This list highlights simple, yet powerful tools that can be used to create animations or storybooks without any drawing or programming skills.
Powtoon - Free/Paid; Web-based..... PowToon is an online tool to easily create animated stories for presentations or explanation/information videos. With it's ease of use and polished outcome, it's becoming extremely popular. Powtoon offers drag-and-drop objects which you add to slides, and then choose their animation, duration, add text, and add a soundtrack. On screen, animated slides provide an easy to grasp narrative. PowToon includes templates to get started and resulting presentations can be uploaded and shared.
Website: http://www.powtoon.com/
Google Chrome app: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/powtoon-edu/ogodblbnhpbcmcjcoopbalconhnloagl
Go!Animate - Free; Web-based..... Go!Animate helps you easily create animated videos using with a diverse number of options to make animated movies that fit custom needs. You create your animated videos directly online, where you drag-and-drop objects to add to slides and choose their animation, duration, add text, and add a soundtrack. Helpful Review: http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1142/go-and-animate-with-goanimate
Website: https://www.vyond.com/
Voki - Free/Paid; Web-based..... Voki helps users to create speaking avatars (a talking character). Users customize their characters look and what they say (for class presentations, such as reciting a poem or presenting a book report). Voki's can be published and shared.
Website: http://www.voki.com/
Storyboard That - Free/Paid; Web-based..... Storyboard That is an online storyboarding/storyboard creation tool. Storyboards combine storytelling with relevant images in a linear, concise format. Storyboard That provides three and six frame templates with several scenes, characters, and text bubbles to fill your storyboard's frames. Each element that you drag into your storyboard's frames can be resized, rotated, and repositioned.
Website: http://www.storyboardthat.com/
Wideo - Free/Paid, Web-based..... Wideo is a tool to easily create online animated and Common Craft-style videos, simply by dragging and dropping elements into place then setting the sequence of animations. Wideo’s free elements include text, cartoons, and drawings and you can also upload your own images for use.
Website: http://www.wideo.co/
Blabberize is a fun web-service that allows you to create your own talking picture (basically a moving mouth on a still image), with any audio that you record. Simply upload a photo of your choice, select the photo’s mouth or jaw, any part that you want to make talk and record your audio. See classroom application ideas at: http://teachbytes.com/2012/09/18/blabberize-and-10-classroom-applications/
Website: http://blabberize.com
Storybird – Free, Paid; Web-based….. Storybird incorporates illustrations to inspire students to write stories, anything from picture books for younger students, poetry, or even longer chapter books. Beautiful, professional artwork can help jumpstart student creativity. Simple tools make story creation easy and help keep learners on track. Stories may be created to enhance personalized learning, work on a new language, increase vocabulary, explain a process, and of course tell a story. Student both learn to write and create stories, but also learn to comment on others through built in social feedback. Students, classes, and schools can create shared libraries to be read by others.
Website: https://storybird.com/
Sutori - Free/Paid, Web-based Sutori is a online digital learning tool for creating and sharing visual stories or timelines. Teachers create classes and then send students codes to access shared timelines and to create their own. Using a simple and intuitive interface users can add text, hyperlinks, images, videos, or audio files. Engagement is further supported by embedding multiple-choice quiz questions and a commenting feature, and multiple users can work in real-time on the same project. Developer pre-made templates are mainly timelines, while shared Sutori community contributions cover all subject areas and grade levels. Teachers may use pre-made templates, construct their stories or timelines, or create assignments that require students to build multimedia-rich stories.
Website: https://www.sutori.com/
Toontasitc 3D, Free/Paid; iPad Toontasitc 3D is a digital storytelling app that allows students to draw, animate, narrate and share 3D cartoons. Making cartoons is easy, yet engages students in logical thinking. Students (or teachers) begin by selecting an open-ended story formats (traditional arcs) which turn into the scenes of their digital stories. The three formats are: Short Story (with a beginning, middle and end); Classic Story (with setup, conflict, challenge, climax, and resolution); and Science Report (with a question, hypothesis, experiment, results, and conclusion). Storytellers choose from a library of three dimensional settings (with surprises built in) or they can draw their own backgrounds and settings. They also choose characters related to the setting (virtual playsets chock full of animals, pirates, princesses, far away galaxies, and many more), import characters from their camera roll, or they may draw their own. There’s an assortment of fanciful creatures, and human characters represent a range of diversity. Characters are easily moved around their settings. Storytellers have the option of full character control or using a character as is. Some have rather special personalities and talents. Music can be added by adjusting the scene's Emotional Energy level and plotting out the perfect Story Arc. When complete Toontastic will record and play back the animation and voice as a cartoon that can be shared online via ToonTube or Toontastic's Global Storytelling Network. Toontastic 3D is great for education as there are no ads or in-app purchases and no logins required; the Free version comes with the basic library and tools set.
