Group items tagged

"I haven't had a lot of time in the last few weeks to spend searching for great mobile apps. But with a hat tip to Jaime H. and through a conversation with a couple of great teachers in Illinois, I did run across three that I really like. I think you will too."

"All three iPad magazine apps have similar features, but each has something unique that might cause you to use all three. In this article I share some of the best new features in these apps, and explain why you might download one or all of them to your iPad."

"The packages where from the More/Real stylus project. Each little box held three stylus caps and three different ink pens that the caps fit."

" 65+ iPad Apps Perfect For Elementary School"

 Three years ago, we knew nothing about apps, and now they're an integral part of our daily lives. Mobile gaming was virtually unheard of, except for a few iterations of solitaire. Now we can play PC quality games like Infinity Blade and Call of Duty right on our phones and tablets.

"The question I find myself asking now as we look at three year lease programs is has the iPad Peaked in education? Barring a few software tweaks and faster processors is this as good as it gets? The more I speak to others in education and start to look at alternatives I am increasingly seeing that the iPad's future is not as bright as Apple would like to have us think."

"In a three-part series of articles, we are going to share how use of the iPad and other tablets can be maximized in multiple contexts: learning with the iPad, teaching with the iPad, and leading with the iPad. "

"As we start to get into the rhythm of the school year with the 1:1 iPad program, and as I also use the iPads with other grade levels on an ad hoc basis, I find myself coming back to certain apps over and over again."

"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)"

"Based on the feedback we received from our staff, we decided to officially start our professional development with 'iPad Basics' or as we called it, 'iPad Tips & Tricks.' The goal of the PD was to get teachers comfortable with their iPads so that they could become more confident and start experimenting with them in their classrooms. Because we know our teachers are not all at the same place, we created 3 levels of the training. We are offering the sessions on three consecutive Mondays and you can read more about the planning process here."

"n iOS 6, Apple decided it was time to remove the podcasts function of the Music app and replace it with a standalone app, available for free in the App Store. Properly titled Podcasts, this app released in June of this year, but has been under much criticism for its half-baked design, lag and lack of functionality. Since then, there have been three updates to the app, the last of which arriving the day of iOS 6's release. All the same, is this app even worth the trouble Apple has gone to thus far?"

"The idea of students sitting in front of PCs learning how to use Word is as dead as the proverbial dead parrot. It is already an antiquated model of learning - like chalk or fountain pens with ink-wells; it has a whiff of the twentieth century about it, rather than preparing our students for the future."

"Three IT workers with iPads gathered around a whiteboard in a conference room in Boston to figure out how to improve a long-standing technical service- and running into more questions than answers."

"Be forewarned, then: The Fourth Dimension is an app which will mess with your head. Deliberately. Even though the aim is education and expansion of knowledge, it will still mess with your head. You will emerge from the experience only fractionally the wiser, and quite a lot more confused than you were at the beginning. Don't worry, this is perfectly normal. The aim of the app is to explain four spatial dimensions to creatures like us who live in a stubbornly three dimensional universe."

"Augmented reality (AR) is a tool educators should consider using as it provides discovery and experiential experiences creating more opportunities for students to make deeper connections and understandings. Additionally the 2010 and 2011 Horizon Reports, predict that the use of augmented reality in education will be widespread within two to three years. "

"here are tons of ways to manage business, school, and home projects. Tracking things like timelines and schedules, resources like people, materials and tools, and keeping it all in an easily read format is quite the challenge, however. We took a look at three different types of software for managing projects on the iPad, starting with the powerful (and premium priced) OmniPlan for iPad. We also took a quick look at iScope, a less expensive yet unique piece of software for managing projects with a more personal feel, as well as the free Wunderlist, a great and free app for just managing tasks."

"So it's time to look at the feedback from 177 of our students who responded on our brief end-of-the-year survey asking about some of their impressions after a year of 1:1 with iPads. For today, I would like to focus on the responses to the three questions below:"

Comparison of three word processing apps.

"The universal Kindle App for iOS was updated today with quite a few new features for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Included are adjustable margins when running on the iPad, allowing you to choose from three new layouts. Amazon has also added faster highlights to let you mark important stuff to reference later as well as an improved brightness control, highlighting for images, a notebook feature to gather all the bookmarks, notes, and highlights for studying, and better navigation for print replica textbooks."