iCreate to Educate with myCreate

With myCreate ($4.99), your students can get started designing their own video stories on their iPads. They’ll put their iPad camera to use and play back pictures in stop-motion animation.  After adding audio to go with their story, they can send their completed product to Facebook, YouTube, or Vimeo.  myCreate is a perfect hands-on tool to enhance curricular content for just about any subject. Watch myCreate on YouTube; it will make you want to download it right away.

Anime Studio 7 from Serif

Serif is offering its Anime Studio Debut, an all-in-one 2D animation software program for Windows computers, for $29.99. With it, your students can create their own cartoons and animations. The program is designed to be used by everyone from beginning animators to those who are already adept at the skill, so it includes a beginner’s mode, ready-made artwork, timeline animating, animation tools to bring photos to life, and more.  

Amazing Apps to Use in Elementary Classrooms or Homes

Jinny Gudmundsen, USA Today, recommends five super apps for children. One is free and all cost only a few dollars. There’s Painting with Time for the iPad “which lets kids explore how things change over time. With this app, which was partially funded by the National Science Foundation, kids select from tubes of paint that represent different intervals of time.” For example, if landscape is selected, the tubes represent the seasons. When children “paint” with their fingers, they can transform the scene into colors of the different seasons. Other of Gudmundsen’s favorites are the stories: Hogworld: Gnats Adventure for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, and Kindle Fire, where children engage in adventures through 3D visuals, sounds and interaction; Cinderella – Nosy Crow Animated Picture Book for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, in which the characters talk to the reader, and on the iPad2, the reader’s face shows up in all the mirrors; and Auryn – Van Gogh and the Sunflowers for the iPad, an eBook that brings Van Gogh’s life and painting to life through visuals and interaction. The app Out-A-Bout for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad uses parent-child interaction as it teaches early reading skills and encourages physical play. The app involves the reader in the story through photos and recordings. All of these apps would be wonderful for our Preschool to Primary students.

eBook/App Book/Animated Book for Young Students

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is available at the iTunes store for $4.99.  The reviews are excellent; in fact, it is rated #1 in the iPad App Store. Author William Joyce, who previously worked at Pixar, created this book, which is being called a mixture of a wonderful bedtime story and an animated movie. It includes interactive interfaces, which children may or may not use. The “book” lets children explore as they want through the “book” with or without music, voiceover, and embedded features. If you are interested, you can take a look at the trailer for a glimpse of what Mr. Lessmore has to offer.  I think you’ll like it. And, by the way, it is also a favorite of the orangutans at the Milwaukee and Houston zoos who are using iPads as part of enrichment exercises.