Free iPad app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toontastic/id404693282?mt=8&uo=4&at=10l6SU
Paid iPad app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toontastic-all-access/id563403725?mt=8&uo=4&at=10l6SU
Chatterpix Kids Free; iOS ChatterPix Kids is a photo-editing app that makes photographs talk. The fun and creativity happens when students choose any photo (a person, an animal, an object, even a doodle), draws a mouth ,then records a short audio of what the picture will say. Students can embellish the photos with stickers, captions, text and use a variety of different photo filters and frames. Creations are then stored in the Gallery where they can also be revisited and re-edited. ChatterPix Kids is great for any elementary school creative project, such as creating short book reviews from the main character’s point of view. Students could research a historical figure then use a portrait or drawing photograph of that person with comments on the historical event. Educators have been searching
Free iPad app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chatterpix-kids-by-duck-duck/id734046126?mt=8&uo=4&at=10l6SU
Free iPhone app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chatterpix-kids-by-duck-duck/id734046126?mt=8&uo=4&at=10l6SU
ComicBooks! Free (Android)/Paid (iOS) ComicBooks! is an easy to use app students can use to build comic strips based on their own photos. Students take pictures or import them from other sources (younger students may need guidance), and choose from dozens of multi-panel page layout templates to create their own comic books. Realistic comic styling includes a wide selection of image filters, fonts, captions, and a library of classic comic graphics. Comics are then saved as jpegs or PDFs. ComicBooks! can be used with numerous classroom activities, from book reports to creative writing, from summarizing topics to expressing sequences, timelines, or historical events, supporting students as they learn narration, storytelling, art, and digital-creation skills.
Paid iPad app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/comicbook!/id436114747?mt=8&uo=4&at=10l6SU
Paid iPhone app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/comicbook!/id436114747?mt=8&uo=4&at=10l6SU
Free Android Phone app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.threedtopo.comicbook.android
Story Wars Free/Paid; Web-based Story Wars is a website where students can collaborate to write stories, almost in a “choose-your-own-adventure” format. After creating an account students either start a new story or contribute a chapter to an existing story. After at least two people have contributed drafts, a timer starts and others have a set time to add other potential chapters to the story. All Story Wars users get vote on the contributions, chapters with the most votes become the next chapter of the story. Students can write, vote, or read the stories across a range of genres, including historical or fan fiction, humor, science fiction, fantasy and more. The site is free, but also offers a paid subscription for teachers (Story Wars Classroom) with private Story Wars community for their students. The private site gives teachers more control over content and language and also provides data on contributions and voting.
Website: https://www.storywars.net/
Google Chrome app: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/story-wars/coadbejlmmejdkpdcnbikfcplabhgmpo
Free iPhone app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/story-wars/id1010560424?mt=8&at=10l6SU
Kid in a Story Book Maker Free/Paid; iOS This story creator resource for very young kids or special needs learners makes it fun and easy to create visual stories that support learning, social modeling, and early literacy. By using the devices camera or photo album, parents or teachers can create customized picture storybooks with the child as the main character. The app extracts a person's image from a photo and eliminates the background so that the person can be dropped seamlessly into the scenes in the book. Adults (and kids) can create their own story from scratch or use the existing story templates, and add their own text and voice to personalize the stories even more. Stories featuring the learner can be created to hep prepare for new situations, know what to expect, adapt to a new routine, or even better understand emotions. Current templates include: Faces iMake, Let's Get a Haircut, On the Playground, When Is It Time to Wash My Hands?, Are Monsters Hiding in My Room?, and others.
Paid iPhone app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id594403164?mt=8&at=10l6SU
Paid iPad app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id594403164?mt=8&at=10l6SU
Free iPad app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kid-in-story-book-maker-free-create-share-personalized/id608194073?mt=8&at=10l6SU
Free iPhone app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kid-in-story-book-maker-free-create-share-personalized/id608194073?mt=8&at=10l6SU