Top Five iPad Apps for Teaching Across All Content Areas Ever since I was a kid, I loathed back to school commercials. They always showed parents gleefully skipping through aisles of pencils and notebooks as the kids, sullen and dejected, sluggishly followed along. It's a scene we are all too familiar with, and one that creates a negative stigma around school. But what if that scene were flipped? Although this post is a little early for the back-to-school season, consider it an early reminder that summer is near and that, eventually, the start of the 2013 school year will be close at hand. I’m going to share five applications for the iPad that will take the place of student supply lists, provide savings and replace dread with anticipation. Notability While some may argue that there are better options -- and free options -- out there, I find, along with many of our students, that Notability is the go-to application for note taking. A note about Notability: I would strongly endorse Evernote here as well. Haiku Deck Edmodo ShowMe Google Drive
21 Simple Ideas To Improve Student Motivation - 21 Simple Ideas To Improve Student Motivation by TeachThought Staff The best lessons, books, and materials in the world won’t get students excited about learning and willing to work hard if they’re not motivated. Motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic, is a key factor in the success of students at all stages of their education, and teachers can play a pivotal role in providing and encouraging that motivation in their students. Of course that’s much easier said than done, as all students are motivated differently and it takes time and a lot of effort to learn to get a classroom full of kids enthusiastic about learning, working hard, and pushing themselves to excel. Even the most well-intentioned and educated teachers sometimes lack the skills to keep kids on track, so whether you’re a new teacher or an experienced one, try using these methods to motivate your students and to encourage them to live up to their true potential. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: 7 Excellent iPad Games to Develop Kids Critical Thinking There is an app for everything these days. From health apps to travel apps, iTunes market is teeming with all kinds of apps. It only takes one click in a search engine to find what you want but as we always say not every app can do what its developers preach , you need to have a critical eye to evaluate the apps that will work for you. As teachers and educators, we are in a constant search for apps to use with our students and this is why we need to make sure we have recourse to checklists such as this one whenever we are to recommend apps. In today's post , we are providing you with a list of great games designed to improve your students critical thinking and creative powers.Check them out below and don't forget to check the list we have posted before on iPad Apps to Develop Kids Critical Thinking. 1- Feed the Head " The iPad adaptation of our classic surrealist toy! 2-Where's My Water "Where’s My Water? 3- RoomBreak 4- Cross Fingers Fee 5- Doodle Fit 6- Jelly Car 7- Geared for iPad
A Free Interactive iPad App To Teach Algebra For many students algebra seems too abstract and hard to learn. They often resort to ineffective memorization and in the long run find only frustration and failure. Now there’s a new free iPad app that can turn frustration into success. The app is intended for children from age 8 onward. The app, like the physical version, is also well suited for helping older students who are struggling in traditional algebra classes. Each of the three lessons of this free app is introduced by a short three- to four-minute video. In the first lesson the student learns that a pawn, or marker, has an unknown weight, or value, and that a number cube has the value shown on the cube. The “scale” does not actually move. The sample image below is from Lesson 1B, which requires the student to find the value of the pawn that will make both sides have the same value. After a short while the student will see that the value of 5 for the pawn will give both sides the same value, namely 13. Consider example 3B.
The 20 Best Education Apps And Web Tools Of The Year The following is an excerpt from the December issue of Edudemic Magazine. Download the issue for just $.99 to view the full issue and the rest of the list! Stay tuned (or download the magazine) for the best devices of the year! In our year‐end special issue, we’ve worked hard at assembling the best of the best. As you probably know, we publish an array of lists and resources on edudemic.com. It contains the best (in our opinion and what we’ve heard from educators around the world) resources you should know about. It’s the end of the year and that means you have a little extra time for the first time since summer. NOTE: These are in no particular order and the list is actually longer in the iPad Magazine. Evernote (Web, iOS, Android) Use it for: note taking/word processing, voice recording, photos (snapshots of teachers’s notes group work, etc), share work between teachers and students, organize and search all of your notes. Blackboard (Web, iOS, Android) You know Blackboard.
