TomTom

For the past 15+ years one of the first assignments my students need to do when they enter my classroom in the 7th grade, freshly from primary school, is to draw a map of their route from home to school. This is for understanding and reading maps whilst having a proper look around with a pair of geographical glasses. ;) They need to add the scale, a title, a compass (at least the arrow that points to the north) and the legend of their map.
And since a couple of years my students seem to be less engaged or at least that's what their work looks like and that doesn't make me happy. So one of my colleagues helped me out and she asked why I didn't use the iPad instead (since 7th graders start with iPads this year) and let them create a TomTom alike stop-motion video from their route from home to school or vise versa. Great idea! With great results. And after they've done the video they had to watch their video and create a map with al the landmarks that is visible in their video. Also great results.

Most of my students used the Lego Movie Maker stop-motion app, which is very good and free!

Two awesome videos created by my students: