Mission US and Think Fast App

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! If you check in to my blog often, thank you for following my posts this year. I hope they have helped you add technology to your classroom in a meaningful way. I have several new projects in the pipeline for the upcoming year, but I will continue to share my techKNOW with you as much as possible. Each time I take on something new, I just consider my classroom getting bigger. As I begin facilitating online courses through WVLearns, I hope to continue to share my love for connecting teachers with technology and opportunities with even more educators!

That being said...here's a great interactive website for social studies that you can use to engage your students when you come back from your winter break! Mission US has a video game vibe that sends you on a journey through history. Students get to "choose their own adventure" as they play one of two quests. "Crown or Colony" follows the trials of an apprentice in Boston around the time of the Revolutionary War. Students will learn about American Revolution events and landmarks as they help Nate make decisions about which side to join in the war. If you teach the American Revolution, introducing this to your students is a must!

"For Crown or Colony" is the original interactive created by Mission US. More recently they have added the second one, "Flight to Freedom!" This one centers around slave Lucy King and her path to freedom. It has the same choose your own adventure aspect as "For Crown or Colony," only students learn about life on a plantation and escape on the Underground Railroad.

In both games, students earn badges as an incentive for completing tasks and collect "smartwords" (vocabulary highlighted in each mission). To keep a log of your progress and to continue your games at another time, you and your students can create accounts (neither of which require you to submit an e-mail account). There are also educator guides for each mission as well.

Mission US also has a free app (both for iPad and Android) called Think Fast. It is basically two separate true and false quizzes that test you on the historical facts from "For Crown or Colony" and "Flight to Freedom." Since it's free, you have nothing to loose, and your students may enjoy racing against the clock to test their knowledge. Other that that...EH, there's not much to it! The Mission US website, however, it a fantastic way to put your students in the role of a historical figure!

http://www.mission-us.org/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mission-us-think-fast!-about/id566607316?mt=8

APP Time: Haiku Deck

Move over, PowerPoint! You, too, Keynote!

And Prezi...I never liked you anyway, so peace out.

This has to be the easiest way ever to make a slideshow presentation, hands down. I love it, I love it, I love it. Haiku Deck, a FREE app, lets you make simple presentations in record time. Now...can you add bullets and transitions and all that other presentation mumbo jumbo that you think you need to display information? Nope...but you know what? After you use Haiku Deck to share information with your students or have them use it to display what they have learned, you'll realize how much more you can do with less.

The concept behind Haiku Deck is that you use fewer images (one picture per slide, actually) and short phrases and sentences to tell your story. You tap on the slide to start typing your text. Then, to add a background picture...well, you have your pick of images to choose from. Haiku Deck will use the text you have entered to suggest images, or you can search for them by keyword. There are oodles of pictures, beautiful pictures, licenced by Creative Commons, to choose from. In addition to using the pictures on Haiku Deck, you can use ones you already have on your iPad camera roll to make your presentation more personal.

You can showcase your presentations with an Apple TV or VGA cable directly from your iPad, just as you would Keynote. Just swipe your finger across the screen to move on to the next slide! To share your Haiku Deck creations online, just create an account with your e-mail. By doing so, you can access your presentations online via the Haiku Deck website. Once your creations are available in your gallery, you can set the privacy level to your presentations (that way if you have students who create work you would rather not share publicly, you can set it to private).You can e-mail your presentations to yourself - and they will automatically convert to a PowerPoint presentation or Keynote. You can also embed them into a blog or share on Edmodo, although it's a little tricky to get it to show up just right. I've created a Haiku Deck on my grant writing tips, which you can view on the right side of this blog. However, that's been the only place (and size) I've been able to stick it.

