Category Archives: classroom tool apps

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Tellagami

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Telegami

Currently FREE, Tellagami (rhymes with origami) is a unique storytelling app. Short stories called gamis are easy to create. First you select and customize a character by choosing his/her skin tone, eye color, hair, and clothing. Then you add emotion – happy, sad, surprised, angry, scared, silly. Next you choose a background from the app, from your photo library, or by using your camera. You are now ready to create your gami. You can record your gami in you own voice or choose the text button to type in what your character will say  – the limit is 450 characters. Gamis can be shared via email, messaging, Facebook, or Twitter.

The app is fabulous!! Its uses are only limited by your imagination!! Kids can customize their characters to look like themselves and be reporters, scientists, teachers, etc. They  create the character and setting from a book they are reading. They could message or email a parent to explain what they are learning in class. Teachers could use gamis as interactive exit slips. The list is endless. Kids will LOVE creating gamis!

Tellagami ™ - Tellagami Inc.

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Artmail

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Artmail

FREE for a limited time! Add a personal touch to your emails with Artmail, an app for writing and sending handwritten notes. The app features several choices of stationery plus the option of using your camera to create a unique background. The writing is a brush style (similar to a fountain pen) with several color options. But the best part of this app is the scaling feature – which makes this app great for kids. Users can fill up the entire screen and the app automatically shrinks the word/words to fit in a letter format. Subsequent words are shrunk to match the size of the other words. A red cursor can be moved around to change the location of the words. Little hands will be able to write thank you notes to grandparents or to add a note of explanation to a photo. In the classroom, teachers could use it is SO many ways – for good copies of their writing, to communicate with parents, as an exit slip after a lesson, etc. I LOVE that this app preserves the child’s writing!!  Very cool app – perhaps an upgrade will include the ability to pull in pictures from the photo library which would make it even better!!

ArtMail - Wen Yun Rong

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the reader

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the reader

The day I downloaded this iPad app it was FREE. It is now $1.99. This app is straightforward & simple to use and supported in 4 languages – English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Just type in text then you record yourself reading it. Or type in text and record someone else reading it. The app also logs the time it takes to read the text. There are so many ways that this app could be used in a school setting – record/time beginning readers: to share with the reader & his/her parents, to analyze strengths & weaknesses, to collect fluency & rate data, etc. There are lots of possibilities for teachers of foreign languages too!

Keep reading my blog to find out when great apps like this one, become FREE again.

the reader - CROMBEZ Emmanuel

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Artkive

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As featured on THE TODAY SHOW, Artkive makes it easy to digitally store, share, and print your children’s artwork/schoolwork.  Originally released on August 11, 2012  – this app for the iPhone/iPad is FREE again for a limited time. It is very easy to use…. First you create an account. Then enter the first names of your children. Take photos of their artwork/schoolwork or upload existing photos from your camera roll. Tag the photo with a child’s name, age or grade, the date, and a title. So simple! You can then share their art with family & friends. You will also be able to have Artkive create digital books & other products with your child’s artwork/schoolwork. Artkive makes it easy to collect and store your children’s artwork in one place.

What a great idea! As a parent, you can use it to create books for your children, of any age. I plans to make gift books for my adult children of their art/work that I have saved!  As a teacher, you could use it to create digital portfolios of children’s work. Lots of possibilities…. try it yourself while it is free 🙂

To learn more @ http://www.artkiveapp.com/

Recommended!

Artkive - The Kive Company

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Teacher Clicker – Socrative / Student Clicker – Socrative

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Still FREE , so powerful! This website and app are unbelievably cool – they turn any device with a web browser (iPhone, iPad, laptops) into a student response clicker. If a teacher has access to any kind of wireless lab, he/she can engage the entire class in a game or quiz and watch the results in real-time. Teachers begin by using their teacher app or logging into t.socrative.com with their email and password. Once logged in, teachers are assigned a room number to share with their students. Students log in using their student app or at m.socrative.com and enter the “virtual room number” provided by the teacher. Teachers initiate an activity and students respond on their devices. Multiple choice and short answer quizzes are easy to create – types of questions can be mixed. Teachers can also choose to run the quiz as a Space Race game. The students’ responses are visible to the teacher in real-time. Teachers can see what each child answered individually as well as what the group answered collectively. And the best part is… the app grades, graphs the results, and generates a report as an Excel spreadsheet or an email.

