4/27/12 meeting

Myrna shared "Bob's Big Bug," great for kinders. She also shared MathWise, a math program which keeps track of several students in basic math skills. LearnNumbers has a grid of flashcards for students to learn to identify numbers. Little Speller helps with 3-letter words, which is made by Grasshopper Apps; a great website to subscribe to, since they'll give you some apps to review every once in a while when you're on their mailing list. MathPuppy is a math bingo game that has adjustable levels & topics, pleasant graphics, and sound effects your can turn on or off.

Nancy shared SimpleK12.com, a great tech in the classroom resource. You can subscribe to an e-newsletter with information about technology tools, tip s& resources. She's found lots of great info. To keep upper grader's attention in reading, consider Hello Cupcake and Food Network's Cupcakes! Her students also enjoy Minecraft, which allows students to create their own world. Draw Something is a Pictionary-type app; blocked by the district filter. Students enjoy playing it at home.

Melvin demoed Draw Something for us. He also shared the latest Apple Learning Tour (May 3rd); seats fill up quickly, so sign up now. He's also discovered kindergarten.com, which has great apps for kindergarteners. New River Community College has an app list of great education apps; he liked Aesop's Quest, Portion Platter, Factor Race, Spelling Cat, Opposite Ocean, and Same Meaning Magic Synonyms.

Apples in Hour Hands helps with learning an analog clock time. Common Core Standards App keeps track of common core standards in an app. Kahn Academy Algebra

Maria likes Storia from Scholastic. It offers 5 books for free to download to your iPad. Splashtop Remote is another app she likes, which allows her to control her laptop or computer from her iPad. Skip recommended Mobile Mouse as a similar tool, as long as you can see your computer screen. He's also enjoying using Aviiq's set of Ready Clips to connect various devices... no more tangling. Be careful when ordering, though and make sure you get the ones you want... no returns.

Meeting Notes from 3/15/12

Maria Rios, 5th grade teacher from Hurley, joined us today, along with Marilyn, Nancy, Skip & Melvin. Maria's a newbie with her iPad, and is excited about playing with it!

Marilyn shared how she's using her iPad with her RSP students, tying into DIBELS for checking fluency. She's also using Phonics Genius as instruction with small groups in conjunction with Houghton Mifflin. Story Builder is a great app for writing. It shows a picture, asks a question, shows a sentence stem, and students record their voice for each picture. It also keeps the data. LetterSchool is a handy app for working on letter recognition and writing. ToonTastic is another way to write a story using cartoon characters. It covers setting, characters, conflict, challenge, climax, & resolution.

Skip found an updated version of Flashcards that ties in to Quizlet, called Flashcards Deluxe. He used the previous version, called Flashcard Touch, for vocabulary practice with each HM story. The new version has a slicker, more customizable UI, and allows students to take a multiple-choice quiz. PhotoSync is a great app for transferring photos from your iPod or iPad to your computer. It's quick and easy.

Nancy's been enjoying Numberly, a great way for ESL students to learn the English alphabet. Each letter has its own story. Designed by a Pixar genius, it has games to create each letter. She also found RhymieStymie to be helpful. It's a hangman-style game that requires students to rhyme to find the answer. It's free. She also found a small way to earn money on the side for completing surveys, including a $50 iTunes card. The website is called eRewards.

Melvin found SmartyPants School, a great app for kinder/1st that ties in the fun of Pac Man with learning word sounds. It can do an assessment at the beginning and keeps track of their progress. Math Bingo helps practice basic math/multiplication skills, with a highly interactive interface. It's 99¢. Nancy says Word Bingo is a fabulous for students who are fresh to the US. It goes all the way up to 3rd grade. Both programs allow you to set up individual users to track their progress. One more Melvin wanted to share was AP Mobile, which is great for tracking news and sports. It pulls brief summaries from the AP news feed, including videos. He also purchased the new iPhoto app, which sets up albums and downloads pictures from your computer. You can easily edit and improve photos with a few clicks.

We'll meet again April 26th at Jellick at 3:30.

