Emergent Writing and Pic Collage

Celebrating Scribbling with Pic Collage!!

PicCollage is an off-the-shelf app designed for quickly creating and sharing photo collages.  It is very easy to get pictures from:

- Camera

- Photo album

- Web

It's also very easy to add and manipulate text.  It has one of the easiest interfaces for manipulating:

- Fonts (multiple intriguing and varied fonts)

- Colors

- Styles (bold, etc)

- Size (pinch & drag)

A wide and growing list of sticker sets adds to the fun.

But what does this have to do with emergent writing?  

PicCollage is great for writing.  Here's an example:

1) Student picks one or two photos to write about (in this case, it was pictures saved as screenshots from a favorite story, The Princess and the Pea, from Best Kids Stories-Songs).  

2) The student scribbles using the alphabet, whether using a keyboard, typical pencil, or an alternative pencil.

3) This writing is transposed to Pic Collage.  The student picks font, colors, etc.  

4) The resulting collage can then be shared via multiple routes, including e-mail, Facebook, twitter, photo library, etc.  (I typically mail to the parents / teachers).

Below are samples using text and words from the communication device.  This student is a very early conventional writer.  She later confirmed that S = sad and B = bad.  Most samples would show more scribble!

Device (help) and Scribble

 Device (no someone, etc) and Alphabet