I first learned about Chatterpix and Chatterpix Kids* at ITEC last month. I couldn't wait to spend a few days trying it out with students in my schools. It is a great free app that is easy to use and has many applications for enhancing literacy instruction. Since it involves using the microphone to record, the ideal way to use this in the classroom would be with individuals or small groups working at one time. I learned the hard way how chaotic a classroom can be when the whole class was attempting to record at the same time!
One day I introduced Chatterpix Kids with first graders as a way to share their published writing. They took a photo of their illustration, added a mouth, recorded themselves reading the narrative, then decorated their photo with stickers, filters, and frames. When they were finished, they saved the project to the camera roll of their ipad. This has great potential for publishing writing. Often, we teachers get stuck in a rut of publishing a certain way. It's nice to have a novel and engaging way to allow students to share what they write.
With another group, I helped some students create Chatterpix creations with non-fiction text they'd been reading. They took a picture of their Spider Book cover, added a mouth, then recorded themselves reading the text. This was a great opportunity to practice reading aloud for improved fluency.
It only records for 30 seconds, but it's long enough for early primary grade books or short reading passages.
Chatterpix would also help when teaching point of view. Students could add a mouth to a picture of an animal or an inanimate object, write a script from its point of view, and record a Chatterpix.
Tellagami is another app that has a lot of possibilities to enhance literacy instruction. I think it is especially good for sharing non-fiction text. Students can use it for fluency practice and record a page from text they have read in class.
To use it, students simply take a photo for the background image. (We used a scene from a page in their book.) Then students record a "message" for their avatar to say-- in my case, reading the text.
Students could also publish informational writing pieces with the help of the avatar they create in the app. I can even imagine students creating short videos with Tellegami reporting about school events or explaining school expectations. They could take a photo of an area in their school and have the avatar/reporter explain the procedure.
The drawback to Tellegami is the number of locked features in the free version. It recently made severe limitations to the free version and requires 4.99 per user to unlock all the avatar customization features. I almost decided against using this with students due to those limitations. With a class of second graders, I decided to tell them the avatar was the "reporter" and they could pick a male or female, and make basic changes that the free version permitted.
The way the avatar gestures and uses facial expression really adds a lot to the quality of the project.
* There is one main difference in the two variations of this app. Chatterpix includes links for sharing of creations on social media, but Chatterpix Kids does not. I prefer to use Chatterpix Kids with elementary students.
