Student Projects
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10+ DigiTools for Growing Readers
Apptivities -- Models for successful instructional practices
Creation Apps for the One iPad Classroom
App Resources by Grade Level
Teaching Tales along the Yellow Brick Road
Explain Everything: Video
Futaba: Video
iSpell Video
IXL: Video
Khan Academy: Video
Quizlet: Video
TinyTap: Project
Learning to use an app is not necessarily easy. Some are easy to use but others have many nuances and details, so time, practice and support are needed. In the first Summercore Primer (1985), we stated "software is more like a violin than a blender." That statement still holds trued for apps and using them effectively in the classroom In fact, we have said for almost 30 years that you can rate software (and now apps) by these categories:
G: generally easy
PG: personal guidance appreciated
R: really tough without help
X: extremely complicated even with help
Touchcast
A powerful creation tool, TouchCast lets teachers and students create and watch a video layered with interactive Web pages, YouTube clips, Twitter streams, polls, quizzes, and Google maps that viewers can expand, manipulate and turn on and off. One of the most powerful features of the app is the capacity to add vApps, the interactive, live and embeddable extra content elements.Teachers of all grade levels can create interactive lectures using the "Vapp" feature that adds a website within the touchcast. Students can demonstrate content knowledge, create a news story, a how-to video, or a timeline of a novel replete with images and videos. The possibilities for screencasting/flipped lessons, digital story tellings, science lab presentations, poetry analysis are endless. World Language students can demonstate their language skills with the creation of a travelogue. Final results can be viewed on the iPad app or on a computer using Chrome or Safari as the browser. (For some reason, Firefox does not work.) Touchcasts can be embedded in your class website or uploaded to YouTube, but these options remove the interactive quality of the added vApps (The company is working on changing this limitation.) This app is free and fantastic.
Summercore Principle
Recommended App
iPads and Apps
