Kahoot or Quizizz - Game Based Classroom Response Systems

These two free, device neutral, online resources are sure to bring high engagement and active participation into any classroom.  The idea is simple, students answer questions in a competitive atmosphere, there will be a winner.

For both Kahoot and Quizizz, the facilitator creates a series of questions to be answered by the participants.  Each question can have a time limit before the participant must select a response.  The quicker the participant chooses a response, the more points they earn providing their choice was correct.

Using Kahoot, the questions are asked to the participants one at a time.  Participants view the projected screen, answer a question by selecting the corresponding color on their device, points are awarded, and a new question is provided.  When finished, persons with the most points will be displayed.

Using Quizizz, the facilitator starts the activity at which time participants are given questions in a random order.  The participants read the questions on their device and answer them at their own pace.  Once all participants complete the activity, persons with the most points will be displayed.


Quizizz would be a great tool to use for an entire class, or as a center since it is student driven.  Kahoot is teacher driven providing time for discussion between each question being asked.

I've tried using both resources with groups of at least 40, and each time they worked fine.

Both Kahoot and Quizizz allows teachers to create their own questions, which can include images. When finished with the activity, the teacher can save the data describing how students answered each question. Teachers can explore through the many public assessments created and shared by others.

In either case, these opportunities provide a nice review experience or possibly a motivating pre-assessment experience.  Definitely stated, the experience will be fun, highly energetic, and competitive.

Google Classroom Releases Their iPad App

Google Classroom released an iDevice app, available for both the iPad and iPhone. Requires IOS 7 or higher.

 

The app interface to Google Classroom is very similar to the online interface.  This should be an easy transition. One difference is when posting, find and use the plus down in the lower right hand corner.

What I like about the app is you can add photos from your camera roll to include on any post.

 

I also like the ability to switch classroom accounts by clicking an icon.  This will come in useful in scenarios where there are multiple students sharing an iPad in a classroom.

Jefferson Lab - Science Education Resources

There are several National Science Laboratories in the United States.  One of these, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), has a nice collection of  resources for middle school and high school science classrooms.

The Jefferson Lab Science Education site, iPad and chromebook friendly, contains resources for the teacher and student, including loads of games and videos, to assist with the physical science classrooms.  

Games can include Element Hangman

Or Speed Math Deluxe.

 

Watch videos from the Frostbite Theater where Joanna and Steve provide you with many liquid nitrogen experiments, as well as other scientific eye catching topics.  These videos are typically 1-4 minutes in length.





Another video series hosted at Jefferson Lab is Physics Out Loud containing 1-4 minute videos regarding many explanation of common words used in nuclear physics research.

If you are interested in hearing a 40 minute lecture from highly credible scientists, check out archived science lectures from as far back as the early 90's. Many interesting topics to choose from.


Again, a nice collection resources to help students learn and review physical science concepts.

Ask3, a Collaborative Screencasting App for the Classroom

Many of us in education have a few "Go To" apps we think work well in the classroom.  Some of these apps are free, while others come at a cost.

For example, Educreations is a great free screencasting app, or you can pay for a different screencasting app called Explain Everything which contains many more rich features.  However, the question comes up quite often how do students share their creative content with the class?

Try Ask3.  This is a wonderful, free, screencasting app designed for collaborative classroom use. iPad only with IOS 6.1 or later.




To begin, a teacher creates themselves a teacher account.  Then they create a class which uses a class code.

Students sign up with their first name, and the class code.  No email or online registration required for the students.

Anyone can create a screen cast video using the basic tools, such as annotations, record, and inserting images.  While creating the video one can pause and start throughout.  However, there is not a feature which allows you to modify your audio content without starting over.

Once a person thinks their video is ready to share, they upload it to the class with a title.  Everyone in the class will find all the videos in the "Bulletin Board" section.

While viewing the video one can leave comments, both in written form and as a video.  The cool aspect is you can pause the original video, then leave your video comment creating a video beginning where you paused.  A viewer can also star videos and/or comments that they want to flag as helpful.

This tool can be great for math students to share math problems or exit tickets, science students to explain concepts, social studies students to share map annotations, elementary students to share animal or state reports, and much more. 

Give this app a try, as it may become one of your "Go To" apps.

Virtually Visit the Smithsonian on the iPad!

The online virtual tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has always been a favorite resource of mine for the classroom.  Students can virtually take a field trip and tour the many displays in 360 views of different areas of the museum.  There is now a mobile friendly version of this site that has made this site possible on the mobile devices, both iOS and Android.  

