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Middle School

Inspire Creative Writing With the Scribeasy App

April 14, 2016 by admin

scribeasy icon One of the challenges of teaching creative writing can be just getting students to start a story. That’s when apps like Scribeasy can be quite helpful as they provide students with visual prompts that can inspire the start of a story.

Scribeasy is a free iPad app that offers a fun environment in which students can write short stories. Students create stories on Scribeasy by first selecting a background image then dragging and dropping additional pictures onto their chosen background images. When students select objects to add to their backgrounds, a narrator reads the name of the object aloud. Students can move and resize all images to create a visual story in Scribeasy.

scribeasy writing

Once the visuals are in place on Scribeasy students then write a story about the scenes they’ve created. The next step is where Scribeasy shines. Scribeasy gives students a list of suggested words to use in their stories. The writing process is a timed activity. Students can choose to write for a short, medium, or large amount of time (they can extend the time if needed). Completed stories are saved in the app. Students can also save their stories to the camera roll on their iPads.

Part of this post originally appeared on my other blog, FreeTech4Teachers.com

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Filed Under: Elementary School, Middle School Tagged With: Creative Writing, digital storytelling, free apps, free ipad apps, language arts, storytelling, writing

Seesaw TV for Apple TV – A Good Way to Showcase Students’ Work

April 7, 2016 by admin

seesaw app icon Over the last two school years Seesaw has quickly become a favorite tool for creating digital portfolios. Some of the great features in Seesaw include letting students join your classroom account by simply scanning a QR code, letting students add voice notes to artifacts in their portfolios, and enabling students to share portfolio artifacts directly to a classroom blog managed by their teachers.

Seesaw recently released an option for displaying portfolio artifacts through Apple TV. Seesaw TV can be found in the Apple TV App Store. Through Seesaw TV you can display student work, add emoji comments to their work, show slideshows of all of your students’ work or an individual student’s work, and view all details about an artifact.

Seesaw TV could provide you with a good way for students to give a presentation about their favorite lessons of the year or the work that they are most proud of.

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Filed Under: Elementary School, High School, Middle School Tagged With: apple tv, digital portfolios, free apps, free ipad apps, seesaw

Change Your Google Slides Themes and Layouts in the Latest iOS App

March 26, 2016 by admin

Screen Shot 2014-09-22 at 8.28.40 AM The Google Slides iPad app received a nice little update this week. Now you can change your presentation theme and template in the Google Slides iOS app. Previously, you could only do that in your web browser or in the Android app. Make sure you run the update in order to take advantage of this new feature.

This update brings the Google Slides iOS app to closer alignment with the experience of using Google Slides on an Android device or in the web browser on a laptop or desktop. This is good news for teacher working in BYOD or BYOT environments. Speaking of which, one of my summer workshops is focused on teaching in BYOD settings. You can learn more about the Practical Ed Tech BYOD Workshop here.

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Filed Under: Elementary School, faculty, High School, Middle School Tagged With: BYOD, BYOT, GAFE, google apps, Google Slides

New Content Previews in the Latest Google Drive iOS app

January 11, 2016 by admin

Screen Shot 2014-09-22 at 8.28.40 AM Google Drive users who have allowed updates their iPhones in the last few days, may have noticed a slick new feature in the Google Drive app. The latest version of the app supports “peek and pop” previews of files. Note, this feature is only available on iPhone 6 and 6s.

An update that is available to all Google Drive iOS app users is the addition of support for four additional languages. Those languages are Hindi, Indian English, Canadian French, and Chinese (Hong Kong).

Source: Google Apps update blog. 

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Filed Under: College, High School, Middle School Tagged With: free ipad apps, Google Docs, Google Drive

10 Good Spelling Apps

December 17, 2015 by admin

10 iPad Apps for Spelling PracticeGrowing up in my house there were countless games of Scrabble and informal spelling bees. Those were about the only fun ways my siblings and I had to learn how to spell. Today, there are plenty of iPad apps that bring an element of fun to spelling lessons. Here is a selection of some of the dozens of spelling apps that I’ve tested over the last few years.

Words Mine is a free iPad app that combines elements of Tetris with spelling games. The challenge of Words Mine is to spell words quickly before the screen fills up with blocks. Each block contains one letter. Choose blocks from each column to be sure that one column doesn’t reach the top of the screen too quickly. A columns drop down when a letter is used from it. If you need more letter options just shake your iPad to make more letters drop into the screen.

