iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

storytelling

Fun Apps for Designing and Printing Characters to Tell Stories

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Years ago I learned about the Foldify iPad app from one of my students who had used to create characters and buildings that he printed on thick paper then folded into shape. He positioned those characters and buildings on a flat background and made a stopmotion video in which the characters moved to match the narration of his story. 

Foldify is an iPad in which students can design foldable paper people, buildings, and vehicles. Students can design characters and buildings by modifying the many templates available in the Foldify app. Students can make freehand drawings, use block coloring tools, shading and highlighting tools, and erasers. And if students want to include pictures of themselves in their Foldify characters, they can do that by enabling the cameras on their iPads.

When students are happy with the design of their Foldify characters they can save them and print them in three sizes. Once printed students simply follow the Foldify folding lines to make the characters stand up. 

In addition to the classic Foldify app there are two related apps that students will enjoy. Foldify Zoo has animal templates. Foldify Dinosaurs has dinosaur templates. 

Inspire Creative Writing With the Scribeasy App

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scribeasy icon One of the challenges of teaching creative writing can be just getting students to start a story. That’s when apps like Scribeasy can be quite helpful as they provide students with visual prompts that can inspire the start of a story.

Scribeasy is a free iPad app that offers a fun environment in which students can write short stories. Students create stories on Scribeasy by first selecting a background image then dragging and dropping additional pictures onto their chosen background images. When students select objects to add to their backgrounds, a narrator reads the name of the object aloud. Students can move and resize all images to create a visual story in Scribeasy.

scribeasy writing

Once the visuals are in place on Scribeasy students then write a story about the scenes they’ve created. The next step is where Scribeasy shines. Scribeasy gives students a list of suggested words to use in their stories. The writing process is a timed activity. Students can choose to write for a short, medium, or large amount of time (they can extend the time if needed). Completed stories are saved in the app. Students can also save their stories to the camera roll on their iPads.

Part of this post originally appeared on my other blog, FreeTech4Teachers.com

Create Dinosaur Stories With Foldify Dinosaurs

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dinosaurs Of all the apps that students have shared with me over the years, Foldify is probably my favorite. A few years ago one of my my students used it to design a bunch of characters and buildings that he then printed, colored, and folded according to the Foldify print-out. He then used those characters in a video that he made. In his video he and other students provided the voices for each character.

Last year Foldify introduced Foldify Zoo for designing and printing animals. This spring Foldify released Foldify Dinosaurs for designing, printing, and constructing dinosaur models.

Foldify from Pixle on Vimeo.

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

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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.

Avokiddo Emotions – Kids Create Puppets to Identify Feelings

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Screen Shot 2013-09-03 at 9.10.22 AM Avokiddo Emotions is an iPad app that young children will enjoy using. The app presents children with three sock puppet-like animals for students to decorate. Each animal can be decorated with fun costume pieces. The animal’s face reacts as children add things like funny glasses, snorkels, musical instruments, and pieces of fruit. Children pull a handle on the app to shuffle and get more decorations to work with.

Evernote Camera Roll 20130903 092552

Avokiddo Emotions could be a good app for children to use to help them identify their feelings through the creation of fun characters. The app is currently priced at $1.99.