Tellagami

Tellagami is a free App that allows you to create a customizable talking avatar. Check out the video below for an example.

Easy to customize your own character's appearance from a side menu.  Use a background from one of Tellagami's pre-created, or upload your own background from your camera roll or an image you've saved.

To make your avatar speak, either type the text and choose from a list of voice types to read it out load or record your own voice.  Once it's saved in your camera roll on your iPad or other "iDevice", simply sync it to your laptop or email the video in order to share it.


Classroom Integration Ideas:

• A great tool for digital storytelling where students create an avatar with their own photos and voice to tell a story.
• Teachers can use Tellagami to introduce a new topic in place of themselves to their class.
• Students use Tellagami avatar to present a short book report.  

Mentormob

Mentormob is a free Web 2.0 resource that allows users to create "learning playlists" for their students or even colleagues. Essentially you can create a slideshow that contains websites, uploaded files, online quizzes, or self written information pages.

As you create each new "step" containing one of the above, a you will be asked to add a description of what that step includes.  The steps can be edited, moved into a different "play" order, or deleted.

Once the list is complete, simply share the playlist with others with the shortned URL that was created by clicking the share button. As students move through the playlist, a progress meter is displayed at the top of the page letting them know how many "steps" of the playlist is left.

One of my favorite aspects, is the ability to create a quiz anywhere in the playlist.  The questions on the quiz can be multiple choice or true false.

Classroom Integration Ideas:

• Teachers can create playlists of websites they want students to use for that day or week in class. Especially useful for elementary grades since students only have to type in one URL of the playlist.
•  Use a mixture of web pages, photos, and written articles to focus a particular subject. Then evaluate their learning with a quiz inserted into the playlist.

Best of TCEA 2013

Each February, some of technology's best and the brightest gather in Austin for the annual Texas Computer Education Association's conference.  Over the new few weeks, I will discuss some of my favorite Apps and Web 2.0 sites from that conference.

Chirp is a free app that lets you share information from one device (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) to another using sound.  Chirp 'sings' information, letting you share photos, links, notes after the user uploads that data into Chirp. Any device within the audio range that is using Chirp is able to retrieve the data.  There is no need to pair devices. 

Classroom Integration Ideas:
This could be an easy way for teachers to share presentations or web links to students without the students typing any any URLs.

 
Two Web 2.0 resources that are related but perform different tasks are KeepVid and Quitetube.
KeepVid allows you to easily download video from Youtube and save it for later use.
Ouiettube simply removes all distractions such as comments, side ads, etc.

Classroom Integration Ideas:
Great way for teachers to preview and save videos to use in class at a later date.