Download Haiku Deck (you have nothing to loose, or pay) and play around with it. The simplicity of it will engage your students. They could easily use this app to share anything from poetry to a short report about a region of the United States. The next few weeks until Winter Break are as good a time as ever to try something new!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/haiku-deck/id536328724?mt=8
http://www.haikudeck.com/
http://www.haikudeck.com/p/y4fJV0Zvf2/grant-writing-tips

APP Time: GarageBand

It's been a while since I have reviewed an app. With all the websites and blogs already devoted to listing education and/or free apps, I almost feel like it's irrelevant. However...this is one app, one function that you may not realize has the potential to allow your students and yourself to share what they know. It's not free, but the possibilities that your students will have to create and record their own shows, podcasts, and reports are priceless.

GarageBand ($4.99) is an audio and music recording app for your iPad. It simplifies the entire podcasting process to the point where anyone, teacher or student, can record themselves speaking, create and add background music, and publish to iTunes. There are features about GarageBand - such as automatically saving your work and nice, big buttons and graphics to guide you along - that making creating a recorded show nearly fail safe (I will mention a few things to keep in mind at the end of this post). Once you and your students have had some practice, it takes very little time to create a fantastic sounding podcast.

Let me back up a minute - podcasting, simply put, is creating a recorded show and then publishing it through an RSS feed (a site with hosting capabilities). The platform I use to host my podcasts in my classroom is Podbean (setting up an account is free, and for the volume that classroom podcasting takes up, you shouldn't need to upgrade to anything more). Prior to GarageBand, making podcasts was a pain - make sure they are speaking directly into the voice recorder, not deleting or recording over their work, uploading it onto the computer, configuring...I'll stop there. With the built-in microphone in the iPad, you don't even need an external mic to amplify your voice. Students can create music using virtual drums, keyboards, guitars, and "Smart Instruments" that have basic beats already programmed (I like to direct my students to these for time's sake). It's fairly easy to delete, add, and adjust the volume throughout your project - in fact, your students will probably be teaching you a few things about how to use it once you get started. This article on Appstorm helped me tremendously on how to create a podcast set-by-step using this app.

Why do you need this, when there are already so many other things that take presedence over having your students record themselves speaking? Podcasting has many functions and appeals in education. As the teacher, you can record yourself speaking about a concept you are learning in class, then publish it so students can access it though the site hosting your podcasts, or they can subscribe to them through iTunes so they receive them on a personal mobile device. I have the RSS feed for our classroom podcasts set to automatically appear on our class Edmodo group, so they can access the links directly through there instead of typing in the web address. Unlike video recording, students can have a script (that they have written), so the focus is on speaking and fluency. Anything can become a podcast - a classroom newscast, book reviews, a how-to for math problems...the list goes on and on. Podcasting is a great "carrot" to get your students writing, speaking, and being creative.

A few things to keep in mind with GarageBand - from personal trial and error:
1. TURN OFF the metronome FIRST THING - otherwise, you will hear it all through your podcast. Yeah, Mrs. Sponaugle didn't think about that the first time her kids used GarageBand. Oops.
2. Set the meter - plus (+) sign in the right hand corner - to ON for automatic, so it will make the section longer as you continue to speak. Otherwise, your students (and you) are going to get frustrated when it keeps cutting off at 8 bars.
3. Turn the volume up for the audio recorder for students with soft voices.
4. Like I said above, encourage your students to use the "Smart" instruments with the preset beats.
5. Create a sample "song" (what GarageBand calls your creations) yourself so you get a feel for how it works.
6. Make sure you or your students give each song they create in GarageBand a new title, otherwise you will have New Song, New Song2, etc.

There are also multiple articles in the Apple help section of their website to guide you along. If you are looking for a new way to utilize your iPad in your classroom aside from using educational apps, look no further.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garageband/id408709785?mt=8
http://ipad.appstorm.net/how-to/lifestyle/making-a-podcast-with-garageband-for-ipad/
http://www.podbean.com/

Classroom Collaboration Series: 5 Reasons to LOVE Edmodo!

