iTunes Resources

I just tweeted some great resources from iTunes that could be beneficial when trying to implement some mobile device apps in your classroom - i.e. Explain Everything, Skitch, SketchBook, etc.

Stop Motion Studio Lesson Ideas by Apple Education on iBooks https://t.co/TobFYqsIse

— Benjamin Nason (@Ratkacher) November 19, 2015

iBooks Author Starter Kit by Apple Education on iBooks https://t.co/qlMArxJtwS

— Benjamin Nason (@Ratkacher) November 19, 2015

Excellect collection of lesson ideas: Apple Education on iBooks https://t.co/INQYl7sBXj #edtech #ipaded

— Benjamin Nason (@Ratkacher) November 19, 2015

Quizlet for iPad

If you haven't discovered it already, Quizlet is a great app as a tool for studying.  Quizlet had been out for awhile, however from my experience it offers a decent amount of capability for being a FREE app.

Not only is this a great tool for general study of facts and concepts, but it, also, works well for learning languages.

Starting off, a student can easily Sign-up and Sign-in via their school Gmail account.  Making it very easy and secure for a student to register for an account.  Once started, a student can create a data bank of terms and definitions grouped in what Quizlet calls study sets.  Below is a video demo of using Quizlet.

Learning Workshop Idea for PIMS

I realize that lessons and plans for learning workshops have been already planned for the rest of this school year.  However, thinking ahead, for next year, SimCity has recently released an iOS app, FREE.

If you are not familiar with SimCity, it is a simulation gaming franchise that has been out since the late 80s and the premise of the game is that you are the mayor of a potential city.  As mayor, you have to build and improve your city to help it grow and make your city residents happy.  As a learning tool, students will learn how to manage the cities finances and resources, make critical thinking decisions and learn to work efficiently with the resources they have to develop a successful running city.  Not only is the game fun and clean, it is a great way to develop strategic thinking and problem solving and planning.

Perhaps consider this for your next Learning Workshop in the 2015-16 school year.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

The SimCity gaming community in education is so large, there is a site devoted to creating lesson plans and collaborating lesson ideas when using SimCity in the classroom.  Check out GlassLab's SimCityEdu.

Apple's Reminders Desktop and iOS Apps

If you haven't discovered Apple's Reminders desktop and iPad app, you may find this a very useful tool.  Simple, yet effective the Reminders app allows you to create reminders and lists for anything you want to be notified or "reminded" later on.  Sometimes just making a checklist of todos or goals for a projects is all you need.  Reminders is a simple way for you to manage several tasks or todos.

The great thing with having both Reminders on our MacBook Air and our iPad Mini is that you can sync your reminders and be notified on both devices.  If you have an IEP scheduled and you want to be notified later, you can set it in Reminders.  Perhaps you have a list of goals for a project or activity and you want to be able to prioritize and organize your workflow.  Reminders is a great way to accomplish that.

The video below demonstrates how Reminders is used on iOS (iPad) and on your MacBook Air.

Spotlight, Open an App Fast - MLTI Minute

This is one of my most used Macbook functions.

Google Drive on iPad

Google's Drive app on iPad is great.  Not only is it a great container for all of your file storage and documents, but you can create documents on the app as well.

Richard Byrne has released a guide handbook that explains and walks you through how to make the most of this app.

Google Drive for iPad by richardbyrne

You can view document by using the right-side scroll bar; use the download button in bottom toolbar; or the "full view" button.

Appsfire - Another great iOS app shopper

appsfire.com offers some great resources for finding iOS apps.  They have their own FREE app, called Appsfire Deals, which shares apps that have recently gone FREE and the top rated FREE apps.  Check it out.

Using Voice Recording Apps for Verbal Practice in a World Language Classroom

Here's an easy and useful way to have your students practice their vernacular and pronunciation for those teachers and/or students who use iPads in the classroom.  Find a reliable audio recording app that allows the user to share the final product via email.  Below are a couple of recommendations.  Student pairs can be handed the iPad device, record their conversation in their learned language and save their recording in the app; or email the final product to the teacher.  The teacher can then review the student's quality of pronunciation later at a time when it is more convenient, so they can manage the class or work with another group of students.

Not only can this be a fun and convenient way to assess a students performance, but it can be less intimidating for some students than speaking directly to the teacher or the classroom and can therefore build confidence within the leaner.

Here's another creative idea that works well with naming objects.  Some of the recommended apps below not only record audio, but utilizes your 5-megapixel camera for adding snapshots to your notes.  Have your students take pictures of objects in the classroom, hallway, or any where you would like them to.  Then have them attach an audio recording to the note in their learned language with their chosen camera snapshot .  This is another fun way of allowing them pick the objects and label them with their recorded voice.

