Thing 15: App-palooza!

I LOVE the idea of "Library in your Pocket".  I am in the process of creating my list to share with students and staff but I feel like every day I come up with something new to add.  I have decided to do an APP of the week!  My staff at the HS is so excited with new Apps...almost as much as I am...my students...not so much.  They want to stick to Tumblr and Twitter - they are a hard sell...so far!  I have added to my "Library in your Pocket"  YALSA's teen book finder, StudyBlue for flashcards & study tools, Teen hotlines, Shakespeare in Bits, EasyBib, Videolicious, MyCongress which allows studetns to follow closely what is going on in Congress...links to each member's website, news articles, Twitter  feeds.  That is just a start!

I believe this will be much more productive when all of the students have ipads which is what we are all hoping will happen in the near future.  The teachers were given ipads this September....and there has been quite a learning curve for some of us.  There are so many Apps out there - I feel like if you have an idea...just look online there will be an App for it!  Kathy Schrocks Bloomin' Apps and Ipads4education are just amazing resources as well as OVERWHELMING!!! I love the graphic of different Apps which support the different aspect of Bloom's Taxonomy.  So helpful when planning lessons and wanting to implement technology.

I tried out the speech to text apps...they come in handy for classnotes etc.. but I have been on a search for a text to speech App...something free as we are not allowed to purchase Apps on school ipads...we are still working out the kinks on that!!

I did spend which a bit of time on the Apps in Education Blog.  I wish it was better organized...scrolling through loads of stuff got tiring but there was some great information...I loved the writing prompts, the art and music app suggestions were great as well.

There were some apps used as icecreakers that I thought my HS students would love...plinky, socrative, polleverywhere.  I can't wait to try them out...One of the teachers was looking over my shoulder asking what I was doing....so I quickly explained Plinky.  Her thought was too bad they kids don't have ipads so we could use this...many teachers don't realize that many of the apps that are available today can also be used through a web browser!  Let the apps continue!