Group items tagged

"This week, Grade 5 began a unit on Volume, Capacity and Surface Area. On a weekly basis, I take combined groups from the 4 grades consisting of the higher achievers, while the classroom teachers concentrate on the mainstream group and students needing more individual instruction to achieve success. I made a conscious decision this week to focus on using iPads with my group to explore both volume/capacity as well as surface area."

"One question I seem to get a lot about the iPad is what apps do I recommend that are free. I am hearing from a lot of teachers that they have no way to add paid apps and thus are stuck trying to find free apps. My experience is that many free apps stink. They have many adds, require in app purchases to be useful, or are just junk. I tend to stay away from most free apps. So what are you to do if the district controls adding paid apps? My suggestion is to build relationships with the decision makers. Don't just ask for a bunch of apps, instead provide documentation and purpose for a few apps you would like to have. I know this process takes time and effort but if you can show the purpose and learning you have a much better chance. If you need lesson ideas I suggest checking out my Pinterest page, and three of my favorite Pinterest pages: iPadsammy, TechChef4u, and Sue Gorman. Look for apps and lesson ideas there and modify them to fit your standards and kids. If I was starting from scratch this is the $10 iPad app setup I would push for in my kindergarten classroom. (I will be posting a $20 setup later)"

"Recently SCAN journal published an article I wrote around our schools' experience in using iPads in learning and thought it would be timely to look at what was available for schools from educational journals to supplement material they find elsewhere on the web and to assist further in their decision making on whether to go with iPads as a learning tool and/or to get teaching and learning ideas."

"A iPad app, News.Me is offering a similar experience around the news your friends… and other people too… say is worth reading. It bases it's decision on what to show you via Twitter posts. When you tell News.Me your Twitter account, the (Free) offers you the option to chose which people you already follow and others to keep an eye on for interesting news."

"I don't want to make blanket statements regarding purchases. I fully recognize that every educator, school and institution has to decide what makes sense for them; ultimately, it is you that must live with the purchasing decision. At the same time, I would like to point out some things to consider. Applecare, from what I understand, extends the standard warranty of your iPad from 12 months to 24 months. Additionally, if you crack the screen of your iPad, you can have that iPad replaced for an additional $49 fee over and above the cost of your applecare protection plan of $99."

"Serious, it's Free and it works. The developer would love to have you in-app donate of few of your hard earned cents towards their efforts, which proves to be a easy decision after playing with all of the features of Yocto Clock on the iPad."

"The founding members of this wiki consist of "old" therapists, with over 200 years of experience working with special populations and technology. We hope that people will use this site to make informed decisions before downloading. Our purpose in creating this wiki is to foster collaboration around how applications can be used in unique ways to support learning in home, school, and therapy settings. If you have used iPad/iPod applications with special populations, please consider joining and contributing to this wiki by adding information to the charts on the various pages (see navigation pane on the left). You can also contribute without joining by adding entries on the discussion tabs for each page."

Macworld article about how some schools are funding iPads.