4 Apps to Create Designs with Words

Creating designs with words can be a great way to reinforce spelling , learning of new words and describing a theme or topics.  Students can create their own designs and use them to decorate the classroom. here are 4 great apps which allow you to design using words in different ways.

Word Collage

Create a collage of words and customise text, colour and layout.

Path on - Swipe to Type

This app allows you to draw a line or choose a created line and the add text to the line.

Typedrawing

Type the text you wish to use and customise font, size and colour and then draw on the device and the words appear.

WordFoto

With this app you can take a photo or use one from the gallery, type in a set of words and the app will apply the words to the image. There are a few styles to choose from and colour schemes.  The effects look great.

Learning Game Coding

Learning the basics of computer programming can be a useful skill. There are many apps and software designed to be user friendly for students of varying ages, to learn how to code using visual interpretation with drag and drop functionality. There are also games which involve giving instructions and using commands. These processes can help develop skills in sequencing, literacy and numeracy, problem-solving, creativity, and communication.

 

Apps:

Cargo-bot - a fun game where students learn about sequencing and instructions, also good for developing memory skills.

Hopscotch - provides a visual drag and drop platform with colour coding.

Daisy the dinosaur -  This free app offers an easy drag and drop platform to move Daisy the Dinosaur.

Kodable - a game to learn programming concepts and problem solving.

Move the Turtle. Programming for kids - a fun way for younger students to learn the basics computer programming and using commands.

Bee-Bot  - provides a tool for younger students to learn directional language and programming through sequences.

Bee-Bot Pyramid - provides challenges for students to solve.


Software:
Scratch

Stencyl

App Inventor

Alice

Kodu

Game Salad

 

Web Based:

 

Gamestar Mechanic - a game which allows students to learn about game design and make their own games.

Professor Word

 

Professor Word provides a function which allows you to visit any web page, click on the word and a definition will pop up.

 

To activate it, you go to the Professor Word website and follow the instructions to add it to your favourites bar. You click on Run Professor word on the favourites bar and then go to a website and click on a word to see the definition.

 

This can be useful for students who are researching a topic or lower level readers and ESL students.

Add fun to learning with Trading Cards

Trading Card Creator

This site allows you to create Trading Cards which gives students an alternative way to demonstrate their knowledge of a concept. This interactive activity allows students to create their own trading card about a real or fictional person, place, object, event or concept. The site also provides ideas and lesson plans.

Having fun with spelling

Here are two sites which can add variety and interest to spelling activities!

Spell with Flickr

Create words using images from Flickr.  Great for writing names or adding interest to spelling words or creating banners to decorate Virtual Classrooms. Type in the word and click on spell.  To change the look of a letter click on it.  To save the image use can use the snipping tool on your lap top.

GeoGreeting

This is a great way to add some interest to spelling and integrate geography at the same time. You can type a message and the site finds an image from around the globe which resembles the letter.  You could do this as a class activity or send a message to someone.

Here is an example I created

Create Talking Images

This post is an extension of the last post I made where you can attach sounds or speech to shapes.  In this activity you can drawing shapes onto an image and then making the shapes transparent.  This idea was inspired by acolleaue of mine and her great site on using ICT in the Early Phase . 

Ways to apply to learning are:

• Describing the words in a tag cloud

• Describing aspects of an artwork

• Discuss aspects of a photo

• Add music to reflect the mood in an image

• Eye spy photos

To start insert an image into PowerPoint.  Draw a shape over an area of the image.  This can be done by selecting a shape or freeform shape.  Attach the sounds to the shapes as explained in the last post.

Now to make the shapes transparent,  right click the shape and select Foramt Shape.

Move the transparency bar to 100%

Select Line Color and select No Line and your shape will now be transparent.

 

Now you cannot see the shape on top of your image.  To test go to slideshow and move your mouse over the screen, when you click you should hear the sound.

