Knowing the hectic schedules and the amount of work required just to keep everything up to date and follow curriculums as is, how do educators find high-quality upgrades to technology, which seems to be constantly changing? I called up a friend of my from a neighboring school district who is a media specialist for his school and asked him how he does it.  The answer, I discovered, is that you have to try them out and talk about them.  This wasn’t exactly the answer I was hoping for because again, who has to time to do that?  He did go on and tell how last summer before school started he and his principal put together an App Party.  The principal sent all the teachers the invite and they had a pretty good turn out with about twenty teachers meeting up over at the principal’s house.  They brought the school’s new iPad lab and spent a couple of hours working together, looking and reviewing different apps.  He acknowledged some spent more time talking than researching, but he got more research done in two hours with help from everyone then he ever would have by himself.  Plus, the teachers’ researched thinking, “How can this app work for my curriculum?” So the apps they put money into are ones he knew would be money well spent.  I thought it was a great idea. His teacher’s also appreciated it, knowing their input was important.  There is a down side, however.  Most apps don’t give you a free trial and the reviews can be misleading sometimes.  Plus, I’m a strong advocate for making technology enhance your curriculum and not change your curriculum.  With that in mind, the sad reality is right now you really need to just bite the bullet and spend some money testing out different apps to see if they are worth buying for the whole school.

Below are my top apps:

Brainpop

5^th and 6^th graders are still very much kids.  And kids love to learn, but it helps for them to be tricked into learning sometimes.  That’s what I love about Brainpop.  My students get on Brainpop, watch the videos, and then want to take the quiz to show how well they listened.  Brainpop covers a lot of different topics and subjects like: science, social studies, English, mathematics, arts and music, health and even technology.  A lot of schools I know use it, and while it can’t teach our students everything it’s a great tool to spark interest and go over certain topics.

                      NASA

The NASA app is probably the most subject specific app for my school I will write about today.  Our sixth grade science curriculum has a big unit on space and the solar system.  Several of our teachers have created large projects and the students this year have loved using the ipads for the NASA app.  This app has all kinds of information about the planets and objects in our solar system, hundreds of images from NASA and some awesome NASA Videos.  Our Media Specialist told me in all the classes she has, she has noticed the students who are working with the iPads and this app are so much more focused than the student’s working at the PC’s.  The hands-on features the iPad apps provide dramatically increase student interests.

                   Book Creator

Book Creator is an app for your iPad that helps you create an eBook.  There are two main tools in the app that I’ve worked with.  The first is for text and the second is for images.  The students have fun even with the text because they can manipulate the font, size, and formatting on the page.   My school has used this app a couple times this year with our students during research projects as a format for them to present their findings.  Both science and social studies classes have used it and I fell the students really enjoy the way this app helps organize and clean up their work turning it into a project they really enjoy presenting.

           Stack the States

Stack the States has been voted Best Kids App for iPad! - 2010 Best App Ever Awards.  This app is a great tool for my students for studying.  The down side to this app (as is the case for many apps) is it’s great for the students as a review/study aid on materials they already have learned in class.  It’s not an app that develops creativity or teaches new or more information.  Still, I put this app in my top app list because sometimes as teachers you need to have stuff available for students if they ever have down time or need a break.  Our special education department loves this app because there are often times when our students aren’t doing well in the classroom yet we can give them a “break” by letting them play on an app like Stack the States and they are still learning/reviewing.

               iMovie

iMovie is a video making/editing app.  Students love working with iMovie.  Students can record movies, edit the video clips, add titles, and add music. Not to mention transitions such as fade-in, fade-out, and slides.  This is probably the one app were I can clearly see how my students are digital natives, because there have been several times this year when I’ve had to ask them, “How did you do that?”  The only problem I see right now is having the time to fit iMovie into your curriculum.  We’ve used it several times this year for our morning announcements that we broadcast through our school’s television channel.

       Evernote

This app is in my top list, but not because I’ve worked a lot with it.  To be honest, this app is not an app that our school has available for everyone.  However, there are two students who have IEP’s that allowed them to receive services such as their own iPad and Evernote has been a key tool for them to take notes and better organize themselves.  We are not sure if these two students will show great leaps on their Istep test results, but we have seen improvement in their everyday classroom work and behavior.  So much to the point we have not needed to be nearly as hands on with them this year compared to last year.  Evernote might not be for everybody, but I would definitely recommend it for students who can get it.  

               Math Fractions

This last app I felt I needed to be on here primarily because I co-teach 6^th grade math.  There is nothing mind blowing to this app.  Students learn with hands-on exercises, interactive demonstrations, and by answering simple multiple choice questions.  But why I put this app on my list is because sometimes students need to hear the information from someone (or something) other than the teacher.  It’s amazing to me watching some of these students look at you like you were speaking Japanese and then go to the iPad and play around on Math Fractions for ten minutes and a light bulbs turns on.   

