is an iPad app that students can use to design all kinds of 3D figurines on their iPads then print them out to fold and assemble. Last week a new version of Foldify was released, Foldify Zoo. Foldify Zoo is an iPad app that students can use to design 3D animal cut-outs. Just like in the original Foldify in Foldify Zoo after designing their figures students can print their designs with directions for folding their designs into 3D paper objects. Foldify provides basic templates for objects like cars, houses, and people. Students complete the templates by coloring them in, adding their own pictures to the templates, and adding fun digital stamps to the templates.

Foldify Zoo from Pixle on Vimeo.

I first learned about Foldify from a student who used it to create a bunch of characters and buildings that he then used in a video that he made. In his video he and other students provided the voices for each character. The same could be done with Foldify Zoo.

screen480x480

Videoshop – Add Slow Motion and Image Effects to Your Videos

by

Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 8.14.25 PM Videoshop is an iPad for creating and editing videos. Through the app you combine video clips and images into one video project. You can import video clips and images from your iPad’s camera roll into your project or you can capture new footage through the app. After adding your video clips and images to your project you can edit each of the clips by trimming their lengths and adding slow-motion effects. To the pictures and video clips in your projects you can add voice-overs, background music, and text. Transition effects can be inserted between each clip and picture. The last step before publishing your video is to choose Instagram-like visual effects to your project.

Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 8.48.58 PM

Videoshop’s biggest selling points are found in the visual effects and the sound library. The sound library contains dozens of sound effects that you can import into your project for free. You can also import music stored on your iPad.

Storehouse – A Free iPad App for Visual Storytelling

by

storehouse Storehouse is a new iPad app for visual storytelling with your pictures and video clips. The basic idea behind Storehouse is to create stories by combining images, text, and video clips on a blank canvas. To create your stories you can import pictures and video from your iPad’s camera roll, from Instgram, from Dropbox, and from Flickr. You can arrange the sequence of the media by dragging and dropping it into place. You can add text above and below each picture or video clip in your story. Completed Storehouse stories can be shared via email, Facebook, and Twitter. Stories published through Storehouse are given their own URLs for online viewing. You can see my sample story here.

Storehouse could be a good app for students to use to develop visual stories about themselves, about field trips,  or  about school events like winter carnival day or other celebrations. As your students create their stories encourage them to think about the sequencing their media to support the narratives of their stories.

Evernote Camera Roll 20140121 202333

Storehouse is a free iPad app. iOS 7 is required in order to use Storehouse.