February 21, 2014 – It's 'Appy Hour!

It has been estimated that the Apple App Store has over 475000 apps available for the iPad, so I have chosen to highlight a few more for you this week.  Enjoy!

Teacher Notes (Free)

 With Teacher Notes you can keep your grades, anecdotal, video and photo notes for all of your students in one place.  Organized by class and student, Teacher Notes is an easy way to maintain student records for easy report writing and evaluations.  You can file notes by student name, domain (self-chosen categories such as language, cognitive or behavioural) and content areas (i.e. Art, Math, Science, etc.)  Notes can be seamlessly uploaded and stored on Dropbox and can be maintained securely using a PIN code.  Additional features include being able to search notes by phrase, sort notes by child, domain or date, and e-mail notes to parents, administrators or teaching partners.  There are various Youtube videos available to assist in learning how to record and edit notes as well as use the graphing feature.  Although the app takes some practice to become familiar with, it is very much worth the effort and quite beneficial. Many thanks to Michelle for bringing the Teacher Notes app to my attention.

Penultimate (Free)

A free app which allows the user to handwrite, draw or create on lined, graph or plain virtual paper.  Some may wonder why this app would be preferred over the iPad Notes app, and my response would be that with Penultimate you are able to draw, as well as write on the virtual pages – while in class you could draw and label a diagram in addition to taking notes on the topic) Also, you are able to insert images from your camera or photo stream into your notes and add comments, labels or captions to them.  Other features include zooming into the diagrams and notes, being able to search handwritten notes for keywords, email notes and maintain all pages in various notebooks by subject or topic.

Google Translate (Free)

This app lets you translate into 80 different languages including French, Spanish, Hindi, Dutch and Italian.  You can type in or paste text to be translated or you may speak directly into the app and have the sentence appear on the screen for you.  Then you simply listen to your translations being spoken aloud as well as view the written words for easy rewriting.  Google Translate also maintains your translations in the memory for easier review later or they can be starred for quick access when offline.  I have worked with this app briefly and with my limited French background, it appears to be able to successfully translate various French verb tenses.  I would love to hear from any French instructors as to how they feel the app works in practice.

WWF Together (Free)

The World Wildlife Foundation has yet again found a way to excite and educate students about animals from around the world.  This app includes informative and interactive stories of endangered species including tigers, butterflies and polar bears coupled with spectacular photographs of them in their natural habitats. Additionally, it allows students to use the interactive 3D globe to discover the location of over 70 different species and a step-by-step guide to creating over 15 origami animal creations.  Kids will love the cool and unusual facts and games, making this a definite must have app for animal lovers.

As always, past Tech Tidbits posts can be found on the blog at http://techtidbitz.blogspot.ca and if you have an idea for a future blog topic, please feel free to pass it along to me.

Cheers,

Stace