Are you looking for an alternative option to the traditional trifold brochure or poster? Adobe Slate might be the answer for you. It is another app that can be found on the student iPads. See below for the link to also access this app on the web – very cool! I encourage you to download this one to your teacher iPad as well. Unlike the previous two digital storytelling options, Adobe Slate allows the students to tell a story – but with no audio. It has a pretty cool layout to it that makes it quite engaging. You can add your own pictures or there is an option to add free images (in other words there is no copyright, so you can use and change them as you like). Here is the wood frog presentation again, except this time using Adobe Slate. When you click on the picture below, a new tab will open, just scroll through the presentation.
As always, let me know if you are interested in learning more about this app and/or to have a collaborative meeting on how you may be able to best use it as a tool of instruction.
UPDATE: Mike Kiefer is going to be psyched – it is not just an iOS app – it is available online too! Follow this link: Adobe Slate.
I wasn’t going to blog again today – but this was sooo easy and quick to do, I figured, why not? Soon to be pushed out to all of the student iPads is an app called: Adobe Voice. It is a very straight forward way to create a digital story. Like any digital storytelling, you want to have a prewritten script and have your pictures on your device. Once that is set, launch the app.
Adobe voice currently has the brown icon. Once the app is launched, click on create a new story.
Give your project a title and then you can to choose a theme. Voice comes with great storyboards pre-made for you and the students. Below are just three, but I think you will get an idea of how helpful they can be. I am going to select, “Follow A Hero’s Journey.”
All you need to do now is add whatever picture, texts or icons (Voice comes with hundreds) you want to use to tell your story. To narrate, simply hold down the orange microphone and record. Don’t like your recording? Hold down the microphone and record again. It was really easy!
When you are done, export it to your camera roll and then upload to your google drive.
Here is the digital story I created on wood frogs using Adobe Voice. For the record, it took longer to create this post than it did to create the story…. As always, if you’d like more information, to brainstorm how you can use this in your instruction, please let me know! I envision lots of opportunities to embed our 21st century matrix skills with this application.
There are many different web based apps you can use for digital storytelling – Storybird, Haiku Deck, Animoto, WeVideo, and PowToons to name a few. The hangup is they all cost money if you wish to use them in full. I thought it would be best to focus on the free options.
Using the Chromebook for a multimedia project can be a tricky bird. There are not too many free options – but here is one way, with a caveat at the end. First, have your class create their ‘movie’ using Google Slides. A great advantage to using slides is that it is a medium they will be familiar with as it is part of the Google apps suite. Another advantage is using the research feature for images. One of the many reasons I like this feature is that the kids can search for images that are free to use. To do this, open the research window and enter your search item. For this example I chose frogs. Under the search window you will see a down arrow. Click on it.
This will open a menu. My images are currently not filter by free usage. Click on the “Not filtered by licence menu.”
You only have one other option here, select it!
Once the kids have finished putting together their presentation, it is time to start recording. I highly recommend they create a written script in Google docs that they have printed and practiced before they film their presentation. To film their presentation they will open the TechSmith Snagit extension I pushed out to their chromebooks. It is the blue box with a white ‘S’ in the upper right hand corner of their window.
This will open a window on the right side of your screen. Under the Video section, you will want to click on ‘Screen.’
Once the screencasting begins, start the Slides presentation in full screen mode, wait for the slides counter in bottom left corner to fade out and begin your presentation. Use the arrow keys to move between slides. If you touch the mouse, the slides counter will reappear. When you are done recording click the ‘S’ again and stop recording.
You will end up with a little extra video at the beginning and the end of your recording. Which brings us to the caveat – the tricky bird. You could use WeVideo to edit your recording, but the free version has limitations. A great free option is the YouTube editor. It isn’t very difficult to master and does a great job. But not all of our students have access to this feature. As the teacher, if you want the videos edited, you may need to do some overseeing of the editing process.
If you’d like to learn more about Google Slides, Snagit, or YouTube video editor, invite me to a team meeting or personal planning and we can discuss how these applications might be useful in your instruction.
I am sharing a quick digital story I put together using these three tools.
