My Review of Toontastic

Last week in EDTech class, we explored three different video making/story-telling applications: Toontastic, Clips, and Adobe Spark Video. I was particularly interested in Toontastic because it involves animation AND story-telling in an easily accessible way. When I was younger, my brothers were avid cartoonists and created hundreds of characters and story-lines. They drew everything out with pencil or pen and colored them to perfection. We cut characters out and played with them, giving each one a personality. It was one of my favorite hobbies as a child and bonding time that I spent with them that I will never forget.

In the modern world that is influenced so strongly by technology, there are new applications that allow for the recreation of what my brothers and I used to do. Essentially, the characters and stories can come to life with voices, song, and animation which can add to the overall experience for creators and viewers. The app “Toontastic” allows for creators to pick their setting, characters, and gives an outline for the story so that the creators can move through the process with a little more structure. I think this app is a wonderful tool for teachers to use to guide students through the story-telling process while allowing them to be creative. Students would definitely need to write a script out first because coming up with the story on the fly was much more difficult that I imaged. The creator also can move the characters around to match their words and build connections and relationships between characters as the story moves along.

I think this app definitely has a place in the classroom and specifically for guiding story-telling and creative activities. Students both young and old could benefit from a creative space to engage their ideas and voices (can also be used with partners or small groups to incorporate many different ideas and voices). Students would need to experiment with the app itself before using it, but stories can be shared easily with the whole class at the end of the day!

Here is a funny video I found of some young boys explaining the app:

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/24856399″>Toontastic</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/applesforkids”>Adam Brice</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>