Group items tagged

"In the month of March 2012, an International team of 4 elementary school classrooms are conducting Action Research about quality writing through blogging. You can support them by giving them an authentic global audience and modeling quality commenting on their posts. " A great way to collaborate internationally with blogs.

Great ideas and cautionary advice on using VoiceThread with 2nd graders (ages 7-8). The lesson upgrades a typical report from books and library and paper to electronic.

A multimedia version of Wikipedia. Searchable by words in video or other media. As available as an app for iPad. Might be good for project-based and content-based learning. From Carla Arena.

A nice app for your iPad by a language teacher in Brasil. Free version has 80 sentences, but the pro version is only $1.99. Practice prepositions and phrasal verbs sentence by sentence to cross a flowing river of lava.

"Drawing and recording your voice is not an easy task. What I've discovered is that once you start drawing, and your focus shifts to the image, there are few barriers to speaking. "The tool I'd like to share today is EDUCREATIONS . I haven't explored it to its full potential but what I've seen so far is good enough. The free tool allows you use your mouse or your finger (ipad) to draw stick figures while you record your voice. You can also upload an image and draw and record your voice at the same time. Once finished, look at the right side below the twitter and facebook buttons for the URL and the embed code which allows you publish the recording."

While these are mostly translation tools, there are a number of interesting apps on culture as well: French and Italian cuisine, world customs and cultures in gestures and pesonal space, flash cards and tutoring, and "addictive gaming."

This is a beautiful blog (mashable.com) that has a very smart viewer for examining the apps it talks about. These include iMovie for iPhone and iPad, and an Android comparable; Vyclone, which lets you mash up video from up to 4 different smart phones taken at the same location (using your GPS locator); Lapse It to crate time-lapse videos, etc. Way more than just special FX tools here.

Whether you are taking notes on paper on an iPad, these are great tips for taking lecture notes, studying, and reviewing for exams.

Shared infographics can visually engage learners. These are five to create flowcharts, Venn diagrams, audio notes, etc.

A Scrabble-like game for learning Pinyin (Chinese in Western alphabet/letters). For computer or iPad; soon for iPhone and Android.

"A movie trailer is a perfect summarizing activity. It can also act as a "teaser" as an introduction to a presentation or student paper. A movie trailer can readily showcase the acquisition of knowledge of a lesson or unit." A good description of how to use iMovie on the iPad/tablet.

From R Byrne: This is the most useful collection of screencasting tools I've seen. Includes both Windows and Mac applications. There are several worth trying and having on your desktop. Show Me What's Wrong, offered by Screencast-O-Matic, might be of particular help: it can be sent to a student having trouble with an application. When he/she opens the mailing, they start recording their screen, audio recording as they explain what they are doing and why they are having a problem. When they close the application it is mailed to you. This list of tools also includes some for capturing iPad and Android device screens, including AirDroid that can mirror your tablet on Mac or Windows computers.

Hopscotch is an iPad app that young learners can use to create their own games using templates. I think Hopscotch is ready to be tried out. Looks like fun. As gaming comes into the picture, there are lots of good tools out there for kids to try to make their own games. Project-based learning. By the makers of Daisy the Dinosaur.

Very simple and works on iPad as well as the Web. Apps for other platforms are under development.

"The U.S. Library of Congress offers a wealth of fantastic online resources for teachers and students. A quick jump into the teachers resource page will lead you to things like these primary source analysis guides that I have used with students in the past. The LOC also offers a couple of good iOS apps that are worth noting." Shows how various apps can be used with the teachers' resource pages at the U.S. Library of Congress. Great authentic materials for research papers and projects. H/T to R. Byrne

R. Byrne offers an overview of OTUS, a mobile learning environment to distribute assignments, quizzes, polls, readings, etc., to iPads. It can now also be used with browers on laptops and Chromebooks. The Otus YouTube channel has detailed directions for how to use the various elements of the service.

A demonstration of how you might use this app for iPads to brainstorm ideas with an audio recorder running. ScreenChomp can write over whatever is on the screen, e.g., a pdf file or website. Or just draw from scratch. Good tool.

R. Byrne: "Scribble Maps provides a variety of base layer maps on which you can draw freehand, add placemarks, add image overlays, and type across the map. Compared to creating a custom map on Google Maps, Scribble Maps is much easier for students to learn how to use. Scribble Maps also provides far more default placemark icons than Google's My Maps tool. Scribble Maps will work in the web browser on your laptop, Chromebook, iPad, or Android tablet."

This is an essential video to learn how to use Twitter effectively. If you are interested in mobile social media Twitter is needed, but TweetDeck helps you organize and use a variety of social networking tools. (This set of videos doesn't deal with the iPhone and iPad versions of TweetDeck, however.)

From the blog, 1:1 in Practice at Sinarmas World Academy. This is a nice short course in educational aps for very young learners.