Mobile Learning Series: Overgram for great title slides...and poetry!

Overgram is a free app that I've been using for awhile on my iPhone because it can quickly add info or even humor to some of the pictures that I share through Twitter, Flickr, or even that I just text to friends. As an added bonus (for the Instagram crowd) they can also be shared through Instragram.  I recently loaded Overgram onto my students' iPads.


How can you use this in your classroom?

1. To introduce the students to Overgram, I created a scavenger hunt with a slideshow of pictures around the school and cryptic one-word clues on the photos using Overgram.  

2. My students have begun using Overgram photos to add interesting and original title slides to their iMovies and slideshows.

3. I thought it would also be a neat idea to use Overgram as part of a "visual" poetry unit.  Students studying poems with lots of visual imagery take photos and include a word or two from the poem that showed how they thought about what kind of imagery the language of the poem evoked. Overgram adds a nice aesthetic element to those kinds of photos. The one below was created to go with Rudyard Kipling's poem The Fires. *note - you have the option of removing the Overgram watermark at the bottom.

How easy is it?

Just take a photo, or use one from your camera roll on your mobile device, and double tap on the picture to add your text. You can change the font style and color, and move the text around, to add interest.  My students have also begun using Overgram photos in much the way I have - for sending each other pictures or posting pictures on Facebook with interesting or funny captions!