Adobe Post - Enhance your photo with text

I stumble into the office this morning with a few tasks that need attended to, and then an opportunity to check out a new app comes across a feed. I am not the best at ignoring these opportunities, so I dive in and explore a bit.

The app is Adobe Post.  Released yesterday and currently available only as an iPhone app.

Adobe Post is a free, easy to use app, which allows you to add text to a photo enhancing the message you are communicating.

Imagine a student typing in a vocabulary word with a definition.  Or possibly they've typed in a sentence using the word.  In either case the text overlays a photo in a eye catching artistic manner.

As a teacher quickly share a photo on instagram of your students success stories.

Users can take photos, use pictures from their photo roll, or search online from free photos available to them via the app.

Remix a stunning graphic available from Adobe Post and turn it into yours very quickly.

When you like the finished product, the options include saving it to the camera roll, email, or any social media posting.

Creativity at your fingertips, just in time to capture your Holiday moments.

Free Math Manipulatives for the iPad

Here is a collection of free math manipulatives for the iPad.  A great tool box for many elementary math classrooms.

I'm going to define a math manipulative as a tool which allows users to explore mathematical concepts.  These manipulatives are not games, but instead used for open ended exploration.

Elementary

• Number Places - Ten Frames and more, include 5 frames, 20 frames, and even 100 frames.

• Tangram XL Free - Use plain black and white tangram pieces to create.

• Geoboard - Create shapes using rubber bands and explore many geometric concepts.

• Number Pieces Basic - A basic set of base 10 blocks to explore place value, addition, and subtraction.

• Number Pieces - Base 10 blocks with more features.

• Number Line - Explore number line counting and mathematical concepts.

• Virtual Manipulatives! - Explore with fraction strips, decimal strips, or percent strips.

Secondary

• Geometry Pad - Explore all geometric concepts including lines, angles, shapes, and more.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Using Adobe Voice to Create Food Chain Videos

What I like about the iPad is the ability to work without connecting to the Internet.  This is especially true when you work with field study groups up in the wilderness.

At Outdoor School, 5th or 6th grade students spend 2-4 days experiencing the outdoors.  They get to sleep, eat, and learn up in the wilderness.  Part of their experience is rotating through hour long field study groups which could include learning about weather, creating survival shelters, or identifying plants.

In this hour long field study we start with a review of the food chain including producers, consumers, and decomposers.

The students then take an iPad on a scavenger hunt snapping photos of producers, consumers, and decomposers.  Since consumers don't stand and wait for a photo, we instruct them to take photos of evidence a consumer was here, like a nest or track.

After all the photos are taken, the students storyboard their movie choosing which photos to use and how to tell about the food chain they found.  We ask they include a scenery photo as the title slide and a selfie photo as their credits.

The finished product is created with Adobe Voice, usually 5-10 photos, a narration that tells the story, and background music provided by the app.

At the end of the hour we save the videos to the camera roll and repeat the study for the next set of students.  Then back in town we upload the videos to Youtube.  Here is an example from a group of 6th graders in North East Oregon and their food chain video.




NOTE: If you use Adobe Voice, be sure to login to the app while in wifi, then turn the iPad to Airplane mode.  As a backup iPad app we will use 30Hands in case Adobe Voice logs out.

Seesaw - ePortfolios for Elementary Setting

There are many great ePortfolio options available, including Evernote or Google, however they can be a bit overwhelming for the students in primary grades.  Especially if you want to have them save exemplars.

Seesaw is a free iDevice app that is very simple to use allowing any student capable of using an iPad to take a photo to save an exemplar into their ePortfolio.

Instead of calling them ePortfolio's, Seesaw uses the term journals, both class journals containing works displayed by the entire class and individual journals containing works by any particular student.

The process is quite simple.  As a teacher you create your free account which will be tied to your classroom.  Set up all your students inside that class.

From there you can add either a photo, video, drawing, or something from the camera roll.

 

Once you upload an item, like a photo, you can add annotation, voice recording, or text.

Then you select which student is associated with the artifact.  You can select multiple students if it is a group project.

