Year 8 are (app) Smashing!

I am lucky to have a really positive year 8 group who are very keen to practise their spoken French.  So, after a few weeks building up some relevant vocabulary and practising our grammar skills we then spent time preparing a presentation about our Vacances Désastreuses.  I gave the students certain freedom about how they presented their work.  A couple went down the traditional route and made a powerpoint presentation on the class computer and then acted out their role play.  Others decided to make use of my iPad (or even their own iPod touch that they had been allowed to bring to class expressly for this purpose) and add a little extra to the background image of their presentation.  They followed some simple steps:

  1. source some photos and save in the photo library
  2. upload to Photo Collage Maker and put them together with this simple app
  3. save to the photo library
  4. upload the newly formed collage to Balloon Stickies and add a thought bubble
  5. save to the photo library
  6. go to Tellagami and create an avatar
  7. upload the collage complete with thought bubble to Tellagami and use this as the backdrop
  8. record presentation
  9. save to the photo library or to you tube (as desired) 
This may seem complicated but really it was quite simple.  As soon as I had shown the students the first couple of steps they figured out what they had to do.  The apps were new to them all but once they had enjoyed a quick play they very quickly felt at ease and understood how easy it was for them to re-do, re-record, or re-organise as desired. 
This is an excellent example.  Achieved in one 40 minute lesson:


One tool that must not be overlooked in all this is CuePrompter which is an online teleprompter much like an autocue that displays the text to be spoken on the computer screen at a speed of your choosing.  An excellent tool to use in this instance and one that ensured that this little project worked well.   This example here is from a student who can be quite anxious about speaking but hiding behind this avatar and creating this presentation helped her overcome this anxiety and she produced something of which she is very proud.
Do you use any of these tools?  Do you use any others?  Let me know about them in the comment box below. 

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