I kind of let the Classroom Collaboration Series go by the wayside over the summer, so it's time to start it up again! I have known about Edmodo for a while, but have always had so many other "techKNOW toys" to play with that I never truly implemented it. Now that I'm using it to have my students collaborate and to keep connected to other teachers, I don't know why I've waited so long! If you haven't jumped on the Edmodo wagon, here are five reasons why you need to set up an account and get your students connected!
1. First and foremost, it teaches your students proper social networking! When you set up your Edmodo account, the first word that will come to mind is "Facebook." It surely resembles it, right down to the color sceme. However, Edmodo is a means for students to communicate and collaborate online within the parameters of the classroom. As the teacher, you can monitor what students post on your group wall (the only way students can communicate with one another, no "chatting") as they discuss posted topics and complete assignments. Only the teacher, students, and parents have access to your Edmodo space (via password) unless you choose to set it to public. You set rules and guidelines for what students can put online, and can set their status to "read only" until they can post properly. Students have to create their own username and password in order to access the classroom space you have created, so they learn the additional responsibility of keeping track of their personal information.
2. It streamlines your online resources to one place.  Links and Google Docs can be posted to your Edmodo library. Your students, when logged into Edmodo, can access these resources for the assignments you post. You can also post links and videos to your group page for the student to view as well. For example, I love, love love, the awesomeness that it Animoto. I or the students can post their Animoto slideshows for us to view securely.
3. Assignments, Quizzes...AND Polls!!! No, really! You can post directions for an assinment to your group page and include the necessary files and links to complete it.  When students complete it, they just post their assignment and attach their completed files...completely paperless! There's also a way to create quizzes for students to complete right on Edmodo. The quizzes can take a variety of forms, from multiple choice to short answer. You can even set it so students automatically see how they scored for instant feedback. I also like how you can create a quick opinion poll to gauge how your class feels about a topic - and the students like it, too!
4. You can connect to other teachers. As a teacher you can make connections to other educators through using your Edmodo profile. Although your students and classes can't "see" each other, you can keep in touch professionally with your colleagues within your school or around the country (or world, for that matter). You can also join communities, such as ones on technology, to learn from and assist other teachers. Another feature is that you can "follow" publishers such as Sheppard Software or Spelling City to keep up with the resources they provide.
5. It's FREE, and so is the APP!!! All of this fantastic online collaboration costs you nothing. That being the case, it is pretty impressive all that you can do with this "free version," when so many online resources limit your capabilities (or at least cause you to find creative ways to work around buying them). You and your students can also download the free app for iPhone/iPad/iPod or Android so Edmodo can be accessed anywhere!
Edmodo is pretty much an ideal virtual classroom. While nothing can replace being together in the classroom to work and learn from each other, Edmodo can keep you connected to your students when weather, illness, or distance are in the way. I can't wait to see where using this resource leads me this school year!
http://www.edmodo.com

Classroom Collaboration Series: VoiceThread

Looking for a cool way this summer to keep your students engaged with technology? Here's a way you can make a virtual field trip, an online lesson, a display of student work, or a virtual discussion with your class - VoiceThread.
This is, in a nutshell, what you can do with VoiceThread. Add images or pictures (which could be screen shots of math problems worked out in class, pictures from a field trip, student illustrations, you name it) to create a slideshow. Then, for each slide, you as the teacher may choose to add your voice or type descriptions to each of the slides. You can also write on the images as you record your voice to reference points of interest.
Once you complete your VoiceThread, you can have your students find it online. As they view your VoiceThread, they can make comments on each slide! For example, you may want your students to respond to an image about a science experiment to show what they remember, or it could be as simple as having them leave their memories on a picture from a school field trip. They can comment by typing a response or leaving a recorded message. If you have a webcam available, your students can respond using that as well. What happens after your students comment on the VoiceThread is that you create an online conversation. You and the class can go back and view the show together to view each other's feedback - a great way to review information. Your students can go back and view the VoiceThreads on their own as well to reinforce content or take a virtual field trip of sorts over and over again. You can also download the VoiceThread app to your iPad so you students can access it there as well.
This resource is free...to an extent. Creating a VoiceThread Educator account is free, and the app for iPad is a free download as well. You get 250 MB of space (or 50 VoiceThreads) using your account on the computer, and you can make up to five VoiceThreads using the app. Each VoiceThread you create can have up to 50 slides on your free account (which I think is plenty). You can make it work for you as a free resource if you are willing to delete the VoiceThreads that you aren't using so you don't run out of space. And if you really like it, you can consider getting a classroom license so you can go further with this resource.
If you search on VoiceThread, you will find caboodles of examples of how you can use it in your classroom. Take a look and see the possibilities you could use this for in the fall!
https://voicethread.com/
http://voicethread.com/products/k12/educator/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voicethread/id465159110?mt=8