What a powerful tool for teachers – a short quiz at the end of a lesson can pinpoint what students understand and what needs to be retaught. Hours of grading and analyzing test results are done immediately. Every student is involved – wow!

Highly recommended!

Teacher app Teacher Clicker - Socrative - Socrative           Student app Student Clicker - Socrative - Socrative

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MyScript Calculator

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myscript

FREE for your iPhone/iPad, MyScript Calculator is an amazing app. It performs mathematical operations using your handwriting! The app is simple to use and intuitive. Just write the mathematical equation on the screen. MyScript technology converts the symbols and numbers to digital text and delivers the answers. It supports the following operations: basic operations (+, -, x, ÷, +/‒, 1/x), additional operations ( %, √, x!, |x|), powers/exponentials (ℯx, xy , x2), trigonometry, and more. Very cool!!

MyScript Calculator - Vision Objects

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Smart White Board HD

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super white board

FREE whiteboard app, Smart White Board HD, is super simple to use! One finger writes, 2 fingers erase, 3 fingers clears all. Press the save button or shake your device to save an image. You can write in black, blue, or red and in 3 thicknesses. The app also includes a simple voice recorder. Just press record, talk, stop & name your file, and it is saved to a list. You can then email your recording if you wish to share it. Teachers can get rid of their classroom whiteboards, markers, and erasers! Have kids show their work, explain their thoughts, etc. with this simple app!

Smart White Board HD - Pad read

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Equivalent Fractions

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equivalent fractions

From the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics comes a FREE app called Equivalent Fractions. Kids create equivalent fractions by dividing and shading squares or circles. Circles can be divided into 24ths. Squares can be divided into 144ths. In the play mode, a fraction is shown and kids must create 2 additional fractions that are equivalent. All 3 fractions must have different denominators. The app also places the fractions on a number line – a great visual for comparing! There is also a “build your own” mode which would be fabulous to use for guided exploration & practice. Kids could also use this section as a virtual manipulative when working independently. This app is an excellent resource for the classroom !!

Common Core Standards met:

  • 3.NF.3 – Explain equivalence of fractions and compare fractions by reasoning about their size. Understand two fractions as equivalent (equal) if they are the same size, or the same point on a number line. Recognize and generate simple equivalent fractions, e.g., 1/2 = 2/4, 4/6 = 2/3). Explain why the fractions are equivalent, e.g., by using a visual fraction model.

Equivalent Fractions - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

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Trading Cards

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trading cards

Fabulous app!!! ReadWriteThink’s Trading Cards is powerful FREE app developed by the International Reading Association. This app provides a unique way for kids to share their understanding of topics, generate their own study aids, create a fictional world to use in their writing, make their own trading cards, and more. There are 7 categories of cards available within the app: fictional person, real person, fictional place, real place, object, event, and vocabulary. Kids start by choosing a category and typing in the title of the card. Each category has specific questions which help kids create information-rich trading cards. Images can be added by using the device’s camera or by accessing pictures in the photo library. Kids can also sort their cards into collections such as characters from a book, heroes or villains, landmarks, the 50 states, vocabulary by subject, etc. The possibilities are endless! Cards can be shared via email, saved to the photo library, or printed on a wireless printer. And… the kid appeal is tremendous. Kids will LOVE trading their cards with their classmates 🙂

Highly recommended!!

Trading Cards - International Reading Association

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Rhyme Lite

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rhyme

It’s called Rhyme Lite but it contains over 120,00 words – nothing lite about that!! This app for the iPad is simple to use. It is basically a rhyming dictionary at your fingertips. Just type in a word and the app will generate 1 syllable or 2 syllable rhyming words. There is also the option for 3 syllable rhyming words. BEWARE – words that are inappropriate for a school setting are included.  So…. if you have kids that are inclined to look up “bad words” in the dictionary, they will probably use this app to find rhymes for those “bad” words. Consider yourself warned  – it is billed as an app for poets, rappers, and romantics rather than a kids. That being said – it would be a useful tool for teachers who are trying to generate lists of words that rhyme, words that sound alike but look different, etc.

Rhyme Lite | must-have for poets, song writers, rappers and romantics - A2rt