Friday, September 25, 2015

Awesome iPad App: Adobe Voice

Storytelling is a powerful way to inspire students and give them a voice. They inspire us, catch our attention, and solidify concepts in our mind. The way stories are created and shared can be just as powerful. Students don't need a tool to be so complicated that it gets in the way of the telling of the story. 

Adobe Voice is an iPad app that follows this philosophy. Check out this two minute video from Adobe Voice that shows this philosophy.
 

Voice is so easy to use that students at virtually any grade level could use it. When you launch Adobe Voice the first time, it includes an on screen tutorial to walk you through the process of creating your story. Once you know what you're doing you can skip that and go straight to the creation!

The app starts by asking you to enter a topic for your story. Swiping up from the bottom reveals suggestions for different types of stories.


Voice then offers a story structure for various kinds of stories. The structure includes a certain number of slides with suggestions for what story element to include on that slide. You can also start from scratch. Make your choice and tap Pick This One.


Choose a Layout for the slide you are on.

Choose a Theme for the entire story.

Choose Music for the entire story.

On each slide you tap the + to add an icon, photo, or text. There are thousands of iconic images to choose from.

If you select photo you can import from the camera, camera roll, or Dropbox.

Tap the microphone and record what you want to say. It's best to add only one or two sentences on a slide. Let the pictures help you tell the story.


When your whole story is done tap the Share icon and save the video to your camera roll.

Adobe Voice maintains a YouTube channel with some really good videos that offer some more advanced tips and tricks.


Integration Ideas

  • Create an All About Me story
  • Summarize a chapter
  • Recount a story
  • Share a biography
  • Create a how-to video
  • Present a position on a topic
  • Cultural explanations
  • Journal of field trip
  • Book trailer
  • Descriptive language practice
  • Create a dictionary

Download the Tech Integration Challenge for Adobe Voice and see if you are up to the challenge!


4 comments:

  1. As a science teacher, I am always looking for a way for students to really develop their own ideas about the topic rather than memorizing a list of facts. In my class, I try to do project based learning through a lot of the course and am always looking for more ideas for creative projects. One of my project ideas last year was to have students create a travel brochure for the past, but I think this would be better. Students could create something like a video advertisement instead of just a paper brochure. Have you tried this program in class? How easy do you think it would be for high school students to use?

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    1. I think that's an awesome idea! Students will catch on to it very easily. It's just a few simple steps and the app adds in the music and transitions for you. Your students will have it all figured out inside of 10 minutes tops.

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  2. I really enjoyed this because our school just got iPads for the school. Just recently my class wrote a Halloween story and then took their writing and transformed it into a presentation using Keynote. My next goal is to use Adobe voice for our next project. I feel that this will help students who are shy and do not like public speaking. I really enjoyed watching the video and understanding how Adobe Voice works.

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    1. I think your students will love using Adobe Voice. It's super easy to learn. And just like you demonstrated, students can still use the writing process off line, but can then use digital tools to bring that writing to life.

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