The fifth grade social studies teacher and I worked in collaboration on an Explorer unit. Students were given five questions to research. They worked with a partner. Students then were told they had to present to the class before February vacation. They can present in any format they want. Some students took the opportunity to try something new while others chose a presentation method they had experience with already. Students created Power Points, Photostories and then some used apps to for their presentations. They had to include the answers to the five questions, but it was neat to see how they creative they can be.

One of my groups created a short movie using the app Tellagami. Tellagami allows users to create an avatar. Then they can type in text and the avatar will read it. They stumbled upon two problems. One, the free app limits the amount of text you can add. They decided to create two separate Tellagami's so they could include all of their information and then combine them together in IMovie. The second problem was, the avatar didn't always pronounce everything correctly. They girls had to figure out how to phonically sound out some words so they avatar would pronounce it the right way.

Explorer Tellagami

Another group used the app Educreations to create a short video. Educreations is basically a way to screencast a series of pages and add images and recordings. This group liked how accessible and easy to use Educreations is, however they learned the hard way the apps biggest downfall. Unfortunately, you can not save the project as a draft. It needs to be created straight through or you will loose your work. Even once logged in their doesn't seem to be a way to save and unfinished product. (If anyone has figure out how to, please share!) After a third attempt the group created a successful video.

Explorer Educreations