Tech Review

Luis Cisneros

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ISTE: Video Games: Harmful or Helpful?

This article gives insight on video games and student achievement in the classroom. There are two arguments in this article. Are video games helpful or are they harmful. It was an interesting article because I see student around campus always playing games on their phones. I don’t matter if they are playing at home or on the go. They are always interacting with technology. I would like to know more of how it can be harmful and what can educators or video game creators do to make them helpful.

TED TALK: Using tech to enable dreaming

Using technology to enhance the learning experience the main focus of the presenter in this TED Talk, she talks about children losing touch of reality because they are consumed with technology. She uses technology in a way that she can interact with reality but stay connected as well. The book that she created give real world topics and also lets children connect with other people from around the world. She is giving the book real world meaning as kids read the stories.  

Edweek, webinar: Clearing the Hurdles: Helping Low-Income Students Get Into College

Interesting webinar about low-income students and college, during this webinar the presenters gave statistics and charts that made their presentation more interesting. They also had more than one presenter to give different perspectives. Good webinar!

iPad app: Khan Academy iPad app

This is a cool app from Khan Academy. There are different videos and presentations that students and teacher can view. There are different subjects that are presented and discussed. From math to history, this app covers a lot of information. Khan Academy also has Talks and interview section that have student talk about use of Khan Academy in the classroom and how they have improved on their test scores. It also posts Interviews with the main stream media.

ISTE: Got a Student Who Hates School? Give Him an IPad

The article in ISTE talks about students that done care for school let alone being in school, and how the use of technology with trouble students has increase learning in the classroom. Engaging students is the main focus of this article and they do it by implementing tech tools

iPad app: Educreation IPad App

This is very interactive and fun app. You can take picture, record audio and also watch lessons from other educators that have made their lessons public. If you create a lesson you can send it to your Facebook page or twitter account and you can also present it to your class. You can either do it with the iPad, or simply login to your account and use the computer.

Review of Mobile Apps for the Science Classroom

My overall impression of a lot of these apps is the free apps in Biology are not that great. I have used a few that were not free before that were very good and were interactive as well. I found a couple for chemistry that are free and really helpful however.  

The Chemical Touch- IPad- Only the lite version is free but even this version is very helpful for a high school science classroom.  It shows the periodic table and you can click on any element and get more detailed information.  Also there are buttons at the bottom that can even get more details on each element and show trends across the table.  I would definitely use this app if I was teaching chemistry.

Biology I- Android smart phone- I was a little disappointed with this app because it is more like a virtual textbook than an actual app.  There are no real menus or any demonstrations to be found.  It would be good to just read up on Biology but for searching for a certain topic it would be hard to do.

Molecules- IPad- This is a great free app for any chemistry classroom.  It can show the properties of any molecule and a 3-D image that can be rotated by the user in any direction.  A must have for any Chemistry teacher.  

Video Biology- IPad-This is a good app for finding a video presentation of any topic in biology. The teacher in the videos is the same for every video and actually does a good job explaining different processes.  Not a great tool for everyday use like some apps as a lot of these videos are probably found on YouTube.  

Biology Reference-Android smart phone- I decided to pay $1.99 for an app to see if it was a little better. This app was better than the other Biology apps because it has menus to easily access topics.  It also has quizzes and flashcards to test yourself on these topics.  The only issue I have is that the quizzes were way too easy and there weren't enough topics to quiz you on.  The basic information section had a lot of information and most of it was pretty good stuff.

Science Facts- IPad- This was a good app to learn some amazing facts related to science but is not really useful in a science classroom. It could possibly be used to just post a fun fact on the board every day.

App Reviews_SauloHJ

One of the projects of the Migrant Education Program, BSD, is to serve not only the students enrolled in the district, but also to start teaching the Pre-K age students that do not have access to a Pre-K program, mainly because of financial problems. Last year I had the opportunity to teach some classes to kids ages 4 and 5. I focused on teaching basic skills, for example holding the pencil and tracing lines, holding scissors and cutting lines, learning letter names (capital and lower case), low numbers, and basic colors. The Apps I found today could be used in my practice as I continue working with these children. This is what I found:

App: 123s, ABCs, Handwriting Fun Set 1 (version 5)

More info: teachersparadise.com

Requires 180KB

Grades: Pre-K through 1^st Grade

This is a very cool tool to teach numbers, letters, and shapes. I could use the App to teach letter names, to practice tracing capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and shapes. The practice could be by category or any combination of the different categories. It could be in order (alphabet and numbers) or in random sequence.

App: Kids Numbers and Math Lite (version 1.17)

More info: Intellijoy

Requires 7.82 MB

Grades: Pre-K through 2^nd Grade

This is a very cool tool to teach basic math. I could use the App to teach numbers and practice counting; to compare largest and smallest numbers; to practice basic addition and subtraction. This App also gives you and advanced level for practicing addition and subtraction. On the other hand, it also gives you a basic number game of finding matches. In a Pre-K class this could be a little bit advanced, but numbers from 1 to 20 could be practiced here.

Shane Robinson
ASL APPS

ASL APPS

I reviewed the app for Baby Sign and Learn. This app is exactly what I have been searching for. The students I am teaching ASL are at the cognitive level of an infant up to a toddler. I believe this form of technology and especially how user friendly it is will hold my students attention while they learn American Sign Language. I just hope they don’t break the IPAD.  The only down side is that the amount of sign language on the app is relatively low since it is a free app. Fortunately, this will not be a problem as my students are only able to learn one at a time over a good deal of time. What I like best about the app is the words they do choose to provide are relevant and helpful. 5-23-2012

I also downloaded Baby Sign Lite which unless you purchase it only contains 34 signs. The paid for app contains over two hundred signs. I like how it has a quiz you can take however I could not figure out how to make the app to be shown full screen version which would help engage the students I work with. Scratch that just found it in the lower right hand corner it shows a 2X.  

Downloaded a couple of flashcards deck apps to help me study facts and found them to be user unfriendly. For one I had to be apart of a website called quizlet.com. Shouldn't be this hard to create custom flashcards from an app. Probably user error...

App Reviews

In class you will be playing with and reviewing some apps related to your authorization/endorsement areas. As you look at the apps analyze them from an educator perspective - e.g. how good is the app from an educational standpoint? What age level is it suited for? How could you see yourself using this in your practice? You can start writing your reviews in Word or GoogleDocs and when you are ready create a comment to this post and copy and paste your reviews so to get them into our blog.

Some apps that you might want to check out are:

• Explain Everything
• Show Me
• Quick Voice [to be able to create podcasts like you did on the iPod]
• G-Whiz Google Browser [get the free version]

You can also set up apps for your accounts on :

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Skype
• Linked In

Good apps for productivity include:

• Drop Box [to coordinated files between your computer & device
• OnLive Desktop [gives you Office virtually but requires a good connection]