iPad in Education For Dummies

Chapter 15

Animating Your Lessons

In This Chapter

Staging and recording a sock-puppets show

Designing, writing, and sharing comics

Communication is the heart of learning, and we adopt different communicative techniques at the various stages of our lives. When you’re a kid, you love to express yourself by using your imagination in all sorts of creative ways: You role-play, dress up, and make up stories with colorful characters. Playing in these ways — animating, if you will, the stories and ideas you imagine — is a vital part of growing and learning about the world around you. It’s also an important part of the learning process in school, and many iPad apps seek to tap into the potential of learning by creating colorful stories. I discuss two such apps here: Sock Puppets (which enables you to create animated shows featuring those lovable critters) and Comic Life (which helps you create your own cartoon strip).

Staging a Sock-Puppets Show

We all played with puppets at some point in our childhood. My daughter’s first joke was when she pulled a sock over her hand and pretended it could talk. Children will give the puppet a name and character, and use it to make up stories that exercise their imagination and express their feelings.

One digital equivalent is an iPad app called Sock Puppets ...