Tellagami
Custom animations are fun but are too short and lack polish
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Tellagami
Pros: Flexible options for recording audio or using text-to-speech are great for students who struggle with oral presentations.
Cons: Videos are too short and features too few to add serious value to classroom presentations. Most backgrounds are available only as in-app purchases, and few seem especially appealing.
Bottom Line: While it's fun to create a character and record audio, uneven features make for a disappointing user experience.
You could encourage kids to use Tellagami to create video postcards about faraway places. Have them use their devices to download images from faraway places and locate their characters in exotic locales. You might also ask kids to make "gamis" that represent a character from a book they've read and use that character to explain the book's plot or the character's story. Kids could use Tellagami to show how changing one visual element can change the meaning of text. Students might use the emotion feature to show how the emotional state of a character can change the meaning of a story. They could also alter the background image to add extra irony or humor to a character's words.
Tellagami (pronounced similar to "origami") is a mobile app for creating a custom animated video called a "gami." Users enter text or record audio and then choose from a range of outfits, skin tones, and hairstyles to create a custom character to deliver the recording. Users then place their character against a background selected from the free built-in options, from the device's photo library, or from several background "packs" available for purchase within the app.
Tellagami's main purpose is to allow users to share their gamis, but frequent error messages and crashes within the in-app sharing features make the user experience uneven. Instead, it's easier to store gamis in the device's photo library and then use the device's own sharing features. After making a few gamis, it becomes clear that there's not much variety in the animation: The characters' hand gestures don't seem to vary depending on the audio, and the animation doesn't add much meaning. It also would be nice if there were more options for characters, more free background options, and the possibility to have more than one character on-screen.
The biggest learning potential for Tellagami might be for students who struggle with social skills. This medium has good potential for kids who are uncomfortable presenting in person or on film but are more comfortable recording audio or entering text. Beyond that support, though, it's unlikely that Tellagami would inspire deep learning. It's definitely fun and engaging to design a custom character and place them in an exotic location, but that's truly all that this app does. Additionally, with videos limited to 30 seconds, this isn't a great tool for students to use to make lengthy, in-depth presentations. And in spite of the range of skin tones and hair colors available, the characters all look alike: They all seem to be slim 20-somethings with Caucasian-looking features. Most background "packs" are paid content available only via in-app purchase, making it more likely that kids will need to import their own custom images from their device's camera. At that point, it might make more sense to use the device's camera to record a longer, more expressive video.
Learning Rating
Community Rating
Interactive tool for students to present without standing up in the room
I like this tool a lot because it is easy to use and kids enjoy using it to create presentations. A great part is being able to add your own background. This makes it personalized for social studies or book reports. I wish the voice options were all free to give more availability.
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