Great reinforcement of narrative elements while having fun building your own movie!
Community Review for Toontastic
My Take
This is a great app for reinforcing learning in the classroom and integrate both creativity and technology. It is a great way to include a "task and purpose" for writing, as students are creating storyboards in order to produce a movie that tells a story (just add an identified audience)! The app is simple enough for individuals, or small groups of students to use once they are introduced to the elements of the app itself.
The free version doesn't seem to be available anymore, but the classroom version has a lot more to it anyway. There is a simple story arc by default, but more scenes can be added. Same for characters; students can actually draw their own creations and they are added to the choices within the app. Students record their voices telling the story with the animation, add music and voila! a movie is produced that can be shared locally or globally on the TuneTube.
How I Use It
After students are introduced to the story arc of how narratives are developed, this app was introduced to the class. They were introduced (via a doc camera) to the interface; the story arc, with settings, characters and other choices. After students do some writing (storyboards) of their own creation, the app is used by them to bring their stories "to life" by creating a movie! The built in story arc reminds them of the elements needed, and the choices they need to make are grouped, allowing choices to be made more easily. The app builds in the connective structure "and then...", or " and finally", which reinforces sentence structure too.