Give Students Mobile Devices to Maximize Their Learning Time
In a blog post, Chris Dede, a professor in learning technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, advocates the use of mobile devices in education. The devices, which allow students to learn any time and anywhere, expand instructional time beyond the classroom and the teacher and help increase students’ motivation to learn, Dede writes. NBC.com/Education Nation blog
Cell phones have long been a serious no-no in the classroom, and many schools, stating that they are a serious distraction for students, have banned them from campuses altogether. Yet there is a growing trend that is lifting the ban on smartphones and instead asking kids to use their phones and mobile devices as learning tools. While some have responded critically to this movement, others have found that it helps students to become engaged and interested in lessons, and in some districts has even resulted in a marked increase in performance levels.
Whether you’re still on the fence about the role of mobile technology in the classroom or are looking for ways to get inspired to use it in your own lessons, it pays to learn a bit more about how smartphones are currently being used for education. Here, we’ve collected stories about just a handful of the schools leading the way in using smartphones in the classroom, making for both interesting and informative research for any tech-savvy (or tech curious) teacher. Who knows, you may just find ideas that inspire you to initiate a mobile revolution in your own classroom!
Shelly Terrell DOES IT AGAIN……
Recently, I presented a webinar with Simple K12, Holiday Apps for Creating Gifts. Children, adolescents, and teens can create very meaningful gifts for friends and family members using several fun apps. The apps are very easy to use, often free, and have various multimedia options. Many integrate images, audio, text, video and extras. Moreover, students write, read, and present digital stories that tie into their real world experience! Children can also easily send the messages, videos, and cards Christmas morning for parents to wake up and see on their phones. Many of these apps have the ability for users to share their productions through online communities, e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter! Some even allow editing online on a website and embedding options.
Text your classroom.
Broadcast updates to parents and students.
Engage any student on any device — during or after school. Ask and answer questions, individually or with groups of students. Incorporate modern technology in your teaching safely and easily.
Examples……
Problem: Students and parents keep forgetting about homework changes and schedule changes.
Solution: Use ClassPager to instantly message everyone’s phone — where you know they’ll read it.
Stuck On Earth
Free
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stuck-on-earth/id478313722?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
A new kind of travel app that brings you the best places in the world to visit, photograph, and experience. It’s the ultimate app for explorers, photographers, and daydreamers.
The high school standards are listed in conceptual categories:
- Number and Quantity
- Algebra
- Functions
- Modeling
- Geometry
- Statistics and Probability
The Real Number System: Properties of exponents to rational exponents, use of properties of rational and irrational numbers, Reason Quantitatively and use units to solve problems, the complex number system which includes complex numbers, polynomial identities and equations. Vector and Matrix Quantities- perform operations on matrices and use matrices in applications, perform operations on vectors.
Check out the complete list, CLICK HERE
While many were disappointed with the lack of new features that came standard on Apple’s new iPhone 4S, there was one that many are hailing as a breakthrough in technology. That feature was Siri, the phone’s built-in personal assistant. While Siri might be employed more often to help users find a latte than do anything life-changing, the technology itself is pretty amazing. Siri can listen, interpret, and respond to user voices, making it a huge leap forward in voice recognition technology.
Siri is still in relative infancy as a program, but as the technology develops, it will be interesting to see how it’s applied in other situations outside of finding basic information, locating a Starbucks, or updating a calendar. One area where Siri’s capabilities could be extraordinarily useful is in education, and many are already theorizing about the myriad different ways that Siri could be used to change how we teach, learn, and view it. Here we’ve collected a few of these ideas about how Siri could make the leap from a simple search tool to a powerful learning and education assistant. While they may not all come to pass, it’s certainly fun to think about a world where interaction with technology for education could be so seamless, accessible, and maybe even fun.
Beginner’s Guide to iOS Development: The Interface – Part I: The good news is, iPhone application development is not as hard as you might think, and this post exists as a comprehensive guide to walk you through the complete process of building an application for iPhone. So whether you’re learning for business or you just have an amazing app idea that might make you a millionaire, let’s get started on building your first iPhone app!
Beginner’s Guide to iOS Development: Building Your First App – Part II: In the first part of our iOS tutorial I took you through a guided tour of the iPhone app development. We got a deeper look at Xcode 4, and also took a very short tutorial on building iPhone app. Today, we’ll get into the second segment of the topic, where we will be building a fully-functioning iPhone application. The app, with a tabbed navigation, will convert temperature units and distance units. Don’t worry if you’re still new to the Xcode. It does not take very long time to comfortably adapt into the interface. I’ll be explaining each step in detail so you shouldn’t get lost, either!
These are actually pretty good and very clear. I think most of us could actually accomplish the task and create an App. I think the hard part is a fully developed idea.
Adobe has officially decided to halt development toward future versions of Flash for mobile devices. While this mainly affects those of you with BlackBerry’s and PlayBooks or anything running Android, I believe most Apple owners are quite interested in this news. I am pretty sure if you have a seashell in the room you can put your ear against you can hear Steve Jobs whispering, “I told you so.”
Jobs was at the center of controversy when he took a stand and said Apple would not be supporting Flash on iOS-based devices. Everybody thought he would cave. Everybody thought we couldn’t live without support for Flash. Well, those everybody’s were wrong.
