Storia is an app created by Scholastic. It allows students and teachers to read ebooks. You must have a scholastic account to use Storia. To create a scholastic account go to scholastic.com and click on Register in the upper left hand corner.
During our iPad session Karen will talk about the way she is using Storia in the classroom with her first graders. We will also discuss other ideas for using this app.
For answers to more questions about Storia you can click here.
When we think about using the iPad in the classroom, itʻs not about the iPad or the apps, but what we want our students to be able to do. With that in mind, there are some great resources available that categorize apps based on what they can do and also include an ease of use rating.
EdTechTeacherʻs iPad As…resource is excellent. It includes a table with skills teachers would like their students to be able to do and when you click on the skill, it takes you to a page with a list of apps that can accomplish the task with the cost, description, usefulness rating, and ease of use rating.
Another fabulous resource is edshelf, reviews and recommendations of tools for education. Edshelf allows you to browse tools by category and also by subject age and platform. When you click on a tool, you get a description of the tool, reviews by educators, pricing, and collections of tools that teachers have put together that are either similar or include the tool reviewed. But thatʻs not all! The tool is also rated based on Learning curve, pedagogical effectiveness, and student engagement.
Appolearning is a resource I just learned about from one of my colleagues, Lynne Horiuchi. At this site, there are experts who rate apps and give them scores based on educational content, kid appeal, assessment, feature & design, value, and safety & privacy. Apps are categorized by grade level, as well as content area.
We will be having iPad PLC meetings on the following dates in April and May. We will be sharing some of the apps that will be on our new iPads when they arrive (at some point in the near future I hope) as well as leaving time to share, discuss, and ask questions! All of the days are Thursdays or Fridays. When you see two dates listed together in the same week (e.g. April 18, 19) you do not need to come both days as we will be covering the same app. This is to give as many people the opportunity to attend as we can!
All meetings will be from 3 pm to 4 pm.
Please join us! If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact Carmen or Ellen.
Want some awesome resources from other educators who are using iPads? Simply go to google any type in “#iPaded”, click on the first result and you’ll see a twitter feed of iPad lesson ideas, tips, best practices and more! The beauty of it is you don’t even need to be on twitter to enjoy the benefits of it!
The link above will take you to the page they have created that contains video tutorials on a number of different apps. The blog also has tutorials that show you how to manage your iPad from the minute you get it to more complicated tasks.
I have gotten several requests from parents and students for a list of the apps that we use at school on our iPod touches and iPads. Well, there are quite a few that we use! I have taken a screen shot of the apps that I have downloaded so that you can see the selection that we have to choose from. If your child has talked about an app they will likely recognize the picture of it if they cannot remember the name of it. To find out more about an app you can google it or contact me by email (castack@ksbe.edu). All the apps you will see are not used by the students, but I have included all of them in my list as many teachers have also been asking me for app recommendations.
Some of our very favorite apps from the many you will see in the pics below are:
Oregon Trail
Sky View
World of Goo
BrainPop
Feed Me
Math Evolve
Math Bingo
Comic Book
Puppet Pals HD
An excellent website that offers lists of apps is: AppAdvice.com
Have you tried ClassDojo yet? Well, if you have and love it then you’ll love what they are doing now. I recently logged on and came about an area where they were taking ideas on how to improve ClassDojo. Here users of ClassDojo could make suggestions on things they wish ClassDojo could do. After you post your suggestion others can read through and vote on them. I’m thinking, the more votes the idea or suggestion gets the better chance it has of being implemented into ClassDojo. I’m sure realistic expectations take into play as well.
Here are a few ideas that I thought were great or wouldn’t mind having so I voted for them. ClassDojo wouldn’t let me log on, so the ideas are just in my own words but suggested other people.The blue comments are my own thoughts. The red is the status of the idea or suggestion.
For rewards – as student gain positive points for behaviors they will be able to ‘purchase’ items for their character or change their characters. Items such as cool outfits, hats, glasses, colors of the character, etc. The characters could be personalized.
I like this feature. Who wouldn’t want to personalize their little monster.
Having a school wide account so that multiple teachers could award negative or positive points from any where. Then teachers could see the points for students no matter what class they are in and tally at the end of the day. (Something similar is being planned.)
As a school wide system, I think this may work with our positive behavior system. This way anyone with smartphones or iPad or laptop can keep track during school wide events, transitions, recess, lunch, huakai, etc. Someone suggested in the school account have codes for teachers so they know who gave what point. For example – Chang +1 Respect.This might be a good way to keep track of our school expectations for Na Koa Reward.
Feature allowing parents to have a login to see their child’s daily progress. (Planned)
This may alleviate you having to email the parents all the time or printing out reports. Plus since it’s real-time they can check when ever.
Instead of having monsters or cartoon characters have the option of putting the students picture instead.
In a school wide account this may help those who do not have particular students yet or at the beginning of the year with new students.
Having the option to award by groups (Planned)
I was thinking for group projects if groups are working on experiments together and doing well or being respectful you can award all of them the same time. Or on particular components of the project. If you change to use ClassDojo as a reward system for curriculum or academic as mentioned in my previous review of this app.
Having the ability to award multiple students at once instead of doing individually, which may be time consuming. (Started)
There are so many others that I didn’t have enough votes. But I checked out the ones that were planned or being started and I think they are very helpful towards using this application for behavior management. I’m very excited. Here are a few more that I couldn’t vote for.
Make iPhone app, Kindle Fire app, Android app (Started)
Enable more languages to be used. (Planned)Maybe Hawaiian?
Absent button so takes away name for the day
Have character evolve as gain more points or interact as points awarded
ONE LAST UPDATE…
As sent in my email tonight you can now change each student monster. You can pick which on you want for each student. You can even set them all to the same if you want. That way students don’t get embarrassed or upset that they don’t have the one they want. This could be a good thing. You can tell students that as they gain so many positive points, you will give them the option to change their monster. OR you can just print out an invitation for each student to pick their own monster / character. I tried it. The invitation gives them the ClassDojo site and a special code that they punch in. Though I think they have to make an account, which would be their KS email. (Now that I think about it, it may be a hassle. But something worth trying if you want).
Well, I hope that you all try it. If you log into your account, on the left side bar there is an option “New Features”. Click there to make suggestions on how to improve ClassDojo, see others or vote on ones you like. It also lets you query out ideas that they have completed, planning and started. This will let you know which ideas are in the works or done.
All the best! -Kalei
Here’s a short video of how one teacher in Idaho uses ClassDojo. He even mentions using with specials teacher (PE).
Here’s another video showing how to change the avatars.