Choose the gallery that you would like to visit from the list.  Each gallery is full of many rooms. Geology, Egyptian mummies, mammals, the Ice Age, fossils.... just to name a few! 

Inside each room your can use your finger to move in all directions and zoom in closer on displays.  Tap on the images along the bottom to move, or use the arrows on the iPad to move to the next room. 

This is a mobile friendly website, not an app.  To save it to your iPad for easy access by students, add the address to the Home Screen.  

Targeting Maths Grade 2 is Free for Limited Time

If you are in the need of a nice math app tailored to review math topics typically found for grade 2 mathematics, download the app Targeting Maths 2 while it's free for a limited time.  Regularly $6.99.

You enter the app by creating your account on the iPad. This enables this app to be a great resource for an iPad center, since multiple students can use one iPad and have their individual progress saved under this one app.



Entering the activities area, students can choose between Training exercises or Timed exercises. 

In training excersise there are 9 different topics including number sense, addition, subtraction, fractions, and more.  Under each topic include several sub-topics, including math vocabulary.

 

Students are asked a variety of questions, in which the goal is to answer as many in a row as possible.  To check of you have completed a subtopic mastery, the student must have answered 10 questions in a row correctly, and at that point they earn a badge. They can try to obtain higher levels under each topic by answering correctly 25 or 50 in a row.

Timed topics are similar to training topics, but are provided in either 30 second, 1 minute, 2 minute, or 5 minute timed test environments.  Each timed test has 3 badge levels to achieve as well.

Badges are rewards for completing the activities with proficiency, which can be used to play one of two games called Exploding  Mice or Acrobat Splat, both addicting and hard to master.  However, in order to keep playing these games one  must obtain mastery of math concepts.



On all questions students can pull up a workspace area before answering their questions.


There are also multiplayer opportunities with 2 player, 3 player, or 4 player activities.












 




Finally, each person that has created an account is provided with a progress report they can view at any time.  This makes for a great place a teacher can go into the app, check in as a student, and view their progress report.   Progress reports are not shared via the app, however if you wanted to share it an ipad screen shot works well.

Pop Flux, a game for your brain break activity

Those of us that have viewed Pop Flux for the first time all think it is very similar to a Kinect type game from xBox where you aren't using any controller.

The objective of Pop Flux is very simple, pop as many falling bubbles with your hands without getting hit by bombs or other destructives that fly through the air.

 

To play the game, stand the iPad 2-3 feet away, facing you, as your movements captured by the camera will allow you to control this game.  Unlock levels as you increase your talents.

Great for the brain break, inside recess, or just allowing us to have fun. What other types of games will be controlled by our movements?

Math Manga High is now iPad Compatible

Often times teachers comment, "iPads are wonderful, but they can't do ..." and usually referring to a flash based online resource.  Math Manga High, an online math teaching resource, recently completed an overhaul so that their entire website can now be viewed on an iPad.

If you have not peered into Math Manga High, you need to check it out and give it a try.  This is a math resource offering practice to students in a gaming environment, thus students are highly motivated to continue playing.


There are two types of games available from Math Manga High. The first type are called Prodigi's, which allow students to work through a series of questions aligned with a particular selected Common Core Standard.  Math Manga High has started adding curriculum aligned to High School CCSS.

 

 

These questions are adaptive and progress through the material based on how a student answers.

 

Once the game is completed, points are awarded.  Teachers can set a goal for students to achieve Bronze, Silver, or Gold medal status. Students keep playing the game (answering additional questions) to earn more points.  Also,  as the student plays a second, third, ..., tenth time the questions continue to adapt, with the objective to reach Hard and Extreme level of questions.

There are also several themed games available for practice.  Such as Ice Ice Maybe, where a student practices estimation skills with the objective to get Penguins from one island to another.

Teachers should assign student logins for all their kids, so Math Manga High can assist in data collection for the teacher.  Individual game stats are recorded, as well as student growth data.

Try Math Manga High, your students will be so motivated that they will continue playing math games at home.

Educreations Update

Educreations, a great screen casting app, came out with an update earlier this week.  This update includes an eraser, with the nice option of erasing various items.  For instance, you can use the eraser for annotations, clear the page, clear all annotations, and even clear recording.

In the past, a person would set their pages the way they wanted for the screencast with images and annotations.  If the recording contained too many glitches, the entire project had to be a re-do, including all the graphics. 

Now the question, when will educreations allow us to work on multiple screen casts at the same time?

