Chatterpix in the classroom

A new iOS app to blab about — literally!

Chatterpix is a free iOS app that allows you to put tiny mouths on your photos and give them silly voices. I am not making any of this up. Here’s one of a crab explaining facts about crustaceans:

Cool things about Chatterpix:

1. Easy to use: choose a photo, draw a line for the mouth and record the message. Boom! Done.
2. You don’t need to create an account to use it
3. It’s free
4. You’re limited to 30 seconds of audio, thus focusing students on the essential elements of storytelling.

There are so many ways you could use this in an educational setting:

• have students animate a favorite photo of themselves with messages for a virtual exhibition — great for students with social anxiety issues around presenting;
• record the morning school announcements;
• create a map of a country and give each state it’s own voice;
• have students record bios of famous historical figures (HT Matt Bergman)

“Bios” could actually be recorded for just about anything that will hold still long enough: moss, trees, VW Vanagons, abacuses, graham crackers, more moss, just of a different kind. There’s something about the ability to give silly voices (along with glasses, top hats, scarves and electric guitars) to items and get into the storytelling groove that’s incredibly appealing.

In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that if I’d gotten to write dialogues for animated chemistry molecules, I’d’ve passed Chem on the first try:

As an educator, you could also record yourself giving instructions for a lesson; modeling that bio of a famous historical figure; create a map of a significant place in a book your class is reading and APP-SMASH: photos + Chatterpix + other photos + Thinglink = APP-SMASH! YES!

Or you could just record dogs talking about which strand they’re taking at this year’s Code Camp:

What could you do with Chatterpix and your students?