Typedrawing - drawing with words

Typedrawing is an app that lets you draw with words or sentences. Typedrawing users have come up with some amazingly creative images, but I think it could also be an interesting way for students to review vocabulary. You can choose from the fonts available on your iOS device, pick a color and a font size to 'paint' with.You can also change the way the text behaves (getting larger or smaller depending on the speed you draw at.)

Click to see a larger version of this image

There are paid versions of Typedrawing for iPod/iPhone ($1.99) and iPad (2.99) as well as a free version. The iPad version allows for higher resolution images. After playing with it for just a short time, I decided it was worth the money to upgrade from the free app to the higher quality version for the iPad. I was glad I did, because when I encouraged a colleague to download the free version and she had a student use it, the student accidentally clicked on the ad at the bottom of the screen and became very confused as to where her picture had gone. When we explained about the advertising she looked at us in disgust and told us to make it go away because it was in her way!!

In addition to creating an entire drawing with words, you could use this app as a way to annotate a photograph as the latest version has the ability to stop it from repeating text. Choose a photo from your photo album on your device to use as a background and then write on the picture. When you're done, save it back to the photo album as a new picture. (You also have the option of sending the finished image as a PNG file or a PDF file to iTunes on your computer.) Here's an example I made with a drawing that I'd previously scanned:

Click to see a larger version of this image

It would be nice to have the ability to move text once you've drawn with it, but the app does have an undo button which can be helpful.

Unlike earlier versions, you can now save drawings in the app itself, so if you want to stop work and come back to an image later you can.

You can save a finished picture to your photo album, save to iTunes, email it, or share it to Twitter. You can lock the drawing to prevent it from being accidentally changed.

(Review originally written May 2012. Updated October 2013 to reflect upgrades since my first review.)

In, out, on, and under

Learning which preposition to use can be tricky for second language learners. There are a couple of apps that can help. Speech with Milo from Doonan Speech Therapy has one version that focuses on prepositions, and Mobile Education Tools has just released an app called PrepositionBuilder.

I used Speech with Milo - Prepositions last year, and although it's not the most exciting of apps, the kindergartner I was using it with loved Milo the mouse. Designed for use by speech language therapists with a view to using it with kids on the autism spectrum, the mouse does seem to be popular with younger kids. Although most of the animations are very clear, there are a few that are potentially confusing. The preposition 'under' for example, is illustrated by Milo getting IN a submarine that then goes UNDER the water. This is not an app that students would use by themselves - it is designed to be used with an adult's guidance. There is nothing built in to the app to track a student's progress. In the settings you can decide which of the prepositions will be presented at each sitting. At $2.99 it is relatively cheap.

 PrepositionBuilder is significantly more sophisticated. Unless an adult is sitting with them to read the sentence prompts, students need to be able to read in order to choose the correct preposition to complete the sentence. However, once they have chosen the correct answer, the app will read the completed sentence to them. When a student gets an answer wrong, the image on the screen changes to represent the sentence that they have created. Although kids will enjoy getting the sentence wrong, the app is still reinforcing the correct way to use each of the prepositions. Students can record themselves reading the correct sentence, and that recording can be emailed to the teacher. Even if you are right next to the student listening to them, sometimes it's nice to have a recording that documents a student's speaking skills! Some students may find it harder than others to manage the recording and saving process by themselves.

PrepositionBuilder keeps track of each student's progress and rewards them with animations when they get answers right the first time. You can save profiles for multiple kids. At $7.99, this app is clearly more expensive than Speech With Milo, but I think with the added features you get your money's worth.

Storytelling apps compared - update

Here is the link to my updated spreadsheet comparing some storytelling apps. I've added 3 more apps since the last version (highlighted.) Apps included in the comparison are:

• Our Story
• Pictello
• SodaSnap Postcards
• SonicPics and SonicPics Lite
• StoryKit
• StoryPatch
• StoryRobe
• StoryMaker
• StoryPages

All are obviously intended for the creation of stories, but the final products vary from a single page with images and text, to multipage stories with images and text and audio, to a video that is basically a narrated slideshow. 

Visit my Storytelling page for  a quick overview of all these apps as well as several animated storytelling apps.  My side-by-side comparison of the animated storytelling apps is on a separate spreadsheet. 

Storytelling apps compared

As a follow-up to my comparison of animated storytelling apps, here is a spreadsheet comparing some other storytelling apps. Apps included in the comparison are:

• SodaSnap Postcards
• SonicPics and SonicPics Lite
• StoryKit
• StoryPatch
• StoryRobe
• StoryMaker

All are obviously intended for the creation of stories, but the final products vary from a single page with images and text, to multipage stories with images, text and audio, to  a video that is basically a narrated slideshow. 

