Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Apps for Storytelling

Apps for Storytelling in the Classroom
 


Storyrobe:
This is an app that allows you to share your story with other Storyrobe users. You can add to existing stories to create longer tales of travel, events or history or you can create your own. This app can be used for work, school or just to share stories with each other.

StoryPatch:
Storypatch is a storytelling app designed for children to create their own picture books. It has hundreds of images in it’s library as well as the ability to import photos. Students will love this app because they will be creating fun and engaging stories almost immediately.

ComicStrip:
Create your very own comic book page using photos from your camera roll or takes new ones in-app. With this fun and unique layouts and caption bubbles, anyone can create the story they have always wanted to tell. Email your stories, your creations from your photo album.



PuppetPals:
Create your own animated stories. Simply pick out the characters, drag them onstage and tap record. Movements and audio is recorded for your performance. If you get the Directors Pass you can act out a story of Pirates on the high seas, fight scary monsters or play the part of a wild west bandit.

Reel Director:
This is a powerful video app that allows you to create, edit and share movie clips on your iPad. Smooth or blend transition between scene changes are its biggest feature but it also does Ken Burns, text overlays, music imports and voice over capabilities. A great storytelling app.

Strip Designer:
This is a comic strip creation with included page templates. Add photos and a couple of speech bubbles and additional effect stickers and you have a professional looking comic or graphic novel. You can even paint on the photos or draw sketches from scratch.

Sonic Pics:
This app is like a narrated slideshow of your images. You can add images from your library or take new ones in app. The images can be arranged any way you like and then you records a voiceover that narrates your story as you swipe through your images.

Toontastic:
Making cartoons is as easy as putting on a puppet show - simple press the button, move your characters onscreen, and tell your stories through play. Once you are done, Toontastic will playback your animation and voice asa cartoon for you to share with firends and classmates.

StoryKit:
Create an electronic storybook. Write some text, illustrate by drawing on the screen, tag a photograph or drawing on paper and then photograph the image. Sounds can be recorded for narration or effects and the layout elements of your story can be dragged, pinch and altered with ease.

Cartoon Studio:
Create multi-celled cartoons straight from your iPad. Some characters and backgrounds are included all you need to do is select the ones you want and drag them in to place. Add your speech bubbles and you can make any situation both entertaining and informative.

Comic Creator:
Turn your own photos into a dynamic comic book. Insert images into customisable templates that allow pan, zoom in and zoom out. Add you speech bubbles from the selection and then use the app to share with other or social networks.

PhotoComic:
Photocomic is easy to use and discover. Start by selecting a layout, ad photos to each frame and then select one of the various bubbles to add text. Interaction with each object by double tapping. Capture the right moments and re present your story creatively.




Why an iPad?

Why an iPad?
  • The iPad has a very responsive Multi-Touch screen, a strong advantage over using a touchpad or external mouse.
  • The iPad has accessibility built in. It comes with a screen reader, support for playback of closed-captioned content, and universal zoom feature which provides magnification of the entire screen of any application. There is even support for a wireless braille display and international braille tables.
  • The iPad is more streamlined, portable, and cool.
  • The iPad boots up much faster, since it uses a solid-state hard drive.
  • The iPad is optimized for its hardware–the operating system was designed for the device.
  • The iPad video display is a large, high-resolution LED backlit IPS display.
  • The iPad can stay charged for an entire school day, with a 10 hour battery life.
How might teachers use iPads in their classroom? 

Reading: The iPad makes an excellent ebook, magazine, or any document reader, as the color screen is vibrant and readable in almost any kind of lighting. Books can be transferred to the Apple iBook app, using ePub or PDF formats. The color screen is especially appealing when displaying picture books and other media such as magazines. The advantages to students would be: (1) not having to lug around heavy books, (2) having all textbooks on one device, (3) being able to take and share notes, (4) automatic bookmarks when returning to the book, and (5) potential cost savings versus purchasing books.

Listening/Viewing: Students can download podcasts, music, and other media (iTunes U anyone?) for instant listening and viewing through the iTunes store. They can also view YouTube and other image/video sharing services.