Here are a couple of apps that I have found that can execute this job and are fairly cheep.

Audio Memos (FREE or $0.99) - Very simple interface and easy to use; one step record

• Students can email as well as store their recordings in the app.
• Students should label their recordings with their name to recall them later
• This app actually provides a URL with which you can remotely access your saved voice memos online and download them to your computer
• The only difference between the FREE version and the $0.99 version is
• You can send email up to 15MB of audio (free version should be more than enough for the classroom assignment
• The app will continue to record when you are multi-tasking out of the app
• USB file transfers
• Application lock code
• Search/filter your recordings

Audioboo (FREE) is an iPhone app, but works in the iPad device.  This is an online application that has an iOS app.  Simple operation - record and publish.  Teacher can access the published recordings from the Audioboo site.  Students will have to make sure when labeling their recordings with their name that they do NOT use their full name because the published file is on an open forum and their name will be available to public.  Students should use a teacher-given nickname or their first initial and last name.

Voice Recorder for iPad ($0.99) does the same as the $0.99 Audio Memos app; easy and clean user interface.  It, also, allows users to upload their recordings to YouTube and Facebook and allows the user to add notes to their recordings.  You can, also, trim the recordings within the app.

AudioNote Light (FREE).  The extras to this package is that it is designed as a notetaker with audio recording capability.  The notes taken are synced up with the audio recording, so you do not have to search through the audio to find key points, but you can locate them by the links in your notes.  Pretty nifty and maybe more than you need, but for the teacher who has everything, you may not have this.  There is a lot more to what this app offers and perhaps it could serve as a multi-purpose tool for the teacher as well as the students.  Their $4.99 version, of course, does more.

My Favorite All-in-one:  Noteability ($0.99) is similar to AudioNote in that it is a notetaker with handwriting capability and audio recording ability.  Noteability syncs with Dropbox and your iTunes account.  Students can record and you can either email or sync them to your iTunes library for later grading.  This app is one (as mentioned above) that will allow the user to import a photo from their iPad photo roll to the note.

Another of my favorite apps:  Evernote (FREE) is an all-in-one notetaker, data collector, bookmarker; you name it; it is designed to be your personal digital notebook.  Evernote, like Noteability, will crate notes using audio recordings as well as imagery.  You could set up notes in advance with your selected images and have your students record their pronunciation of that object.  Since Evernote is an online cloud storage system, student names are not protected or secure, so make sure you are using code names, nick names, or first initial and last name.

There are hundreds of audio recorders and notetakers with audio recording, however here are a couple more recommendations that can do these features I have mentioned:

Draw Pad Pro ($1.99 w/ $0.99 upgrade for audio recorder)

Handwriting/Notetaking apps from appadvice.com.

Apps Gone Free - Today's Feature

Apps Gone Free is a FREE iPhone app (compatible with your iPad as well) that features on a daily basis apps that have gone FREE.

Today there is a good one for those iPad begginers or those who would like to know more about your iOS device.  The app is called SCOtutor for iPad.  It was at the price of $3.99, but now it is FREE.  The app is basically an organized and categorized set of video tutorials explaining pretty much every little feature of your iPad device.  It is designed to cover the iPad2 and iOS5, however is great for anyone who has the original first iPad.  The app is amazingly easy to navigated through and to where you want to view.  I believe you will find this extremely helpful.  Below is a video demo of the app.

Get the Apps Gone Free app for more info, or just go to your iTunes store for SCOtutor for iPad.

(disclaimer - this is not my preferred demo, but it does cover it all; he's not Mr. Personality)

AppAdvice - App News, Reviews, and Much More

Previously I mentioned the app directory Appolicious, which is a great directory and social media platform for finding iPad, iPhone or Android apps.  Another one I stumbled upon through the highly resourceful social medium of Twitter is AppAdvice.  This is an extremely resourceful app search service.  Similar to Appolicious, AppAdvice not only features an easy to navigate search directory, but they also offer fresh updates and news on anything iOS (which is referring to your Apple mobile devices; iPad, iPhone, etc).  I believe you will thoroughly enjoy perusing through this site.

Here is an excerpt from their About page:

AppAdvice is the ideal resource on the web for people looking to discover iPhone apps. AppAdvice thoroughly filters through the 60,000+ apps in the App Store to bring you up to date on relevant news regarding apps, as well as providing detailed app reviews.
The focus of AppAdvice.com is not to give you the same monotonous content found all over the web, but rather aggregate it in a useful way making it easy to figure out which apps you should download, that’s it. No Apple or Mac news, just iPhone apps. From our custom AppLists to instantaneously updating our BargainBin to inform you of discounts on apps, AppAdvice aims to be your one stop shop for everything App Store.

