, Touch Press is unquestionably the front-runner among app producers. The London-based company has set out to “forever transform the act of reading,
Gems and Jewels, which highlights holdings from Chicago’s Field Museum
The Waste Land, which includes a stunning reading of T. S. Eliot’s iconic poem by Irish actress Fiona Sha
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (Moonbot Studios).
Beware Madame La Guillotine (Time Traveler Tours, LLC), an audio tour of Paris that stops at the French Revolution’s most significant sites
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road at an impressionable age. The app (Penguin/1KStudios) offers the complete text of the seminal work supported by a rich variety of print resources, video and audio recordings, and visuals culled from Viking’s archives and the Kerouac estate.
Spot the Dot (Ruckus Mobile Media/Unicorn Labs) embodies the medium’s potential to create entertaining educational materials for all children, including those with special needs.
. Al Gore’s Our Choice (Rodale), which targets the climate crisis, was first published in 2009, and this app (Push Pop Press/Melcher Media) updates the book
video introduction by the author sets the agenda, while a cogent text, video clips, fluid interactive graphics, and spectacular photos address our world’s most pressing environmental issues
Nosy Crow’s Cinderella: A 3-D Fairy Tale puts a fresh, modern spin on the classic slipper story. The app features animated scenes and reader-controlled text speed. And if it’s interactivity you’re looking for, this one can’t be beat.
Edward Bell’s Journey to the Exoplanets (Farrar/Scientific American) explores the little-known planets beyond our solar system. The app offers many cool options, including a regularly updated “Exoplanet Feed,” animated explanations of key concepts, and gyroscopic views of these far-flung orbs
“Is this the best use of our funds, or is it simply a tool to engage and motivate our students?”
“Of course, technology has that capability, but is that always the best angle?”
In September, Virginia announced the purchase of 350 iPads for 4th, 7th, and 9th graders in four counties to test the use of the device as a 1-to-1 computing tool in social studies classrooms.
th and 9th grade classes used gaming and assessment applications
Pearson
personalize reading assignments based on proficiency,
e-text feature
most teachers and students supported continuing the pilo
Pearson officials say their material would be more refined a second time around after learning their own lessons about designing content.
that can lead you to want to overload the presentation.”
Excluding the fad factor, experts say there are legitimate reasons for educational interest.
For this to work, really, next year, you need to have a team—one or two or three teachers—who will just sit down and go through this and put stuff on there that’s going to matter,” he says. “Trying to do it during the school year is just crazy.”
Teachers in the pilot also reported having to learn on the fly.
iPad to help highlight key vocabulary words
some apps to help students understand fractions and decimals
definitely a work in progress
The question may be whether the iPad is best suited as a 1-to-1 device or to be shared as part of a stable of digital classroom tools.
students can choose which device to use for an ongoing book-publishing project
students rotate between workstations
34,000-student Irving Independent School District, where all high schools follow a 1-to-1 computing model, about 10 students and 20 administrators are testing an assortment of tablet-computing devices to see how they would meet their daily needs
administrators
tablets to access their calendars and email while on the run through campus, as well as how to use their touch-screen capabilities to check off rubrics for teacher evaluations like they would with an evaluation form.
Laptops, iPads, social networks and computer simulation games are making their way into area classrooms, giving teachers a blank slate for innovative approaches to learning.