Spelling Monster is an iPad app (free and paid versions available) that students will enjoy using to practice spelling words. On Spelling Monster students can create their own lists of words or use lists shared with them (sharing only available in paid version). The app contains a half dozen games through which students can practice spelling the words in their lists. Spelling Monster keeps track of the number of times a game is played and the percentage of words spelled correctly. Students do not have to create an account to use Spelling Monster. The app can be used without a connection to the Internet.

Spell ’til You Drop is a free iPad app from McGraw-Hill. The app gets its name from the game format used throughout the app. To play the game students have to correctly spell words as they are read aloud to them. For each correctly spelled word students move across a footbridge. For each word spelled incorrectly a piece of the bridge drops away. The app has eight difficulty levels for students to play. My one complaint about the app is that it doesn’t use a QWERTY keyboard.

Endless Wordplay is a great app from the same people that brought us the popular Endless Alphabet,Numbers, and Reader apps. In Endless Alphabet students help a friendly monster navigate a make believe world by spelling words correctly. At each stop in the adventure students have to spell a series of three rhyming words. The app reads the word to students and provides them with hints when they get stuck on a spelling. Endless Wordplay doesn’t award points. Instead of earning points the incentive is just to keep moving forward in the game at your own pace.

Manulife Word Hunter is a free iPad app designed to help children learn new words. The app features a board game that students move through by rolling dice and correctly spelling new words as they go. Kids can play the game alone or with up to two other players. A student who plays alone will be playing against the automated players.

Animals Flip and Mix ($1.99) is a fun iPad app that elementary school students will enjoy using. The app presents students with cartoon drawings of animals and plants. The drawings are divided into three sections. Each section has a syllable written next to it. Students have to sort the thirds of the cartoon animal or plant until its name is correctly spelled. When they’ve correctly spelled a name they can play a short game or see the cartoon animal in action.

Word Wizard ($2.99) is an iPad app that elementary school students can use to learn the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, sound-out words, and spell new words. The app has two primary modes to it. In the “Movable Alphabet” mode students can drag and drop letters on a board to try to create words. In Movable Alphabet mode each time a student touches a letter the narrator makes the sound of that letter. If a student combines letters, the narrator will make the sound of that letter combination. That pattern continues until a word has been created. In Word Wizard’s Spelling Quiz mode students select a word list from the gallery of lists. After selecting a list students have to spell the words that the narrator reads to them. To help students spell each word each letter is pronounced while the student drags it onto the letter board. Word Wizard offers four narrator voices to choose from. I found the “Tracy” voice with the US accent easiest to understand. There is also a “Rachel” voice with a UK accent, a “Tyler” voice with an Australian accent, and another US voice called “Heather.”

Rocket Speller is a fun iPad app designed for students in Kindergarten through grade two. The purpose of the app is to help students learn to spell words simple words that are three to ten letters long. As students progress through the levels of the app they get stars. After they get three stars students pick out the parts they want to use to build a rocket ship. Rocket Speller has five levels for students to work through. The first level uses three to six letter words and gives audio and visual clues to students. The second level features words up to ten letters in length and offers audio and visual hints. The third through fifth levels have words up to ten letters in length but reduce the number of clues available to students.

Bitsboard is a free iPad app that provides word games, memory games, spelling games, and reading practice activities, and dozens of other activities in one place. On the Bitsboard app students can learn new vocabulary words, how to tell time, and how to count money. Students can also use the app to learn basic geography. When students first open Bitsboard on their iPads they will have six topics shown on their homescreens. Those six topics are emotions, animals, famous places, first sentences, introductory English vocabulary, and introductory Spanish vocabulary. Opening any of those topics takes students to their choice of eight practice activities including flashcards, true or false quizzes, word building practice, reading practice, and matching activities.

Stumpy’s Alphabet Dinner is a fun app in which students feed letters and shapes to cartoon characters. The letters and shapes that students feed to the characters have to match the letter or shape displayed on the character’s stomach. If the child makes an incorrect match the character spits out the letter.

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Filed Under: Elementary School, Middle School Tagged With: free ipad apps, ipad apps, language arts, spelling

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