Just the two of us... Melvin & Skip

Melvin checked out SimpleK12.com, which lists 20 free apps for education. You need to sign up to get the ebook with the information. Click here to view.

He's also played with Kobo, which offers many ebooks online for free... not just the public domain ones. You can also purchase books to download.

For science, a high-interest app is Science 360, with many videos and images. Students spin a virtual globe to find a video. It's free.

Apps Gone Free is one of the latest apps for finding more ways to fill your iPod hard drive. Not all of them are educational, so use your discretion.

iFitness is 99¢, but worth every penny, according to Melvin. It displays a variety of exercises, allows you to journal your workouts, and interacts with your iTunes library.

Another app with the Cortez seal of approval is Remote, the one that can be used to control Keynote. He uses it on his iPhone to control Keynote presentations shown on his iPad... slick! It's 99¢.

Skip has found an app for making books on the iPad, quickly and easily. They can then be added to iTunes and copied to iPods, iPhones or iPads. It's called Book Creator, and it's $4.99, and worth it. It's really, really easy to make books with images and text, and can be imported into iBooks as well, which gives it that cool page-turning effect.

He also found Popplet, a mind-mapping program a little bit like Prezi, but somewhat easier to manage. Online accounts are free.

Opposites is a great one-trick-pony for working on antonyms. The graphics are slick, and keeps students moving. It gets faster as it goes! It's $2.99.

A great, high-interest math app is called Operation Math... lots of great graphics and works on basic math skills. It's $1.99, and needs the later iPods to work.

Want to send a slick-looking snail mail card? Cards by Apple will do nicely. Pull photos from your iPod or iPad, pull an address from your address book, and send. It charges $2.99 per card to your iTunes account... pretty cheap since it includes postage. Never taste another envelope again!

Mark Brumley of Education Nation put together a blog sharing some great teaching apps, including Popplet, at this site.

Next meeting: March 15th, 3:30, at La Seda's library.

Meeting Notes from 1/19/12

Melvin found a website for iPad & iPod manuals from Apple... very useful if you've just upgraded to OS 5. He also found a neat app called Skitch, which allows you to annotate a webpage thorough a snapshot, or any image you can find on your iPad. Another cool app is QuakeTracker from Popular Mechanics... in-depth info on recent earthquakes. It's also free.

Skip recorded his students reading a story into their iPods and turned them into an iTunes podcast, which students can then download at home, or load on classroom iPods. It also will download the text of their stories if it's included. Click here to see the site where they're uploaded, or here to see them in iTunes. All you need is a way to upload your podcasts (created in Garage Band) which creates an RSS feed. Submit a request to Apple through iTunes, wait a couple of days, and it's available at iTunes to subscribe.

Marilyn found some phonics apps worth downloading: Tic Tac Gold, Fry Words, and Sound Sorting.

A word of warning: every iOS device at school needs restrictions turned on for in-app purchases, or students can spend loads of your money. Go to General - Restrictions - Enable Restrictions (put in a 4 digit password) - Turn off in-app purchases.

Myrna found a great health app called Fooducate, which gives nutrition data on anything you scan at the grocery store. The data is from an unbiased 3rd party. She also likes KidsLearn Sight Words for her students; free for the first 2 words, a purchased app later, but she says it's worth the purchase.

Nancy downloaded Top 100 Tips for iPad. She shares tips at school with her staff, and looks brilliant! JibberJabber is a fun game for guessing words. One for home is the Betty Crocker app... students can read the recipes for enjoyment. A great kids' cookbook is Big Fork, Little Fork.

Melvin also likes Secrets for iPad.

Yet more websites for apps, help

Melvin found some apps for education and teaching...

