On the 5th Day of Apps

My true love gave to me....A great app for Teachers...

Remind101

Description from the itunes store....

Remind101 provides a safe way for teachers to text message students and stay in touch with parents. It is 100% free and is used by over 500,000 teachers, students and parents to send millions of messages every month.
FAST, SAFE & EASY
* A teacher communication tool that allows you to message your entire class of students and improve parent involvement.
* Teachers never see students' phone numbers. Students never see theirs.
* Students and parents join by sending a text message. No computer needed.
* As a safety precaution, only one-way messaging is permitted, allowing teachers to send updates and reminders without having to worry about managing another inbox.
* Great for parent teacher communication: improve parental engagement at the primary school, elementary school, high school or college level.
* Inclusive classroom communication: students and parents who cannot receive text message notifications may opt in to receive their teachers messages via email.
* Have an upcoming test or quiz? Schedule text messages to be sent later.
* As safe and easy as teacher student communication could be!

The Remind101 developers can be followed on the following social media sites.
Follow us, twitter.com/remind101
Friend us, facebook.com/remind101

4th Day of Apps

Choiceworks

A great app for students who need to use a visual daily schedule. We are having great success using it in a variety of our schools for a variety of students.  This app is a little expensive at $6.99, but well worth the price.  

Here's a great description from the itunes store.

The Choiceworks app is an essential learning tool for helping children complete daily routines (morning, day, & night), understand & control their feelings and improve their waiting skills (taking turns and not interrupting). Created with the support of leading hospitals and child development specialists, this app is designed for caregivers to provide clear and consistent support to foster a child’s independence, positive behavior, and emotional regulation at home and in the community. It can also be customized for teachers in a school setting. 

Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChoiceworksApp

Key Features
■ Three boards: Schedule, Waiting, and Feelings
■ Three Companion Books supporting each board
■ Image Library preloaded with over 180 images and audio
■ Add your own images and record your own audio for limitless customizability
■ Easily create profiles to personalize and manage multiple users
■ Save an unlimited number of boards for multiple children or different routines
■ Speaks boards out loud with professionally recorded audio
■ Time saving essentials like search and auto-save
■ Share boards by Email or iTunes File Sharing with other Choiceworks app users
■ Ability to print boards or save as PDF

Schedule Board
The Schedule Board focuses on making task completion easier and more fun, allowing the user to select up to five steps on iPhone, seven on iPhone 5 and eight on iPad that can be easily reordered. The schedule is then paired with an all done column to check off steps toward a motivating reward. As the task image slides to the all done column, the user gets both visual and audio confirmation. Schedules can be enhanced by adding a timer. The schedules are easy to edit and fully customizable. Once you have created a schedule, it will be saved automatically.

Waiting Board
The Waiting Board is a great way to teach waiting skills like taking turns and/or not interrupting. The user can begin by reading the companion book, When Do I Have to Wait?, in order to explain to the child the reason why everyone has to wait on occasion. Using the waiting board, the top picture can be selected to indicate the reason why the child will be waiting and a timer can be set to show how long the child will be waiting. Next, both the user and the child can select an activity for the child to do while waiting.

Feelings Board
The Feelings Board provides a tool for helping children understand and express emotions. The user can begin by reading the companion book, When I Get Upset, to provide an example of how the child might recognize an emotion and choose a coping strategy. On the Feelings Board, the user can then help the child indicate how they are feeling from a range of options, select a coping strategy, and then request an activity which would likely help them feel better or re-engage with others.

Profiles
Supporting multiple children is effortless with Profiles. When using profiles, the app automatically organizes boards by child and encourages independence by removing the distraction of other children's boards. Personalize each profile with a name and custom photo.

Image Library
The Image Library comes preloaded with over 180 of Bee Visual’s most commonly used images, each with professionally recorded audio. You can access the images quickly using the search feature or simply by scrolling through the images. Users can add to the Image Library by selecting an image from their own camera roll or by taking a photo. The user can then add a caption and record the audio. The images can be defined as a Schedule Board Title, a Task or an Activity, a Waiting Board Skill or Activity, and/or a Feelings Board Activity. This allows only the images you want to use in those categories to be viewed when you are editing and customizing the boards. 

