Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Alli's App Smackdown Vol 6

It's been a busy week as everyone is working hard to prepare for Open House and make it to Spring Break! That said, my App Smackdown only has 4 apps, but they are apps that can be used in many ways!!

1.  StoryBuddy - A great digital storytelling app, StoryBuddy lets you create a book one page at a time.  Create illustrations, write your story and save your book into iBooks! This app is great because it can cross many subjects and grade levels.

Click here for an example of one of our Kinder kids using StoryBuddy (Thanks, Mr. D for sharing!)


2. Comic Touch Lite - Most of my Creekside friends have seen this one as it has been my obsession ever since my iDevice hero, Tony Vincent came to train Denton Creek in January. Basically, you use your photo library or take pictures with the camera  to create your very own comic image.  It is easy enough that our younger grades can create comics easily, while the older ones can do a series of comics to bring together for their own comic strip. I have seen it used in Math for depicting Geometry vocabulary, Language Arts for modeling personification and Social Studies to illustrate what students know about landforms.  A VERY versatile app!




3.  Pic Collage - Simple to use, Pic Collage lets your students create photo collages with captions and different backgrounds. They then can save the new image to the photo library on the device for use in presentations, movies or slideshows. Great for building creativity skills and for making a visual reflection of a concept or idea.

Please do not judge the app solely based on my non-student example above...the kids create so much better than I do!! ;)

4.  Pocket Zoo - Got animals?  Pocket Zoo does!  This app is great for animal researching.  Not only can students watch videos and read about different zoo animals, they can also watch live streaming animal cams and hear each animal's sound! This app would also be a great discussion starter for habitats and adaptations.


ENJOY!!!  Have you tried any of these?  How are you using them?

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Spring Cleaning CISD Style

'Tis the season for Open House, pre-testing jitters, and my favorite, Spring Break countdowns!

It is also time to do some spring cleaning and in Coppell ISD's case, that means it is time to clean out your H drive!  Our goal is to get all employees down to 4GB or less.

Not sure how big your H drive is right now?  Check out this screencast by my awesome teammate, Technology Toni!

http://www.screenr.com/b1s8

Happy Cleaning!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Alli's App Smackdown Vol 5 - TCEA

Hi!  Just a quick post from Edubloggercon in the TCEA Web 2.0 Lounge.  My nerdiness is official now.  I am sooooo excited and inspired by what my collegues are sharing!

I'll be quick, but here are my top 5 Apps I saw today!

1. Aurasma - Your students take a pic, this app takes them to a video you have preselected! Great for scavenger hunts!

2. Educreations - Another awesome screencast/show me what you know app!

3. Action Movie - Add stunts and effects like car crashes, explosions, and falling rocks to your video productions!

4. Sock Puppets - Tell a digital story with these sock puppets!

5. PhotoTangler - Take a bunch of pictures and meld them together to make a photo collage.
IDEA: Have students create a brace map of a topic. (ex. parts of an apple)  Then, using the brace map, ask the students to take a picture to represent each part they wrote about (ex. seeds, stem, fruit, etc). Use this app to "meld" the photos together, label it and post it next to the brace map!

2 Disclaimers:

  1. I have not tried these yet - I literally learned about them a few minutes ago! If you try them, comment to me to let me know what you think!
  2. These aren't on Creek Devices yet...see #1 for a reason why!

HAPPY APPING!!!!