There’s a lot to love about the way iOS works, but sometimes you just need a little bit more from it. Take the built-in keyboard, for example. It gets the job done for texting and typing in shorter bursts, but for those aspiring novelists, businessmen with a presentation to finish, or extremely dedicated Internet forum trolls, the default keyboard may not cut it. Thankfully, there are a handful of options in the App Store that provide a functional alternative. From the keyboards for the socially addicted to the professional typist on the go, here are eight of the most helpful alternative keyboard options.
http://www.maclife.com/article/gallery/8_alternate_ios_keyboard_apps
The iTunes App Store is packed to the brim with dozens upon dozens of quality apps. We’ll help you wade through the slush to find them.
As of July, 2011, there were over 425,000 iOS apps in the iTunes App Store, 100,000 of them native iPad apps. That’s an extraordinary amount of software battling for a home within your iPad or iPad 2, and there’s no doubt that some is great and some is junk. So the vital question is: how does one find the gems among the garbage? The most basic answer is to read App Store user ratings and reviews, but that’s a potential time-suck of massive proportions. Besides, the wisdom of crowds isn’t always all that wise. The better answer would be to check out PCMag’s picks for the 100 best iPad apps.
Read the full story and find out what PC Magazine thinks are the best 100 apps.
In Lion you can easily add Emoji characters (smiley faces, hearts, graphic icons, etc) in text. Bring up the Characters palette with Command+Option+T and then select Emoji. Then select the type and double-click the character to insert it. Works best in rich text editors like TextEdit and Mail, but doesn’t seem to work yet in Pages. http://macmost.com/type-emoji-characters.html
and check out:
Video: MacMost Now 623: Address Book Special Fields
Video: MacMost Now 622: Speech Recognition For Your Mac
“Autumn is beginning to set in and for anyone who’s still pursuing education in any form, now is the time that it begins to drag. In an effort to help all those at high school, and show the rest of us just how intriguing the iPad can be, I have compiled a list of excellent educational apps that will go a long way to enlivening your learning!
If you know anyone who is struggling to get engaged with their school work, or just needs a little boost, make sure they have an iPad (maybe buy them one) and then send them here…
Let’s dive into the depths of human knowledge and understanding!” CLICK HERE
Wesley Fryer, of Moving at the Speed of Creativity has a wonderful post today about annotating on your iPad.
“As I approach a significant academic milestone this semester with the completion of my dissertation and PhD, I thought I’d share a very handy iPad application I’ve been using to annotate, correct and edit PDF versions of my own writing recently: iAnnotate PDF.”
Read the full story and see the step-by-step instructions.
When iOS 5 was released alongside the iPhone 4S, much of the talk was about Siri and other voice-related technology built right into the operating system. The option to speak into your iPhone and have it either translate that speech to text, or act upon your instruction is obviously super cool, but there’s one speech-related feature that’s slipped under the radar.
iOS 5 has a new accessibility option that allows iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users to have their text read back to them…
The toggle switch for text-to-speech is hidden inside the General > Accessibility section of your iDevice’s Settings app, and goes by the name of “Speak Selection.” You can also change how quickly the text is read via a slider.
Read the full instructions: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2011/10/23/ios5-text-to-speech/
(CBS News) For severely autistic people, communication is often impossible, leaving them unable to convey what they want or need. But as Lesley Stahl reports, touch-screen apps designed for tablet computers like the iPad are now giving autistic people new ways to express themselves, some for the first time. Teachers and parents are hailing the technology as a breakthrough, one that can reveal the true depth of knowledge and emotion trapped behind a wall of silence.
Watch the segment: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-20124225/apps-for-autism-communicating-on-the-ipad
Angela Cunningham, Social Studies Educator, Instructional Technology Consultant.
Here is a great LiveBinder with resources for social studies teachers
By R.J. Murphy, Small Dog Electronics
This is a neat little tool I’ve been using for a while. You can essentially turn any song in your iTunes library into a ringtone for your iPhone.
First, you’ll want to pick out the song you’d like to use and find a good 15-30 second duration that you would like to specifically use for your ringtone. If it’s not the beginning or end of the song, you’ll want to make a note of the start and stop time of the part.
Next, click on the song and press Command + I on your keyboard. Click on the Options tab and plug those recorded times in the Start and Stop Time fields (e.g. if you would like to use the first 30 seconds of the song, you would leave the Start Time at 0:00 and input 0:30 for the Stop Time). Make sure both check boxes are checked next to Start Time and Stop Time, and hit OK.
With the song still selected in iTunes, click on Advanced > Create AAC Version in the menu bar. You should now see a duplicate of that song in your library that has a 30-second duration. Click the newly made AAC version of the song and drag it onto your desktop. Click the file once, then press enter.
Now, you’ll need to change the .aac file extension to .m4r (the standard iTunes ringtone file). You should receive a prompt asking if you would like to use the .m4r extension (yes). Your ringtone should now look like “[song title].m4r”. Drag the file back into iTunes where it should populate under the Ringtones section of your library.
Now, when you plug in your iPhone, you’ll want to check the box next to Sync Ringtones (if it’s not already checked) under the Ringtones tab. The next time you sync your phone with your iTunes, this ringtone will be uploaded to your device. Lastly, you’ll need to select the song in your iPhone as your ringtone. You can do this under Settings > Sounds > Ringtone.
Turn up the volume and enjoy your new ringtone!
Read the rest of the newsletter with other good tips and tricks at:
http://blog.smalldog.com/techtails/tt790/
If you have been struggling to find the right PDF annotator. I am a teacher and need a good one for grading purposes! Mac|Life has a good article compare several of the top apps. Hopefully it will help you.
