The Top 17 Free Digital Storytelling Apps for The iPad 1-StoryKit This is an awesome iOS app that allows users to easily create an electronic storybook via illustrations by drawing on the screen, using pictures and text, and recording audio to attach to stories. 2- Talking Tom & Ben News This is fun app to use. Kids can talk to them and they will repeat what you say in turs. 3- I Tell a Story This is a free app that allows users to narrate and record their stories with their own voice and language. 4- Scholastic Storia This is an app that is designed to help kids learn and love to read in a fun and interactive way. 5- Talking Tom Cat This is a cool app that lets you interact with Tom, your pet. 6- Toontastic This app allows kids to draw, animate and share their own cartoons through imaginative play. 7- Our Story This app lets young learners take part in fun games that can help them develop their reading skills. 8- Bunsella Bedtimes Story 9- Idea Sketch Idea Sketch lets users easily draw a diagram and convert it to a text outline, and vice versa.
Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Teaching and Learning By Tom Preskett Connecting formal education to social media/web 2.0 tools is a relatively new area. Educational institutions hope that by purchasing a virtual learning environment (VLE) all of their learning technology needs will be met. However, the world moves fast, and some educators find that our suite of communication and collaboration tools doesn’t cater to our teaching and learning needs as well as they might. Interestingly, VLEs are usually more suited to managing rather than learning (but that’s for another day). When it comes to thinking about social media or web 2.0 tools, we are looking at tapping into the affordances such tools have towards communication and collaboration. Usually the stimulus for such a process comes from seeing or hearing about a particular tools used in a particular context. Firstly, it’s useful to have in mind a set of criteria like the Sloan Consortium’s: AccessUsabilityPrivacy & Intellectual PropertyWorkload & Time ManagementFun Factor Like this:
Digital Storytelling Apps - The GWAEA iPad PD Site One of the best advantages of the ipad is the flexibility that gives your students when completing assignments and communicating ideas. Today we will learn some of the many ways students can communicate their learning by looking at some of the many choices for Digital Storytelling. Allows students to create and record simple puppet shows. Watch your characters take to the stage and deliver their lines just as you wrote them. Toontastic -- (Free with in-app purchases or $9.99) Same basic concept as Puppet Pals but provides some information about different parts of the story (Set-up, Conflict, Challenge, Climax and Resolution) and how they work together to make a story. Allows students to record a story with sock puppets. This one is a little more advanced than some of the others. Similar to Story Patch. Storywheel -- (Free or $2.99 with in-app purchases) A game-type app that has students work together to tell a story. Create Voicethreads on your iPad! Rubrics for Digital Storytelling:
Top 8 Web Tools for Teacher's Professional Development I have been recently posting about teacher's professional development using web technologies and each time I do I would get emails asking for the tools I use personally. I compiled a list of the top 8 platforms I use almost daily for expanding my knowledge and staying updated about the topics that interest me the most. Being a graduate researcher in the field of educational technology and from my own experience of several years blogging in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, I highly recommend the tools below and I personally view them as the most important platforms for growing professionally.
iMovie and the iPad - The GWAEA iPad PD Site -- Allows for editing and enhancing of photos on your iPad. -- Select any photo from Camera Roll -- Features include: Cropping, Color, Exposure, Sketch, Focus, Borders and Effects -- Share edited photo through email, Facebook, Twitter, tumblr., Flickr, and through -- Photoshop Express -- Allow for enhancing photos with pre-made effects -- Choose Film, Light, or Borders and scroll through options -- Select your choice in one and move on to another (can choose one in each section) -- Share edited photo back to library, iTunes, Facebook, Flickr, Imm.io, Dropbox, or email Video Filming and Planning Resources -- Allows you to create movies or movie trailers using photos and videos from your camera roll and music in iTunes on our iPad or by recording straight into the app -- iMovie allows you to share your videos back to your Camera Roll, YouTube, Facebook, vimeo, iTunes, and CNN iReport Trailers -- Allows the creation of movie trailers around a theme; scary, superhero, romance, etc. arrow. 1. 2. 3.
TeacherTube 10 Apps for Documenting Learning One of the things that really excites me about the iPad is the ability of the students to show their learning. I am not talking about the end product here, I am talking about the act of learning that can be shown by students recording their processes. It is often about the student putting the information they have learnt into a context. It is this contextualisation that helps the students create meaning. Here is a perfect example from a young 1st grade student who talks us through his investigation into transport. This example was shown on a recent school visit as one way a student could document their own learning. This is where we really see the mechanics of a student's learning and how this can be individual for each student and in the case of a tool like the iPad, individualised for each student. Here are a couple of apps that give students the opportunity to showcase, share and then reflect on their learning. ShowMe: FREETurn your iPad into your personal interactive whiteboard!
Free Technology for Teachers A Parent's Guide to Educational iPad Games Partially excerpted from the new book, "iPads in Education for Dummies" by Sam Gliksman In between repeatedly imploring my youngest son to turn off the XBox, iPad, his mother's iPhone and every other device we have around the house, I get the occasional flashback to when I was his age. In my flashback, it's a weekday and the time is somewhere around 5pm. I've just come home from school and I'm glued to the 17th repeat of an episode of Get Smart or Gilligan's Island. My point is simple. In that spirit, I've started a list of educational iPad game apps for parents. The link to my initial choices is below. Parent's Guide to Educational iPad Games
iLearn Technology – Integrating technology in the classroom The Top Educational iPad Apps Every Teacher and Student should Know about ( 100+) When it comes to searching for educational apps to install on your iPad it feels like you get drowned in an avalanche of apps and resources from which you emerge empty-handed. Everyday new apps go viral and to keep up with the updates in this field is really a daunting challenge. Thankfully, there are many trusted educational resources ( this blog is one of them ) where educators and teachers can get to discover and learn about new useful apps to use in education. Another trusted resource is Langwitches whose images I am sharing with you below.
10 free tools for creating infographics | Infographic Done right, infographics can be a great way to make sense of complex data. The best infographics transform complex information and data into graphics that are both easy to grasp and visually appealing. The only problem is, infographics that look like they were simple to make are often anything but. Exclusive offer: Save 15% on Adobe Creative Cloud now Here, we've selected our top free tools and apps for making infographics. Give these free tools a try and let us know which ones you get on best with on Facebook or Twitter. 01. Visme promises to help you 'speak visually'. 02. Canva is a powerful and easy-to-use online tool that's suitable for all manner of design tasks, from brochures to presentations and much more besides. It features a dedicated infographic maker that you can use for free, with hundreds of free design elements and fonts at your fingertips, and many more premium elements that you can buy for up to $1. 03. Google's chart tools are powerful, simple to use, and free. 04.
iPad Apps How do I get Apps to this device? Or If you are new to the mobile world, what is an App? App or an application is a program that can be installed on to the device. Notes on Selecting Apps: When selecting an app, there is not one app that is perfect for everyone.