Toontastic is an iTunes App
Description: Lights, Camera, Play! Toontastic is a storytelling and creative learning tool that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family around the world through simple and fun imaginative play! With over 2 million cartoons created in over 150 countries, parents and teachers rave about the app... and kids can't stop creating!
Making cartoons with Toontastic is as easy as putting on a puppet show - simply press the record button, move your characters onscreen, and tell your story. Toontastic records your animation and voice as a cartoon video to share with friends and family on ToonTube, the app's global storytelling network for kids.
"Kids and parents will agree: Toontastic is fantastic. The app offers a creative and engaging educational experience that builds a critical new bridge between informal and formal learning." -Michael Levine, Executive Director: Joan Ganz CooneyCenter at Sesame Workshop
Review: I found this app to be a great use of technology for young students when working with the themes of animation and storytelling. The app allows you to develop characters, scenery and a story-line. The user can then animate the difference parts of the story. I think that elementary, and possibly middle school students would love this application. Also, I love that students and upload and share their animated videos to TuneTube. I can just see students all creating their own version of a classic story, or creating a totally unique story perhaps with a common thread. The possibilities of this app are endless, and it's free! There is also a $20 version, which I'm sure offers a lot more possibilities. I found the app overall to be extremely user friendly, so I'm sure children would grasp it with ease. Judging by the reviews, it looks like this is a popular app with teachers!
Classroom Application: Like I mentioned above, I would love to see students each develop their own rendition of the same story. I think another interesting project would be taking one story or narrative and asking each student to create 1 minute of animation for a particular part of the story, then somehow combining them all to create a collaborative project. The last day of the project you could have a screening of the animated film!
Visuals:
I can see this working well as a collaborative tool with language arts teachers at the middle school level and as an arts integration tool in Elementary classrooms. What about using this app with your students at the International Center as an icebreaker?
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