Here's a link that you may find useful when beginning to use this app. Good luck...and enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6lBfRYK6Nc

On the 3rd Day of Apps...

My True Love Gave to Me....Story Creator....

Another great app...Teachers and students love this app. It is so easy and fun to use. To top it all off it's FREE.... Get the PRO version for $1.99.

Story Creator allows you to easily create beautiful picture books containing photos, videos, text, and audio all in one location. Story Creator brings your best stories to life and easily allows you to retell and share your memories.

Story Creator offers a creative way to enjoy your personal pictures, videos, and experiences with family and friends.


Kids will love this app because it is so easy to use. Teachers love it for the same reason and for many more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgDP4XkuGDM

2nd Day of Apps

Explain Everything.... A great way to increase student engagement....

I love this app as it gives students the ability to creatively communicate their thinking.  Students love using this app, and working collaboratively to create amazing projects for their teachers.  

Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere.

Create slides, draw in any color, add shapes, add text, and use a laser pointer. Rotate, move, scale, copy, paste, clone, and lock any object added to the stage.

Add new or existing photos and videos. Import PDF, PPT, DOC, XLS, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and RTF files from Evernote, Dropbox, Box, GDrive, WebDAV, Email, iTunes, and any app that allows you to open these files types using "Open In…". Export MP4 movies, PDF documents, PNG images, or XPL project files directly from your iPad.

(The above description from the iTunes app store.)

Cost $2.99

There is a android version available as well on Google Play. 

Here is a great link, that has a great video on Explain Everything.

http://www.explaineverything.com/

1st Day of Apps

Here is my 1st app for the 12 Days of Apps...

I love the Teach Me Apps, for our young friends.  I used these app with my lifeskills students and what a difference it made in their engagement, and achievement.

There are 5 different grade levels ranging from Preschool, Kindergarten, Grade 1, 2, and 3.

The Teach Me apps teach six different age appropriate subjects.  These apps focus on: sight words, shapes, colours, addition, subtraction, spelling and now writing letters and numbers. Parents/Teachers can select which subjects they want, set different difficulty levels, and even choose specific questions. Parents/Teachers can review performance history for each subject to check how the child/student is doing. 

TeachMe:  keeps children engaged with a rather unique reward system where children earn a coin for every three correct answers. Coins can then be used to purchase stickers to place in fun sticker scenes or to purchase items for the new virtual aquarium. Sticker scenes can be exported as wallpaper or emailed to family and friends. 

The simple and intuitive user interface is designed to be child friendly, which allows children to play without help from an adult. An animated teacher (Mimi Mouse) gives verbal instructions and feedback to the child which makes learning fun. 

Starting Dec. 4, the 12 days of Apps....

Holiday Spirit....

Only 13 more school days left until the holidays, not that I am counting :-)......

I was thinking it might be fun do a count down of my top 12 favourite apps... So starting on Dec. 4 I will post a new app everyday until our last day of school on the 19th.  

Enjoy and if you would like to add your favourite apps please do so...it is always nice to have lots of great apps to try.... Have a great Monday everyone.....

Mindmapping & Graphic Organizers

Popplet...

Popplet is great for school as it is a platform for students to communicate their thinking to their teachers.  

• It can be used for brainstorming, mindmapping, and as a graphic organizer.
• It can also be used for creating timelines. 
• It can also be used for collecting inspiration i.e. A scrapbook. 
• Create for collaboration between students and teachers.
• It can also be used to make connections between items and matching for our life skills students.

Popplet lite is the free version of Popplet. When using this version you are limited to just one popplet ( 1 page). 
With the purchase of Popplet ($4.99) it lets you create an unlimited number of local popplets, which are stored on your iPad. You can also use the full version to create online popplets, which can be shared with and edited by other Popplet users, both on the web at popplet.com and on their iPads. 

This is a great app for students to use to organize and plan their thinking. The possibilities are endless for this great app. A must purchase for school ipads.