GroupMaker - a Great Teacher Tool

GroupMaker is a free iPad and iPhone app that allows teachers to upload class lists and organize them into groups quickly based on various characteristics, such as gender or academic level (based on a 1,2, or 3 rating). 

Once your students are uploaded, adjust and regroup as needed.  The ability to add photos for quick reference is great and by using the PICK! feature let the app choose a group or student to answer, discuss, or present first!     

Group sizes can be one to twenty.  Create as many Group configurations as you would like and save them within the class for quick access! 

GroupMaker is an easy app to add to your teacher toolbox.  

My Script Calculator

My Script Calculator, a free app, is a unique calculator that interprets the mathematical expression you write returning a calculated answer.

One teacher is having students use this for multiplication fast practice up to 10 x 10, where student A writes a problem and student B must provide the answer before the calculator returns the solution.  They keep tally back and forth to see who can get the most right.  Note, you need to be fast returning your answer as the iPad will be rather quick.

Check out the video to see some examples, but most of all try, experiment, and have fun.

Word Clouds on the iPad?

I've always enjoyed doing word clouds with my students.  

A few of my favorite uses were to hang a name cloud outside my door at the beginning of the year with all of our students' names or have my students create a word cloud about their experience at Outdoor School, in the shape of their mascot!

There are many great sites online to make word clouds, but most require flash, java, or other add-ons that make those sites incompatible with the iPads and iPods. 

Here are some app options to explore:

WordSalad (Free Version with option to pay $0.99 to get rid of ads and watermark)

Core Features:

-Import any text from iOS clipboard with a single tap  (create your own by making a list in your Notes app or any other word doc app that allows for copy/paste) 
-Customize with 8  fonts-Color with 8 color palettes -Feeling creative? WordSalad gives you 5 layouts to position your words-Save your salads to camera roll for later reuse and export them to pdf

Cloudart ($0.99) iPad Only 

Core Features: 

-no ads or watermarks

-23 fonts, 7 layout styles, and 19 color palettes

-Share by email, pdf, save in app, or save to camera roll

-tap on the word cloud to add more words

-create straight from a webpage by pasting in the address

Need ideas for word clouds in the classroom? 

• Take a news article, blog post, famous song, or short story and create an easy visual of key themes or points being made.  
• Cut and paste reflections to a piece of work from all students and see what the common words were
• Collecting Data  (input a list of what students ate for a week and see what they ate the most!)
• Beginning of the Year Ice Breaker "About Me" Activity 
• End of the Year "Highlights" Activity 
• and ....

For more word cloud resources, check out these sites:

WordSift - Play with Words! from Digital Drifting 

Wonderopolis

Have you wondered about what it means for a product to be generic?  How about whether or not Fairy Tales can be true?  Do you wonder if tics can make you sick?

Wonderopolis is a free app that provides you with a Wonder of the Day.  This wonder begins with a "Did You Know" section which contains an explanation of the inquiry.  This is great non-fiction reading source for students. For instance, generic products began appearing on shelves as white boxes with black lettering.

The second section is "Try it out".  This is where there are exploratory experiments designed to allow students to further their understanding of a wonder by completing an investigative activity.  For instance, an activity is suggested to go with a parent to the grocery store and compare brand name products with generic products.

The Wonder Words section provides a list of vocabulary words key to the topic.  Some words in the generic wonder word list include brand, product, aisle, staples, generic, and prescription.

Wonderopolis is a great, clean app providing students with interesting topics to read.  If you want to investigate further, please check out the Wonderopolis.org website, where there are videos and more that correspond to this resource.

Book Magic - A digital story telling tool

Last week while visiting a 2nd grade classroom we observed that students were using a digital storytelling tool we hadn't seen before.  This tool is called Book Magic, and if you haven't seen it you need to take a look.


This free app has many positive features you want in a book creator app.  Along with using photos from camera roll, authors have the opportunity to search through a nice volume of clipart in order to find a picture of something that supports their writing. 

You start off by making a book which requires you to title the book and provide your name as the author.

Next step is to start inserting content on each page.  Students could select a theme for their book, for instance the ocean, so all their choices would encompass items supporting that category.

 

There are many different types of objects you can insert into a book, including clipart, photos, drawings, and text.

Each object has a set of options to alter the look of that object, like size, layer, and color.  For example in this text box there are options to change, color, size, font style, alignment, and more.

Finished projects can be shared as pdf files via email enabling students to send finished projects to parents, teachers, and peers.  There is also a facebook sharing option or one can upload to the book magic community.  

Here is a snap shot of a book about dogs created by one second grader.