Puppet pals
What is Puppet pals?
Puppet Pals is an application to use on your iPad, iPhone or iPod. It allows you to create your own theatrical stories in a fun and easy way. It allows you to use your imagination and to take your learning experience to a new level. The free version gives you some characters and scenes. You can download the whole version for 22kr to be able to use all of the characters and scenes.
How does it work?
You or your pupils can use your favorite actors or take pictures of yourself witch you can use in the creation with your short movie. After this you choose a scene you think fits to your story. Then it’s time to record. Just press record and the app will record how you move your actors around and everything that you say. In just some minutes you have created your first movie. To make this app work you have to ha an iPad, iPod or iPhone.
How it can be used by teachers
Before you use this app with your students it’s important that you as a teacher know how the app works and witch learning goals you should reach by using this app. It’s important that everything you do in your classroom can be motivated in the syllabus. By using this app you can also work against many different goals in the syllabus and by that give the students a chance to reach different goals in different subjects.
In the purpose of teaching English according to the syllabus you can read that the education in this subject shall have the purpose to give the students a chance to create knowledge about how to use the language in different situations and in different meanings. The purpose is also to develop skills in how to talk the English language. By using Puppet Pals and create stories where the students can record the spoken language and listen to their own voice you can work against these goals and purpose with learning of the English language.
How it can be used by students
By using this app the students’ have an easy way to create short movies. They can use their imagination and learn a new language in a fun way. By recording their own voice they can hear their own pronunciation and fix their flaws in an easy way. By using this app it is also easy to share their movies to other students. In this way they can give each other constructive feedback and so can the teacher witch is a formative way of assess the students. In this way they have a chance to redo their work and develop their learning skills.
Other things to have in mind…
I think that this app is a great way to capture young students’ interest. Young students are captivated by this new way of learning and we as teachers can take this to our advantage. The iPad, iPod and iPhone itself is a tool where the students often have more knowledge then we do. My belief is that we have to make our students creative learners by using this tool and not a consumer of this tool as a game or as a pastime. If the students shall have a chance to become creative learners it’s very important to let the students know their learning goals and the purpose of creating a story and a movie in this app. This is a task that shall be done and the outcome will be given feedback on to expand the students’ knowledge in the subject.
Have fun!
Louise Johansson
This sounds like a nice app. I am sure that most of the pupils in my class would love to be creative and to make a story using it. The cost of the app is not high so it is possible for all schools to buy it. The difficult part of it have to be to be able to get the iPads. In the school I am working at we have one iPad/class and in my class we are 27 children.
ReplyDeleteJust like you point out Louise I think it is very important to have the learning goals for the task before starting, but also be flexible if you during the task notice that other goals than the once you planed from the beginning is developing.
As you write in the blogg there are many language goals that could be practiced with this activity. I also think that many of the pupils that are finding it difficult to talk (because they are afraid/shy) would enjoy this because it´s a "puppet" speaking (using their voice). With this it can be possible to practice all kinds of vocabulary (deciding themes) or storytelling. Thanks for giving this good description of this app, I am sure that all my students will be happy after the easter holiday when I can introduce them to it. We will start with one iPad and then beg the school to invest in several of them. Kristina Wiliam