Group items tagged

"Please take the following survey and share your thoughts, then pass the link on to your colleagues and friends. I'm writing a new column for the Appealing Apps for Educators series in Appolicious and I'd love to get gather the opinions of educators and students on their favorite apps that they've used this year. These apps do not have to be new to the education market this year. Vote for one app per category only; apps can be listed in multiple categories. You also are not required to submit an app in every category. K12 classes may want to consider discussing the following categories, and making one group entry. NOTE: This is not a survey for app developers to promote their own work. Do not take this survey if you are not a K12 student, a K12 class or educator."

Note: The mention of the Literacy with ICT group on Diigo here! Apparently we're #1! ;-)

"So you have tried many iPad educational games but still did not find the one that perfectly meets your students needs. Well you will never find a perfect one for your particular students because each group of learners have their own idiosyncrasies and only their teachers know them . That being said, using TinyTap you can now easily create your own games based on pictures of your choice. "

"Brainstorming is an important process for any subject and helps improve writing, organizer group ideas, inspires discussion, and provides a roadmap for projects. When brainstorming is combined with sketching, drawing, and graphic organizers it helps learners to organize their thoughts for better flow and organization. Moreover, learners can make connections to previous knowledge and expand on what they already know. This means the brain will process the new information into long-term memory. Our learners can utilize free mobile apps to brainstorm on the go whenever they feel inspired. The following are brainstorming apps for IOS/Android devices. Free Brainstorming Apps"

"Remind 101 is a free service that allows you to send text messages to groups of students and or parents from your computer, your iPhone, or your Android phone. The benefit of using Remind 101 over Google Voice, which I used to use for this purpose, to text students and parents is that your phone number is not revealed and your students' cell phone numbers are not revealed to you. Students and parents have to opt-in if they want to be added to your text messaging list. Students and parents have to enter a confirmation code to state that they do want to be contacted by you through the service."

"According to Cybrary Man's Educational Websites (@cybraryman1), "a Smackdown or Show and Tell is a sharing of websites, tools or teaching tricks that you have found to be great to use. You are given 2 minutes to present the tool to the group.""

"art of rethinking learning means rethinking the -which is what makes the following chart we spotted over at connectedprincipals compelling. Rather than simply a list of alternatives to homework, it instead contextualizes the need for work at home (or, "homework"). It does this by taking typical classroom situations-the introduction of new material, demonstrating a procedure, etc.), and offering alternatives to traditional homework assignments. In fact, most of them are alternatives to homework altogether, including group brainstorming, modeling/think-alouds, or even the iconic pop-quiz. Nothing ground-breaking, but food for thought, yes?"

"Today's Best Educational Apps for Kids list is Natual and Animal Science Apps for Kindergarden and Early Elementary School Kids (age 6 to 10). There is another list of science apps for this age group but on other subjects, such as astronomy, physics, or chemistry. For this other science list, you can visit an earlier post HERE. Please add your favorite nature and animal science apps in the comment area. I will update the list periodically. I"

"Learning to read can be difficult. And teaching a group of students to read and write can be a daunting task - especially taking into consideration that each student may learn differently, and at a very different pace. Some students may have trouble matching sounds with letters and words, some with writing mechanics, others may have trouble concentrating in a traditional classroom setting. Having a few extra tools in the arsenal to have students using either in class or out of class can help to bring everyone up to speed or help any student to get a bit ahead."

"Here's a great idea… Take your students to a gallery and let them interact with the sculptures like never before. We took a group of Year 10s on a walk through a sculpture garden and asked them to use their iPads to photograph the work. Using their iPads they created abstract images by using apps in workflows to manipulate the photos on the spot. The results were amazing. Rather than producing one picture, most students created a very diverse folio of work."

"I teach in a small rural school, and more than half of my students arrive and depart by bus everyday. So how do I maintain strong communication with parents when I rarely see them face-to-face? I send home a monthly calendar, and you may have read past posts about using clipboards with weekly sheets and Twitter, but my quickest and easiest tool for disseminating information quickly is Facebook! After posting daily to my classroom Facebook group for two years now, I've gleaned a few tips that I'm happy to share with you."

"ArtSet was an impressive app that I was introduced to last week. I was presenting at a conference and one of the organisers asked if a number of the presenters could go through a workflow to illustrate how a series of apps might be able to be used to deepen student learning. The idea was the the product of one app would become the input for the next. The story of The Lion and the Mouse was suggested as an idea. Each presenter was given three minutes only. There was a cross section of both primary and secondary teachers in the group."

"Making use of free iPad apps in the classroom can enable you to diversify your teaching, while providing the opportunity to inspire and get students more engaged in lessons. There are many different educational apps available, which range from apps like Evernote that allow you to organize your teaching materials, through to interactive whiteboards from Educreations, and Screen Chomp, a screen recording app that can be very useful for teaching lessons on the go. What, then, are some of the best iPads that can be used in the classroom, whether you have multiple tablets, or just one as a teaching tool for different groups?"

"In my work through school and organization visits, I have been fascinated to see the correlation between the speed of change and an individual who is "leading" the charge. The schools that have someone (or a group of people) helping to push the boundaries of what can be done in schools seem to move a lot quicker with a larger amount of "buy-in" through the process. As Malcom Gladwell describes in his book, "The Tipping Point", he states: The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts."

"The opportunities for learning through the use of digital gaming are diverse and massive. The speed and ease in which basic game development can be achieved using apps such as Sketch Nation can provide a platform for outstanding cross-curricular projects and really make an impact on progress, standards and pupil independence. This blog post describes one project (upper KS2) which could easily be adapted to suit Key Stage 1 or expanded to meet the needs of Key Stage 3 pupils, and to support almost any topic/subject. 1:1 use of iPods enabled maximum pupil engagement but fewer devices could have been used if pupils collaborated in groups"

"This afternoon I introduced Wallwisher to a group of teachers at Paradise Valley Christian Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona. This evening when I got back to my hotel room I had an email from Wallwisher announcing that they are changing names to Padlet. Fortunately, the name change means almost nothing from a functionality standpoint."

"Can you recall a time when you were so engaged in learning that you became unaware of your surroundings, that each step of the process energized you to pursue your goal further, and the learning became its own reward? Recently, I was working with a gathering of administrators from my county, contemplating the puzzle of student engagement. Most of the small groups in the room organized their exploration around the premise that on-task behavior is a necessary but insufficient step toward engagement. The T-charts they created focused on how an administrator observing a class might recognize subtle differences."

"The past couple weeks my 7th grade daughter has been working on a National History Day project for her social studies class. Today she proudly showed me the display board which her group created about our president."

"Today is the last day of our first quarter, and I had my IB Theory of Knowledge students work in groups of three to prepare presentations on this topic: How do each of the Ways Of Knowing - Perception, Language, Reason, and Emotion - help and hinder our search for knowledge. Give examples of each."