Easy to Use iPad Animation Creator

So you want to have your elementary or middle school students create short, narrated animations on their iPads? I just came across a nifty app to do just that.

Check out Tellagami. This free app is ridiculously easy to use. After downloading it, I handed the iPad to my 7-year-old and told her to check out the new app. First use, she had figured it out in about one minute with no coaching from Dad.

Easy to animate. Gestures added automatically and the mouth
movements sync to the audio (or text-to-speech) quite well.

If you've used Voki before you'll find this similar, but with the benefit that no user accounts are required. Kids can customize their avatar's gender, hair, eye color, skin tone, clothing, head size, basic expression, and the backdrop of the scene. They can even take a picture with the iPad camera (or pull an image from the photo roll) to use as their backdrop. Narration can be either captured audio or text-to-speech.

Faces...he kind of looks like me!

Customize your avatar--make it look like you...or not!

Finished with your animation? It can be saved locally, emailed to a friend (or teacher, or parent), or shared via Facebook or Twitter. Super easy, and "FUN!" as my 7-year-old reports.

Create a 30-second animation in less than 5 minutes? What would you have your students do with this?

(Thanks to @edtechbsu for the tip!)