I love Yakit kids. All the apps in which one can manipulate pictures tend to make me smile. It seems I’m easily assumed. Yakit kids can be applied to many aspects of your classroom besides the obvious ones. This app can tilt the “Dopeness” scale positively and it’s really easy to use. Even my kindergarten friends on my day job can manipulative it pretty adroitly.
A Portrait of a Student as a Strange Man (or Woman)
I was never a great artist. Try as I might, my dream of being Van Gogh took a rather large tumble quite early in life. I still love to doodle and draw however. If you want to integrate a bit of art into your classroom duirng your literacy block, you might do this…
1. Have students choose a character from a story that you’re reading. It could be independent reading or a story everyone is enjoying.
2. Give out some construction paper or printer paper and ask students to choose a scenario that the character finds herselfr or himself in. They should be mindful of the setting, the character’s attitude, and actions during the scenario.
3. Have the students draw the character by beginning with a large circle (or another shape) as the head. DO NOT HAVE STUDENT ADD EYES, EYEBROWS, LIPS, OR A NOSE.
4. Add a rendition of the setting that the character finds herself or himself in the background.
5. Open the Yakit App on your iDevice and click on the camera to take a picture of the newly drawn artistic work.
6. Have students add whatever flourishes they’d like, including the eyes, nose, mouth, etc., and then record themselves as if they are the character.
7. Finished products can be shared by text message, AirDrop, Cloud Storage, or with an app like WeTransfer rather easily.
Tutorials
Now, this one takes a little more imagination. Apps like Doceri, Educreations, Showme are far easier apps to pull tutorials off. They’re not half as much fun to use as Tellagami or Yakit kids because you can add an avatar or speaking image and you have to use a little ingenuity.
One way you might use Yakit kids to have students do tutorials, say in math, is the following.
1. Have students write a math problem down on something. I’d use a white board personally, but you could just use a sheet of paper. Then take a picture of the white board from within the Yakit kids app.
2. Have students script how the problem would be solved. Using storyboarding here would be awesome.
3. Armed with a script, pull in one of the characters into the scene in Yakit kids. Have students record the first part of script/storyboard, then immediately stop as soon as they are done.
4. Press “Add a Scene” and change your math problem to fit the criteria necessary for the next part of the script/storyboard.
5. Add the new picture and continue the same process until the problem is explained.
*The only issue with this functionality is that there is a limit amount of recording time.
You can just keep it Basic
So if you want to be basic, just use Yakit to take a selfie and make it run it’s mouth. This is great for any subject area. Also, you can just bring in any picture of any figure from historical period and then make him or her bend to your will. To avoid complications with copyrights, one might acquire pictures from a site like Photos for Class so citations will be made for you.
Intelligent Hoodlums 