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Severe Weather Reports iPad Project

Severe Weather Reports iPad Project using the FREE app, Tellagami

Tellagami is an oldie but goodie app that I like to show the teachers I work with and their students at the beginning of every year. This app is great for app smashing (combining two+ apps to make a project).  Tellagamis are talking avatars that stand in front of a background picture of your choice. Students can take a picture of their background, upload a picture of their background, or draw a picture of their background within the app. It is really cute when the younger ones draw a colorful picture on a piece of paper, take a picture of their picture with the iPad and save their picture as their Tellagami background. It is really amazing when older kids make a digital poster/representation in another app like PicCollage, Popplet, Trading Cards, Doodle Buddy, etc., save it to the Camera Roll then import their work as a Tellagami background.

Last week I worked with a 2nd grade class who wanted to pretend they were news reporters reporting about one of the severe types of weather they had been studying: thunderstorm, hurricane, tornado, floor or drought. I thought it would be fun to use Tellagami to accomplish this activity. Check it out:


Before I went into the classroom, the teacher had her students pick one of the severe types of weather they had been studying and write a few sentences in their science journals. This allowed us to jump right in and get to our digital creations when I cam to the room :)
 photo IMG_0966_zpsl2gympsa.jpg photo IMG_0967_zpswoehzcrp.jpg I made a Google folder with images of the different types of weather and weather tools. Then I turned the folder link into a QR Code that we projected on the board. Save paper! QR codes still work when you project them :) Students used the QR scanner to scan the QR code that took them to the Google folder. They located the image that matched their weather description and saved it to the camera roll.  Click {HERE} to download this QR code that will take you to the folder of copyright free images.

 Next, we went to the app, Tellagami, and students changed their background to be the picture of their storm. They got to customize their character, pick their emotion of their characters fail features (most went with "scared" or "serious") and then record their voice pretending to be a news reporter reporting about their storm.   We used the free version of Tellagami which only allows for a 30 second recording. Talk about summarizing practice!




Afterward they saved their movie to the camera roll, students scanned a different QR code that took them to my Work Collector that sends work directly to a folder I have set up in my Google Drive. I downloaded their projects and smashed them into one big movie using MovieMaker. I sent the embed code of the movie to the teacher and she was able to put their movie on her classroom blog for the students' parents to see!

Check out their class movie:
Weather from Julie on Vimeo.

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