iLiterate News
Getting iLiterate the ensure our students aren't illiterate.
2nd Edition
Thanks for checking out this week's edition of my iLiterate News flyer! Read on for fresh news, nuggets, and my first nerd bio! And don't forget to fill out the form at the end so I can thank you with a fresh morning pick me up. I was able to surprise a couple teachers last week and I'm hoping to keep the tradition going.
News
iPad Collection for Park Terrace
I'm excited to let you know that this year you will be able to keep the iPads in your classroom for students to use right through the last day of school!!! With that said, please be sure to keep track of them in those final days and definitely do a final count before the bell rings. If you don't notice that one is missing until the students leave it will be much harder to make sure we get it back. More info to come on the collection process including deleting apps, cleaning screens etc in the coming weeks.
Nuggets
News-O-Matic
News-O-matic is a really cool kids news paper/current events app. They take actual stories from the news and present them in a very kid friendly way. There's new content added every single day and in each edition there are things to read, images that help explain the content, videos about the stories and even educational games to play. When there's a story about a specific place around the world, you can pop that place up on the map, Want kids to find and highlight important information? You can do that too. Does it come in Spanish? Yep. Can it be differentiated for the varying reading abilities in my class? Yes there are different version of the apps: ages 5+, grades 1-2, and regular for grades 3-4. There's also a paid version but all of the features and versions I've mentioned are in the FREE ones! But why keep telling you about it. Download it yourself and check it out. Thanks for sharing Sarah Wall!
All About News O Matic
Lego Movie Maker
Yep it's like it sounds, its an app made by lego to make claymation like movies with real legos. Legos have been an extremely poplar toy for decades. Why? Because they involve a lot of creativity, engineering and critical thinking skills. And now with this app, you can add a lot of language arts skills as well. How it works: you set up the legos, take a picture within the app, move the legos slightly and take another pic etc. Then you add audio, sound and visual effects, text and titles and so on. The language arts skills come in when you have your students write a script for the movie, make a movie based on a specific genre or theme the class has been studying, or show their understanding of an ELO using the movie maker as they would with puppet pals. Could you use this app with something other than legos? Certainly. If you do want to have your students use the real thing let me know because I've got two big tubs of them I'd be happy to lend you until Sully reaches the age where he won't try to eat them :)
How to make LEGO Stop Motion Videos with LEGO Movie Maker App - Cheep Jokes
Nerds
The nerd for this week is Katrina Swartz
She hosts a radio show in San Franciso called mind shift and showcases great apps for education. Here's a link to an article of some of her very top app recommendations. In the article she explains why they're great, how to use them and if they are free or paid. She's great. Check her out.