Showing posts with label science apps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science apps. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

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.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Kids Discover Holiday Specials - Antarctica and Washington DC

Kids Discover has released many awesome iPad apps full of information on various subjects, and during this Holiday Season two of these apps are now free.  Hurry and download Antarctica and Washington DC before the price jumps back up, especially if you have a classroom set of iPads.

These apps provide great non-fictional reading opportunities for students as they will learn all about topics and issues surrounding both Antarctica and Washington DC, including people, animals, and the environment.


The app also provides an opportunity to view excellent photography along with many short video clips.


You can explore among several areas, play a few educational games, or take a quiz.



Download these apps soon and explore, I'm sure you'll learn much from exploring with these excellent apps from Kids Discover.



Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Science and iPads

Today's Agenda
Dec 4, 2013



Additional Resources:
Next Generation Science Standard App - Mastery Connect 
*  Flipboard App   Follow favorite blogs, magazine feeds, follow tweets from #ipaded, #edchat, #scichat 

Friday, May 10, 2013

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?


Friday, April 12, 2013

Create, Build, Explore, Problem Solve with Creatorverse

For all the future engineers in the classroom, Creatorverse is the app for them!  
This is the perfect app for exploring physics.  
From bouncing balls to creating creatures, the free version of Creatorverse has plenty to create a sandbox for students to explore the effects of gravity, friction, density, and much more.  I love the vocabulary and ability to adjust each object and view the results instantly make this an addicting app!  Upgrade to the advanced tool box for $4.99 and have access to rockets, magnets, and many more tools.  The wide range of possibilities and tools makes this an app that can move from primary through adult.   


Create contraptions! 
Play with the pull of gravity


Adjust characteristics of each object

Create Movable Images

Explore other shared creations to see the possibilities!
Pinball machines,  moving creatures, trigger mechanisms, input/output...
there is so much to explore!
 
The opportunities with this app are endless, critical thinking, creation, collaboration.... all in one great app! 
Tutorials on the different tools and more information on the app can be found at their website:  creatorverse.com.
 

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Apps Task Ideas - Great Resource!

I recently added a new resource to the App Resource page.  It's a spreadsheet created by Brad Wilson at www.21innovate.com.  Brad Wilson's site and blog are an amazing resource for integrating all types of tools into your teaching.  Many of you ask us for lists of apps, this is the place to go.  Under the tab on his page called "Free Resources" along the top, he has lists..... lots of lists.....based on what tool you want to use. This is the type of site I could spend hours on!

But we will focus on the spreadsheet that I put on the App Resource page. 

Notice along the top there are tabs for each other subject areas he has this broken in to.


  The YELLOW highlighted squares are each time a new app is mentioned.  Notice that with 'Middle School Math" it is highlighted once at the top and then underneath there are four more posts. Each time it is posted, there is a different idea of a task to use that app for.  I love that it gives the VERB for writing your goals for the lesson you are using it with, as well as both the traditional and revised Bloom's. 

I think this resource gives teachers just starting some great ideas for how to incorporate the apps into your lessons, taking it beyond just low level Bloom's tasks or playing games for free time. 



Wednesday, May 9, 2012

More Educational Free Apps!



Marcel  - Free for Today - 5 stars
KidsandBeyond LLC has had various apps throughout the week (I believe until the 15th of May) that they have reduced to free.  Today's app is Marcel - an ebook about a bookworm.  I've noticed with the other ebooks by this company that many include comprehension questions and other interactives that we don't always see in ebooks.  This book says that there are updates coming that will include some of these features.



Other Kidsand Beyond always Free Apps include:





Ed's Jungle HD - a hide and seek game for students to explore and learn about 20 different jungle animals.  This is a new released app, no ads, and lots of interactive for the younger children.







For a limited time - Toca Doctor is free.  Smart Apps for Kids has a great write up here. There is also an iPhone app for this as well.  






Eclipses - In honor of the upcoming solar eclipse here is a free app that will show time, locations, etc of all upcoming sky events, including the upcoming transit of Venus.   In access wikipedia online to give more information on the events.






Learnin' USA -iPhone/iTouch
Learnin' USA - iPad
Extra practice for learning the states and capitals.  This is also a new app, so not many ratings on this.





As far as other items, I'm see lots of "sales" on apps - such as the Oceanhouse Media's Smithsonian Apps for $0.99.  

If you are looking for more interactive ebooks for your iPad here is a link to Digital Storytime's list of Free ebooks based on their ratings.











Friday, April 27, 2012

Apps for Preschool and Kindergarten

I was visiting with an adorable little special needs student the other day and spent the morning looking for  free apps that are simple, fun, and engaging..  Some of these are free only for a limited time so if you work with primary, now is the time to download!



Wee Sing & Learn ABC - **Free for a limited time**  4+ star rating
Read along, ABC Song, explore the ABCs, play along, or explore some animals.... all from the Wee Sing company.  No ads!






Squiggles! by Lazoo Worldwide    **Free**  4+ star rating
This app is a simple drawing app that has children practice their fine motor skills by creating different squiggles for pictures that come to life.  No ads, audio instructions, bright and colorful.  It also includes a storybook that can be read aloud to the child with interactive pictures.  In the "parent" zone it allows for teachers or parents to record themselves reading the book..... or better yet, have a sibling or older student do it!





Little Writer - Tracing Letters, Numbers, Words, and Shapes **Free** 4+ star rating
I love the layout and ease of this app.  The shapes and letters that they trace are large and easy to follow.   There are no ads, a reassuring voice that tells them what they have drawn or written.  Colors are bright and nice animation.





i Learn with Polo:  Seasons and Weather!  HD   **Free for a limited time** 4+ star rating
There are many versions of the iLearnwith apps with most costing about $0.99.  This one is a science educational apps designed for preschool and kinder aged children.  No ads, all audio instructions, allows for an adult to set up a monitoring account for progress as well.