Month: May 2015

Week 2 reflection: I Learn Technology

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This blog was created by Kelly Tenkely. She is a teacher, and a technology education specialists who really likes to be able to meet the needs of many different learning styles. She begins her blog by posting a math app called Monster Math. I went to my app store to see if I would like this app to use in my future classroom and I have to say it was quite useful. Tenkely also give a strong explanation about why utilizing technology in the classroom is so important, she believes it helps students who struggle with learning in traditional ways. She has many links to websites on her blog that are for multiple learning styles. Examples of theese learning styles are verbal, logical, musical rhythm. Another app that she has listed on her blog was called 123D Design which would be great for students who enjoy assembling and building with shapes, great for a geometry lesson.

Overall Tenkely’s blog was very interesting I do wish she had a list at the begging of her blog where she listed all of the apps she used. As a whole her blog is full of ideas of how to integrate technology into the classroom. I really like that she has so many ideas about how to use technology to cater to students who have different learning styles.

 

Word Clouds in the Classroom

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Word Salad: Free or $3.99

Likes:The app would be very useful in the classroom when introducing a new unit. This could also be used to introduce new vocab. I used the free version of the app which was set up very similar to the paid version. Overall the app was user friendly. The set up was simple and well organized.

Dislikes: The app was a little confusing when it came to figuring out how the words would display on the screen. Also the free version has a huge watermark in the background which makes it quite distracting to the viewer.

 

 

Thinglink in Education: Native American History

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The App is free:

App Description: This app is wonderful for teaching, job, and just simply connecting to others. This in a sense this is twist of Power Point, Prezi, and social media combined. This app is mainly a canvas to post ideas, links, and videos to integrate into lessons. This is a way for teachers to and students to make a more personalized profile.

Application in education: This app could be used in the classroom for a research projects. This makes presentations way more interesting and interactive than a Power Point presentation. Also vidoes are easy to hyperlink to you Thinglink. Also this would be great for a teacher to use for a guest speaker or to make a Thinglink for the whole class for an end of the year project, where students can take turns adding icons each week.

Limitations of the App: Since I haven’t had a lot of experience with using new apps, getting started on Thinglink was quite challenging to navigate for me. So teachers who are new to integrating technology . I think the app could be more user friendly, and easier to navigate.

Conclusion: overall I think the app is a great way to present projects and share ideas. Also this is a greta way to discover new lesson that you could teach. I would most recommend using the website version verses the app version.

 

Week 1 App Review: Star Walk 2

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–The price of Star Walk 2 is $2.99, I downloaded the free app version.

-App in education: -This app is amazing! This app is so amazing for science projects. When you hold the tablet or phone up to the sky the app is able to show you where all the stars and  constellations. When learning about physical science this would be a great app for the students to learn and explore space. 

-App description: The app uses modern-day technology, satellites, to pinpoint star clusters, zodiac signs and more. Star walk 2 is so unique because you can find out the name of all the stars, locations of planets, this is all made possible by just the touch of your finger any where on the screen. The makes have also improved the app by using HD images, adding mission to mars which lets you explore more about the planet, and adding additional language translation.

-Limitations: This app is best if you pay for the full version (i.e. Star Walk 2 app.) There is a free Star Walk app available but ads interrupt the user often. Also on the free version you cannot click on everything and get information about it, many stars or other features are not activated.

-Conclusion: I have concluded that if you buy the full version of this app it could become very useful to help students understand more about space. Also this would great to help with projects over the planets, or just to have the students use to do an at home assignment. I’m very impressed and overall I intend to use this app in my classroom if ipads are made available.

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Week 1 Reflection: Moving at the Speed of Creativity

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Blog: moving at the speed of lightimage

Overall I really like the set up of this blog. There post on their blog that talked about distributing free ebooks; Amazon, Apple, and Smashwords. This was very informative about what apps. are easy to post books on and what apps are hard to post books on. Wesley Fryer is the author of this blog and explained in great detail about both the struggles and the successes he had. He has explained about his great struggles with posting books on Apples IBook, he has also explained his success with using Kindle Direct Publishing and other tablet apps that are more user friendly. In his posy Fryer explained how Apple  higher’s people from PC to show how they design their apps. so they can make their products more suer friendly.

I really liked how Fryer explained in detail about what apps are made more user-friendly by certain companies. I didn’t like that the writer bashed on some PC product designs but didn’t explain an alternative side.

OSMO in class

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Osmo was very intriguing, I feel that systems such as this would be great to use in the classroom. I really liked the tangram app with the different shapes. This was both challenging and unique wayimage image to create designs and shapes. Very exciting experience and would be great to teach Geometry. This app also inspired me to get out of my comfort zone for example I struggle with drawing and I was able to have a opportunity to experience drawing in a new way with the app.

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Words:

running

jumping

eating

crawling

singing

playing

looking

swinging

riding

galloping

swimming

diving

Dusting

crying

screaming

standing

paddling

grinning

smiling