Group items tagged

"We learn most effectively when motivated. This is a list of games your kids will have fun playing ... while also learning important skills and lessons as a by-product!"

"Great apps for educators and some just for fun too! In true "smackdown" fashion we will continue to add the apps that we believe can be most helpful to educators as we discover them. So follow the boards and Get HappY!"

"While the iPad is never going to become a perfect substitute for irreplaceable teachers like U.S. History Teacher Mr. Murphy, who opened every year's class with the same lecture - "Farmers are debtors, my dear children…" - it can make educating kids about exactly what government is and how it works more fun."

"Lets face it, math is not the most intriguing or intuitive subject. For this reason, many students find learning math a real drag! As a math tutor in NYC that deals with children of all ages, I am constantly looking for fun, new ways to teach my students. Since many of them have access to an iPhone or iPad (or both), I recommend that they use their devices as an educational tool. Believe it or not, your smartphone or tablet can be a great learning resource."

"The iPad doesn't need much in the way of extras, but these essential peripherals are, for the most part, highly useful (that iCade's just fun)."

"The iPad is nothing if not versatile - a real jack of all trades. One of its fun and lesser-know features is its ability to server a a digital photo frame - so you can enjoy all your favorite photos as a slideshow invoked right from the lock screen."

"eBay has been available on the iPhone and iPad for years now. While, for the most part, it is possible to get at things you may want to buy, the iPad app hasn't really been using all that screen space effectively. With the 2.0 update, eBay has done a much better job at offering a mobile version of their service that is quick and easy to use."

"Until recently, we have always had a big bowl of Legos on the conference room table. They are great to 'toy' with when waiting for folks to gather rather than have our noses buried in our mobile device screens. There are folks that can look at a pile of Legos and see a fire engine waiting to be built. There is the rest of us that see a lot of fun lockable color blocks."

"Creating a journal in iPhoto is like crafting a scrapbook page that you can post live on the web for anyone to see, for free. Not only is it fun to design a journal, but it's a super-fast way to show off vacation pics, or to show distant relatives how much the kids have grown. In addition to creating a journal on an iPad, you can also make one on an iPhone in the same way. The feature is currently missing from the Mac version of iPhoto, however."

"It goes by many names, but the syndrome is the same. Whether it's dubbed "summer learning loss," "summer vacation slide," or good-old-fashioned "summer brain drain," studies show that students usually have to relearn four to six weeks of classwork at the beginning of every school year. On the brink of the lazy days of summer, what's a parent to do? Here are nine ways to use your Mac and iOS devices to keep your kids sharp during the summer. Add your own advice to the comments at the end of this article. "

"I searched all summer for a fun Back-to-School activity. Well. . . unfortunately I couldn't find anything!! So, I have been racking my brain to come up with something exciting for Open House. This is when my kids will find out who their teacher will be for the year, and they will also find out that we will have 30 iPads in our classroom!! Yay! I decided to incorporate the QR scans and create an Open House Scavenger Hunt to give the parents and kids the information needed to begin the new school year. As the students arrived, there was an iPad and the first page of the scavenger hunt on their desk. They were instructed to work through the scavenger hunt with the help of their parents. Here is what I created:"

"Two years ago today, I wrote a post about how I was going to use my iPad in the classroom. It was simply titled "Using My iPad in the Classroom This Year". To my surprise, it is my most visited post of all time with over 37,000 page views. That is about 20,000 more than my second most read post. I thought it would be fun to do an updated post having used the iPad in my class for two years. Now that I have a class set of iPads, the number of apps that I use or will be using has changed and I thought I would share that with everyone."

"This week's pick is Qwiki - an amazing app that lets you explore 3 million topics and presents each of them in a fun, exciting way that gets you hooked right away. Here's a bit of its App Store intro: Qwiki combines thousands of sources to present concise, interactive summaries of millions of people, places and things in an experience optimized for the iPad. Explore topics by searching or browse a worldwide map highlighting landmarks, monuments, cities, towns, and more."

"It is Advent season again. This means that BlackSmith Games has launched their app-a-day Appvent calendar. Each day a new app is released and is downloadable all day for FREE! Very cool. Not every app released is appropriate or useful for the classroom, but they are always fun! "