Faces iMake by Applicable2U

Faces iMake – Right Brain Creativity

By iMagine machine LLC

As a learner what strategies work best for you? Are you left or right brained?  At this point are you wondering what that means?  If you are left brained then you like talking and writing, you are a planned and structured person and tend to control your feelings.  If however you are a right brain individual then you are spontaneous, prefer drawing and manipulating and respond well to demonstrated instructions.  iMagine Machine creator of Faces iMake have your hemispheric dominance, right or left brained, literally in the palm of your hands as you explore your creativity via your iPad device running iOS4.2 or later.  The creative juices of this application was developed alongside renowned artist, educator and author, Hanoch Piven. Faces iMake integrates a creative style of art as it entangles various benchmark assessments necessary for elementary students.  It explores various elements and principals of design: color, line, shape and space.

As we explored this multi-purpose application, we were intrigued to see in their About, a word cloud, Wordle describing what Faces iMake is capable of doing for your child(ren) or students.  iMagine machine describes this application as mind opening, original, social and provides the user an opportunity to try things.  It is an application that meets a child’s multiple intelligences.  To get started, users might find it helpful to explore the five pre-installed lessons.  Begin to develop your 21st century skills as you think outside the box.  Amazingly, Faces iMake has no right or wrong answers, it’s all about expanding your imagination.  Immediately, users will notice the various toolbars that can appear and disappear as needed.  Whether you are right or left brained, users may need some inspiration.  Click the “gallery” button and a sampling of twelve pieces of art are there to spark whichever side of your brain.  As you create, “bebop”  to the default application sounds or link to your own music.  Simply click the “plus” sign and your library of music will appear.  It is preloaded with a large library of clipart in such categories as: candy, toys, food and base templates.   In addition, users can incorporate their own objects by using the device’s camera.  Use those images already in your iPhoto library or shoot now.  The opportunities are endless.

No matter where you piece of art comes from, it can be manipulated in a variety of ways. As art is dropped onto the green canvas, users will immediately notice a dotted circle and a new toolbar.  Images can be cloned, locked in place, reversed, stacked, deleted and rotated.  Users will be manipulating and developing their fine motor skills as they make tapping movements like pinching, expanding and dragging.  As you imagine, build, giggle and smile, your artist does not have to be finished just yet.  Creations can be saved and shared to your iPad, emailed or posted to a Facebook account.  If however you want to take it one step further, share it via Tap2print.  Tap2print will turn your creation into a puzzle that can be purchased.  The artist inside you can now be manipulated in a whole new way.  An artist does not have to have a paint brush in their hand.  Art is taught in a variety of ways and Faces iMake is making that possible.  As a parent and educator, Applicable2U is impressed with the educational possibilities that this application has to offer.  Whatever  your child or student “imakes” it can then be integrated with a creative writing piece, thus stimulating those left brained students.

As we tried new things with this application, Applicable2U would definitely give it two thumbs up!  This is an application that does not focus on a particular age group, it’s for all to enjoy and learn from.  If you would like to learn more about iMagine machine, please visit their website here.  What faces do you make?  Put them to art today by downloading Faces iMake HD to your iTunes library today.

Reviewers website: www.applicable2u.wordpress.com

Review of Draw for iPad by Kathy Burdick

Name of App: Draw for iPad

Free or Fee: Free!

Rating: 5/5 stars

Why I like it: Draw for iPad offers more than just a medium for creating masterpieces (however, even my artwork looks decent and I am no Van Gogh!) There are also options for playing a basic game of Tic-Tac-Toe or a word game. The word game gives a word in the upper left hand corner leaving space for students to draw the given word or to write a sentence using that word. There is a dots option, which fills the page with rows of dots making it a perfect replacement for the geo board and all its rubber bands. The straightening toggle makes this a great app to use in a geometry class. When the toggle is turned on any line that is created is straightened making it easy to draw perfect shapes while still leaving room to write in equations and angles. Images on the screen can be emailed, added to a photo album (which I have yet to figure out how to access) or tweeted. I always appreciate when developers add the email feature so that students can email their end product to the teacher or in some cases vice versa. Draw for iPad offers many color options as well as an eraser (or a clear button to delete the whole page) for students to let their creativity run wild. Draw for iPad is loaded with uses for the classroom- elementary, middle school or high school!

Visit Kathy's website for more ideas on using apps in the classroom!

iPad Creativity? Creation?

Review of Tortoise and the Hare Puppet Show by Kathy Burdick

Name of App: Tortoise and the Hare Puppet Show Presented by Puppet Art Theater Co.

Free or Fee: Free!

Rating: 4/5

Seller: Handcrafted Web Solutions

Why I like it: The Tortoise and the Hare is a commonly told (and read) children’s fable, but this version uses puppets to tell the story! The Puppet Art Theater Company is a touring puppet show that performs several different stories to hundreds of live audiences every year including preschools, elementary schools and libraries. This app is a digital version of their live performance that can be viewed over and over again. There are 3 parts to this app- play the show, about the show and the workshop. About the show gives you information about the kinds of puppets used in the show and the workshop, which makes this an exceptional app, teaches the viewer how to make their own tortoise and hare puppets. This app would be great for early elementary art class or integrated with reading (of course, by reading the story as well as viewing the show). Students can watch the show then participate in the workshop to create their own puppets. The workshop is broken down into sections to give step-by-step instructions making it easy for students to work at their own pace. Once the puppets are made students can perform their own Tortoise and the Hare puppet show! This app is free, however, Three Little Pigs and Three Billy Goats Gruff is also available for $1.99 each. Telling a story using puppets… it doesn’t get more fun than that!

