Great App Reviews

It can be overwhelming to find the best apps for your classroom for your money. Teachers often are dealing with small budgets for their classrooms. There is a great site that gives a lot of examples of ways to use technology in the classrooms. It has podcasts and other valuable resources for teachers. It also has a great App Review section. Here is the link to that section: http://teachercast.net/appreviews/ .
Just to give you an example of the type of reviews you can find on the site, I have included one of their reviews below.

As you can see, they include a lot of great information, as well as, images from the app. I hope this helps you as you are searching for great apps to use in your class.

iPad Case Update

This last week I wrote this post about the custom iPad cases we are trying to make for iPads for this coming school year. Yesterday, I was able to meet with ADR Packaging a local a manufacturer of custom corrugated, foam, and wood packaging products. Meeting with them was very helpful in finalizing a plan for the insert for the cases. Below is an image of how we plan to place all of the items inside the case. The grey color is the foam. The case should accommodate 10 iPads in Otterbox defender cases, one 10 plug power strip, 1 apple TV, remote, and cord. The configuration seems nice. We are having a prototype built, and should be able to test it out on Friday. We are still trying to decide if we are going to drill a hole for the power cord for charging, or just charge them with the case open.  

How do you use your iPad?

Please take a quick second to answer this poll question. If you have other things you like to do, add them as a comment to the poll or the post.

Promoting Fluency With Ipads

This is a great idea on how to use ipads to promote fluency in reading. Check it out:

App Review Podcast

Here is a app review podcast for some educational apps by Appy Hours 4 U entitled Hot Apps 4 Literacy. Please give it a moment to load.



Have you used any of these apps in your classroom? What did you think of this podcast?

Custom iPad Charging Station

We are rolling out many iPads this coming school year. As part of the process, I have been tasked with finding the best solution for a charging station. There are several prebuilt solutions available, but they are very expensive. We have decided that each of our stations need to be able to accommodate 10 iPads. Here is an example of a prebuilt cases we have looked into.

 












The route that we have decided to take is building our own cases. Currently we are in the process of deciding which box to use. The box that we are leaning toward is this box. It is very sturdy and should accommodate 10 ipads. We are planning on having custom foam inserts made to house the iPads.

This should save us a considerable amount of money and will allow us to customize the cases as we want. The other thing we still need to decide on, is what power strip we are going to build into our cases. So many decisions, and we are running out of time. We need to have these cases ready to go before the coming school year. 

Are any of your schools using multi-charge iPad stations? If so please post in the comments which one they are using.

Examining Generational Differences

Looking back and forward at history is a very interesting thing.  I have not done any studies or research to make me an expert by any means.  After reading these articles I wondered which side was correct - are there truly the generational differences that SEEM to be evidenced in today’s young people? I must admit that I do think (without research - just by my own observations) that today’s youth are incredibly talented when it comes to learning, navigating, and deciphering technology.  There are clear levels between my grandparents, my parents, myself, and even my children in terms of comfort with using technology and how quickly a new technology is learned.

That being said, I was convinced by McKenzie’s points against the Pensky article.  His claims are unsubstantiated by any kind of real research or study.  Each generation has differences from the previous generations that have come before it and technology is not the only area in which these differences are noted.  For example, track athletes continue to set new records and have accomplished unimaginable feats in their sport for athletes that were competing decades ago.

In dealing with a colleague that was convinced of the digital native argument, I would probably agree that today’s youth are much more advanced and capable with technology that any previous generation. However, this gap in achievement is just like in many other fields such as sports and education. Maybe it is just a typically generational thing- each generation differs from its predecessor not just in dress and slang but also in accomplishments. That it is what comes with the changed world we live in and what is deemed as valuable in society while we are growing up.  Those things that are most important in the society we live in, get a greater emphasis in our lives from an earlier age and thus we can see that in the difference from one generation to the next.  So in conclusion, yes this generation is a digital native.  I would tend to say that it is not because they were born with a different type of brain but rather that the world they were born into is a technological world.  They, like all other generations, have adapted to the world around them in order to be successful.

