Smart Application–Picle

 

Picle is a free app for iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch that works well for putting images and audio together to create digital stories or multimedia projects. Images can be imported from the camera roll. Or, pictures can be taken directly by the app with the iDevice’s built-in camera. Then by clicking a record-button you can attach audio narration or other desired sounds to the image. You can also record whatever sound is present when the picture is taken while taking a picture to capture. Each image, with attached audio, is known as a ‘picle’. Individual picles can be woven together into movies that tell a story. These movies can be uploaded and shared on Picle’s site. Or, movies can be saved to the camera roll and sent from there directly to Youtube, on your blog or emailed. Individual picles can also be shared on their own.

I particulary like to use this application in language learning and reading. Children can take pictures of different things and say a few words about them in the language they are learning. As a fun way to teach reading, they can take the picture of some text written in other languages and record themselves reading it. My children are also using it in making tajweed videos by taking pictures of different words and verses from the Quraan and explaining the tajweed rules in the voice recording. children can also take pictures of their art work and record themselves explaining it. This application presents many wonderful opportunities and since it is so easy to use, it can be used by even very young children.

Price
Free

Link for
iphone and ipad

Reading Urdu

Here is a first in some Urdu readers I am making myself. My kids can speak Urdu fluently but can not read it yet. I wanted them to get fluent in Arabic before introducing Urdu reading as both languages use mostly the same alphabets and learning to read both at the same time may prove confusing. Also, it is better to learn reading Arabic before Urdu otherwise sometimes it may complicate learning Arabic phonics.

When I started to hunt for the resources on Urdu, I was very disappointed. There are no colorful readers available and the content is low quality so I decided to give it a go and make my own stuff. I am by no means a compatible person to make readers in any language, but my children find what I am making more interesting than the drab text books available anyway. So for anyone who may want beginner Urdu material, I am sharing these here. Please note that these readers are made for children who have no problem in understanding Urdu and who can already read very basic words.

This first reader is a poem I have sung as a child myself and still love it. The poem is not my own work but I don’t know the name of author so can’t give proper credit.