Following last week’s look at iMovie, we’ll look at three free video-creation apps – Toontastic, Clips and Adobe Spark Video. All are easy-to-use for video storytelling and are popular with teachers and folks who want to produce fun video content for their social networks. We will also work in teams to review the apps for use in the classroom.
The session will begin with a brainstorming exercise designed to develop some app evaluation criteria. (We’ll use our experience with iMovie). Students will be organized into teams and supplied with iPads loaded with the three apps. There will not be any instruction on how to use the apps – we want students to be able to experience the learning curve for a new user. Then we will use a jigsaw approach to trying out each app and then teaming up for comparative analysis.
More on each app
- Toontastic – a Google project for creating animated stories. That runs on iOS and Android phones and tablets. Also select Chromebooks. No social network sharing features.
- Clips – an Apple project that makes cool videos designed for sharing on social media. Think Instagram on steroids. It is iOS only and runs on iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Built in social network sharing.
- Adobe Spark Video – Part of the Adobe Spark suite. Built in storyboards allow you to integrate images, video, sound. iOS. Runs on iPhone, iPad. But also can be used with desktop browser. Built in social network sharing.
Assignment Due April 3 | Completed Work
Student will pick one or more apps and develop a blog post. Here’s some ideas for writing prompts
- Review of one app.
- Comparative review of multiple apps.
- How to tips for using an app.
- Lesson idea based on an app.
- Another great idea you have for a prompt.
Your post can include an embedded examples of a video made using the apps. You will need to download a copy of the video you create. Then upload to YouTube to host the video and get an embed code. Then use HTML Snippets with the embed code.