Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Storytelling Apps on the iPad – Voki Toontastic and More”.
The topic of this video is storytelling on the iPad, and this is going to be basically an overview of what’s available, some of the best apps that are available and just a glimpse into how to use a few of them. We’Re not gon na have time to show in depth all of them, but by watching this video you should be able to get started using the iPad to tell stories, let’s jump right in to the first app that I think, is just wonderful for storytelling on the Ipad and that is Voki to be specific, Voki education, and this is what it looks like it’s this one here and you can see that it looks like it’s called Voki Edie. But if you go into the App Store and try to get the app it calls it Voki education, so I’m gon na go ahead and just tap on that app to open it up and you can see what happens you get. This welcome screen with a bunch of characters and what Voki is for it’s for creating your own talking avatars.
Now these can be avatars that represent who you are, or they can just be characters, maybe characters from novels people from history or really just about whatever you want to do. So, let’s take a look at what we can do with this app you’ll notice here in the upper left corner, where there’s a face, if you tap on that face, you can select different characters to choose from and you can see that they have a. They have a series of folders that you can choose from. They don’t look like folders, but that’s basically what they are. So I tap on this one that looks like animals and I get a bunch of different animal characters that pop up and I can just tap on one of those characters to select it and make that the avatar or the character that I’ll use in my storytelling.
You’Ll notice that there are characters that are people more animals, cats, in this case we’ve got other people. These are more realistic. Looking people at least somewhat more realistic, more animals in a different style. We’Ve got dogs some people from around the world, there’s even some famous people that you’ll recognize here in this list.
Here we have some holiday characters and on and on even some politicians. Now, if you or if a student, the know where to go to get started, maybe there’s just too many choices. It’S too overwhelming what you can do is you can tap this die here at the top and that will randomly give you a character from the collection, and so that way you can get started instead of spending too much time with a character just tap and randomly Pick one and then just get started.
Okay, so that’s that’s an option for the purposes of this video, I’m just gon na tap to select a character and I’ll pick. This dog now you’ll notice here at the left, underneath the face, there’s also an image of some clothing. If you tap on that, you can sometimes put clothing on your character, in this case no clothing necessary, and so I’m not going to bother with that.
But oftentimes you’ll have hats that you can put on. You can put glasses on the character change their mouth, their lips, facial hair. But again I chose a dog, so it’s limited in what you have available, but there is what they call bling. Okay, that’s what this represents and on the website. It actually calls it bling, but anyway it’s kind of fun. You can choose some bling to add to your character.
Okay, I’ll, go with that. Now, let’s move down the list here in addition to clothing, you can also put in a background, and you can see that there’s different ones to choose from so just go ahead and pick background for your character, underneath that we also have some color options and these Color options are for the lips of the character, can change the color of the animals lips. I could change the eye color, the skin color and sometimes also the hair color okay. So now, if you’re wondering okay, where does the storytelling come into play? That’S next.
At the very bottom left you can see, there is a button for sound and when you tap on it, it gives you two different options for adding sound to your characters. The first is this one using the keyboard. You can just tap to enter a message and after you’ve typed the message you can just shrink the keyboard to get it out of the way, and now I can just tap the play button and my character speaks now. You probably can’t hear that. I don’t think it’s being recorded from my iPad. This dog is speaking and saying hello there. Now, if I want to – or if I need to, I can change the language from English to any of these other languages. Now it won’t translate. It won’t translate the text that you see here, but rather it will pronounce it as if it is in the language that you select. You can also change the voice, there’s male voices, female voices and a variety different accents things like that. And finally, you can also add sound effects, for example, chipmunk sound effects or echo so kind of some fun options. Now there is another way to put audio into this character and into this animation, and that is through the microphone. So if I tap microphone, it lets me tap record and I can say something into the iPad mic so, for example, hello, hello there. How are you i tap? Stop and it’s now attaching you can see this spinning circle.
It’S getting that recording connected to my dog and you can see it’s now. It’S now saying what I had recorded again, you’re, not hearing that just because of how I’m mirroring my iPad to my computer again, i could put in sound effects if i want to so. That’S an overview of Voki. Now, when you’re done with your Voki, how do you share that? How do you ever see it again? You have to just open the app well, there is a nice option there in the lower right corner and if you tap on it it lets you easily share it to Facebook, Twitter, Google. Now those may not be good options in a school setting, but this fourth one is and that’s email. You can just tap that and it will open up a dialog that you can use to email it to the teacher or to students or to colleagues whatever you need to do. Okay, so that’s Voki education. I think it’s a great app for storytelling and lots of other uses actually in education. Next, let’s take a look quickly at Adobe spark video.