The app allows for student access as well.  The only rights students have will be to add artifacts. Students do not need an account, just scan a QR code and they are in.  While logged in as a student they will have the ability to view any artifact from within the class, not just their own.

Let the students do the work: take the picture, create a drawing, shoot a video, or select a project from the camera roll to insert into their own journal.  As a safe guard, before it is finalized into a students journal the teacher must approve the artifact from within their teacher account.




Seesaw allows for you to invite parents so they have ability to see only their child's artifacts.

If you have been looking for an ePortfolio type tool to use with K-3rd grade, this is a perfect fit.  Easy to use so students do the work, teacher has full control over anything posted, and parents have access to their child's work.  Also a great visual recap come conference time.

Epic! - Thousands of Books for Kids

One awesome aspect of a tablet, such as an iPad, is the ability to have one device containing many books.  However, the challenge is finding the books.

Epic, an iDevice app which is free for teachers and librarians, contains thousands of titles which can be accessed by students using a variety of filters such as age level of reader and interest.  Formats include books that are read to students, books for early readers, and extensive chapter books.

As students read books, they can be awarded badges and obtain new themes to use with the app.

Once you set up your teacher account, you can create profiles for students on one iPad.  This is great if you have students sharing one iPad.  Epic keeps track of what students have read under each profile as well as providing a list of titles tailored to the students interest. Note: when setting up these profiles each account will be asked to confirm via a parent email address.

If you are in a one to one environment where each student has their own iPad, or iPod, then they would be fine using the guest profile.

Be sure to sign up as an educator when you first open the app.  You will need to complete an online form submitting your educational information such as school, grade, and email.

You may consider creating your account online at Getepic.com, then download the app and begin your reading adventures.  The online site allows you to browse through titles, but reading the books is done via the app.

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.

Elevate - Train Your Brain

Voted as one of the top apps in 2014, Elevate is a nice iPhone, iPad, or Android app which offers a wide variety of tasks focused on all parts of your brain.

You begin using the app by creating your account and taking a placement activity so your brain practice is adaptive to your needs.

The app is free, however you can upgrade to the premium version.  With the premium version you get access to additional games and your growth is charted against others online.

There are nearly 20 games in five areas of brain training including reading, writing, listening, speaking, and math.

 

Each day three different tasks, which take about 5-10 minutes, are available for you to complete.  Elevate then charts your individual growth over a period of time which you can access at any time by checking your performance.

This app would be perfect for a personalized middle school or high school 1-1 environment so students can track their improvement over the course of a month, semester, or year.  As a teacher, take 5-10 minutes during the evenings and Elevate your brain, which probably can be done during a commercial set while you are relaxing on the couch.

Photomath - Mobile Device Solves Math Problems

 

I remember teaching Advanced Math in High School, and often times I would randomly write down a few Algebra problems for students to solve.  However, I also needed to solve them to generate a key.  Even though that isn't a huge hurdle, there is an app for that.

Photomath, available for most any mobile device.  Yes, using the camera you get the problem into your viewfinder, and the expression is either simplified or the equation is solved.  You don't even have to key in the problem.

 

You can examine the steps taken to solve the problem.

 

The app also contains a history of all the equations or expressions you've scanned.

This would be a nice tool for students to use in order to check that they complete practice problems correctly. 

At this time the app can simplify arithmetic expressions, interpret fractions, decimals, powers, and roots, and solve linear equations.  It can't comprehend higher level math like Trigonometry or Calculus, yet.  Hopefully in the future, as the app was released just a couple months ago.

Post It App - Great for the Teacher iPad!

I used post its a lot in class.... exit tickets, brainstorming, questions and we still do in our teacher trainings.  Post-it has a free app that allows the user to take the notes with them, move them around, group them, even edit and add additional notes.

These are the actual physical paper post-its.    We used this app to collect thoughts by teachers at the NE Oregon Regional EdTech Cadre about coding in schools.

Teachers wrote thoughts onto Post Its and then used the app to categorize and compare common thoughts that teachers had in their small group. They then sent a picture of their board to our working blog so other groups could see what their thoughts were.