Storytelling with Puppet Pals

Years ago, I used a piece of software called Hollywood, from a company called Theatrix, with my middle school ESL students. The software provided sets and characters to choose from and the students wrote the dialogs and stage directions that made the cartoon characters move around on screen.  My students really enjoyed working with it. They worked on their language skills as they wrote the dialog and social and cultural skills came into play too with the topics I assigned. Although the computer did the talking for them, they got to work on their pronunciation when they listened to the way the computer pronounced their dialog - they occasionally had to deliberately misspell a word in order to make the computer pronounce it correctly!

I recently discovered an app for iPod and iPad that is similar to Hollywood. Puppet Pals also allows students to create 'plays' or 'movies' using provided characters and backgrounds. I downloaded it and within minutes my daughter and a friend were playing with it, creating a story. It is a little harder to use than Hollywood in some ways, in that Hollywood allowed you to create a script which controlled when the characters moved and how. With Puppet Pals, you drag the characters around the screen with your finger as you talk. The iPod/iPad records the audio as you move the characters around. I can see students needing to create a script and rehearse several times before they come up with a movie they are happy with. Hmm - just like a real play!

It does take a little getting used to how to move the characters around the screen - it is too easy to make them shrink or grow enormously tall without meaning to. You can pause the recording, but there is no way to go back and edit what you have already recorded.

The app comes with a limited collection of characters and backgrounds. You can get more with an 'in-app' purchase.  The Director's Pass is the best deal, with one fee entitling you to download all the currently available characters and backgrounds. You can then also 'cut out' characters from your own photos to use in your stories! Although you can not draw your own characters directly in Puppet Pals, if you plan ahead carefully you could draw your characters, digitize them, and add them to the photo album on the iPod/iPad. You would then be able to cut them out from there. I have a colleague who teaches pre-school and although this app may be too difficult for her students to use, I can see potential in teachers using it to create 'social stories' with familiar backgrounds.

My first attempts at using it were only moderately successful. The videos we made on the iPad saved OK and were viewable on the iPad, but turned out to be too big to email to myself so I could put them on my website. I bought the Director's Pass for my iPod, and found that videos did not save properly at all - all I got was one second of video! At this point (version 1.2.012), I can't recommend downloading it. It has some great potential, and I will be downloading updates as they become available, hoping that they are going to iron out the technical glitches. From what I've seen on their website, they do seem to be very responsive to customer comments, so I'm hopeful that this will soon become a more usable product.

Here's a video from the creators of Puppet Pals, Polished Play, on using the software. 



Puppet Pal for iPhone/iPod
Puppet Pal HD

Digital storytelling with StoryRobe

StoryRobe is another way for kids to create digital stories using photos or digital copies of their own artwork. Once they've selected the images they want to use and put them in the right order, they can record the text to go with the images. They can talk for a total of up to 3 minutes, and synchronize the images with what they are saying by tapping the screen as they talk to advance to the next picture. StoryRobe creates a single video file that can then be shared.

Unlike StoryKit, there is no option to add text to the finished product, as  the model is more video-like than book-like. There are ways to add it it to the pictures however. Students could handwrite text on their original artwork before it is digitized, or use an app like Comic Touch ($2.99) or Comic Touch Lite (free, reduced feature set & watermark on output) to add captions or speech bubbles to the images and then save them to their photo album before adding them to the StoryRobe project.

I initially thought that one drawback to working with StoryRobe is that once you start the process of adding pictures to your story, you really have to complete the story (including adding audio) in one sitting. There did not seem to be a way to save works in progress. I later found that Storyrobe does sometimes save works in progress.

I have not always been successful in creating StoryRobe stories - the process seems to fail at the point of creating the finished video. Because I have managed to get short projects to work, I think this may be because I have included too many photos, even though the audio recording was within the 3 minutes allowed. Because of this, I have not yet had students try to use it. For my purposes - working on writing and speaking - I already have a workable product in StoryKit. Once I figure out what makes StoryRobe fail I will be more likely to use it with students, but I'm not going to have them work on a project knowing that it may well never reach completion!

Here is a very short video I threw together using StoryRobe and Comic Touch Lite while sitting in the car one afternoon waiting to pick my kids up. (The Comic Touch Lite logo does not show up on the first image because of the way I cropped it.)

 

I'd given up trying to get longer videos to save properly! I thought this one hadn't either , but when I checked my photo album later it was in there!

The following video gives a good overview of how StoryRobe works. There are also directions on the StoryRobe website that you could print out if needed.**  The video creator mentions that Story Robe costs $0.99 - it is in fact free at the time of this posting. StoryRobe does not yet come in an HD version for iPad, but will work on one.




**Addendum: Less than 2 days after I originally wrote this post, the Storyrobe website disappeared for several days . . . It did reappear again, but given that and the tendency of the app to crash (Wes Fryer also commented on this), I think Sonic Pics will be less frustrating to use in school.