App of the Week: Evernote Scannable

Scannable is a new scanning app from the makers of the ever popular Evernote. It instantly locates and scans documents, receipts, photos, and other paper files. Your scans are cropped, rotated, and enhanced right in the app. It can even turn scanned business cards into contacts! Scans can be shared via email, sent to other apps such as Evernote, saved to Photos, or send to Cloud storage locations such as DropBox or GoogleDrive.

Download the pdf

Download the App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/evernote-scannable/id883338188?mt=8

App of the Week: Toontastic

Toontastic is a storytelling app for creating your own cartoon stories. Design your set, create characters, act out the learning. Students can draw, animate, narrate, and record their

Launchpad Toys, the creators of Toontastic, was recently acquired by Google and the full version of the app is now free! There are hundreds of characters and backgrounds to choose from and videos can be exported to the Photos app, posted online, or edited in iMovie.

Download the pdf

Learn more on their website: http://www.launchpadtoys.com/

Download the app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toontastic/id404693282?mt=8

Digital Math Manipulatives and Models

The use of manipulatives and models for math aid students in learning math conceptually. While physical manipulatives are great there are also a lot of math manipulative apps available.These math manipulative apps align well with the common core math standards and allow students to develop conceptual understanding of many math concepts.

Here are a few teachers and students have been using:

Virtual Manipulatives is a app from ABCya.com and provides both fraction bars and fraction circles. In addition to fractions, there are models for decimals and percents. The app includes an pen tool for annotating on the screen. In this lesson, the teacher and students were using the app to decompose both simple fractions and mixed numbers.

Virtual Manipulatives: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/virtual-manipulatives!/id471341079?mt=8

Number Pieces is from The Math Learning Center. There are two apps in this series:
Number Pieces and Number Pieces Basic. The apps both contain sets of Base Ten Blocks (ones, tens, and hundreds), and tools for annotating. The apps can be used for modeling a variety of problems. This teacher is using the app to model decimal division.

Number Pieces: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/number-pieces-by-math-learning/id605433778?mt=8
Number Pieces Basic:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/number-pieces-basic-by-math/id611452042?mt=8

Geoboard is also from The Math Learning Center and is one of my personal favorites. Students always love using Geoboards but mostly because of the the rubber bands. Now we have digital rubber bands! The app has been recently updated and a lot of new features added. In addition to the standard 25-peg board, you can change to a 150-peg board and a circular board on the iPad. There are also annotation tools and a text tool for writing equations and expressions.

The app can be used for learning about area, perimeter, fractions, the new circular Geoboard could help with learning about time, and much more.

     

The app is available for both iPad and iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geoboard-by-math-learning/id519896952?mt=8

The Math Learning Center has other great apps for learning math. Check them out too. Many of their apps are available for IOS, Windows phones and tablets, or via the web.

Similes and Shadow Puppet Edu

One of the 1:1 iPad teachers created a nice flip learning lesson on similes. She created her flip learning video using Explain Everything, which her students watched at home.

In class the next day they reviewed the concept and the teacher modeled creating a smilie using the Shadow Puppet Edu app. The students first had to create their comparison and get approval from the teacher, then they created their own Shadow Puppet Edu video simile.

While observing, I created one too!

Download the Free ShadowPuppet Edu app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shadow-puppet-edu/id888504640?mt=8

Learn More: http://get-puppet.co/education/

App of the Week: Post-it® Plus

Post-it® Notes are really popular both for teachers and students. But what do you do with a all of those little squares at the end of a brainstorming session or project? You digitize them of course using the Post-It Plus app.

Download the pdf

Free in the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/post-it-plus/id920127738?mt=8

Practice for AZELLA Testing

In Arizona, students learning English as a Second Language are required to take a state assessment called AZELLA to check their progress in learning english. Prior to taking the test, teachers often have students practice some of the types of skills and activities they will see on the test. They are provided some resources for this but one teacher decided she needed more and wanted them to be more engaging for the students. She used the Pic Collage app to create these practice activities for writing. Much better than black and white practice prompts!

Getting Creative with Explain Everything

I have posted before that Explain Everything is one of our favorite apps. It is just so versatile and creative. Students and teachers are using it a lot to explain concepts, create flip learning video lessons, take notes, and so much more.

But sometimes we just need to come across a couple of new and refreshing ideas for using an app!

So here are a couple of nice blogs posts with ideas.

iPaddiction posted about a teacher that created her own audio recordings of To Kill a Mockingbird. She recorded the book by chapter so that her students would all be able to access the text. So she found the book in pdf format and imported the document into EE and then recorded herself reading with proper pacing and expression.

http://ipaddiction.blogspot.com/2015/01/explain-everything-for-read-aloud-book.html

Think back to those VH-1 Pop-Up videos from the 1990's. Greg Kulowiec posted about using EE to create similar pop-up videos. His post outlines the process but he also has a great video tutorial. Thanks Greg!

http://kulowiectech.blogspot.com/2015/01/pop-up-videos-x-explain-everything.html


Check out these ideas and see if something would work for your classroom!

Enjoy!

Apple Site Visit

The iAchieve Project is an Apple Distinguished Program. As part of that designation we host site visits. Apple advertises and supports the visit but we do the hosting and presenting. During the site visit, attendees from other schools and districts come to hear and see how we are integrating Apple products to impact learning.

Last Thursday, November 13th, was out fall visit. We chose one of our schools that has 7 flipped learning classrooms supported by 1:1 iPads. There were about 20 attendees along with 4 representatives from Apple. We shared information about iAchieve: how it all started, how we use the iPods for learning, iPad Media Kits being used by teachers, and our 1:1 iPad flipped learning classrooms.

