New Apps, App Ideas, and Other Practical Ideas for Use in the Classroom (inspired from the JSEA Technology Conference)

As promised, a more practical post from the Tech Conference:

GradeCam

If you use Scantron for quizzes or tests: GradeCam is an affordable option that would cut out the purchasing of the forms as well as you going to the work area to process the scores.  As soon as a student is finished, you could take a picture of his answers using your iPad and it would immediately give you his result. As more come to you, using your Camera you would have instant results and see, by person or the aggregate, what learning has been missed.

Book Creator or Creative Book Builder

These two apps are essentially ways to create iBooks on your iPad.  The first is more simple with a more intuitive learning curve, while the second is more advanced but can be more cumbersome. 

Ideas would be to have students use one of these apps to create a book as a unit assessment of overall course assessment.  They could use it in a group project to create a student's guide to the course for next years' class, or create a visual glossary or even a resource compendium to help differentiate learning.

EduCanon

Imagine taking a YouTube (or Vimeo or others) video you have created and placing stops during it that bring up quiz questions.  The student answers the quiz question and they get immediate feedback (for multiple choice ones). Once they have answered the question, they are allowed to resume watching the video.  You are given the results, so you can formatively assess the learning as it is taking place in the video.

If you flip the classroom instruction, this might be a way to embed a type of worksheet into the actual video.  At the least, they cannot skip ahead and they are forced to engage in the viewing.  Accessing the scoring data also gives you more focused points for remediation.

Vernier Video Physics (Math/Science)

Using the Camera, a student can record something in motion and the data analysis within the program will draw trajectory, position, and velocity graphs for the object.

An instructor from Brophy uses this to prove gravity and acceleration, and then has students discover the laws of physics with motion in the AngryBirds universe. 

The Grading Game (English)

Competing as an "evil" English teacher bent on giving students terrible grades, the "player" gets writing samples and a time limit.  The goal is to bring the grade down finding mistakes in grammar as quickly as possible.  Teachers have found this to quickly increase student capacities in writing.

ComicLife or Comics Head Lite (English, Theology)

Create comic strips on the iPad. 

If you are having students create story outlines, have them take pictures enacting key scenes and use the bubbles or captions of the comic strip to analyze or provide grounds justifying why the scenes they select are crucial in the development of the plot.  Limit it to two pages to force their evaluative capacities.

TI-Nspire Calculator and Keynote (Math)

For Math: have students find real life examples of 90 degree angles or other concepts, take photos of them, highlight the area or lines the image represents. Using the Inspire app, have it analyze the data and then insert this analysis into a Keynote presentation.  This can become a creative unit review and integrated into future physics or architecture lessons, can add application and depth to learning.

iPhoto (English, Fine Arts, Languages, Science, Social Studies, Theology)

Have students take photos that can express the meaning of vocab words or key concepts.  Using iPhoto and the Web Journal feature, have them create a photo glossary of terms/concepts for a unit.  With the sharing feature, this could be done as a group project or with peer review. 

iMovie (Social Studies, English, Theology)

Using Ken Burns documentaries as examples, have students use photos in the iMovie app and by adjusting the effects and adding in recordings, have them create their own documentaries of a time period.

iCircuit (Science)

Create and experiment with circuit design/analysis.

TimeLapse (Fine Arts, Science, any project with a visual aid)

Turn your Camera into a time lapse camera.  Set the length of time to "record" or just set it to take a shot every 5 seconds, you can use this to show the progression of something over time.  

Imagine setting this up to record dissection or the creation of an art piece. Every five seconds a photo is taken and at the end, it makes this into a movie. Import that into iMovie and they can give audio commentary on the dissection/piece of art.

Another idea stems from RCA Animate.  Have students create a graphic in the stop-motion style to be used to present ideas/concepts.

Holomic or AirMicroScope (Science)

The first, Holomic, turns an iPhone into a microscope, even an electron microscope.  You can also do blood or allergen analysis.

The second, AirMicroScope, turns the iPad into a microscope.  With the click of a button the teacher is able to send an image of a cell into every students' Camera Roll.

SmartMusic (Fine Arts)

Students can come home, practice music on their instrument (voice included) and the software will record and analyze their performance.  The student will even receive feedback on how to improve.