Monday 30 September 2013

Skitch

Skitch is a free app that I have blogged about before. It has many uses in the classroom but the two uses I believe to be the best are labelling of photos and blurring photos. Labelling photos is fairly self explanatory and can be used in all learning areas. Blurring photos is useful if you have a great photo that contains a student or object that shouldn't be in the photo for its intended use. Eg. If you have a photo that you want to publish online but you don't want to show student faces, blurring can be very useful.
Students fully engaged during a Stop Motion lesson

Digital Story Telling

I just downloaded this Digital Storytelling Resource Kit, and thought you might find this resource useful, too. You can download your copy at: 

http://web.tech4learning.com/digital-storytelling-resource-kit/


Friday 27 September 2013

Today's Free App

Movie360 is a really cool movie making app. You can take video footage with amazing effects and the movie can be sent to the camera roll.

HelloCamera is a really cool photo app with amazing effects made by the same developer. Photos automatically go to the camera roll.



Thursday 26 September 2013

The New iOS

For those who are reluctant to update to the new iOS - just remember a change is as good as a holiday. If that didn't convince you here is a link that will give you some tips.

Sun by Kids Discover

An educational app that teaches students all about the sun and stars.

Sunday 22 September 2013

Stop Motion and Claymation

I have been having a play with stop motion and claymation lately and it so much fun! For stop motion  I have tried several different things including Lego, paper cut outs and writing on a whiteboard. So many everyday objects work well. For claymation I have used play dough. I even let some students have a turn last week! With very little instruction they came up with sone quite good results. Actually my plan is to do claymation with the junior classes next term. I will have them plan and then storyboard thier idea before they start taking photos. There are a lot of resources online that show ways to use both stop motion and claymation in the classroom.

Here is a link to one of the sites I found but there are so many more:

Claymation and Stop Motion in the Classroom

The apps I have used are Stop Motion and iCanAnimate. Both of these apps can be exported to the camera roll to add more effects in iMovie.




Wednesday 18 September 2013

Today's Free App

Toontastic Junior Shrek is free today and heaps of fun as well as easy to use for the younger students.

Tuesday 17 September 2013

My Current Favourite Apps

It's been a while so I thought it might be timely to blog about my current favourite apps. Many of them are the same but I have added more fun creation apps, some that complete a workflow with the publishing stage and some that encourage collaboration. Below are screen shots of the apps that I use most frequently. Of course there are heaps more that I find very useful.



Wednesday 11 September 2013

Two Free Literacy Apps

I haven't posted about free content based apps for quite a while. There are a couple of reasons for that. My first and main reason is that I think at KPS we have more than enough content based apps now and definitely should be focusing on the creation apps. The other main reason is that with fantastic apps like TinyTap, Zondle, Book Creator, Explain Everything and so many others, teachers from all year groups can create content that is better than any ready made app because it is differentiated and contains exactly what they what to teach. My final reason is that if a teacher wants to find an app for particular content they are better off finding it for themselves.

Having said all of that I am including two literacy apps today that are currently free. These are both fun apps that would be suitable for extension.

Wordly is a Boggle style app in which you have to use available letters to make as many words as you can.

The other is Hollow Words which is a Catch Phrase style game.



Monday 9 September 2013

Animoto

Animoto is a wonderful way to make learning interesting and fun for students. It is an ideal tool for creating videos and presentations. It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life.
Students can easily use Animoto to make dynamic presentations from photos. It is another app that is also browser based. Simply create a free account, create your slideshow and select one of the many ways to share.


Thursday 5 September 2013

Snapguide

Snapguide is a free app which allows a teacher or student to create easy how-to guides on their iPad and make them available through a web link. Snapguide incorporates text, images, and videos to put together a slide-show style guide on any topic. 

Teachers could create review guides for math problems or have students create step-by-step guides outlining a science experiment. The ability to have students be able to storyboard and explain something through a step-by-step process is an invaluable skill.

What are some of the possible uses of Snapguide in Education?


    •     Create Snapguides for students on a new app you will be using in class.
    •     Students can use Snapguide to develop a procedure.
    •     Create Snapguides in Physical Education to introduce new skills.
    •     School Admins create to demonstrate processes they want followed.
    •     Teachers create Snapguides on how to solve certain problems.
    •     Science teachers could create Snapguides to prepare students for labs.

The possibilities with this app are endless in a school setting!  All you need to do is download the app, create your account and get to "Snapguiding" today! Once created the lessons are uploaded to the website and can be emailed or, of course, linked to a QR Code.

Monday 2 September 2013

Aurasmas continued ...

To share Auras across iPads you can search for the public channel on the other iPads and then Follow it.

Aurasmas

Aurasmas are fantastic for the classroom for many reasons and in many ways. Apart from providing a creative way to showcase student work at events such as Parent Open Night, it is another way to link instructional videos to an item. One problem with Aurasmas is that, as they are not uploaded to a website, they exist on the iPad originally used to make them. 

It is possible to share Auras across iPads by creating an account but it doesn't always go smoothly. I have got it to work by creating a public channel first and then creating the Aura within the channel. You then search for the channel on the other iPads and follow the channel once you have found it.