Look at These 10 GIFs and You Might Actually Learn Something GIFs are more than just entertaining animated loops; they can actually teach us tons of quick and interesting facts. Think about the old textbooks most of us grew up with in the classroom. Each chapter's stock photos helped a little, but visual learners would benefit even more from quick animations. In other words, GIFs could be especially useful in scientific and medical fields. Instead of exclusively bookmarking amusing GIFs, take a look at these loops and learn something new. 1. GIF courtesy of Reddit 2. GIF courtesy of Reddit 3. GIF courtesy of Reddit 4. GIF courtesy of Reddit 5. GIF courtesy of Reddit 6. GIF courtesy of Reddit 7. GIF courtesy of Inside Insides 8. GIF courtesy of Reddit 9. GIF courtesy of Reddit 10. GIF courtesy of Reddit 11. GIF courtesy of Soup von DeLima Image courtesy of Flickr, x-ray delta one
22 Best Mac Apps of 2012 Apple has announced its list of the best Mac apps of 2012. Taking top honors is Day One, a $9.99 journaling app for iPad and iPhone that lets users write about their daily thoughts and memories. Entries into the journal are saved to iCloud or Dropbox, so they are synced across all devices. CameraBag 2 was this year’s runner up in the Mac App Store. Check out the gallery, above, for a look at the full list of Apple's favorite Mac apps this year. Did your favorite app make the list? Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tbradford
How Can We Stop Cheating In Online Courses? This is an excerpt from a longer article in the October issue of Edudemic Magazine for iPad. Be sure to download the free app here and grab the latest issue. It’s packed with plenty of other great stories too! For as long as classes have been in session, there have been students trying to figure out how to get out of class, or at least how to get away with doing the least amount of work possible for said class. When I was teaching at a large, public university a few years back (ok, this was really more like 5-7 years ago, but I figure I can still say ‘a few’ if I’m also convincing myself that I’m still in my twenties, right?) At the time, it was a relatively new concept for a large, pretty traditional university to do this, and many of the students LOVED it. The testing for the courses that I heard of was online, so the students were pretty psyched that they could try to use the internet to figure out whatever they didn’t know the answers to. Some Common Precautions for Online Honesty
SIGML Recommends 25 Educator Vetted Apps for iPad and iPhone With more than half a million apps available in the Apple app store and hundreds of thousands of apps available for Android devices, it can be difficult for educators to dig through the clutter and find apps to facilitate meaningful learning experiences. ISTE’s Special Interest Group for Mobile Learning (SIGML) hosted a forum at ISTE 2012 to share educational apps vetted by actual educators. “We planned this event because educators do not have a clue how much these apps can do,” said Robbie Melton from the Tennessee Board of Regents who led the SIGML forum. During the fast-paced session, panelist and attendees described their favorite apps in brief five-minute presentations. Here is a selection of the most innovative and useful tools from the SIGML forum: InClass: This app has a built in mic for note taking and a simple organizer for student schedules and assignments. Splashtop Presenter: Splashtob turns an iPad into a feature-rich presentation remote.
Apple TV In The Classroom: 4 Reasons To Try It Out If you like to use your iPhone, iPad or laptop in your classroom because it allows you to effortlessly navigate the learning space, one of the greatest frustrations can be having to constrain yourself to the vicinity of the projector cable every time you want to share your screen with the class. I have seen this as a common practice even in open plan learning environments, which instantly does away with it’s greatest feature by forcing the teacher to move back to the front of the room. Whilst you can get wireless projectors at great expense, have you ever thought of using Apple’s $99 Apple TV? I hadn’t until recently, but since using it I could never go back to a physical projector/tv connection for the following 4 reasons: 1. You can share your iPhone, iPod, iPad or Mac’s screen so long as both devices are on the same wi-fi network. Once you click on the AirSharing icon on your iOS device, you’ll be able to select what you’d like to do next with your wireless stream. 2. 3. 4.