Introducing 10 free apps to share with your staff

If you did not have a chance to attend Rachel Rauch’s 1 p.m. session at the November Indianapolis JEA conference, here’s a recap from the audience’s perspective.

Titled, “Multimedia storytelling: There’s an app for that,” Rauch gave a quick tutorial on 10 free apps that a staff can use to spruce up its digital storytelling.

1.  ThingLink.com
   • Easily layer audio, video, Google Forms, exit tickets, quizzes, writing activities on top of images.
   • Now has 360 degree and Virtual Reality capabilities
2.  Steller.co/
   • Turn stories, videos, and pictures into a flipbook
3.  Storyify.com
   • Comb public social media accounts and curate into a story
4.  Spark.adobe.com
   • This simple graphic design app overlay text on images, videos and animations
5.  TimelineJS
   •  Take small posts and put them on an interactive timeline
6.   Issuu.com
   •  This digital publishing app can take anything .pdf and turn it into a magazine
   •  Remember to consider Google slides an easy go-to for creating a publication on the go
   •  Canva is another option to use with issuu.com
7.   Tumult Hype
   • Create interactive infographics here
   • According to its web page, Tumult helps create beautiful HTML5 web content–interactive web content and animations made with Tumult Hype work on desktops, smartphones and iPads (no coding required)
8.  Pic Flow, Flipagram, Videolicious
   • Create and edit videos with music and text (need no video skill whatsoever)
9.  Pinterest
   • Pin ideas or create boards for stories
   • Use Thinglink to take a reader to a Pinterest board, for example
10.  Studio
    • Takes Instagram to a whole new level
    • Preloads design packages
    • Overlays on pictures and makes them look “really cool”