APP Time: Presidents vs. Aliens

Yes, that's the name of this app.
In a way, it seems all sorts of wrong to follow up a tribute to Mister Rogers with something so absolutely silly. However, with the presidential election this fall, students will have a lot of interest in the presidents and the fun facts about them. So, for $0.99, the app Presidents vs. Aliens (from the same developer of Stack the States)will help your class learn about past and present commanders-in-chief, all while taking out some alien creatures.
The app asks students questions about a president and shows four pictures of the presidents (with their names) to choose from. The questions range from identifying the president, quotes, nicknames, or facts about the president or time period. You can adjust the level of difficulty and types of questions by clicking on the question mark on the main menu. I'm adding that because I had trouble figuring out where to go to adjust the level at first. This way, you can use this app for younger students who may need to work on just identifying the presidents, to really upping the ante for your "big kids" (such as yourself).
 You will be shown the correct answer if you are wrong (which is good, because some of those questions are down right hard), but if you touch the correct president, the fun begins. You will get to take the president you have correctly selected and shoot him at the mass of aliens that has infiltrated the Washington, D.C., landmark in the background. It requires a little bit of strategy, but it's great fun to send the president airborne into a sea of little neon creatures. When you have taken out all the aliens, your score will show and you will "earn" a new president for your collection. Once you collect all 44 presidents, you can proceed to the bonus games Executive Order and Heads of State, already included on the app.
Presidents vs. Aliens also teaches your students test taking skills and inferencing. For example, one of the questions might be "Who was president during the Wright Brothers' first flight?" showing the date as well. They have to use logical thinking based on the four presidents shown to determine the best answer for the time period. This is a super app to start off the countdown to Election Day in November and learn fun facts about the exective office. Hail to the chief - but watch out for that alien behind you!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/presidents-vs.-aliens/id427418941?mt=8

APP Time: Story Writing Apps

I've been on the hunt for sometime looking for writing apps for my classroom iPads. My goal has been to find some things that would entice students of different ability levels to write and share. Here are three that I think fit the mold.
Story Maker HD (a FREE app) allows students to design characters and scenes to "illustrate" their stories. They type their text on to the page along with their illustration, then name their story after it's completed. Students can then access the "gallery" where they can read each other's work. While simple, fun (the kids will love making the characters) and to the point, one thing I don't like about this app is that you can't add "pages" to your story - one scene and text is it. It would be great for a poetry unit for students to write a poem and then add their images. Students in the lower grades or with limited writing ability would be best served by this app. For $0.99, you can download add-on story packs (Three Little Pigs, Cinderella, The Wizard of Oz, and Little Red Riding Hood), which provide you with more character and image choices for students to recreate a classic fairy tale - great for a unit on teaching point-of-view or for writing fractured fairy tales!
A similar app is Story Patch ($2.99). Although it's not a free app, you get what you pay for with this one. Like Story Maker, students can select characters and scenery for their stories. You have the option to add pages to your writing so it reads more like a book. After students save their stories, other students can go back and read each others writings straight from this app. You can also convert your story to a pdf with a touch of a button and e-mail it to yourself or parents - a great way to share student work. The one thing I didn't like about this app was, while you can change the size of your characters and image and move them around the page, you can't change the direction they are facing. I know that's silly, but I like my people looking at each other, that's all. Story Patch could be utilized at any grade level K-5.
This next app actually involves no writing at all - and that's okay! Toontastic (FREE!!!) lets students choose a scene (or draw one), select characters, THEN - instead of writing the text - you move the characters around the screen and use your own voice to bring the story to life! Basically, students are creating their own animated cartoon! And...they get to pick the background music to set the tone for each scene!!! Too cool!  It's really like making your own cartoon - hence the name! Student creations are saved so they can be viewed later on the app. You can also go to ToonTube through this app to watch Toontastic creations from all over the world! I got a lot of ideas for how to use this app just by watching those alone. What I LOVE about this app is that it take students through the parts of a story, from the conflict to the resolution (even showing them a diagram). What I don't like is the limited number of background scenes there are to choose from - like, there's four. You can purchase additional scenes for $1.99 each, or $9.99 for an entrire set. Any grade level would benefit from this app. This would also be a good app for speech therapy.
Hopefully you decide to add some of these apps to the next chapter of your iPad use!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/story-maker-hd/id428879894?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/story-patch/id388613157?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toontastic/id404693282?mt=8

