Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Thing #6 iTouch

Last year my teaching team and I wrote a grant request for the iTouch - Power to Learn grant. While we were not the winning team, we did learn a lot about iTouch's.

Several of our students had iTouch's. We decided to start posting items on our website and asking them to download them on their iTouch's to use. The downloading worked okay. The students did complain about the sizing and orientation of the documents and how they displayed on the iTouch. In the end they asked us for the paper version.

However, I think the iTouch still has merit in the classroom. They can use it to access the internet at school and at home. They can tweet, FB, and create/upload photos, videos, etc. We all know the iTouch's have more apps than we can keep up with. Posting a running list of apps in the classroom (and our website) that benefit our students educationally would be a great idea. Teachers could list general apps, fun apps, and apps that directly relate to their content. Students can also text and microblog to submit answers, etc. to teachers. We can turn the 730-3pm learning in to 24/7 learning. Most teachers are life-long learners. We need to inspire and instill that in our students.

A few apps I've investigated for use in the math & science classrooms are:

facebook, google earth, weather channel, brainteaser, skype, dictionary.com, sudoku, twitter, popmath, ACT math foundation, math tutor, flash cards, math drills, math formulas, math references, hubble pictures, science facts, science hangman, science trivia, science news... just name a few.

Students can download these in iTunes and load them onto the iTouch.

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