This morning in the AT&T Classroom the Rootstown second graders explored two tools for creating animations. Toontastic is a free app that allows children to draw, animate and share cartoons. The app offers several adventure themes that include backgrounds and characters for children to use to create their animated story.Children are also able to add audio to their story by recording their own voices. The Toontastic website also offers information and resources for using Toontastic within the curriculum.Today in the AT&T Classroom the Rootstown second graders used Toontastic to work on their writing skills. Using tools such as Toontastic to create digital stories provides opportunities for children to use higher order thinking skills to organize and design the story elements and the traits of the characters. It also provides an opportunity for students to utilize auditory, verbal, visual, and kinesthetic modalities in combination to create a very personalized and meaningful product that reflects their learning.
This morning the second graders also had their first coding lesson using the Daisy the Dinosaur app. Daisy the Dinosaur introduces children to the basic elements of coding through a challenge mode and a free play mode. The challenge mode tutorial shows the child how to create animations by using drag-and-drop steps to make the dinosaur move, jump, shrink and grow. There is also a free play mode in which users can design their own program to animate Daisy. Providing opportunities for young children to learn to code fosters children’s abilities for mathematical reasoning as well as skills for critical thinking, divergent thinking, creativity and problem solving.