Overview
ChatterPix may be a very simple app but I can guarantee it will have you and your students rolling around on the floor in hysterics. The tagline for the app is: Chatterpix can make anything talk — pets, friends, doodles, and more; and it’s desperately amazing just how much fun making things talk can be. By using the app with any picture or photo you have, it’s as simple as drawing a line where you want the mouth and then recording your voice. ChatterPix will do the rest!
Name: ChatterPixPricing: Free
Compatibility: iOS (ChatterPix / ChatterPix Kids)
Access: No signup required
Privacy: Private (privacy policy)
A Quick Look
There are two near-identical flavors of the ChatterPix app: ChatterPix and ChatterPix Kids. Apart from having a few more kid-friendly example animations, the key difference between the apps is that ChatterPix Kids has social sharing features disabled. Other than that they work exactly the same.
In Practice
1. Animate family and friends
This is a great way to start out with the app, as students (I want to say younger students, but I’m 33 and am still getting a kick out of it) will immediately be drawn into the activity once they realize they can make their parents of friends say whatever they like. Try getting your students to partner up and use the app to tell a joke, recite a catchphrase or sing a song in the voice of their partner. It also goes without saying that you will need to supervise carefully to ensure that the app is used for fun and bullying does not occur.
2. Seasonal activities
Using ChatterPix to animate seasonal pictures and celebrate holidays or special occasions is a hugely popular use for the app. Whether it be pictures for Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas or from a school event, students can use their imagination and creativity to give their pictures a meaningful voice.
3. Speeches and historical figures
While still an enjoyable activity, using ChatterPix to put ‘researched’ words into the mouths of historical figures or famous faces has a little more educational merit than making a cupcake sing. Try tasking your students with researching a well known figure for a particular topic or area of study in your classroom. Then, as part of their research they can deliver notable quotes, poems or phrases from the individual using ChatterPix.
4. Put some personality into artwork
This is a wonderful idea from art teacher Sarah Cooley who integrated ChatterPix into her class portrait exhibition. Each student painted their own self portrait and used the app to have their portrait speak a few words about the method used to create the piece. A further step that could work well if parents are invited to view the gallery would be to link each ChatterPix animation to QR codes, so that parents can use their own devices as they browse the gallery.
5. Bring your classroom to life
This is perhaps my favorite example of ChatterPix being used in the classroom from educator Meghan Farley. Try finding different inanimate objects around your classroom and use ChatterPix to ‘bring them to life’. Have a fire extinguisher deliver your next class project? Have a character from a class poster ask a tricky question? Have your lunch welcome students to class? The fun and possibilities are just endless!
Links and Next Steps
- Chatter Up Your Classroom with Chatterpix – App walkthrough
- ChatterPix Pinterest Board – Loads of ideas for using ChatterPix in class
- Talking Shapes – Using ChatterPix to animate shapes in Math class
- A Kindergarten Teacher Explains Using ChatterPix to Promote Creativity
- Edgaged: ChatterPix Kids – Some more ideas for using ChatterPix in class
- Carve A Pumpkin: App-tivities for Fall – Halloween classroom activity
- Chatter Pix- Sea Animal facts-Crab – Video example
- ChatterPix Thanksgiving – turkey, squash, sunflower – Video example
- Made with ChatterPix: Talking Deer – Video example
Feature image adapted from image courtesy of Flickr, Steve Snodgrass.