Chatterpix: Fun Little Add-on Element

As an add-on to a biography unit, a third grade student created a 30 second summary of her famous person. (And apparently, Jacques Cartier wasn't the most honest person.)

As a product, it's a slender demonstration of knowledge for intermediate students, but as a puzzle piece to a larger product it has some fun possibilities. And for younger students, it's a great way to show a snippet of their own work with their voice narrating to work on oral presentation skills. If I were going to take this app further with the third grade product, I'd take the written report, the hand drawn poster of the person, the Chatterpix, and combine those into a more polished product.

With those three pieces (student art, written report, and Chatterpix), students can start creating something a little more interesting. Keep the traditional report and the hand drawn work. Take a picture of the art and use Aurasma, Layar or Glogster as the vessel for making an interactive experience for other students and parents. Instead of making one long recording of the report, have the student rewrite the report in first person from the subject's perspective, and record a different Chatterpix for each subtopic. Embed each Chatterpix in a different area of the photograph of the hand drawn art using an augmented reality app or Glogster. House them on the class blog, and have the students investigate each others' reports. Or, even better, have classmates read the report and create Chatterpix based on what they've learned from their classmates.

It sounds complicated, but if you start with a small project and teach them Chatterpix by itself (and the same with the other tech tool), it's much easier to teach them to integrate these different tools with an academic concept.