PuppetMaster

PuppetMaster is an app that is an animation app that motion captures the action of the student by moving in front of the camera. You can touch the screen as well and it motion captures that too. It can even record their voice as well. Students can take a drawing they made or a photo and make it come to life by making it a puppet by aligning your motion capture with the picture to make it move.

This can be useful in library Makerspaces where students can create their own motion capture videos. They can also use the video as virtual storytelling and have media literacy in their motion capture project. What I also like about this app that it was free and extremely easy to use. I took a photo of a doll and motion captured my arms waving around and in the video the doll actually did it! The app was easy to use and a lot easier than it sounded. You can use a variety of free backgrounds the app provides as well and they provide characters you can use. The only catch is that its an iOS Apple product only so while its free you can only get this app through Apple.

I really don't see any flaws with this app It can be used for any ages but elementary school children will probably enjoy it the most. This will be a great addition to use in a Makerspace without spending money and students can be interested in animation and motion capture while playing around with this app. It can even be used to present a book report or project by recording a student's voice over the animated character. This app teaches students technology, art, literacy and STEAM initiatives. I hope to use it in my own school library someday.

Where to find the app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/puppetmaster/id438080891?mt=8

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kodable - Coding for Kids

Image
The app I choose to test this week is Kodable. This is a coding app that teaches elementary school students on how to code. What's interesting about this app is that it has different levels from kindergarten to fifth grade and coding can be super easy or more difficult at whatever level you have it on. Also if you buy the school package you can get standard aligned lesson plans. There is also progress tracking in the app that tells you how much the student has progressed from first starting coding and practicing with activities over time. What I love about this app is that it makes computer programming fun and can engage students easily with its fun games and colors. I know a little about coding and this app was easy for me to navigate. This app was made for educators because they base their pricing around class sizes and can even import lists directly from Google classroom. I love apps that are made for educators because you can really tell the difference between this app and
Read more

Storytime By Kindoma

Image
Storytime by Kindoma The name of the app is Storytime by a company called Kindoma. It allows long distance parents or relatives of a child read them a story over the app. The story appears on the screen along with the video of each of the people using the app. The child can point to something and the other person can see where the child is pointing and they can highlight words as they go along. This can make interacting with books much more fun for the child and provide the long distance relatives a chance to connect with the child.  The price of the app is free and it gives you ten free books to read. If a parent want more books they have to buy each book and the prices vary. For an unlimited access to the catalog of books in the catalog, s ubscription is available for 1 month at $6.99 or for 6 months at $29.99 ($5 per month). A child can use this app by listening to the adult read or doing the reading by his or her self. It can be a fun interactive experience for all the
Read more

Swift Playground

Image
The app I am reviewing is called Swift Playground which is an iOS product from Apple. It's an app that believes anyone can code and its aimed at elementary school students. The app teaches young students to learn the Swift program and how to learn and write code. Lately STEM has been a huge push in school districts and this app can make a great edition to a school library Makerspace. I believe this app should be connected to a STEM unit or to a Makerspace or else it wouldn't make much sense in the context of the school library. What I love about this app is that it doesn't require any background knowledge of coding so this a great app for students to start out with. I recommend third to fourth graders to use this app. The student can code creatures called "bytes" and design their own landscape almost like they are designing a video game. This can get students interested in coding and designing very early in life and its gender neutral so girls and boys c
Read more