Learning from the comfort of your own home!

The webinar I enjoyed the most was- “Top Free Apps in Special Education”. It touched on many apps in one would think a reasonable amount of time (an hour and a half) but it really was not long enough to go in depth with all of the apps. I enjoyed this webinar because it touched on apps that I am interested in using personal and also with a wide range of students in my classroom.

One of the most interesting things I liked right away from this webinar was learning about the “accessibility” feature under the settings app. Although I have an iPhone and feel I am quite comfortable in using it, I had no idea you could change the settings for vision, hearing, learning, physical & motor impairments. I am fortunate enough to not have to depend on any of these features, but it is very useful to know these things for our students who may need them. I really enjoyed the “speak-selection” feature, which I think will actually be very useful for one of my students.

"Bubble Popper" app made me remember what it was like to be a kid again. I had to download that one right away! :)

 

TOP 3 APPS:

Dragon Dictation- This app was actually just loaded onto my iPhone device with my last update. I had heard of it before watching this webinar, but wasn’t fully aware of what it was capable of doing. I like the idea of pairing it with a graphic organizer so they can pre-plan what they want to say. Even I have trouble sometimes knowing exactly what I want to say when using the voice search or voice texting.

For students with learning disabilities (i.e. dyslexia, dysgraphia, visual impairments, physical impairments, etc.) this app can be a useful tool in creating speech to text and is able to produce text for notes, lists, emails, etc. From many sources I read online, there is minimal training (if any) required, which makes it easy for its users. It will also recognize your voice and names over time. Language selection and the detection of the end of speech is a feature. Even my dad who does not own a cell-phone or how to turn on a computer can use it!

 TourWrist and Eyewitness- I thought these two apps would have been so useful to me last year as an art teacher! When I checked it out, I couldn’t believe the tours of places around the world you were able to view. “Tour of the day” is also a neat feature that gives a picture of the day in TourWrist. It is very cool with the panoramic view of pictures. I believe these two are powerful apps for visual learners and would create great classroom discussions for areas around the world and art pieces. Sometimes it is so hard as a classroom teacher to bring culture into the classroom. These apps are a great way for your students to see other parts of the world!

 

 Math App- As a math teacher for the junior high school level, I personally found this app quite interesting and will definitely be using it in my classroom. Although you only get the first 5 video lessons free, I think I will invest in the app to be able to show the videos in class. I believe it is good for any student in math. It could be useful to show to a student who struggles in math, good for students who miss the lesson in class due to absentees, or even for students who do not necessarily get the information the first time because of processing issues. I always believed it was important to teach students material in a number of ways and there are definitely different ways that they use in the video lessons that I wouldn’t have thought of. I also want to install the “Quick Graph” app on our class set of iPods at school so the students can use them as a graphing calculator.