Whetting your APPetite Vol. 7: Toontastic is Fantastic!

This. is. amazing. Many thanks to my new ADE friend, John Shoemaker - a technology coordinator from Palm Beach, FL - who shared this amazing app with me. Toontastic is Puppet Pals on steroids. I still care deeply about Puppet Pals, but Toontastic is my new app boyfriend.

So what caused this switch? Toontastic seems to have been developed with the writing student in mind. The app embeds writing lessons into its beautifully animated screens - but doesn't hit your kids over the head with the fact that they are learning.

For example, this app asks kids to story board before beginning to create their movie. It breaks the "film" into scenes labeled 'setup', 'conflict', 'challenge', 'climax', and 'resolution' -- all in that same graphic story arc we teachers use to teach writing. Once your student selects the scene he or she would like to animate, they have the option to either use a stock setting or illustrate their own. They have this same option for their characters - choose a pre-created character or create one with the paint palette. (An additional plus to these characters over the Puppet Pals figures is that these characters can move their appendages. Groovy.)

Next up, mood music. And I do mean mood music. After developing the visual aspect of their scenes, narrating the plot, and determining their plot sequence, students select the mood  of each scene and its intensity. They use a sliding scale to modulate exactly how happy, sad or frightening a particular plot element may be.

So far, so great - right? Well, it gets better. Your students can upload their toons to ToonTube -- and watch other children's masterpieces as well! I'm not sure if it is up yet, but I am told that this "channel" will eventually (if it doesn't already) allow students to view a globe and select various geographic areas -- then see all the toons uploaded from that locale. So now students from Chicago, IL can watch toons created by students in Seoul, Korea. Wow.

What's more is I hope to also use this in math. MATH?! Yes, math. I am going to have my students animate short real-world mathematical problems to pose to one another, then post them for a classmate in our room or across the globe to solve. Paired with Edmodo or Schoology I think this will be a powerful and engaging tool.

Moreover, who says a character can't be a pie slice? Let's animate a fractions lesson shall we? We can put on some extremely happy music, and narrate the visual addition or subtraction of mixed numbers using pie slices as the "characters" and the "whole" as the background.

Considering the endless opportunities that this well-designed and visually appealing app offers, can you blame me for wanting to go steady with it?

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Kurzweil 3000 Overview

Watch this 52 minute video to learn all about Kurzweil 3000, or read the summary below:

Kurzweil 3000 is writing and reading software that has many great features. Kurzweil is available for both Mac and PC, but the PC version has more features then the Mac version.  Kurzweil has optical character recognition. (OCR) What this means is that a document that is scanned can be read back to you.  As the words are read aloud, they are highlighted.You can turn off the sound if you just need help with tracking and not decoding.  There is an option to speed up or slow down the voice, and the pace of highlighting according to your preference. Kurzweil comes with a few computerized voices, but more can be added.


Once the document is scanned it can also be annotated with text boxes, highlights and circles. This allows you to do anything you could do with hard copy print material. Kurzweil is great for completing worksheets, tests and quizzes. If a document contains many blank spaces Kurzweil has a feature to add a text box on each blank. This feature can be found under tools and then fill in the blanks.

 Kurzweil is also great for writing. It has spell check, word prediction and web layouts. One of the best parts of writing with Kurzweil is that the text is read back to you, which is a great editing tool. Kurzweil has a built in dictionary for quick reference. Another handy feature is "read the web" this feature allows a web page to be read aloud with out copying and pasting the text in to Kurzweil. With read the web a toolbar appears with a read button a the bottom of your browser. To read the web simply select the desired text and press the read button. Kurzweil is a great tool for reading and writing. To learn more about Kurzweil, click here visit the Kurzweil webpage. For a video about Kurzweil's virtual print click here. Stay tuned for more Kurzweil tips, tricks and videos.

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Window Speech Recognition, a Great Tool For Struggling Writers

Windows 7 and Windows Vista come with free speech recognition software. The software is able to input text into any text field. The software is also able to open programs, browse the web and format documents all with your voice. Windows speech recognition is also a great tool for people with disabilities that are unable to use the key board or mouse. To find the software simply search for "speech recognition" in the start menu. I found the speech recognition to be very accurate after a couple of training sessions.

Windows speech recognition is very easy to use because it only has one button. The button starts and stops the speech recognition. If your using a computer with Windows 7 or Vista check out this great feature.

You have read this article accessibility / assistive technology / dictation / Dragon / speech recognition / speech-to-text / VoiceOver / windows / windows 7 / windows vista / Writing with the title Writing. You can bookmark this page URL https://fieldecho.blogspot.com/2011/06/window-speech-recognition-great-tool.html. Thanks!

Whetting your APPetite Vol. 5: Student-Created Movies on Puppet Pals

Puppet Pals HD - FREE

Have you used the Puppet Pals App yet? If not, you should! (And while you're at it, cough up the $2.99 for the Puppet Pals Director's Pass - which adds more options to the free base app - it is completely worth it.)   In Puppet Pals, students can create their own "puppet" show movies using either the app's characters and backgrounds or their own "cut out" from pictures found on the Internet or taken with their iPad.

The app is surprisingly versatile and allows for a lot of creative expression. Since Puppet Pals allows you to use photos to create your own characters and backdrops, students can create quite realistic depictions of their chosen subject (depending on their level of expertise with Puppet Pals and the amount of time you'd like to give them).

Below are two examples of the videos my classes created for their constellations research project. They are just "rough drafts" (they will "re-shoot" their videos after some feedback from yours truly) but already I can see tons of potential for this little app. Can't wait to put Puppet Pals into action again!

Note: The videos will not play if your network blocks YouTube :(... Sorry!

"The Death of Sagittarius" by Kontrell & Cencere

 

"The Medusa Slayer" by Kenneth and Lomante

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