• iPads for Education: This site is from the Victoria, Australia, Department of Education. It is a rich resource with a list of well-organized and categorized Educational Apps with a brief description of the Apps purpose and link to download the Apps.
• Teach with your iPad: Answers the basic questions like where do I begin, what are good Apps to use in education, how do I use the Apps in a lesson, and iPad activities.
• Apptivities: This site is great for sharing a variety of activities teachers can share, using their iPads in the classroom. You can explore the site by grade level.
• iGear USA: Get your super cool iPad gear at this website.
• iPad Academy: Great resources, articles, and links to favorite Apps, available free Apps, and general use of iPads. However, it is a blog site, so click on the links to find the complete articles and resources (Note: not accessible at RUSD due to block & restrictions).
• Tech Radar: This site is great at teaching you about 50 very helpful tips & tricks in your iPad.

Marilyn shared MathAids.com, which lets you create your own worksheets and answer sheets for students to work out on paper... a great practice resource! She's also using AAAMath.com, where students practice basic facts.

The issue of printing from iPads came up again... Melvin's happy with HP LaserJet Pro P1102w, which is AirPrint enabled, and can be purchased online for $99. Skip's been using WePrint, which is a free program to load on a server or computer which is running most of the day at school. It allows any iPod or iPad to print to any printers loaded on that particular computer. Melvin also shared a page from Apple's site with info about AirPrint printers, which can be found by clicking here.

Skip shared Idea Flight, which allows someone to share their iPad with other iPads on the same wifi network.

A last bit of fun, click the title to watch... A magazine is just a broken iPad.

October 27, 2011

Melvin met with Special Ed and discussed ways to set accountability for making sure the iPads are used for educational purposes. He also found some cool gestures with the new iOS 5. Check them out here. Avatar Books lets you put your face in a classic fairy tale. Almost all are free. He also found that Accessibility options allows you to zoom in with gestures. In Notes, unpinch between the G & the H and the keyboard will split for thumb texting. Michael Nunn has set up all kinds of links for iPods & iPads... a wealth of resources. NoteTaker lets you take a photo of a document and take notes on top of it, then save it as a pdf.

Skip shared about a great free site for giving students online assessments called Socrative. Teachers can set up an account and "post" quizzes online for students to take. Results show up on the teacher's screen almost instantaneously. You can also post one question at a time and view results right away as a bar graph. AR now has an app, and students can take AR quizzes on iPods and iPads.

Marilyn used Phonics Genius in class yesterday during an observation. It's received great reviews at working on phonic sounds.

Myrna shared that with www.yahoo.com and do a search, the tabs now have an Apps button. Cool! She also found a nice one called Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App. Not cheap, but a high interest writing app. KeepVid.com allows you to download YouTube videos so you can play them in class. Skip uses Jaksta as well for the same purpose. Zoola Lite has many animals and is great for working on creating sentences for oral language. Talking Roby is another favorite. Another one is Kids Learn Sight Words... $5, but great since it includes lots of sight words, and they have to write it and record it.

Nancy found a high-interest program called Factor Samurai, a lot like fruit ninja. It works on prime numbers and factorization. The students really enjoy it. She also used TeacherPal at conferences to get the best phone numbers to reach parents.

Susan loves Talking Tom. She's been using JibJab Jr. as a reinforcement for good behavior... the child gets to be the star. Meet Millie is an interactive story that's great for K-2.

September meeting, 9/29/11

We got together and fine-tuned our CoP's name to reflect the changing landscape in technology, "iTech in the Classroom." In attendance: Nancy B, Myrna T, & Susan A from Jellick; Marilyn C & Marilyn H from Yorbita; and Skip from Shelyn.

Melvin shared a great resource he found on the web, www.uquery.com. Type in what apps you're looking for, and links pop up.

Nancy found an app called JibJabJr., which allows you to add a child's photo which creates a jibjab-type animated book. First book is free; others are $3-5 each. She's also very happy with Comic Touch, which adds cartoon bubbles to pictures you take with an iPad or a newer iPod Touch.

Skip shared an app he found courtesy of Patty K called ScreenChomp. It allows screen and voice capture on an iPad and publish it on the web. You can then create a short web address on http://tinyurl.com for students to find; both are free services. His students are also using Evernote to start their stories in the computer lab and continue in the classroom or on their computers at home. It's free.

Looking for a video cord to show your iPad on your video projector? Click here for a Google search for the best price.