Heads Up!
Overall
This app is a great app that can easily be incorporated into any Drama classroom. Heads Up! essentially recreates the game of charades. When opening the game, you can choose from several “card decks” that are different topics/categories. Once a deck has been chosen, the person holding the iPad turns the screen towards the audience so that they cannot see it. The audience or partner then has to try to get them to correctly guess as many titles as possible before the timer runs out.
Grade Level
Appropriate for all grade levels. Best for warm-ups or fun days. It is perfect for units in acting or physical movements. This app would get students to act and improvise without realizing that they are, in fact, acting, which many students are scared to do, especially around their peers.
Strengths: Simple to use, excellent tutorial. Fast, energetic, competitive and fun.
Weaknesses: While I highly recommend this app for any Drama classroom, it does have a couple of aspects that I did not like. The first was price; Though the app is initially free to download, it only has one card deck on it. To have more card decks, the user must pay $1.39 per deck. While this is not a lot of money, it would add up after a few decks, especially if the students were in smaller groups or partners, requiring this app on several iPads. The second issue I had with this app in terms of it fitting into a Drama classroom was the type of card decks available for purchase. Many card decks in this game require vocal clues, not acting or physical movement. Only two decks are acting out decks, that could be used in drama.
Effie P. (Spring, 2016)