APP Time: Symmetry Shuffle

It's difficult...but it's so cute! You'll play it as much as the kids!

Symmetry Shuffle ($1.99) is an app that makes you think. By this time in the year, we're all in standardized test review mode (or about to be when we go back to s-c-h-o-o-l tomorrow). This is a great, adorable app to review the geometry concepts of slide (translation), flip (reflection), and turn (rotation).

To play Symmetry Shuffle, you select an object (ranging from sneakers to robots), the number of objects in your grid, and an easy or hard level. The object is to move your object to cover all the pictures in the least amount of moves - with the fastest time. Sounds easy, right? Nope! It requires a lot of thinking, rotating, flipping, and second guessing yourself - kind of like that game they have on all the tables at Cracker Barrel, Tricky Triangle. It's spatial and logical reasoning at its finest - and your students will be putting into practice the concept of transformations - even though they'll think they are just solving a puzzle!

The graphics on Symmetry Shuffle look hand drawn, but in a cute (there's that word again!), quaint way that's a nice change from the bright, in-your-face graphics of a lot of games. The sounds are soft and pleasant, too. The only major difference between the easy and hard versions of this app is that you can't "retrace" your puzzle pieces in the hard version without loosing one of your moves. Some of the objects are easier to see where you need to flip and rotate, but none are so stumping that they will frustrate. Your students will love the strategy behind it and timing themselves to beat their peers as they shuffle to cover the puzzle grid. Oh, and many of the touch features on this app involve a "double tap," which can be a puzzle in itself at first. Make sure to review the instruction first so everyone is aware of how to "move."

Have fun shuffling!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/symmetry-shuffle/id387650111?mt=8

APP Time: Nth Fusion Science Apps

So this time, I couldn't just pick one!

It's nice to have some "easy" apps available to students just to review information and reinforce vocabulary. Nth Fusion creates several apps that are engaging and "to-the-point," and my three favorite ones for science have become Landforms, Body Organs, and Life Cycle. They are science, pure and simple - no frills, no super cool interactive features, but for $0.99 each they are great ways to incorporate science and reading skills. Each of these three apps resembles an "e-book" with the way students turn the "page" to the next section. All of these apps have a voice (which sounds like your average teacher, not a computerized person) that reads and explains the information to the student. I love the idea of using my iPad as an e-reader, but not the cost of some of the books on iTunes. So the fact that these apps "read" to the student is a real plus.

Landforms covers every square inch of the earth, both land and water. It is excellent review for a geography and/or geology unit. The students learn definitions and different variations of landforms - I didn't even know there were that many variations of a waterfall (but I do now!). Each section has a quiz, or a "Think and Verify" part where the students can quiz themselves on what they have learned. Some of my students get confused and think the app is "broken" at this point because they want to touch the answer on the screen to see if they are correct. To see if they chose the correct answer, they have to go to the next page.