Create Interactive Multimodal Content

Recently I was working with Asian Language teachers who loved learning about creating interactive content by adding speech to shapes in PowerPoint. By combining images, text and sound you are able to create rich multimodal content.

First you create your slides with images or shapes.

Decide what you want to record. Open Audacity and click on the record button and speak to record your voice, click on stop when finished (headset with a microphone is best for this).

Select File – Export as WAV

Go back to your PowerPoint slide, click on the shape you want to attach sound to and select the Insert tab and Action.

If 2003 version right click the shape you want to attach sound to and select Action Setting.

Select Play Sound and scroll down to Other Sound.  Select the sound you recorded in Audacity.  You can test if it worked by viewing as slideshow. When you move your mouse over the shape and click, you should hear your recording.

This activity can be created by the teacher or students can apply their learning by creating their own.


Here are a few examples of how this process can be used:

• a talking ebook

• a talking map

• a talking timeline

• add sounds to music notes

• add music to images

• add avatars and create talking characters

• add voice to photos

• flash cards

• add voices to speech bubbles in comics

• learning languages

• attach speech to images and students give description

• students identify aspects of diagrams or cycles

Creating Digital Multimodal Texts

With the introduction of the Australian Curriculum, there is an emphasis on the use of Multimodal Text in English. ICT offers a great range of tools to allow students to create digital multimodal texts, such as comics, animations, digital storytelling, video & audio, ebooks, poster & cover design and game design .

What are multimodal texts?

A text may be defined as multimodal when it combines two or more semiotic systems. There are five semiotic systems in total:

1. Linguistic: comprising aspects such as vocabulary, generic structure and the grammar of oral and written language

2. Visual: comprising aspects such as colour, vectors and viewpoint in still and moving images

3. Audio: comprising aspects such as volume, pitch and rhythm of music and sound effects

4. Gestural: comprising aspects such as movement, speed and stillness in facial expression and body language

5. Spatial: comprising aspects such as proximity, direction, position of layout and organisation of objects in space.

Multimodal texts can be delivered via different media or technologies. They may be live, paper, or digital.

(Bull and Anstey, 2010)

Link to Comic resources

Link to Online Story Makers

Photostory 3, Windows Movie Maker, Audacity, Soungle, Free Sound Project

Link to Online Animation Creators

Blog Post on Animations

Flip Flash Album Free

My eBook

Use software usch as powerpoint, publisher, paint.net or photoshop

Online: Sumopaint or Glogster EDU

Big Huge Labs: Magzine Cover Generator, Motivator Poster, Movie Poster

Scratch, Game Maker, Alice, Game Salad (Mac), Game Mechanic, Kodu,

Can create using powerpoint, online resources: News Map, Many Eyes, Gapminder, Periodic table of Visualisation Methods, Information is Beautiful

Tag Cloud: Wordle, Tagxedo

Anstey, M. & Bull, G. (2010) Helping teachers to explore multimodal texts. Curriculum Leadership, 8 (16)

Using Animations to Apply Knowledge

Creating animations is a great way for students to apply their knowledge and demonstrate understanding. It also allows students to develop problem solving and decision making skills while being creative and having fun.  I have included a few links to sites to give ideas and a table to show how animations can be used across subject areas.


I Create to Educate

Great student sample I particularly like to animated diagram of the heart.