Conduct On-Demand Research: The Safari browser is quick and easy to use, allowing students to conduct quick research to answer questions, watch videos, read and save webpages, search for resources in online library databases, share ideas with their Facebook friends–just about everything they can do on a traditional computing device.

Organizing: Students can learn and apply digital organization skills through working with the iPad and discovering ways they can streamline content collection, access, and redundancy. Show them Dropbox as one way they can save and access content through multiple devices.
Publication: Students can post and publish content to their blogs and other websites, either using the browser interface or specialized apps for blogs.

Communicate/Collaborate: Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Evernote, and other social apps are all available through the iPad for sharing information, receiving updates, and conducting research. The email app built-in to the iPad is intuitive and handy.

Facilitate Note taking: Evernote is a great way to take notes on the iPad (yes, there’s an app for that). Students can have all of their notes organized, along with their “textbooks” to study and review. There are also apps that allow the user to handwrite on the device, using either their finger or a specialized stylus. This would provide another way for students to write instead of having to keyboard.

Offer Individualized instruction: As a teacher, you know that not all students are on the same page or at the same level. By identifying students who need extra help or those who are bored and need to move forward, the iPad can provide the platform for additional curricular paths and challenges. Entire courses could become less dependent upon the teacher, with students identifying their interests, needs, and ways they can accomplish their goals.

Teach Personal responsibility: I’ve heard this before, that students won’t take care of technology tools. I don’t agree with that. If students had their own technology tools, they would learn how to take care of them and be responsible for ethical use of these devices. This is another great reason to support individual student ownership of technology devices–the opportunity to actively demonstrate and teach standards for appropriate use and care. We hear a lot about personal responsibility–ownership of an iPad would greatly facilitate this.

Gaming: Yes, the iPad can also be used for gaming, with many games available that would supplement a curricular unit. With a little creativity and no effort to get students to engage, the iPad can be a compelling reason to incorporate games in the classroom.

Apps for Writing

Apps to Get Students Writing:


 

iA Writer:
“A Beautiful and simple design lets you concentrate on writing”. Every elements of the interface has been designed and polished to be easy and clear - no settings, no complicated interactions, no long explanation necessary - you’ll be writing your articles, poems and novels in no time.
Pages:
Exclusively designed for the iPad it lets you create, edit and view documents wherever you are. Pages Templates are available to instantly create beautiful letters, reports, flyers, cards or posters. Wide range of files types accessible as well as file sharing. Most popular writing app for the iPad.
Plain Text:
A simple text editor with an uncomplicated, paper-like user interface. Biggest feature is the ability to create and organise documents in folders and then sync everything with Dropbox from within the app. A great example of how an iPad app should be written.
Articles for iPad:
This is really an app that helps you to do some of the research involved in writing papers. It is a one-of-a-kind presentation of Wikipedia articles with chapter control for skimming, table of contents, integrated maps and email article facilities as well as bookmark folders and all fully optimized for iPad.
Notebooks:
The one and only notebook necessary - allows you to write, capture and organise your notes. Divide your projects into sub project for better handling, and cross reference to your filing system. Can also view PDF Pages, numbers, Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents. A very handy app.
Papers:
Another research app that allows you to browse hundreds of articles in your library, find article by author or journal and even rate articles. Re-built for the iPad it also has a PDF viewer and the ability to annotate article on the spot. 8 built-in search engines for locating millions of articles at any time.
Clean Writer:
A clean and clutter free interface carefully designed for minimal impact on the writing process. Dropox integration, email sending and automatic saving. Only drawback is it is a plain text file(.txt) so conversion is required to open existing documents from other file types. 
Heart Writer:
A simple yet powerful text editor that supports 40 desktop-level keyboard shortcuts. Not designed for beautiful documents but rather for users to write and edit simple documents very quickly. Send via email, Dropbox or Google Docs. Concentrate on just the writing.

My Writing Spot:
Simply the best app for working on your writing project on the iPad. Provides a distraction free environment to create a manuscript that also includes word and character count, an extra row of keys, dictionary and thesaurus, password protection and support for printing and syncing to web service.
Chapters:
Lets you create and manage multiple notebooks, each one fully searchable and with its own settings. Ability to enable fast search, word count and extra keyboard features as well extensive formatting, photo importing, PDF version of documents, timestamps and export via email.
Paper Helper - Easiest Essay: $1.19
PaperHelper uniquely splits your iPad screen in half providing you with a Internet Browser and a Document writer. Seamlessly surf the web for information and transfer it to your document while you keep track of all your sources while providing print facilities as well.

