Adobe Voice

For those of you who may not be familiar with Adobe Voice, it is a very good, easy to use, and intuitive app that can be used as an explanatory tool to explain concepts, ideas, or tell stories. 
What makes this iPad app even more appealing is that it is extremely intuitive and completely free!

It is very easy to get started. Upon opening the app there are three categories at the top: Explore, Projects, and Shared (see first screen capture below). 

Explore will allow you to look at other people's examples. Projects is the area where you will be able to save your stories that you create. Shared will allow you to share, view, and manage your stories. You will need an Adobe ID or you can sign in with your Facebook credentials to share your story. You have the ability to share your story privately (only people who have the link can see your story) or publicly whereby anyone using the app can see your story.

This app is ideal for teachers who want to explain concepts in a humorous manner using icons, pictures and text. The key thing to remember is that the app is used for short stories or recordings. Ideally, we would want to stay between 1-5 minutes.

Once you click on +Create a New Story at the top, you can begin creating your story. Once you enter a title you can choose from an array of templates or create your own depending on what you are trying to create and the message you are trying to send to your users.  Once you have chosen a format, in the center you can choose to enter an icon, a photo, or text (see second screen capture below). Many of the icons and the music tracks are copyright free or you have the rights to use realizing that at the end of your story, the person creating the icon or music will be given credit.
To record your voice to provide a voiceover for your story, tap and hold the Record button that looks like a microphone. Incidentally, to ensure that you keep your recording and story an appropriate length, you will be prompted to keep your recording short if it becomes too long.
The Layout, Theme, and Music options at the top will allow you to make appropriate choices to enhance your story.

Lastly, this app can be used as a tool to provide a quick overview of a concept in math class, a historical event or defining  and using vocabulary words just to name a few ways to use this app. In addition to using this app to explain concepts, ideas, or using it just as an explanatory tool, teachers can have students use this app to create their own projects. For example, if a teacher wants to check students' understanding of a concept, one can have students create their own story demonstrate how well they understood the concept. Or, for instance in a history class, a teacher can have students' demonstrate that they have understood the events or sequence of events related to a historical event.  

This is simply, an intuitive, fun, entertaining, and low cost way to add some pizzazz to your instructional arsenal!