Web 2.0 Tools for My Classroom

It is difficult to think about the huge array of available technology as a special education teacher in an intermediate school setting. This is because one of our students' main struggles is with basic educational tools such as reading and writing, math, and critical thinking skills. We spend the majority of time working on hand writing skills to improve and be legible before worrying about typing skills through digital devices. I know technology is becoming more and more prevalent but I think everyone would agree our next generation still needs to be able to write with a pencil or pen and have others be able to understand and read what they are writing. Nevertheless, technology is changing the landscape of education and everyone in the field needs to be looking for ways to work with the digital natives that are coming into our classrooms. Plus with the development of the internet, there are more tools to aid our students than ever before. So when thinking about how I would go about selecting the technologies for my classroom, first I wanted to make sure I picked web applications that would be standards of the internet and looked to avoid fad websites. The other thing I took into consideration was where my students are in their educational journeys. In 5^th and 6^th grade we're still doing a lot of taking in information and understanding knowledge and how to apply it. I feel each one of the handpicked tools selected can play a pivotal role in the curriculum and education of the students I am servicing.

To start, I wanted to keep two programs that Riverside already uses. Scholastic software is a program that offers several different academic applications each student has access to once they log into their student account through any school computer. We use multiple products from Scholastic: READ180, SYSTEM44, SRI, Reading Counts, FastMath, and Study Jams. All of these programs deal with comprehension (assessment) and remediation to bring students up to grade level standards. The assessments Scholastic has are ones our special education department uses to determine classroom placement and what kind of interventions we will use for our students. The other advantage from our teacher's perspective is the data collection Scholastic offers on all programs, which is incredibly helpful and user friendly. The other web tool Riverside uses is Angel Learning Management Suite (LMS). Our staff uses Angel LMS to create Virtual Learning Environments for online learning but also even simpler tasks such as online assignment postings and notifications for upcoming tests or quizzes. Students are given an electronic portfolio of their digital work. These accounts are also there for the parents to check in on how their student is preforming in their classes. Angel helps our school connect teachers to students and their guardians and that's a huge asset for us. A third program that I feel is an excellent web resource is Google Docs. It is a great web-based office program that is offered free through Google. It allows students to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other students. What is nice about it is you can blend spreadsheet with Microsoft (MS) Word document work. For my classroom this would come in very handy for writing papers because here students could write from both school and from home without having to worry about losing their work from place to place. Next, Prezi and PowerPoint are both web tools that help students put presentations together. Prezi is the "new kid on the block" so to speak. But really there are several differences between the two that make them both useful. PowerPoint typically is more text driven, where Prezi has a much greater visual impact. Prezi also allows you to see a topic wind down a craniological path and yet in the next turn it can visually pull back and show you a big picture structure to a topic because the presentation is on one page. MS PowerPoint is a slideshow presentation that is an application which has a few more tools but needs to be saved to a zip drive or a student's account. Prezi is a free online tool which works well for the students who have a hard time holding on to things from home to school and back and forth. Another great resource is Wikipedia, which is a free, web-based, collaborative, encyclopedia. The pro to this web tool is how user friendly it can be to read and break down topics. The con is that because it's a collaborative website there are times when things are written that are not accurate. This is getting better and they are getting better and better at monitoring and insuring what is being written has a reliable resource to it, but it's still not perfect. Nevertheless, I feel students can easily find quick, relevant facts on a lot of educational topics from George Washington to Ratio. When I think back to the beginning of the web 2.0 era I think Google. I know Yahoo and AOL were technically here first and they all started the change together, but Google changed the game. So this is why I have chosen Google Search as one of the web tools for my classroom. Google Search is the most used search engine of the internet and can be immensely helpful when researching a topic. The downside of Google is the results are sometimes only as good as the search term and depending on if the word has synonyms or connoted meanings, can bring about some unwanted results. The next web tool I wanted our students to work with is Evernote. Evernote has two types, Evernote Premium which is a paid version, or the more restricted, yet free version. At Riverside we would be fine using the free version. What this web tool provides is help with note taking. A lot of my students struggle quite a bit with organization and neatness. This tool can help create nice clean written notes and sort the notes in files for better storage keeping. Another advantage and one of the other aspects Evernote brings to the table is a better way of being "Green." We as a school try and be as eco-friendly as we can; recycling and saving paper wherever possible. Evernote allows our students to keep their notes digitally and not have to use a bunch of paper or note cards for note taking. One of the final resources I've selected is Wordle, which is a web tool that creates tag clouds. Tag clouds are visual representations for text data, typically used to depict keyword words from a topic. It's usually several keywords with each word being depicted by different fonts and/or colors depending on how relevant the word is. A classic example we already have built into our curriculum for 5^th graders is a map. Cites, states, and towns are labeled in different colors and sizes. It's a different type of tag cloud than what we will create from Wordle but this unit is a great lead-in for our students to learn how to create from Wordle. From there our students can build Wordles for multiple subjects when needed. Youtube was my last selection. Not because it's not a good tool, but primarily because so much other non-educational stuff can be found on it there are times when it can be distracting not only for the students but the school staff too. However, videos are a great way to bring topics alive. For example we just read a compare and contrast story about baseball and cricket. Youtube has several good videos showing cricket and all I had to do was type in "how to play cricket." Within several minutes my students now have a much better understanding of what they are reading and how to better compare and contrast the two sports.

All these web tools can be very useful even for my special education department at the intermediate school. Obviously some of these tools will be used more than others. But each new generation is becoming more and more technologically advanced and schools need to aid our students so that technology becomes a useful educational tool, much more than just a place to play games or communicate with friends.

21st Century Learning

I think this video shows I'm one of those Star Wars nerds, I hope you enjoy Episode IV.2!