Thanksgiving is easy.

Hear me out: Turkey? Stick it in an oven for hours. Mashed potatoes? Boil some water. Yams? Sprinkle some brown sugar. Green beans? Open a can. Even hand-whipped whip cream? Yep. That, too. Whip it.

Even if you end up making a Half-Trifle Half-Shepherd’s Pie Rachel Special, “what’s not to like?” Joey will eat it.

Yes, I have a point.

We like to make Thanksgiving a big deal. Sure there are more mouths to feed, more places to set at the table, more potatoes to peel, but it’s not any more difficult than a single crème brûlée. A good mole? I have no idea where to start.

In the same way, there are some of us who still think that digital content creation—a video, a blog post with an image, a podcast, a visual meme, a musical track, an image collage—is a big deal. I am here to say that like Thanksgiving, it isn’t that hard. In fact, digital content creation has never been easier.  We don’t have to wait until next year for Facebook to provide us with another 30-second video with five of our photos. We can make our own in just about the same amount of time it took to watch it.

Here are my go-to apps for composing-on-the-go:

Animoto

This last winter, my nephew was performing at an Open Mic with his brother for the last time before he left on a two-year service stint. As I watched the performance, I took snapshots and recorded a couple of the songs. And as I went up to the bar to order a hot chocolate, I opened Animoto on my phone, selected a couple of pictures and a snippet or two of the video, typed a couple of words. The only difficult thing was hearing the background soundtrack options while listening to my nephews. Before their 15-minutes were up, I had posted the video as a farewell gift on his band’s Facebook page and emailed it to our extended family who were not able to be in attendance.

http://youtu.be/8DyJmB8C7yA
Happy Leviathan

Price: Free and up
Devices: Computer, Android and iPhone, iPad
Stuffs: Video of still images and videos with soundtrack

WordFoto and Over

Both of these image apps allow the user to combine text with image.

In WordFoto, you choose a photo, choose or type in a list of words, and viola! If you want to get fancy, you can also manipulate the image: choose a color scheme, crop the image, change the density of words.

I began using both of these apps this summer while I was working as a facilitator in the National Writing Project’s Connected Learning MOOC. This image is a photo of my niece who was going into 1st Grade using an iPad to make words. The words were I imported were from the Connected Learning principles we were discussing that summer.

Price: $1.99, but I got it for free in the weekly Starbuck’s downloads
Devices: iPad, iPhone
Stuffs: Image, color, word

In Over, you similarly choose an image, manipulate it as desired, and add words and/or graphics. The words and graphics come in style packages created by artists. Some of these are free and others can be purchased.

This image was also created in my work with the Connected Learning MOOC (or #clmooc for short). For our MOOC, I had begun a weekly curating activity that I called Find Five Friday (lots of results of #F5F are posted here).  Each week had a different theme of five things to “find.” When I posted this image to announce that week’s #F5F, I received a chiding tweet in response subtly suggesting that I should “cite & credit.” I was flattered! They thought that a photo I had taken on my phone and designed with a couple of clicks was someone else’s! I had the pleasure of tweeting back that it was all mine.

Later in the summer, my niece and I used Over to create our own pages of a book we were reading at the library.

Price: $1.99, but I got it for free in the weekly Starbuck’s downloads
Devices: iPad, iPhone
Stuffs: Image, color, word, graphics

VoiceThread

On VoiceThread, composers sequence slides with audio, text, image or video. These can be imported or created on the spot on the website. Then, those with a VT account can respond to each slide, and can do so with the same features–audio, text, image or video. The idea is that by the end, not only is a multimedia slideshow created, but an interactive conversation between media and persons has developed. Below is a VoiceThread I designed as a part of an ongoing collaboration with Kevin Hodgson (@dogtrax) that we called #modigiwri (More Digital Writing, after #digiwrimo, or Digital Writing Month, which ended too soon for us). I described how I learned about VoiceThread, and how I composed each of the elements I created for this VoiceThread on the Digital Is website.

[gigya src=”https://voicethread.com/book.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”550″ height=”400″ bgcolor=”#ffffff” flashvars=”b=4263958&lock_to_path=0&color=ffffff&autohide_ctrls=0″]
Price: Free and up
Devices: Computer
Stuffs: audio, video, image, text

Add Your Favorites in the Comments!

To create each of the elements of this VoiceThread I used other platforms and apps like QuickTime Screen Capture, iMovie, Windows Media Maker, Garage Band, and on and on. The point is that there is a plethora of digital tools to use for content creation that are easy to get the hang of, and pretty inexpensive (or free). There are so many that have become part of my working repertoire that I can’t even remember all of the tools I use. Just glancing down at my devices I see that I haven’t mentioned VisualPoet, HaikuDeck, Prezi, Padlet, lettrs (used in this post), and Notegraphy (used to make the image below).

Previously, my grad students have posted their favorite tools for use in the classroom, and I have written about some of the tools I use, as well. So, what are your favorite tools and platforms? Please add them in the comments below.

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