Ok, I know you read the title of today’s blog and asked yourself, “What?” No worries, I am about to explain.

First, let’s take care of a little lunch business. Sandwiches. Now, there aren’t too many people in the world who don’t love a good sandwich. If you happen to be one of the few who don’t, bear with me, there is hope for you yet.

The thing I love about sandwiches, Panini sandwiches in particular is the way you can put together EXACTLY what you want. Get some cheese, some tasty meat (if meat is your thing), some vegetables, whatever other goodies you want on a sandwich (mayo, olive oil, whatever), throw it in a Panini press, and VIOLA, you have the perfect sandwich, for this time. Now, you may not feel like the same sandwich tomorrow. Problem? Absolutely not, it’s the beauty of customization. You smashed your sandwich together to suit what you wanted, and can always smash it together a different way, should you desire.

Now, APP SMASHING, works in much the same way. You see, there are literally more apps than I care to try to count out there. Each does their own thing. Some do their thing really well, and well, some just pretend to do their thing. The fact is, that one thing is something we often settle for, because, well, it’s close to what we want.

Enter the app smash. App smashing is just like making that sandwich. You take all of your favorites, and put them together to get a desired result. With the ease of access to cloud based storage and sharing (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc) we can now collaborate with others more easily than ever to smash things together. Perhaps your class is reading, A Night to Remember, the story of the sinking of the Titanic. You could easily take a picture of the titanic, put your image in front of it,green screen perhaps? Maybe an animated version of a student in front of the Titanic using Tellagami? You can share that via drive to several people. Maybe some students rewrote a song and make it into a summary of the text, and sing it to the animated guy? Publish that on Youtube, share it on drive, you get the idea. The possibilities are endless! The point is, you can make it much better than our first attempt was when we did a singing summary to that very text to the tune of Katy Perry’s Firework. Yes, it’s still out there on Youtube… and it is horrible! I was never meant to sing!

Or, maybe it’s books that are you seek. No worries, the same sandwich making skills apply. Smash together your favorite scene creator app with your favorite book creator app, next thing you know, you have an ebook!

There are TONS of resources out there to find examples of app smashes that work, with directions and everything.  Do a quick Google search, and see for yourself. Here is a site to get you started, from Greg Kuloweic, a master of the App Smash.

http://edtechteacher.org/category/greg-kulowiec/

However, I ask one thing of you. After you look at all the examples out there you can handle, try to smash something new… something different. That is the best part about this, the creativity. Most importantly, if you come up with some really cool app smash project, SHARE it! The power of EdTech is in collaboration.