Recently got into a Twitter discussion about adapting our apps for the secondary level.

For starters, here’s an idea I think could work for middle schoolers or high school students who might be studying art history.
Go to a museum and photograph a work of art – portrait or statue. Or, paint or draw your own interpretation of that piece.
Then, photograph it in PuppetMaster and bring it to life. Have an “interview” with the character in the artwork. Who are they? Where are they from? Do they know who originally painted them? What do they think about the world around them? I’m sure students could come up with interesting questions and answers.

Try planting the character in different backgrounds – easily done in PuppetMaster – and act out how they might respond to these unusual settings. For instance, a person in a portrait form centuries ago placed in a modern city. Are they scared or impressed by the modern world? Or a distorted character from a cubist Picasso painting placed in a photo of a normal, natural environment. Does the natural environment seem weird to the distorted character? Normal is what you’re used to, after all.

Take the resulting videos and edit them with videos of yourself asking the questions or having reactions. You could add “b-roll” of the museum or other related material. Add fun titles if you want, to make it look like a news show or a PBS documentary. You can use a desktop computer or some video editing app right on the iPad – I’m sure there are lots of options that today’s young students can easily handle.

Let us know what you think of these ideas, and please share with us any videos you make on our Facebook page! And we’re always adding features and improving our apps, so let us know what would appeal to you or your kids and students of various ages.