Edgaged

I know I frequently reference Story Kit on this blog. However, I thought it would be worthy of your time to see how flexible apps on the iPod Touch or iPad really are. I am posting an example of how first graders were recording their science experiments with a worm bin. Mrs. Munk from the Kendallville Public Library provided Mrs. Yoder from Avilla with a worm bin. To record their observations, they took a picture within Story Kit .   After they took their picture, a sentence was written to describe the picture. (You could also rely on audio recordings.) Overall, I thought it was an excellent idea. Checkout this example:

I placed Perfect Captions   in Presentation Tools because it really does not apply to a specific subject area. It really could be used for any subject. I recently have used Perfect Captions  with  several first grade classrooms. Students can use it to share a picture of their learning, or a picture that the teacher has provided for a project. The student then can place text directly on the picture. Wifth first grade students, I had students create their own book reviews to introduce it. They took a picture of the book's cover, and wrote a sentence to share what they like about the book. Please also keep in mind that this is the first time they have used the app. It does take a little practice. Here are several examples of a student work: Perfect Captions I also did this with a first grade class to make a Christmas card. For this class, I had a set of pictures that I collected in a Box.com shared folder. I taught the kids how to download the pictures to their device. They then impo...

Long Division Touch focuses on the standard algorithm. It gives step-by-step directions. It also give students practice time without all the detailed steps. A valuable tool for students that need to go through the process through another avenue. It may also be a good tool for teaching the process for teachers that are not in a 1:1 school district using iPads or iPods.

ScootPad is a resource that allows students to practice mathematics and language skills. The activities are more skill and drill, but the data is very valuable. For students that are not able to read fluently, it does have a feature that will read the questions aloud. However, students using the website will need to learn to be patient when using it. The sound does not play instantaneously; it will require a few seconds of wait time. For those of you that are familiar with SumDog, the account creation process is very similar. The teacher must create an account; then create their student accounts according to grade level needs. There is an iPad app available for free to download. The app does not work on the iPod touch, but with some training, younger students could use the website to accomplish the tasks. I included a link on the East Noble First Grade Symbaloo site.

Go Animate is a fun resource to use. Students typically think of it as more of a thing for entertainment purposes. However, if you click here , you will find a great example of how it can be used as an instructional resource. Mrs. Ortiz's students used it to tell about the plot structure of the book, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. What a fun and exciting way to integrate technology into the classroom.

TodaysMeet happens to be one of my favorite sites to use when traveling from classroom to classroom. (That and any site that works on all devices is a friend to me.) I typically use TodaysMeet when I want to generate a class dialogue using their devices. It has been about cyberbullying, digital footprints, or even what restaraunt they wish they could have in school. It is a great place to start to train students how to speak online. The reason? You can set the site to last as long as you want. If you want it for a day, you can set it for the day, and it will be gone tomorrow. I do not have to create accounts for all the students. They do not need a password. I can create it, send the link to the site, and be done with it. If you are interested in doing some blogging or online discussion, but do not want to invest the time to setup nor maintain a blog, I would recommend checking TodaysMeet out. [youtube=http://youtu.be/bBym4Jaerqs]

How many ways could you incorporate sending postcards in the classroom? Many teachers already have students write letters or postcards for students to share their knowledge, write to characters, and ultimately produce a product that is usable for assessment. The Bill Atkinson PhotoCard app is intended to be used so that you can have real photo-cards made, however, the user can save their work to their camera roll as well. Since it can be saved to the camera roll, this allows the students to then email the product to their teacher. There is one little hiccup in using the app. I have found that it really likes to suggest that you signup for an account so that you can purchase photo-cards. The students will need to be trained to cancel that action when it comes up. That is the price one pays when attempting to use an app intended for business in the education realm. However, the products are great and might be well worth your time. Here is a YouTube from Bill introducing his app!