And...as they would say in the infomercial business..."but wait there's more", AppAdvice has their own app collection.  Their recent one is free for a limited time - AppStart for iPad.  The same great search/news features offered on their site is now available in a fully packed iPad app.  They also offer their $1.99 AppAdvice app that has their complete, unadulterated version of the AppAdvice service and their FREE iPhone/iPod app AppsGonefree where they feature several apps that have recently become free; which is great for your iPad collection as well.

As mentioned in the excerpt above, AppAdvice's AppLists and AppGuides are a great way to find exactly what you are looking for; from apps for Passover to apps for Filmmakers to Flashcard apps, and much more.

Google Earth iPad App - More Than Meets the Eye

Lately I have been discovering how awesome Google Earth's iPad app is.  To anyone who I have said that it is limiting compared to the desktop application, I want to tell you I was wrong.

Not only is the app a great feature when using maps and geography in the classroom with fluid navigation (iPad's multi-touch makes a huge difference) as well as incorporating your own Google Maps collections, but it offers most of the same great features your desktop version offers accessible at your finger tips.

Indeed, the layers menu only gives you seven choices of data-layers (or an overlay of visual data) - places, businesses, roads, etc.  However, the cool thing I have recently discovered is that you have access to Google Earth's online Gallery.  The Gallery has hundreds of imagery and data-layers that you can add to your Google Earth experience.  From real-time earth quakes to Rumsey Historical Maps to mountain tours.  Visit the Google Earth Gallery.

 

Here's how it works on iPad:

Locate the Options icon in the upper menu bar.  In the drop down menu you will notice access to Google Earth Gallery.

This will take you to the online gallery (while in the app) where you can find hundreds of data-layers with which you can add to your own earth view.  If you find a gallery you are interested in, click "View now"and it will automatically add it to your earth view.

Keep in mind this is a temporary view.  Once you exit out of the app, your view goes to the original settings.  If you need to clear your earth view of any unwanted data layers, simply click on your Options and select "Clear Map".  Below is the David Rumsey historical maps layer showing a contextual popup bubble of a 1733 map.

If I click on the map, an overlay is displayed on my Google Earth app.

Below demonstrates a view of real-time earthquakes around the globe.

As mentioned previously, when you exit the Google Earth app, your chosen data-layers are cleared.  You can also, start fresh and clear your view by selecting Options and "Clear Map".

So, imaging when using your iPad in the classroom being able to display dynamic views of various locations on our planet with enriched layers of data and embedded information making any type of geographical lesson (in any subject) visually engaging, making student meaning and understanding much more clear and exciting.

Flashcards with Cramberry

I stumbled across this app for creating on line flashcards.  This is a great web application for any subject when studying vocabulary or key words, names or places.  Once you set up your account you can start adding in your key words and definitions.  Cramberry will recognize most common words and supply an automatic definition that you can opt to use; or simply create your own.

Another cool feature about Cramberry is that they offer an iPad app with which you can view a portable version of your Cramberry flashcard library.  This could a great feature for getting individual students involved; especially in Special Education.  The app is $3.99.

Cramberry, also, offers thousands of pre-made flashcards sorted by category.  Teacher your students Spanish vocabulary with Cramberry's pre-made Spanish Vocabulary flashcards.

Opening an account is easy.  They offer either the FREE version or for more capability subscribe $9/year for the Pro version.

Appolicious - Mobile App Discovery Service

Appolicious, a product from Yahoo, is a "mobile app discovery service" for iOS and Android devices.  If I were to have a "favorite of the month", this would be it.


Basically, Appolicious is a directory/social network.  Not only is its app directory extensive with categories and subcategories, but you can connect with other mobile device users and learn what they like.  Users can create their own libraries and lists to share with others.  So finding the perfect app for the specific job you are looking for is much easier.

Also, along with a written review, there is a video demo for each app so you can see it in action.  Appolicious offers recommendations based off categories and even a Price Cuts list of apps that have reduced their prices.  As with the iTunes Store you can put your interested apps in a wishlist for later purchasing.


Go to Appolicious, create a free account, explore around, and add me to your following, ratkacher.  I will be creating lists based off content areas and share apps that I find or are shared to me.  Share this resource with your friends and colleagues.  Let's make a community and network of app sharers.

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