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.
Common Sense Media has long been the go to for the K-12 Scope and Sequence for digital citizenship and so much more but often we forget about some of the other great features!
As a parent or a teacher it's important that we find quality apps to add to our devices in the classroom. Using Common Sense Media's Review page, use search options to find and read about apps, websites, book, movies, and more. I often find myself searching through the lists and being reminded of some great sites that I may have overlooked!
Choose options and see the ratings and level of learning (if choosing an educational app).
Read a brief overview and view screenshots before downloading it for yourself to check out.
So if you are looking to refresh some options on your classroom devices, spend sometime checking out this resource!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A frustration for many of the teachers and students has been the limited usability of google apps on the iPad. It seems that Google hears the needs and does work on adding them....slowly but surely.
A recently added feature to the Google Doc app on the iPad is the ability to finally view and edit in a table! Tables have always caused a problem in the app before this. Requiring students to use the browser to access which is always a few extra steps that teachers would like to avoid.
With this great addition, there is still a few things missing like creating the table inside the app. This is hopefully an option that will make an appearance soon. (fingers crossed) Right now it's just editing in an already created table.
Another Quick Google Doc Tip: If there is a file you access often, or would like to continue to work on even when lacking internet access, be sure to choose to make that file available offline by choosing the option to "Keep on Device". This is great to show students especially who have access to their iPads at home but may have little or no internet access outside of school.
My Story - Book Maker for Kids is an ad free iPad only app that makes story writing and book creating simple for your primary students. Today, September 5th, it is free, normally this app is $3.99.
A few of the features of this app make this an ideal app for a classroom with a center of iPads. The app allows for the adding of multiple authors, which all of us with centers knows, is not always possible inside apps. This allows students to each work inside their own project without having to finish or delete other work before starting. This is super!
The work space is easy to navigate with drawing, text, sticker, and photo album access. Students can also record themselves on each page as well.
Finished products have multiple ways of sharing, including email and iBooks. This makes sharing of projects to other devices very simple.