Sam Animation


Klutz: great ideas for stop motion animation


Animate Clay


RollerMache


Animation for education

Using Animations Across Subject Areas

English

• Demonstrate knowledge of the genre and audience

• Create a Book trailer as an alternative to a book report

• Interpret myths and legends

• Interpret a poem or nursery rhyme through animation

• Create a persuasive animation by focusing on environmental issues

• Bring characters from a novel or play to life by adding them to an animation

• Write a story and adapt to an animation

• Using foam letters to spell words

• Using magnetic words to create sentences

• Use new vocabulary words in context

• Create an advertisement

Maths

• Demonstrate understanding of fractions and percentages

• Display number equations

• Create shapes

• Demonstrate understanding of percentages

• Demonstrate understanding of time

• Create animated graphs

• Use lego blocks for counting

Science

• Demonstrate phases of the moon

• Life Cycles

• Solids, liquids and gases

• Forms of energy

• create a sun safe animation

• Growth of a plant

• Circulatory system

• Digestive system

• Demonstrate a volcanic eruption or earthquake

• Time-lapse video of plant growing, weather changing and melting

• Show understanding of laws of physics

• Show the position and movement of planets in our solar system

• Demonstrate understanding of magnets

SOSE

• Indigenous dreamtime stories

• Re-enact events in history

• Environmental sustainability

• Travel around a map

• Natural Disasters

• Languages Stroke order of script writing

• Characters speaking in the target language

• Create an animation depicting a culture

Art

• Demonstrate colour theory

• Bring an art work to life

• Demonstrate understanding of the elements and principle of design

• Document the creation of an artwork from beginning to end

• Create animation exploring art movements e.g. Surrealism

Music

• Create music tracks for animations

• Demonstrate how to write music

• Demonstrate music theory

Home Economics

• Demonstrate procedures and safety

• Create the illusion that a meal made itself by taking images during the preparing and cooking process.

• Nutrition

Online Comics and Graphic Novels

Here is a list of Online Graphic Novels and Comics. They vary from being read online or download as a pdf. With these comics you can use them for comprehension activities, use them as stimulus to give students ideas when they are making their own, you can also look at characters, setting and the plot of the comic.

http://wormworldsaga.com/

The WormWorld Saga is an Online Comic and is available in a range of languages.  This makes it a great tool for learning laguages.

http://dckids.kidswb.com/

DC Kids offers a range of comics which are free to download.

http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com/

The Dream Chronicles is an online Graphic Novel.

http://www.andyrunton.com/owly/

This site offers a range of comics which are free to download.  they are great for beginning readers andto use for visual literacy.

http://www.toon-books.com/rdr_one.php

This site offers a range of online comics for early Phase students.  They are also avaliable in English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese.



http://comics.com/

This site offers a range of Online Comics

This site provides free sample downloads of classics which have been converted into Graphic Novels such as Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, A Christmas Carol and many more.  The site also provides teacher resources and comics with no text so students can interpret the images and add their own text.

http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone/comic/

This site is a Forensic Science Mystery better suited for older students.

http://www.howtoons.com/

Free 'How to' downloadable comics



http://cindispace.utdallas.edu/education/cindi_comic.html

Free Download

http://www.sciencecomics.uwe.ac.uk/index.php

Online Science Comics

http://www.grammarmancomic.com/twilight.html

Free Download comics on Biographies of the Twilight actors.

http://www.grammarmancomic.com/grammarcom.html

http://www.grammarmancomic.com/marvelidioms.html

http://www.kinsa.net/widgetFiles/file/Web%20of%20Deception.pdf

Free Download about internet safety

http://www.nsteens.org/Comics/HowMuchIsTooMuch

Online comic about internet safety

http://www.adrianbruce.com/machinima/macbeth/macbeth.htm

This link shows an adaptation of Hamlet created using a game similar to Machinima by Adrian Bruce.

http://www2.scholastic.com/content/collateral_resources/pdf/g/Scholastic_GraphixPages01.pdf

This is a great resource to about Graphic Novels.



Conversations Between Characters

Here is an example of a homework assignment on investigating the important aspects of friendship.  First the characters were made using a WeeMee avatar creator app on my iPad you could use online avatar makers.  Then you can remove the background of the characters this can be done in 2010 PowerPoint, paint.net or photoshop.  Using PowerPoint, you can then selected the background setting and then work on the dialogue.  here is the finished result.

The idea of having two characters having a conversation means the characters can be talking about any topic such as reflecting, giving information, revison, speaking in another language, using spelling words etc.