I looked at two apps because I got really excited about having an excuse to play around with different apps. All in the name of being a good teacher. I swear I got no enjoyment out of it.
Telegami: I am not really sure in what capacity I would use this in the classroom because it only let’s you record for 30seconds at a time which is not really long for students to give a response. This app is kind of like chatterpix, but I think chatterpix is cooler. With this though you can pick how your character will look and the background, but then it seemed kind of like a waste of time for only 30second recording time. Maybe if you paid for the app you could record for longer? In addition to choosing your character’s appearance (somewhat) and background, you can also write/draw a doodle to accompany your recording as you can see below on mine. A lot of the features or other options were locked. I am assuming they would become unlocked if you paid for the app. The app didn’t do the greatest job in the name of diversity. The skin tones are limited, so is the hairstyle. The facial features all look stereo-typically “white”.
Pros: It is simple and easy to use. If I can figure it out in a few minutes, anyone can use it.
Cons: the recording time is too short, which severely limits what you can do with it.
https://tellagami.com/gami/OQ62YC/
Puppet Pals: I had a lot of fun with this app. The point is to make an animated puppet show. This could be used as a way to teach part of a lesson or for students to use for authentic assessment project. Puppet pals let’s you pick different characters, setting, and the character movements are controlled with your hand movements. Then you record your voice. It seems like you can make the scenes as long as you want. There were a couple of negatives with this app. The first being there wasn’t a whole lot of choice for background and you couldn’t change how the character looked which brings me to the second drawback which is the characters were very stereotypical. The princess in the pink dress, the knight in shining armor. Its mind-blowing to me that we have the ability to create all these different, innovative apps for the classroom, but we still can’t go beyond teaching that girls are princesses and boys are knights. Am I the only one a little sick of this narrative?
Andrea Hoffman 
Thanks for the reviews, Andrea! I was looking at puppet pals to explore, but never ended up doing so. What an interesting point about gender norms, haha – it’s true, so annoying. As for the telegami site, maybe only having 30 seconds would be a good way for student to demonstrate understanding of key concepts in only 30 seconds (almost like a challenge to be concise as possible). It would kind of be like an exit card or twitter post (which only allows for so many characters).
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Yah it is good for that, but then it just seemed like a waste of time to have students chose how their character looks, what they wear and the backdrop for a 30second response.
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