As an educational technologist, I highly recommend that education adapt to meet the needs and climate of this generation of students - since they are living in this type of world and this technology is all around them in every part of their life, it should be a part of their education as well, even at the expense of requiring teachers to learn and adapt.

Guest Post: Three Ipad Tips in the Classroom

Hello, I am Kylene Brooks – I teach Kindergarten in Weber School District. I am excited to be guest blogging for Geoff today.  Let me start out by giving you a little bit of history about me.  I have been teaching kindergarten for 5 years. I LOVE it!  I love getting to be my student’s first teacher and help them see what great and smart students they are! I love getting to know all about each one of them and be a part of their lives. I love being a part of their excitement for school and learning.  I am also a teacher of technology for other elementary teachers at our school district.  Every summer, our district puts on a technology education and training conference for the teachers and administrators in our district.  I have been teaching at that for 3 years now. Technology is an integral and essential part of my teaching.  This past year I piloted a set of 6 iPads in my kindergarten classroom and will be teaching about how to use them in a classroom at the tech conference later this summer.

Today I want to talk about iPads, of course.  I want to give you my three essential tips for teaching with iPads.

Tip #1: If you have multiple iPads owned by your school or school district, you are under legal obligation to follow Apple’s volume licensing requirements which basically means you can only put each app you purchase on one device.  For me since I have six iPads in my classroom, if I want a particular app on each one of my iPads I have to buy the app 6 times.  Unlike my personal iPads at home, I cannot just buy the app once and install it six times on each device (which apple does permit for personally owned devices.)  Because of this requirement, buying apps becomes very expensive quickly. Let’s face it, I could spend a boatload of money even if I just had to buy one of each app for all the apps I would like on my school iPads, so now that I have to buy six copies of each, it is very challenging.  That is why I love appshopper.com a website that has a complete list of discounted apps.  It changes daily depending on what is on sale (or free!!) I have saved a lot of money over time and got some great apps for free or a fraction of the normal price!

Tip#2: Have a management system for using your iPads.  Find a way to manage when and how students get to use them and then train the students.  iPads are an amazing and fantastic learning tool but like all learning tools, teachers need to give input and hold students accountable for their time.  Ipads can be used independently by students of all ages (kindergarten teacher speaking here!) but they should always be managed by teachers.  In my class, when students work hard without distraction on a task they can earn an iPad pass to use the iPad when they are done, before we move on as a class.  With an iPad pass, they have free choice to pick any app they want.  During our reading and math small group time, if I have a group working independently with the iPads, they have a poster that gives them the choice of several apps to choose from.  Students understand that when they do not follow the system, they are excused to a less desirable activity and lose their iPad privileges.

Tip #3: This last tip is short and sweet and pretty self-explanatory: invest in headphones. The first few months I went without and now I just can’t understand how or why I went without them for so long.

Let me leave you with my excitement for iPads in education.  I am impressed with the device and even more impressed with the variety of high quality apps. I love getting to use this tool in my classroom to help my students learn!   

iPad Implementation In a Classroom

I recently read this article from : http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/07/11/putting-the-ipad-to-work-in-elementary-classrooms.aspx

It is a very good article on using iPod Touch in the classroom. I have included the text below, as well as, some of my own thoughts/commentary following the article.

Lovely Lady Liberty: Active Media Engagement for Young Learners

Andrea Patrick is an exceptionally adventurous kindergarten teacher from Johnson Ranch Elementary School (Comal ISD) in Texas. Her students use iPod touch devices for all kinds of fun learning activities. Recently, while teaching a unit on American symbols, she found several videos that presented information in an age appropriate way. They were short and provided important facts, as well as context and a story for each of the symbols. She downloaded the videos from her school’s video subscription service and synchronized them onto the iPods.

There was only one problem. How would she know exactly what the students were getting from the experience? Were they just passively consuming or were they retaining important facts and ideas?

