Toontastic

Overview

This free app is aimed at helping students learn about the writing process. Users can create their own cartoon stories and are guided through the steps of a story. Toontastic Jr. is also available with a simplified version of the writing process and is specifically pirate themed.

Toontastic would ideally be used with children in Grades 4 to 6 in English Language Arts classes to help illustrate how a story is constructed. This app has potential for cross-curricular use in Science with the scientific method or experimental design in mind along with story progression. It can also be used for video introductions for new topics in other subject areas (Math, Social Studies, Health, etc.). Toontastic could be used as an alternative to giving a written report or presentation, particularly for students with input/output difficulties or students with anxieties. You could use Toontastic Jr. in primary grades, especially Grades 2 and 3, to introduce the concept of progression in story.

This app is incredibly easy to use. To begin, you press “Create Cartoon” and the screen will roll down for you to choose from a previously made story or creating your own. Once you’ve chosen to create your own story, you can keep the story progression slides the same or you may add or delete up to six scenes. You can then work your way through each scene by choosing the background, characters, personalizing each character, using voice over to make the characters speak, animating your characters by moving them around as you record and adding sound effects to each scene. There is even an option to draw your own characters from the front and side angles. The app verbally explains to the user what is required in each step of the creation process. After you have finished all scenes, you can save on your camera roll and view your work from the app or directly from your device. This app allows easy sharing of stories, making student work accessible to parents or other teachers and classes.

Grade Level

Grade 4 - 6

Strengths:

User friendly
Good for independent or group work
Parent guide is very informative, giving parents or teachers an easy way to access resource for developing each stage of the child’s story
You can personalize the story by picking your own character and how they look, using pictures of your face and recording your own voice
Move characters as you speak, never have to worry about aligning aspects of the cartoon
You can edit your work after finishing
Great for publishing student work
Doesn’t limit struggling writers, emphasis is on the ideas, information, and creativity
Background themes for Christmas, Halloween, Spring, home, school, space, worldly settings, and many more!
Character personalization can be saved to use in all scenes of a story or in new stories!

Weaknesses:

Small music selection that changes for each scene
Icons can sometimes be difficult to control, takes some time to get used to how they respond
Can only create up to six scenes
Time limit on each scene of 60 seconds (this does not seem to be a huge issue, as the whole project would be allowed up to six minutes)
When viewing finished work from the app, you cannot pause and return to where you left off. You can in the camera roll option
seven character limit

Rating: 4.5/5

Katherine B. (Spring, 2016)