Best Apps for Teachers

Best Apps 4 Teachers

These apps are designed specifically for the classroom teacher and will assist us in the everyday little jobs that need to be done, often on the run and often while 10 other things are also happening in the room. There are plenty and I am sure as more and more teachers gain the confidence to design their own apps, there will be many more to come. Here is a list of apps that you can use to make your job easier.

Keynote: $9.99
Keynote for iPad is almost as powerful as the desktop application. This is a powerful presentation tool that has animations, slide transition and all the features to make professional slides. It allows you to open templates with graphics already inserted. This is purposely built to work seemlessly on the iPad and to allow the user to incorporate other aspects of the iWork suite. Perfect addition to any homepage.




Since one of the first jobs you have to do each morning is to take the role Attendance is a great solution for the iPad. This app has some great features which make it attractive to teachers; photos for each student, recording lateness or emailing absent students. It asks if you would like to import your address book or you can import student info from external files. It also syncs between different devices. For the price this is a very functional app.



Teacher Tool: Free


TeacherTool saves grades and makes suggestions for grades. TeacherTool saves your remarks about students and presents them to you in the upcoming lesson. It remembers the date of any grade and lets you store comments along with it. TeacherTool keeps track of your students‘ absences. It is much safer than your traditional mark-book, as with every synchronization on your Mac, you save an up-to-date backup copy of all your data.


iAnnotate: $12.99


iAnnotate is a PDF reader and annotation tool for the iPad. It opens documents from emails, fills out forms, you can sign and send out contracts, enter notes for edits, sketch diagrams, copy text, and add highlights or underline with the drag of a finger. iAnnotate fully integrates its annotations directly into the PDF. This is a great tool for teachers to mark student's work.



GradePad: $2.99


The GradePad application allows you to grade your students’ performance directly from your mobile device. The documentation from the application’s website explains that with this app you can Manage Groups, Create GradePads, Do Assessments, Track Performance, and Share Data. Manage Groups, Create GradePads, Do Assessments, Track Performance, Share Data



Dropbox: Free


Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. After you install Dropbox on your computer, any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, your iPhone and iPad and even the Dropbox website! With the Dropbox app, you can take everything that matters to you on the go.




Attendance: $5.99


Attendance is a universal iOS touchscreen application. It allows you to take and keep attendance records. Its main intended use is for teachers to keep track of records for their classes, but it can also be used for meetings and group gatherings. Features include; unlimited courses, move students from one class to another , photo recognition, customisable attendance statuses.



Teacher Pal: Free


TeacherPal is a personal organizer for the teacher. It enables the teacher to organize classes, and students. Its simple and intuitive interface enables teachers to track the attendance, grades and behavior of their students. Features include; simple tap attendance, grade books, enter grade with an intuitive touchpad, import, export data files from and to CSV files.



Flipboard: Free


This is a great app for the iPad. Flipboard allows you to set your twitter feeds straight back to your iPad. Flipboard then re-presents it in a magazine format. The tweets are laid out with images in the same format as an online mag. This is great for making online textbooks for specific classes or even further reading lists. Only the classes that you have given the specific twitter address have access. I think this makes tweets much more user friendly, especially to younger students who may not be as familiar with twitter.


PowerPresenter: $1.99


PowerPresenter is an app that lets you display local PDFs, websites or even draw on the screen as a white board. Through the Web, you can display not just HTML but PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, RTF files and iWork files. This all requires Internet connection, but if you know you do not have a connection save them as local files.





Evernote: FREE



Evernote allows you to capture information in any environment using any device, and makes everything accessible and searchable, from anywhere. Evernote is always synchronized, so any information added in one place is instantly available everywhere else. Use Evernote to capture your ideas, snapshots, voice memos, things you see online, and just about anything else that you want to remember.  Evernote recently reached their have 10 millionth user.


Educate: Free

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/keynote/id361285480?mt=8&ls=1