Being a great teacher, she knew just what to do. She built a scaffold to give the students a place to capture details and construct a concept map of the big ideas in the video. Essentially, she was just teaching them how to take notes. Wait a minute… Kindergarteners taking notes?! YOU BET!

By providing a simple scaffold that asked them to draw the Statue of Liberty and look for at least 3 facts about it, the students engaged with the media in a very different way. As a follow up, they had a conversation about their notes. In one case, Mrs. Patrick noticed that a student had only grasped part of an idea. She asked him to go back to the video and see if he could find out the rest. After a second run at it, he was able to add more detail to his notes.

Scaffolds like this are a great tool to increase engagement and provide you with material for assessment and coaching.

I was really impressed with this article and the use of the iPod touch in the classroom to enhance a learning activity. I was impressed for several reasons:

1. One of the first things that impressed me the most was seeing a teacher use this technology as a supplement to her own actual teaching or in other words to not rely on the technology and device to do the work of teaching. This activity was a success because of her teaching skills and the work she did to scaffold and help connect the students’ knowledge together.
2. She also did what is often forgotten or neglected with using iPads in the classroom and that is to have some kind of assessment or accountability for the learning that takes place on them. 
3. She used them to intertwine traditional learning (concept mapping) with the use of technology. Sometimes we are so “wow”ed by what technology can do we tend to let it overshadow or just plain replace some of the important or even vital aspects of traditional classroom work and learning. This should not happen. Technology like this should be used in an intertwined method such as this article presented or as an enhancement but not as a replacement for those important and vital elements of traditional learning.

I’d love to get some other takes on this—what do you think about this teacher’s teaching methods with her iPod touches (essentially mini-iPads) and how they can and/or should be used in the classroom?

Thoughts on Technology and Education

The advancements in technology have impacted every imaginable field. The field of education has changed a lot in recent years because of the technology that is now available, however, it is bound to change even more.

Here is an insightful article by Edutopia about technology in education:

Why Integrate Technology into the Curriculum?: The Reasons Are Many There's a place for tech in every classroom.

By Edutopia Staff

Technology is ubiquitous, touching almost every part of our lives, our communities, our homes. Yet most schools lag far behind when it comes to integrating technology into classroom learning. Many are just beginning to explore the true potential tech offers for teaching and learning. Properly used, technology will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy.

Integrating technology into classroom instruction means more than teaching basic computer skills and software programs in a separate computer class. Effective tech integration must happen across the curriculum in ways that research shows deepen and enhance the learning process. In particular, it must support four key components of learning: active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, and connection to real-world experts. Effective technology integration is achieved when the use of technology is routine and transparent and when technology supports curricular goals.

Many people believe that technology-enabled project learning is the ne plus ultra of classroom instruction. Learning through projects while equipped with technology tools allows students to be intellectually challenged while providing them with a realistic snapshot of what the modern office looks like. Through projects, students acquire and refine their analysis and problem-solving skills as they work individually and in teams to find, process, and synthesize information they've found online.

The myriad resources of the online world also provide each classroom with more interesting, diverse, and current learning materials. The Web connects students to experts in the real world and provides numerous opportunities for expressing understanding through images, sound, and text.

New tech tools for visualizing and modeling, especially in the sciences, offer students ways to experiment and observe phenomenon and to view results in graphic ways that aid in understanding. And, as an added benefit, with technology tools and a project-learning approach, students are more likely to stay engaged and on task, reducing behavioral problems in the classroom.

Technology also changes the way teachers teach, offering educators effective ways to reach different types of learners and assess student understanding through multiple means. It also enhances the relationship between teacher and student. When technology is effectively integrated into subject areas, teachers grow into roles of adviser, content expert, and coach. Technology helps make teaching and learning more meaningful and fun. Return to our Technology Integration page to learn more.

This article originally published on 3/16/2008  

What is your favorite technology to use in the classroom? What does technology help you with? Where do you see education going with the advancements in technology?