The Apple Distinguished Educator crew creates a number of resources, and the link below is to those it gathers under the title, "Global Collaboration, Exploration and Innovation." These are videos, ePubs, PDFs and similar to provide ideas on all sorts of cool projects.
Make Phonics Fun The Word Cub Letters & Sounds app from Learning Cube takes the alphabet blocks that children treasure and gives them new life on an iPhone or iPod Touch. The app helps young children learn letter names and sounds and recognize directionality and blending. Adjust the settings and the blocks display either uppercase or lowercase letters. The words all use short vowels. Select the consonant blends for the initial sounds and the task gets a bit more difficult. With a left-to-right sweep of the finger, children can hear how letter-sounds blend to create a word. The app is available in the Apple iTunes App Store for $1.99.
Explore Cartoons Made by Children Across the Globe Designed in partnership with Stanford University's Graduate School of Education and Zeum: San Francisco's Children's Museum, Toontastic inspires the artist and writer in every child while teaching key storytelling principles that help to promote creativity at a young age. Toontastic's drawing tools bring children's wildest ideas to life alongside virtual playsets chock full of pirates, princesses, faraway galaxies and many other characters and settings to spark the imagination. Students' cartoons can be shared online via ToonTube, Toontastic's Global Storytelling Network, to help children connect to friends and family and learn about other cultures, customs and lifestyles through stories created by their peers around the world. The app is available for the iPad. Download it from the Apple iTunes App Store for $1.99.
If you're an iPad aficionado, you must check out this excellent iBook
professional development resource. This is my inspiration for developing
future workshop materials!
Through one of Tony Vincent's Tweets I learned about a wonderful free iPad app from Read Write Think. Read Write Think Trading Cards allows students to create trading cards about people, places, and events both real and fictional. I used the app to create a trading card about Winston Churchill. To create my Winston Churchill trading card I simply selected "real person" from the list of trading card options, uploaded a picture of Winston Churchill that I found on the web, and then filled in the details that the trading card template asked for. My completed trading card can be shared via email, printed, or saved to my iPad's camera roll
"Record and playback digital recordings up to 5 minutes long which can then be posted on" to your personal Audioboo profile page.
You can record your "boos" by phone, with the iPhone app or through your web browser.
AudioBoo is iTunes ready making it the easiest way to begin podcasting.