New apps emerge continuually, providing additional features and possibilities for creating content for students on the iPad. Finding apps that are easy to use and functional take some sorting through.  Here are a few more recently found apps that are easy to use and provide great story telling – content creation on the iPad:

 Tapikeo – Remain one of my favorite, inexpensive and easy to use apps. Available now in HD for the iPad (2.99) and for iPod and iPhone (1.99), this app is suited for creating books and vocabulary flash cards using pictures on your device or taken by your camera and adding text and audio recording directly in the app. Once created you can swipe to turn the pages you created or you can add arrows on the pages for turning. One of my students IEP goals focuses on touching with accuracy to prepare him for communication devices, interaction with information on a touch screens or touch screen devices with greater accuracy. I have concerns that swipping on the iPad will undo the focus on accurate pointing as is needed to press a button or arrow or item for interaction. Another feature in Tapikeo is the ability to lock the screen to prevent deleting the story by busy fingers. Easy to use and create, Tapikeo will allow staff and paraprofessionals a fast way to create content for specific students with pictures, audio and text. Grids or creations can be imported or exported. For more information visit my post dated January 12, 2012 on Tapikeo.

 Story Buddy 2 is another story telling or book creating app available for the iPad (4.99). This produces a beautiful, polished book in a slide show presentation using photos from your photo album and adding audio and text. Story Buddy provides different background choices,  styles for text and picture presentation. More than one picture can be added to the slides providing some nice options for presentation.  An audio recording tool is available, however  I did find this could be somewhat finiky at times.

The final product book is very professional looking product that can be edited at any time. Options for the final product include emailing it or sending it to other apps that handle PDF file which is the format of the final product.  An option to send it to iBooks is provided however I did not find this operational. You can view the book within the app however beware of the trash or delete button at initial start is easy available for busy fingers.

Although there currently seems to be some glitches with the program, it produces a very professional and polished book that is easy to produce. A great option for students that are not curious about the Trash button or impulsively touch all the buttons on the screen at onset of view the book selections. Some additional information is available on Tapfuze website.  I really like this app and hope they will fix some of the glitches.

  Book Creator   app is another story telling or book creating app for the iPad (4.99) that is easy to use and provides may features for book production. Very functional, it provides the addition of pictures from your photo album, the ability to add text and recorded audio or sound tracks to your book slides or pages, change text colors, size and background colors using standard color choices.

 Book Creator has many options and working with it has options to create your own textbook using its many tools. Although not interactive allowing movies embedded in the book, it does provide a published look to it. Not quite as polished as the final product of Story Buddy 2 due to their choices of backgrounds and picture presentation, but Book Creator provides the ability to one touch open the finished product in iBooks, or Free Books app for viewing which worked immediately. I was able to view my book in iBooks with audio working and the ability to read the text using the speak text feature of iOS5. When sent to iBooks this text is unable to be altered but also unable to easily be trashed or deleted by a student unless they perform an edit in iBooks.

Certainly there are many more story telling or book creating apps but these suited the needs we have for students of a wide range of skills for under $4.99 or under with ease of creation, presentation of text and audio for access to all students. Some of the apps were easier to manage to make them available to students than others, but each one has features suited to different age abilities for creation of content. The next step will be to create interactive text such as  Apple’s ibooks author software for Mac!

What story telling and book creating app do you have in your OT iTool Kit??

Carol