The highlight of the day is visiting classrooms. The teachers and students did a great job and everyone was excited and impressed.

Fifth grade was beginning their study space. One group had brainstormed questions they had about space and were researching the different topics. When they had completed their research, they began creating presentations about their findings.

Another group was working on a study of the planets. They too researched their chosen planet and then began making presentations on the iPads. Most of them were using our favorite app - Explain Everything.

As we entered fourth grade, we were greeted by a welcome poster with QR Codes. Students had used the Croak.it! app to record messages for their guests about their class and what they were studying. Here are some of the Croak.its. Just click on the link to listen.

App Guest

For Apple People

iPad

iPad 2

The fourth grade teachers had sent home a flipped learning video the previous night and our visitors were able to observe the interactive and differentiated activities going on in those classrooms the next day.

 

After the classrooms visits we returned to the Multipurpose Room to debrief. During that time several students and teachers also joined us for a time of questions and comments.

The visit was quite successful. We were able to share our successes and inspire other to follow.

App of the Week - AZ CORE

Mastery Connect has developed a new Common Core Standards app for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The AZ Core app provides easy access to Arizona's College and Career Ready Standards. The app is free and allows you to search for standards by content area, grade level, or keyword. Check it out!

Click here to download a pdf.

A Technology Coach by Any Other Name...

When the iAchieve Project first began 5 years ago (where has the time gone!), I spent my days visiting our iPod touch classrooms working with teachers and students integrating the iPods into teaching and learning. I was helping teachers plan lessons and activities, co-taught iPod integrated lessons, and assisted teachers with locating new apps and syncing the iPods.

When I would enter a classroom there was a feeling of excitement in the air along with whispers about what was going to happen that day - I wonder what we are going to do today on the iPods? Are we going to get a new app?

Pretty soon when I entered the room there were whispers of

"The iPod Lady is here; the iPod Lady is here!" That label stuck in classrooms and by students across the district - wherever I would go.

A couple of years later we started integrating iPads. Same thing happened. I would enter a room to students clamoring a new title - "The iPad Lady is here; the iPad Lady is here!"

One day recently I was leaving one of our campuses and saw a student and his mom. He pointed me out to his mom and said "Hi!" His mom asked who I was - the response "She's the App Lady!"

Another name that I am proud to wear!!

iPad in Education Results

Apple has recently released their iPad in Education Results study.  The study highlights the changes to teaching and learning brought about by the integration of iPads: academic performance, engagement,  flexible instruction, and content design. The study highlights a variety of iPad schools and includes a vast amount of data collected during the study. Really a good read!



Download the document here.

App of the Week - MoMA Art

The Museum of Modern Art (http://www.moma.org/) in New York is a place that "fuels creativity, ignites minds, and provides inspiration." Their MoMa Art iPad app supports that mission.

This app is designed to inspire the artist in each of us. Create art activities inspired by well-know artists or use the built in tools to create your own work of modern art.

Click here to download a pdf version of the App of the Week.

Chicktionary App

Chicktionary is one of the apps that has been part of the iAchieve app list right from the beginning - that's 5 years now! We first used it with our iPod touches and now also include it on all of the iPads for both students and teachers.

While it's classified as a game, it is a great learning tool. It's an engaging word work resource where students think about letter combinations and practice spelling skills.

Previously there were separate apps for iPhone and iPad but now it is a universal app. They have really updated the user interface and it looks very modern and up to date. But the students still love it and are practicing those skills.

Several of our teachers have created their own accountability worksheets for Chicktionary where 

students keep a list of the words they have created and then use them in a sentence. Many of our teachers are using a Chicktionar recording sheet created by Laura Moore. It's a fun sheet with eggs where students record the words they have created.

Download Laura's Chicktionary recording sheet.

App of the Week - RWT Timeline

Read*Write*Think (http://www.readwritethink.org/) is a great website for ideas, resources, lesson plans, and tools to support reading and language arts. They have some useful online student interactives to support students in showing what they know.

Over the past couple of years RWT has also been developing iPad apps aligned with a variety of their student interactives. The RWT Timeline app is a great tool for creating projects showing sequential order arranged by date, time, or event. Timelines can include both images and descriptive text.

Click here to download the RWT Timeline pdf.

Informational Texts and Newsela

The Arizona College and Career Ready Standards (Common Core) require a greater balance between reading fiction and non-fiction in the classroom. In addition, we want students to be reading nonfiction content that is relevant to their lives and interests.

Last year we discovered Newsela (https://newsela.com/). Newsela is a site that brings daily news into the classroom and provides a way to foster reading comprehension. The news articles are from major publications and rewritten at different Lexile Levels. All students in a classroom can read the same content but at a level that is appropriate for them. The articles are of high interest and cover a wide variety of topics including science, health, money, and sports. The texts are common core aligned and many have quizzes to test comprehension and close reading. There are both free and premium accounts.

Newsela is quick and easy to use. Teachers register, create classes, and add students. Teachers can assign specific articles that are automatically leveled for the grade level of the class. When students log in they see the article(s) that have been assigned and can start reading.

Last week I visited a classroom where the teacher had just begun using Newsela with her students. She was really excited about being able to deliver this type of content to the students. The teacher had created her account and set up the class so the students could get log-ins. It's very engaging for the students and works well on the iPads!

         

Click here to view the Newsela Quick Start Guide for Teachers.

Enjoy!