Creative Apps for Teaching

As the years go by in teaching, I'm finding myself being more of an entertainer than I ever was before. The students entering elementary school these days, are digital natives, and used to instant access. A song and dance helps to keep their attention.

I'm looking at the Sock Puppets app, suggested by one of my students, and at the TouchCast app, which was a discovery I made at the Fall CUE conference, as ways of presenting info in new and exciting ways.

Sock Puppets is a one-take, 90 second movie. The time constraint might be good in that I'd like to get my point across quickly. To save a sock puppet movie, I save to camera roll, and then to YouTube. 

TouchCast I'm still working with, but the idea of the student interacting with the video is super fascinating to me. 

I'm pretty happy about the prospects for the applications for both apps, in my classroom!

http://youtu.be/4WF1P2Z-Qio

An Aha Moment Today

The tremendous task of preparing lesson plans for two grade levels (for my fourth and fifth grade combo class) presented itself again this weekend. Both groups have assessments in math, that have not been seen or created before. Today I created them, both for units 2, and study guide movies to match the unit summative assessments. Wow! What a task!

But in there somewhere today was a pretty cool moment when I saw a light shine,dare it be a ray of sunshine and light...a lightbulb going on over (or in) my head? 

I found premade test questions, the new way of writing them (I'm talking common core here). Then I copy and pasted...well, not exactly that, I transferred from an online site with questions, directly to the Notability app, and placed into one file, individual math questions matching the common core state standards, CCSS, addressed in the units I taught.

A test was miraculously compiled, and besides being saved on/in Notability, I sent the creation to Edmodo. The test will appear on Thursday morning for the students, since there is a scheduling feature on Edmodo.  I'm having my fifth graders save the test in their Notability apps, annotate (that means to write) on top of the test, and send the completed tests back to me, turned in on Showbie. Ahhhhh, well that just makes sense! No paper this time, people! 

Fun at the CUE

Last weekend I spoke at the Computer Using Educators (CUE) Conference in Napa about starting a "BYOD 1:1 IPad Elementary Classroom". I made an iMovie trailer for the apps I like to use in our BYOD class, to introduce and talk about each app. It also gave a good glimpse of the versatility of the iMovie app. 

I spoke about PlanBook.com which has been the greatest discovery for me! http://youtu.be/jEBlbFMLRns

Here is the Edmodo trailer I made to introduce talking about it:http://youtu.be/VrL1NgIp5G4

The educreations app is great for creativity:http://youtu.be/67U42n1czE0

Notability is so versatile for writing and annotating all assignments:http://youtu.be/NC3RFOo9Nmk

Showbie is great for turning in all assignments online. I can give direct feedback:http://youtu.be/GMgL90neEjA

It was a fun weekend for me, not just because of the sharing at CUE, but also because of the learning! I learned about TouchCast which is a free app on the iPad, for making movies, inserting webpages and polls. It is an interactive movie application. Wow! I was reminded of Minecraft, and all the fantastic endless possibilities there. Coding discussions included Tynker and Khanacademy, and so much more. I was very impressed with all the sessions I attended at CUE!