10 iPad Apps To Record How Students Learn

Here is a good website "Teacher Thought" that discusses 10 iPad apps used to record how students learn:

http://www.teachthought.com/apps-2/10-ipad-apps-to-record-how-students-learn/

It provides you with 10 different apps that are free or low in cost.

The website also provides many other resources for integrating technology in the classroom (ex. "21 Literacy Resources For The Digital Teacher"). If you get an extra minute (which I know is rare for teachers) you should check it out!

5 Educational iPad Apps

For more information, check out these 5 free educational iPad apps at the following website for teachers:

http://teacherswithapps.com/still-free-and-still-fabulous-5-educational-ipad-apps/

1. BrainPop Featured Movie

2.  Oh No! Fractions – Curious Hat Lab

3. The Hungry Fish

4.  Rover – The Browser for Education

5. Phonics Genius

5 FREE Programs for Educators:

Here are 5 really neat programs you can use in your classroom:

1. Popcorn Maker allows users to infuse Web content, video and pop-up into an image, creating dynamic, interactive images.

2. GoAnimate helps teachers create tutorials by writing scripts for animated characters.

3. Screenleap gives educators the ability to share a code with students so they can access a presentation on a teacher’s computer even if they are using a variety of devices in the classroom or at home.

4. Remind101 provides a means of communication with parents and students using text messages. After you register and create a class list, you’ll be able to send reminders to students from a program-generated number, and students and parents cannot text back.

5. InfuseLearning brings students into an interactive learning environment in which teachers can create quizzes to gauge students’ understanding in real time. Students can even respond to teacher prompts by drawing pictures. InfuseLearningalso has a built-in language translator.

For #2 "GoAnimate", I also created my own little animation for my AAC presentation. You can check it out here:


http://goanimate.com/videos/0WUv5H9HBVBM?utm_source=linkshare

Webinar #3

Webinar #3- Fine Motor Skills

Dexteria app is an app for occupational therapy. It includes three main features: Tap it, Pinch it and Write it. For a student with limited or impaired motor skills, this app is a very fun and interactive way for students to practice their fine motor skills or hand and eye coordination. These skills are also useful for young children developing their hand writing. The three areas that we looked at in the webinar included “Tap It” which works on fine motor skills, “Pinch it” which works on the ability to pinch grip or the functional grasp for writing and lastly, “Write It” which works on individual isolation of fingers and the ability to use a stylist to practice hand writing. I liked the idea that this program is progressive and you are able to use a stylist, which will help younger students develop their hand writing skills. On the Binary Labs website, which provides the Dexteria app, it was also interesting to see they offer other apps called “Letter Reflex” which helps students overcome letter reversals, and “P.O.V” to help students develop spatial reasoning skills.

Bugs And Buttons is an affordable app at only $2.99. It is aimed towards young children to develop patterns, counting, learning about bugs, and in particular fine motor skills.  The app comes with 18 educational and interactive games. Two of the games that were demonstrated in the webinar which I enjoyed the most were the “Pinch and Grab” game, focuses on developing fine motor skills and it is challenging for students as it gets more difficult. It was neat to see how they added in the feature for student to learn how to sort and recycle as well. The program can also work on student wrist extension with the adjustment of the angles. The other game I also enjoyed was called “Roach Racing” which is another feature that also works on fine motor skills by controlling the speed with the coordination of your finger(s)/thumb.  The “Bug And Buttons” website (provided by “Little Bit Studio”), also indicates it is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese.  

Here is a demo of the app found on YouTube:

 

Injini app- As Barb best said “you get what you pay for with this app”. I can agree with her after learning about all its features and the fact that it was designed by teachers. The website (injini.net) states it’s a useful app for students with “special needs, to improve fine motor skills, spatial awareness, memory & visual processing”. It also states it has been “field tested with families, early intervention centres, & preschools. When this program is used for assessment or practice, the visual motor and control skills, as well as fine motor skills are all important. In this program you are also able to use your fingers or stylist to develop pre-writing skills. Another highlight is that the levels are progressive and develop in the same sequence as the developmental writing skills. It comes with 9 games and 8 mini-games that include many levels to practice the following skills “fine motor, cause and effect understanding, spatial awareness, memory, differentiation, response inhibition, visual processing, sequencing and more” (injini.net).

Here is another demo of the app Injini found on YouTube:

 

 

More apps learned from the webinars...

The next webinar I decided to watch was on "Communication Disorders".