Lots of conversation grew from this as to how to use this app in the classroom. Most common was the comment of how this would be great for a single iPad classroom.  Capture brainstorming, vocabulary, exit tickets, etc... Teachers could use it for later evaluation or in class to project for the whole class to see and help group.    

Classflow - an Engaging Presentation Tool

Imagine presenting to your students a typical PowerPoint or Prezi.  You have a great presentation planned with images illustrating key ideas instead of a screen filled with text.  However, this presentation is still in the form students watch while teachers present. 




What if you can push individual slides of a presentation to student devices, so those sitting in the back row who forgot their glasses aren't squinting to see the slide?  Those that are losing attention because they are looking over a half dozen other students, can now maintain focus because the material is 6-12 inches in front of them.

And what if students could respond back by adding content to an existing slide, in which the instructor obtains x number of alternative results from students and can select which slide or slides to display in front of the class.

Classflow is a free online tool allowing teachers to have engaging presentations with their students.



Some of you are asking, but "Nearpod" does that already.  Correct, this is very similar to Nearpod.  One difference is Classflow also integrates with an existing Interactive Whiteboard, the Active Inspire or Promethean environment.

First step is to create your free online teacher account at Classflow.

If you are an Active Inspire user, give your students the class code and have them join your Classflow session.  Students can join using the Classflow Student app or connecting through classflow.com/student. 

Start by pushing out flipchart pages to student devices with a click of a button inside the software.

When you want the two way engagement piece you'll need to toggle over to the Classflow website.  Send students a slide in "Ad-hoc mode", which keeps your students in the same class as they are when you're using Classflow inside Inspire.

With the Classflow Student app, students can use pens, shapes, text, and even add images from the camera or their photo album.

As a teacher, you also have the traditional student response opportunities like multiple choice, text, numeric, and true false for questioning the class.

Another nice student response feature is the Word Seed.  Great for brainstorming ideas with your students as they enter in their text response, and words are placed in a circle around the slide as they send in their results.


Once you begin using Classflow, look into more advanced features like integrating Active Expression or assessment activities, or individualizing content by providing students with web links and videos during a lesson.

If you do choose to use the web based Classflow presentation platform, you can upload existing Promethean Flipchart or SmartBoard Notebook presentations.

Classflow is a program that may take some time learning, so be sure to check out the Classflow Youtube Channel.

Math Tappers - A Suite of Free iPad/iPhone Apps

Are you looking for some iPhone or iPad apps that allow students to practice particular math skills that seem to be keeping them behind the pace of a class?  Look into MathTappers Apps and check out the apps they have to offer.

• Math Tappers Numberline  Students practice placing numbers on a numberline under a variety of options, such as between 0-100, between 0-10, or between -10-10, and with or without tic marks.

 

• Math Tappers Fund Sums  Students practice addition facts for sums totaling 5, 6, 7, on up to 20, or 100.  Students can play in a ten frames mode viewing a picture version of the sum or view the numeric representation of each sum.

• Math Tappers Multiples Students practice multiplication facts for products equaling 5, 6, 7 on up to 15, or 25.  Students can play in apple mode which provides a picture representation of a multiplication array, or view the numeric representation of each product.

• Math Tappers ClockMaster Students practice converting different representations of a traditional analog clock into a corresponding digital representation or even as text.

• Math Tappers Estimate Fractions  Students practice their understanding of fraction representation by relating them to the nearest half, and extend their understanding by completing addition and subtraction problems.

• Math Tappers Equivalents  Students practice learning the equivalent representations between fractions, decimals, and percents using a number line, circle graph, or array model.

• Math Tappers Carbon Choices  Students track their activity for a week to determine how green their lifestyle is towards the environment as the app calculates the amount of Carbon Dioxide is emitted into the air from their consumptions.

Each MathTapper App is free to use, and without ads. Most of the Apps, all but Clock Master and Carbon Choices, track data for multiple users by allowing each user to complete the App activity under their own name.  Thus, the student and teacher can obtain feedback on progress gained over a time period.

MathTappers Apps are perfect for an iPad or iPod center, or if you only have one device and you let the students share.  If students have devices at home, these would also be perfect apps for kids to practice skills over the summer.