I have been working with blended learning since the 2nd half of last year. Through that time I have faced many challenges, including keeping students engaged, focused, and interested in the blended component. I have tried both a fully flipped classroom and a more blended approach (videos in the classroom and/or at home). Today I think I was able to find the happy medium by giving students a variety of choices in their learning. Each choice would achieve the same goal: the students learned the material. There's more to this that I'll explain later. I was just SO excited when I saw my classes engaged and on task almost ALL day long.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Saving in the Cloud
Saving your documents through some sort of cloud based storage (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc) can give you quick access to your documents (standards, lesson plans, worksheets etc). This is great if you are working on something at home and at work!
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Apps for Students
In a past resources post I offered a list of essential iPad apps for teachers. This is a followup to that article and is geared towards apps that are useful for students. All of these apps are free unless stated otherwise.
Accelerated Reader - allows students to take AR and Vocab tests. You'll just need your school/district's AR URL to get started.
Arcademic Apps - Arcademicskillbuilders.com is a great website that has arcade style skill building activities for students, everything from basic addition and subtraction practice to verbs, state capitols and more. They have a handful of apps available a couple are free and the majority are only $0.99. So they are definitely worth purchasing.
Dictionary.com - Just like you can look up anything on the web now you can also look up any word on this app. It's quick and it's free.
Dragon Dictation - you speak, it types. It's not perfect at recognizing everything that you say but it's darn close. This app is great for students who may struggle with writing as it allows them to speak and get their information typed up.
Evernote - This is an amazing digital notebook that allows not only students to keep track of everything but also teachers. I have never been more organized as an educator than I am now with Evernote. There are a handful of apps that help support Evernote that can be found at http://trunk.evernote.com This includes Evernote Peek which is a great way for students to use digital flash cards.
Google Earth - This powerful app is also available on the PC. It allows for real world problem solving through its mapping, and charting. You can also take students on virtual field trips just about anywhere in the world to reinforce the subject they are learning about.
Khan Academy - Practice, learn, watch anything. Students can add teachers as their coach, they can watch, learn and practice what they have learned.
Math Lands - This game offers math, logic and critical thinking skills
My Big Campus - Social Learning Management System App - access your mybigcampus account from anywhere. I would recommend using the full web version if at all possible as it seems to be more complete and has no trouble loading on the iPad
Looking for more apps?
50 Useful Apps for Students With Reading Disabilities
Accelerated Reader - allows students to take AR and Vocab tests. You'll just need your school/district's AR URL to get started.
Arcademic Apps - Arcademicskillbuilders.com is a great website that has arcade style skill building activities for students, everything from basic addition and subtraction practice to verbs, state capitols and more. They have a handful of apps available a couple are free and the majority are only $0.99. So they are definitely worth purchasing.
Dictionary.com - Just like you can look up anything on the web now you can also look up any word on this app. It's quick and it's free.
Dragon Dictation - you speak, it types. It's not perfect at recognizing everything that you say but it's darn close. This app is great for students who may struggle with writing as it allows them to speak and get their information typed up.
Evernote - This is an amazing digital notebook that allows not only students to keep track of everything but also teachers. I have never been more organized as an educator than I am now with Evernote. There are a handful of apps that help support Evernote that can be found at http://trunk.evernote.com This includes Evernote Peek which is a great way for students to use digital flash cards.
Google Earth - This powerful app is also available on the PC. It allows for real world problem solving through its mapping, and charting. You can also take students on virtual field trips just about anywhere in the world to reinforce the subject they are learning about.
Khan Academy - Practice, learn, watch anything. Students can add teachers as their coach, they can watch, learn and practice what they have learned.
Math Lands - This game offers math, logic and critical thinking skills
My Big Campus - Social Learning Management System App - access your mybigcampus account from anywhere. I would recommend using the full web version if at all possible as it seems to be more complete and has no trouble loading on the iPad
Looking for more apps?
50 Useful Apps for Students With Reading Disabilities
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