Reviewer's Website

Color Mix App Review

Color Mix is another one of those "coloring apps" with a very "nice mix" of features to help it stand out!

First, there is an update coming out that will allow users to color with a "fill" option as coloring on the iPad can be frustrating without that ability.  However, my own children like having the option to not fill as well because they also don't need it to be "perfect" as our 4 year old said.

The best feature is the ability for students to mix their own colors.  Basically, you go into your color editing mode and you can drag the primary colors, white and black into a bucket to get the perfect color you want.  I used this with my daughter and did color prediction and it was fantastic to watch her think through the process.  While we have talked about mixing colors before, it was much more productive to have her experiment.  Obviously the nicest aspect of having this digital is the ability to mix and match rapidly with very little clean up! 

Now, the second very nice feature is the concept of importing backgrounds to color over.  It does come with a very nice set of images, teachers and students can import their own backgrounds as well.  This is very powerful for on the go learning in many ways!

Overall, I grade this app very positively as there is a lot of value for your classroom! Check it out ...

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id432169773?mt=8

Here is their official line from the company ...

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Make your own colors! Children love learning that Red and Blue can be mixed to make Purple. Add some Black and it’s a Dark Purple!

Other apps only let your children choose a crayon color. Color Mix for Kids allows them to explore their creativity by learning to mix colors and then paint “masterpieces” with them.

Using 5 basic paint colors on the palette, a child can mix them to make any color they imagine, then use the saved colors to paint!

The kid friendly interface was designed by parents with a lot of input and testing from preschoolers. So it’s easy to use.

Features:

* Educational! A new way to learn the color wheel
* Learn to mix colors through exploration and discovery.
* Kid-friendly interface – so easy a toddler can use it
* Multi-touch painting (allows more than one child to share)
* Lots of provided coloring pages and backgrounds to color on
* Connect-The-Dots pages have environmental science lessons
* Color pictures from your photo album
* Save to local gallery, or to photo album
* No advertisements!

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If you have any question or ideas on how to make our app better, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at support@eightfoldeducation.com

Painting and Drawing ... Is that all?

Apple has a nice little bundle of Painting and Drawing apps ... Did they hit the mark on this?  Is the paint still wet meaning that they should include other apps? What are your thoughts on this category?

The beauty of some of these apps is not in the artistic aspect but in the educational functionality!  Doodle Buddy is great in so many ways!

Color Mixing for Kids HD by Applicable2U

Color Mix for Kids HD
By Eightfold Education

As a child, whether you had a box of Crayola crayons or some other generic brand, the thought of blending colors to create something new would intrigue just about anyone. Now with the help of an educational app called Color Mix for Kids HD, technology and creativity will come together in one simple download. With only a painters palette for mixing, multiple types of canvases, a sponge and four primary colors, early elementary students will feel like an artist. Color Mix for Kids HD is not only fun to explore, but it also meets a number of academic requirements beginning at first through fourth grade.

With a very clean design as you navigate from page to page, users will quickly understand through visual clues or buttons what choices they have that will encourage or develop their artistic side. This educational app is suitable for both home and school use. To begin creating, simply tap the painters palette. Here users are given the four primary colors: red, green, yellow and blue.  The primary color toolbar is referred to as the mixing bar. Immediately users can begin creating a master piece on the right hand side.  To set themselves apart from other art applications, Eightfold Education has added the ability to have multiple fingers drawing at one time. A note to the developers – is it possible to have users each choosing their own color as they create at the same time?  This would encourage and build the life skill of working together and collaborating.   In addition, by selecting the paint palette button, users can explore and discover new colors. Through this discovery, users should recall various art terms learned such as: primary and secondary colors, warm and cool colors, analogous and complementary, or the color wheel depending on the grade level of the user. With very realistic paint blobs, budding arts can click on a color and drop it onto the mixing bar. If you want to remove or start a new color, simply tap the sponge to clean one or more of the mixing bar colors. Once the color exploration is complete, click the green checkmark to continue drawing. As pictures are completed, the user has the option to save their picture to the gallery, empty it into the trash can or to fix any mistakes. Free draw and this idea of color mixing provides an educator another way to assess their students understanding of key arts benchmarks in a less stressful way.

Free exploration is not the only option that a user has within Color Mixing for Kids. For those not yet in school and those that are in school, they also have the ability to color in a variety of animal coloring pages and environmental science lesson connect the dot pages.  A cross curricular application that also reinforces fine motor skills is definite bonus!  Each can be saved to the applications gallery or to your photo album on your iPad device. If desired, these pages can then be emailed, printed, assigned to a contact, turned into your wallpaper or copied. In addition, users can choose from 32 different backgrounds to extend their free drawing experience.   A note to the developer – might it be possible to choose different sized paint brushes as children are manipulating the coloring and dot to dot pages.  With this incorporated additional art standards would be mastered.

Overall, Applicable2U gives Color Mix for Kids HD a thumbs up!  It provides the user an educational, interactive, and fun experience.  If you like what you see now on this version, just wait until you see some of the upcoming updates.  To learn more about Eightfold Education, please visit their website here.  To encourage learners in a variety of ways, begin downloading Color Mix for Kids HD as a way to bring out the artist inside of them.

Reviewers website: www.applicable2u.wordpress.com