Digital Storytelling: Sock Puppets Giggle Factor

Why are stories so compelling? Is it that they distract us from the reality we are living....or a desire to share information with others?  Or simply that they can be so entertaining. Kids have been writing stories at school as part of the process of learning to read and write for a very long time.  How do the new mobile tools change that landscape?

I recently participated in a SimpleK12 webinar "Stories on the Go: Digital Storytelling with Mobile Devices" with presenter Shelly Terrell.  The audience for this presentation was elementary school teachers and people like me who have discovered SimpleK12 as a valuable resource. The presentation was very basic but did introduce me to a wonderful new app. I had heard of it, but this time I gave it a test drive. 

Sock Puppet from Smith Micro Software

Sock Puppet just makes me giggle. This app is designed to have a very high silliness factor which of course is a great kid-magnet. It has a fairly straight forward interface but there is a link for help.

You select your puppets, up to four, from photographs of real sock puppets or cartoon sock puppets.  Then you select your background and have a few choices of props, some of which can be animated while others are static.

Choices for props, the colors indicating whether they are static or can be animated

Unlike Toontastic in which you see your characters and background as you select them, this app waits until all of those selections have been made to assemble them for the next step. Now you can scale the puppets and objects you have selected and arrange them on the stage.  The real magic is what happens next and how easy it is.

Red button at top left starts the recording/animating of your voice and puppets.

Press the red button at the top left of the app to start recording and animating your story.  Tapping a puppet attaches the voice track to that character.  Tapping another puppet continues the dialogue with that character.  You can also scale and move the puppets as you are recording. With the free version you can record for 30 seconds.  You can record over your initial take, but not add length to an existing story.  

Your dialogue is then "translated" into a cartoon voice that differs by character. After a brief rendering process the animation opens and plays.  Next options include saving and giving the story a title and sharing it via YouTube or Facebook. Or not saving at all and starting over again.

Still from my little story about the Perseid meteor showers.

There are a number of add ons.  I paid $.99 to move my video to my iPad Photos so I could upload it to my computer via DropBox.  Some of the other paid options include buying more characters and being able to upload your own backgrounds. 

This is such a fun tool that sparks a creative nerve, not only in terms of the output but the development.  I can't wait to share this with my young friends.