Perhaps you’ve heard of App Smashing?  App Smashing is using 2 or more apps to complete a project.  Tool smashing works the same way but is not confined to a single device.  My school is all Apple so my tool smashing does stay on the same platform. But your’s doesn’t have to.

This is a video I created utilizing tool smashing.

Here’s how I did it…

I first started with the app VideoScribe. This is one of the few paid apps ($5.99) I am really in love with. The videos are super easy to create. You can choose from many different images.  You can control how long it takes to draw them. There are also several different effects you can choose.  The thing I did not like about VideoScribe was the voiceover feature. You don’t get to watch the video while you record the voiceover.  You do know how many seconds each image or word takes to be drawn but I’m a visual person. I need to see the video. That’s when I decided to tool smash!

I exported the video onto my iPad’s camera roll. I do love that the video exports with no VideoScribe branding built in. From there, I used another of my favorite, well worth the money paid apps, iFiles ($3.99). I added the video to iFiles. iFiles helps you transfer files from your iPad to your computer. It uses wifi sharing. You tap the icon and iFiles gives you a web address to go to to see your files. From your browser you can download your file.

After I downloaded my movie, I imported it into iMovie. The voiceover in iMovie was much easier. I could see the video and I could edit the sound. I also added two titles at the end.  The first reviewed the four things to think about because I decided to add that as VideoScribe was exporting my movie.  I did not want to start again. The second title was just contact information.  I exported again and then uploaded to YouTube.

At this point you are probably thinking, “Aimee, this sounds like it took forever to make.  I just don’t have time for that!”. This project took about an hour. Exporting the videos took up about 25 of those minutes. Coming in second in time was the voiceover. I had to keep re-recording because my phone would ring, a student would come in or I would mess up big time. I did leave in a couple of mistakes because I’m working through my perfectionism. You can tool smash!
But, more importantly, you students can! I’m a big fan of choices. Don’t limit your students to one or two apps or tools. Let them experiment to see how two or more tools can work together or not work at all. They need to fail forward. Try it out!