A couple of weeks ago, Adobe released a new iPad app called, “Adobe Voice.”  It reminds me a bit of Microsoft’s Photo Story – a free piece of software that allows you to create a video out of images.  Like Photo Story, Adobe Voice allows you to add photos, text, narration, and music.  However, it does give more options for where you can find your photos.  You can do a Creative Commons search, use your own, or even choose from a library of icons that is provided. I imagine the Creative Commons search is where the 12+ rating comes from on the iTunes store.  However, my students didn’t run into any inappropriate images during their projects.

The first group to use Adobe Voice in my classroom was a pair of my 3rd grade GT students.  They were trying to synthesize one of the ideas they had brainstormed for solving the problems of noise and mess in the cafeteria.  After consulting with a couple of “expert” principals, they realized that we were lacking some student leadership in the lunch room, and created this presentation to pitch a proposal to our principal for having student monitors during meal times.

They were under a time constraint, so they did not delve into many of the creative features of the app, but they got their message through quickly and effectively.

Last Thursday, I met with my 5th grade GT students for the final time.  Because they have been with me once a week for two years, I wanted to get a sense from them of what they felt was the one “takeaway” they got from being in my classroom.  (In Kaplan language, this is called the “Big Idea.”)  I gave them full freedom to cull through my Pinterest Board of Favorite Quotations. I asked them to choose one that they thought exemplified the message I wanted them to carry with them for the rest of their lives.  Then they were asked to create an Adobe Voice presentation built around that message, giving examples to support it.  Here are a couple of their videos (unfortunately, embed codes for Adobe Voice do not work on this WordPress blog):

“Make” – The students used pictures: from their Genius Hour presentations, of their Character Trait Floor Plans, of MaKeyMaKey, a project from our Global Cardboard Challenge, a drawing from our Squiggle Challenge, and of Cubelets.

“Change the World” – This one came from the pair of students who created the Lego Stop Motion film and scavenger hunt/quiz for Genius Hour.

You can view all of the presentations on our class blog post.  I loved the variety, and the multitude of perspectives.

A couple of things you should note if you are using Adobe Voice:

• You will need an Adobe (or Facebook) account to login in order to upload your videos.
• You can share the videos through e-mail and social networks, but there does not appear to be a way to download the video to your camera roll or to export the file.
• In order to embed the video in a blog post, you will need to access it online once it is uploaded, and then get the embed code (also, the free WordPress hosted sites will not work with the embed code).
• Check to see if the image search is blocked by your district filter.  If so, students will need to have images ready on their camera roll or to be able to take pictures while creating.

Here are a couple of other online articles about Adobe Voice: from CNet,  from EBHS Professional Learning.