Body Organs explains the major organs and also includes a section on cells. Each section discusses the parts and purpose or the organ, location in the body, cool facts, and ways to keep that organ healthy. I like the research section on this app (it poses questions for the students to go on their own and find out), but I think the students like the "quiz" part of the Landforms app better. The diagrams of all the body organs are great!

Life Cycle is a bit deceiving in its name, because it includes much more than just, well, life cycles! In addition to the life cycles of a frog, ladybug, butterfly, and plants, there are also the phases of the moon, pollination, rock cycle, nitrogen and oxygen cycles, photosynthesis... whew! I think that's all of them. It's great review and has wonderful diagrams (the nitrogren and oxygen cycles are a bit of a snooze but oh, well). Each cycle just starts over from the beginning with no review or research section.

These apps could be used with primary and intermediate level students. The content and vocabulary may go over the head of primary grades, although higher level student would probably enjoy the challenge of it. If you have a VGA adapter for you iPad, these would be great to share with the class on an LCD projector to review before standardized testing - or any time you need a science break!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/landforms/id474104965?mt=8

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/body-organs-4-kids/id434151042?mt=8

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/a-life-cycle-app/id394578286?mt=8

APP Time: Oregon Trail

Want to go to Oregon? There's an app for that... and it's way better than the old school version we had as kids (isn't just about everything?)!

Whether you teach the Westward Movement or just need something to turn off your busy teacher brain once and a while, the $0.99 Oregon Trail app for iPad/iPhone/iPod is entertaining and educational. It's the same concept from "way back when:" get to the Willamette Valley with your wagon party, while surviving disease, low food supply, and wayward oxen - to name a few. You know the drill: choose your "career," the month you depart, then purchase your supplies so you can begin the trek to Oregon Country! Of course, along the way you learn about the famous people, diseases, landforms, and landmarks that made up this historic event in American history. If you have a VGA adapter to hook to a LCD projector in your classroom, you can play this together as a class (a little bit each day or just enough to get your class "hooked" because the road to Oregon is incredibly LONG) to enhance your study of Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny.

When I downloaded it, I was expecting much less from an app less than a dollar. The graphics and activities in the app are outstanding! They are a little "cartoonish" in their depictions of landmarks and famous people, but for the sake of hooking kids on history, that gets a pass. Remember when you played Oregon Trail as a kid and it was a "big deal" to go hunting and decide how to cross the river? Yeah, that's been stepped up a notch. Your adventures on the Oregon Trail not only include hunting and river fording, but berry picking, FISHING (too much fun, I tell you), telegraphing, nailing together your wagon, and panning for gold! Oh, oh...and rafting a river is so much more fun when you get to tilt and twist an iPad instead of punching arrow keys! Hand and eye coordination at its finest, I tell you!

One thing that is kind of "eh" is that it does try to push you to buy "game cash," which is completely unnecessary to play and enjoy the game. It's just a way for the app creators to make money. However, if you just ignore that one little annoyance, the app works beautifully and allows you to complete your journey to Oregon.

There are different levels of the game, and if you have it set on easy, your students are guaranteed to make it to Oregon regardless of the missteps they take. It's fun! You learn something! And no matter how old you are...it's still fun and you learn something! Yes, I am a proud, card carrying member of Oregon Trail Addicts for Life. However, if you are looking for a rainy day recess app for your class, or another means of kicking your Social Studies instruction up a notch, it's time for you to head West!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-oregon-trail/id461393130?mt=8

APP Time: Brain Pop

I wasn't planning on doing a post in the middle of the week, but right now I'm too tired to do anything else so I might as well. For those of you that don't know, Brain Pop is an animated approach to online learning. The website chronicles the educational adventures of Tim and Moby (a robot with a kickin' personality) as they answer letters about a wide range of topics - from photosynthesis to the Civil War, and everything in between and beyond. At the end of each short, punchy movie, there is a quiz to test student comprehension of the topic, along with printable organizers and vocabulary. Although using all the full features of Brain Pop requires a subscription, there are several free movies for viewing as well...