Now I actually have a video on this topic already, if you’re interested, you should watch that other tutorial. Now that tutorial focuses on using adobe spark video on a computer, but I want you to know that you can use it also on the iPad, and so basically what this is for is it’s for creating narrated slide shows you can just click that plus sign. That was there at the bottom.
You can put in a title: tap next, choose a template. Tap pick this one there at the bottom and then you can easily add photos from all of these different sources that you see here: okay, including just searching, and then you can bring those pictures in to your project just by tapping. And then you can record your voice and talk about that picture. Esto es un coche now they’re at the bottom of the screen.
You can tap to move from one slide to the next to the next and then, when you’re done, you can easily share this and save it to your iPad as a video. So I know that was quick, but if you’re interested please check out my other video on this topic, going back to my home screen next up, we have a wonderful app, that’s amazing called tiny tap and again I have a video tutorial that goes in detail about This, but this is one of the best storytelling apps on the iPad, so please check it out by watching my video tutorial. It’S a way for you to make digital books, narrated books and interactive activities and games on the iPad, and these are playable not just on the iPad they’re actually playable online, as well as on the iPad. So it’s a great app! Please watch the video that I previously made about this app next up. We’Ve got an amazing and totally free. In fact, all four of these so far are completely free and it’s called Toon tastic.
When you open it up, it takes you to a screen where you can start a new project and what kind of project is this? This is for creating basically finger puppet recordings, but instead of using your your actual finger, you just create a cartoon by tapping create cartoon. You go in and just tap new cartoon. This helps you to plan out the story arc of your story or your cartoon, and then you can just tap, let’s say on setup and then the paintbrush to get started. It opens up, and you can pick from several different settings – lots of different fun settings that give students some ideas and helps them get started. Thinking about what they’re gon na make and do alright, I’m happy with that one I’ll tap the arrow in the upper right and it opens up, and then I pick from what they call the toys. You can see that they’ve got several categories of toys across the top here and you select the category and you get different toys that pop up these are actually characters is the way I think about it, but they call them toys.
Okay, then, if you like, one of them just tap to add the toy or the character to your scene, okay, when you’re done tap the arrow in the upper right and you can place the characters in your scene, okay put them where you want them to be. You can just move them around with your finger. If you use two fingers, you can make them bigger smaller. You can rotate them a little bit and notice that you can even move individual body parts, which is pretty awesome that you can do that with this free app when you’re ready, tap start and it counts down, and it lets you record right now. It’S recording my voice and everything I do with my finger with these characters. You know I’m just tapping and holding and moving these characters around and they’re automatically.
You know their legs are moving, the arms are moving, the mouth is moving and it’s recording my voice and the actions of the characters. When you’re done tap, stop and it begins to compile it, and then it plays your movie. You can see everything that I did was recorded. You can’t hear my voice, but normally you would be able to hear my voice, so it’s really a fun and amazing app great for storytelling, whether in the classroom or at home or just for fun.
So I’m gon na tap in the upper right from there I could add music notice across the bottom. It says: happy friendly surprised. This has to do with the kind of music that you want. What kind of mood do you want for your story when you’re completely done tap the arrow in the upper right again, and you can move on to the next scene when you’re done with the whole cartoon or finger puppet activity whatever it might be, just tap done In the upper right corner and it will compile everything you can put in the movie title directed by and then just tap to export to camera roll and then after shrinking your keyboard, you can tap that checkmark in the lower right corner.
And it’s going to compile this and put it in my camera roll, so quite an amazing, app, completely free and available in the App Store. Now there is a competitor to this. That’S really quite good. It’S called Puppet Pals and there’s Puppet Pals one Puppet Pals.
There’S some really good things there. You should check that out as well, if you’re interested closing out of that. Let’S move on to two more that I would like to mention. One is called stop-motion studio.
This one is an interesting app. It has a free version as well as a paid version, but you can use this to create stop-motion animated movies. So that’s a great app, but I just wanted to mention. Finally, we have an app called tell a story.
This is made by the same people that made toon tastic, and what tell a story is all about is allowing students to pretend to be someone else. It helps them to make their own movies and it uses the camera on the iPad to record the students faces. But it puts things on their face on their head: digital sunglasses, crazy, hair, makeup things like that, and they can pretend to be someone else as they tell a story. So it’s a lot of fun.
So I think that’s a great overview, at least of the beginnings of you know. If you want to get started telling stories using the iPad here are some of the best apps to try and there’s more feel free to check out these others as well. But I think, if you start with these six you’re gon na have a great experience, making stories and telling stories using your iPad. Thanks for watching – and please subscribe to my youtube channel for more videos about technology for teachers and students and check back every Monday, because at least every Monday, I’ll post, a new video on my youtube channel. .