Tech EDGE: Mobile Learning in the Classroom Podcasts
This week we're reviewing a podcast produced at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln called Tech EDGE that gives educators resources for incorporating technology into their classroom. They have over 200 podcasts on different topics and have so far covered honestly basically everything I could ever think of. They have content-specific episodes that focus on things like Social Studies or Reading, but also age-specific that focus on stages in school from Early Childhood to College. I chose to review two episodes, both of which are on the topic of writing apps for iPad, and I chose three apps from them to try out.
The first app that I tried out is Werdsmith. At first glance, it seems to be nothing more than a glorified Notes app, but it's much more than that. Werdmsmith allows you to notate ideas and projects in formats like Novel and Screenplay, and even presents them in that stylistic format so you can begin to imagine what the text would look like in its final, published form. One of its most useful tools is the Word Goal feature, which allows you to set a goal for the amount of words you want to write at any given time and it will show you how far you are from your goal, how much time it would take to read aloud, and the time spent actually writing. This would be an awesome app for students to use when writing essays or short stories, and I think it would help students a lot with procrastinating their writing until the night before the assignment is due because with this they'd be able to come and go with full knowledge of their progress.
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The next app that I tried out is Hanx Writer, which is a typewriter app made by actor Tom Hanks. Now at surface I thought this was kind of just a fun, gimmicky app, but after thinking about using it in the classroom I think it could be much more. The app essentially emulates a physical typewriter with visuals and sound, and allows you to feel like you're typing on a real typewriter. This really intrigued me when I heard about it because in my AP Literature classroom, my teacher always had a working typewriter in his class that he would let us mess around with. Though I don't think that's really a possibility with this one because it doesn't attain fully the novelty of an actual typewriter, there are some definite real classroom applications. For one, students could use this in a multimedia project that incorporates "primary sources" along with their traditional written essay, such as imagining the letter that a character from a book would write to another character, etc. I also think that you could use it in a similar way, by incorporating it into some classroom role play that gets students in the minds of the time period in which they're reading about, and if we're reading about a time when typewriters would have been used this would be a fun, immersive way to take and play as characters from that time.
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The final app is Tools4Students2, which is an app that allows students to fill out graphic organizers and templates that deal with writing and reading. There are 25 options, some are blank and give you a lot of leeway to create a worksheet of your own and print it off for your students, and some are very specific like Chapter Notes; Character, Setting, Plot sheets; or an Essay Map. All of them have inputs that allow you or students to fill them out right on the iPad, which could potentially save you a lot of paper and time. One specifically that I think would be really useful is a What I Learned Today sheet that has spaces for new ideas, new words, and questions for students to fill out. This would be an easy way to get formative assessments of what your students are understanding and what they need to spend some more time on; they could be filling out the sheets throughout class and when it's time for the next period they'd be able to simply drop it into a folder on Google Drive and you'd be good to go and able to prepare for next class.
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