Give book characters a voice in reviews

A great way to bring book covers to life with augmented reality is through the AR app Aurasma. But for some students who are shy about actually appearing in videos for book reviews or trailers can app-smash the Chatterpix app to give voice to their favorite characters from books.

It’s a great way for students to think about elements of storytelling such as point-of-view, summation, showing vs. telling

Besides, it’s just fun!

We covered Chatterpix earlier, but if you need a refresher, it looks a little like this:

In the free Chatterpix mobile app, you choose a photo, draw a line for the mouth and record your message. You don’t need to create an account to use it, and with only 30 seconds of audio to work with, students get to focus on the essential elements of storytelling.

Or in this case, the essential elements of book reviewing.

By combining Chatterpix with Aurasma, students can have characters from the book actually voice their point of view about plot and story elements. Like this:

 Here’s how it works

1. Open up the Chatterpix app and take a picture of the front cover of your book. It helps to choose books where a character’s face is clearly visible. Draw a line across their mouth in Chatterpix, and record your 30-second book review, incorporating the character’s point of view in the narrative.

2. The Chatterpix video is shared in the Camera Roll of your device, so export it AND THE BOOK COVER PHOTO to a laptop or desktop, to use with Aurasma Studio.

3. Open up Aurasma Studio. Create a Trigger Image with your book cover photo. Create an Overlay with your Chatterpix video, then put them together in a new Aura for that particular book.

Smashtacular book reviews!