...Which brings me to today's app! In addition to the website, there is a FREE Brain Pop app! If you have a subscription to Brain Pop, then you are able to log in and watch any and all movies from your iPad/iPod/iPhone. Even if you don't have a subscription, you can watch the movie of the day and numerous free movies as you can online.

What I like most about the Brain Pop app is that all of the movies are captioned (on the online version they are not)!!! At the bottom of the screen, students can read what Tim and Moby are explaining (or in Moby's case beeping) as they watch and listen. I think this is great for students who may have trouble staying focused on the dialogue of the movie or that aren't auditory learners. There is a quiz at the end of each movie, and scores are added to the "Hall of Fame" list so you could go back and see how well the student answered the questions.

What do you have to lose? At the very least, your students will enjoy "watching cartoons" while learning something along the way. Best of all, it's free!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/brainpop-featured-movie/id364894352?mt=8

APP Time: Math Motion HD

When I first received an iPad, one of the things I was most struck by was that it wasn't just touch sensitive but responded to motion as well. The app Math Motion HD ($1.99) is fun and fractions at its finest. Actually, its fun, fractions, decimals, percentages, and visual representations. Out of all of my math apps, this one is my favorite to introduce along with the fraction unit in Everyday Mathematics. Yes, there are Everyday Math apps, but every so often they are available for FREE so I would wait if you don't have them yet. Math Motion HD is worth having to reinforce fraction concepts and parts of a whole.

The focal point of Math Motion HD is a solid fraction stick (on the game it is referred to as a number line, but it greatly resembles the fraction stick concept in Everyday Math). The object is to direct a "falling star" onto the number line in the correct place for the given fraction. Instead of touching the screen to manipulate the app, you must tilt the entire iPad (or iPod touch) in the correct direction. You have to estimate where the star should drop to represent the presented fraction. If you are incorrect, different levels of hints are given to show were the fraction is on the number line. On the first incorrect response, an arrow will point in the direction you should tilt the iPad. The second time, the number line breaks into units (such as fourths or eights). The third time, three random fractions appear on the number line along with the units. I like this because it allows the students to correct themselves instead of just being wrong and moving on. The visual respresentation is great!

As you move through the 24 levels (it is a fast moving game, thank goodness!), the numbers you are trying to represent on the fraction line evolve to decimals, percentages, improper fractions, and a combination of both. The number line eventually respresents more than just "one" to make it more challenging. At one level, the number line represents negative integers, but does so in a way that students could figure it out without being confused (it's actually a great way to introduce the concept!). There is a beginner, medium, and hard version of the game so you can adjust it to meet your students' needs. Even the score is shown as a fraction :)

This app will make your students think and keep them focused on fractions while having a blast! To find out more, visit the link below to get in motion for math!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/motion-math/id392489333?mt=8

APP Time: Stack the States

At 99 cents, Stack the States is an app worth having. Students practice their knowledge of not only the shape and position of the states but also other interesting facts about the "Nifty Fifty." This was the first app I downloaded when I received my classroom iPad last year - and it was a hit from day one!

The object of the game is to literally "stack the states" as you answer questions about the location, capitals, shape, and location of the states. After selecting the correct state, you move the state on the screen as you attempt to stack them towards the checkered line. This requires some strategy, because if the stack topples over before you reach the finish line, you are back to square one! Each time you reach a level, a different state is "earned" on a USA map until you have collected them all.

I figured that this would be a great app at the beginning of the school year to reinforce the states and regions, but I expected that my class would eventually tire of it after they finally filled in the map. Nope! Once they fill in the map, there are three more "bonus games" for student to continue practicing their state geography. Students also like the challenge of "unlocking" the next level so they can engage in more rounds. It takes them a while to reach the other games, but not so much that they get frustrated and bored with this app. They've been using Stack the States since September and still love it.

Stack the States has been a great app to have students practice their basic knowledge of US geography. It also was the perfect way to show students how we would be using the iPad this year to have fun and learn at the same time. Visit the link below to start stacking!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stack-the-states/id381342267?mt=8