The three most useful apps I learned about were the following:

Proloquo2go- is an  that is $189, but worth the money. It is very user friendly by both teachers and students. I was glad to find out more information on this app as I missed our class where we were introduced to it and had the opportunity to use it hands on. It was actually one of the main AAC devices advertised at the Florida conference I attended, but I was still not able to use it there. However, I think it says something when it is being advertised and used in the United States as well. I was impressed by how there are 8000 built in features in Proloquo2go and how adapted you can make it based on the users functioning ability (mainly for students who are non-verbal and have communication disorders). Just from learning about the other AAC devices out there, I do not feel they are as adaptive as this one. The ability to create folders, its word prediction and the options to change the voices are all very impressive!

I found this interesting video on how much time and research actually goes into developping the speech to text in programs such as Proloquo2go:

 

MyVoice- it is an AAC app aimed towards non-verbal students where you can access support online after setting up an account (http://myvoiceaac.com/app/talkrocketgo/).  It seems to be very user friendly with many tutorials available on its website. You can change any photo by pressing on it and choosing photos from your own camera roll. I find the insertion of your own images makes this app very personal. You can download pre-made folders and change the cells around once you have saved it. What’s neat about this app, is since you have to create an account on the website, it allows you to open up the account on different devices and share the created folders. It is also good for users who need to rest their vocal cords but continue to communicate with others. I will remember this one next time I lose my voice in school and want a fun but educational way to communicate with me students! J  

Sign4me- I enjoyed this app for many reasons. One main reason is that it is very affordable at $9.99 and it is very user friendly. It’s like having a translator in your pocket, as you are also able to type in English words or phrases and the avatar will sign for you right away.  It is so neat that you can turn your avatar around to see different angles (I think my students would enjoy that part especially). You are also able to bank your words or phrases and if someone doesn’t know sign language they are also able to follow along and learn as the words are displayed below the avatar. I wish this would have been available to me as a kid, as I had two Deaf grandparents. It was very difficult for me to communicate with them at a young age. I feel a program like this would really interest kids and adults in learning sign language more quickly and in a fun way.

This YouTube video gives a great summary using the app to sign its features:

 

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.

Feb. 9th, 2013

I thought the online class using “Blackboard Collaborate” very useful and interactive! When I first entered the chat before our scheduled class started, I was worried I was not going to understand all its features, but after experiencing our session I felt it was a very useful way to hold a lesson. I can see this virtual classroom being the new way to classes. Soon, there will be no need for people to get out of bed for school, because everyone will be able to participate in class. This would avoid the limitations of not attending class due to a cold, travelling, having young children, etc. I’m not sure if my junior high school students could handle it yet, but I can see it being very useful to high school students and post secondary schools. I’m surprised Acadia University does not offer more classes through a virtual classroom. I guess, there would be some limitations with technology not functioning properly, but it is an amazing way for everyone to access an education and participate online through different modes of communication.
 

I really enjoyed all of the presentations today. Although all of the presentations were done using the virtual classroom, it was interesting that each presentation was still done using a different format (PowerPoint, blog, podcast). I was very interested and drawn to Tarah’s topic only because I grew up with two deaf grandparents that raised my father. They passed away when I was a child, but in my younger years I was able to learn some basic sign language. I have lost a lot of the language over the years, but it is something I have always wanted to learn again. I’m always amazed by those who are able to sign for hours and hours. It looks like it is something that can become exhausting after a while. During our conference in Florida, they actually had someone sign the keynote presentations to the audience and it was very nice to see them have this set up. I was also able to meet a specialist from the Institute for Disability Research and Training in one of my sessions at the conference who was able to show me some of the resources they have available to students who are deaf or blind. The website she directed me to that has many links and more information on how they are supporting students in their region is: www.idrt.com. As I mentioned in my last blog she also shared some apps available to support these students, such as Sign Story, Walking the Plank, Sign 4 Me, ASL Translate. Some of them do cost money, but they are very good prices for what you get from the technology.

I was hoping to be able to present my information today using my blog or the PowerPoint I put together, but unfortunately I was limited in the fact that my computers is not high tech with a working microphone. AGAIN, this is another reason why I should make the big move on purchasing an iPad or Mac Pro. I know it’s going to happen soon, just need to be financially setup to do so. So for now I’ll make do with the old HP, but mentally I have been convinced to buy the iPad because of all of its useful features. I can’t wait until the school board decides to invest in this as well.

Getting back to the virtual classroom, I think it is going to be the new way we hold or offer many of our classes in the future. Not only because it’s so easy to use, but because it truly is accessible to everyone and it avoids much of the intimidation factor that students face when being resistant to participating in class. The camera feature is also beneficial in the sense that we won’t lose all of the importance of being able to communicate in person as well.

I almost hope we are able to have another class through the chat room setting, because although I learned a lot in our session, I’m sure there are many more features available on it that I can learn.