Programming resources for kids 101 -- by Larry Dignan of ZDNet
Summary: Scratch, Lego Mindstorm and Microsoft's Kodu are efforts that may help stoke the programming fires in your little ones.
Sent from my iPad
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Phonics, spelling apps may aid students with special needs
Phonics, spelling apps may aid students with special needs
Lisa Welburn, a mother from Edmonton, Canada, was inspired to design two iPad applications to help teach phonics and spelling after watching her own son struggle with the subjects. Educators and parents say Welburn's apps, sold by her new company PyxWise Software, are especially useful for teaching students who have autism and other special needs. "The one thing they've told us is that their kids are really engaged -- they'll spend a lot of time with the spelling app," said her husband and partner in the venture, Craig Welburn. The Edmonton Journal (Alberta)
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/literacy/raiseareader/creates+iPad+that+leaves+kids+spell+bound/5882990/story.html?cid=megadrop_story
Lisa Welburn, a mother from Edmonton, Canada, was inspired to design two iPad applications to help teach phonics and spelling after watching her own son struggle with the subjects. Educators and parents say Welburn's apps, sold by her new company PyxWise Software, are especially useful for teaching students who have autism and other special needs. "The one thing they've told us is that their kids are really engaged -- they'll spend a lot of time with the spelling app," said her husband and partner in the venture, Craig Welburn. The Edmonton Journal (Alberta)
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/literacy/raiseareader/creates+iPad+that+leaves+kids+spell+bound/5882990/story.html?cid=megadrop_story
Sent from my iPad
Friday, December 16, 2011
A Catalog of iPad Apps for Teachers and Students by Vicki Windman
Great catalog of starter iPad apps in different grade levels and areas of special needs. ~FK
A Catalog of iPad Apps for Teachers and Students by Vicki Windman
Fourteen of us–special education teachers, school psychologists, speech therapists, and other educators–recently spent six hours brainstorming with the goal of producing a starter iPad app catalog for teachers and students in our district, and beyond. Thanks to my colleagues for helping the district pioneer through new territory!
http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&EntryId=3050
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
CJ Children's Music - Apps to pass on
Hi Frank,
I thought I would pass on a good deal in app land:). CJ song cards are
all .99cents. Great deal!! Great apps! Thanks!
I thought I would pass on a good deal in app land:). CJ song cards are
all .99cents. Great deal!! Great apps! Thanks!
Arianne
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Web Tools for Math and Science Educators
FYI …
Web 2.0 Tools for Math Educators
By Laura Turner
This is a continuing series on Web2.0 and other web-based tools for educators. This information is specific to math educators, but there is some crossover into science. Math educators will find a large number of useable interactive companion web sites for the teaching of math concepts and skills.
http://www.guide2digitallearning.com/tools_technologies/web_2_0_tools_math_educators
By Laura Turner
The following web2.0 sites would be useful for science educators at the high school and middle school level. Some would also be appropriate for higher elementary grade levels. There are many new ‘tools’ or websites that take advantage of the higher speed and bandwidth of today’s Internet. Web 1.0 tools/websites were text based and web2.0 tools/websites are designed for full-motion video, 3D animations and are generally interactive in some manner.
Web 2.0 can also be described as the second round of new technology development and adoption. The Internet began as an adoption of a new technology, and then as web practices were standardized, user-friendly interface and aesthetic design were improved.
http://www.guide2digitallearning.com/professional_development/web_2_0_science_tools
Frank Kampen
Hickman Community Charter District
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Fwd: iPad quick tip: Password protect apps and actions
When the kids or students have access to the iPad and you want to restrict their access to certain apps ...
THE iPAD FAN
News, app reviews & gossip
Password protect apps and actions
Hello Frank,
Got kids and don't want them to surf the web while you're away? You can password-protect apps like Safari or iTunes so that a family member can't buy every Beatles record with your credit card. Go to Settings > General > Restrictions, then enable restrictions and enter a password. Now you can define which apps and actions will be restricted.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Top 100 Sites of 2011 by David Kapuler
Top 100 Sites of 2011 by David Kapuler
“
The time is finally here for my annual list of favorite sites of the year. This year, I decided to up my post to the top 100 instead of 25 due to the number of sites that I reviewed and due to the popularity of the post. I tried to cover a wide range of sites, from flash card creators to digital storytelling and of course, social networks, which really shined in 2011. I hope everybody enjoys the read and has as much fun reading it as I did creating it!”
On the Tech & Learning Advisor Blog http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&EntryId=3467
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Lesson Planning and the Common Core: A Unit Based on TED.com | Edutopia
A twelve-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.
I'm currently prepping my classes for another research unit, this one a blend of Memoir, Advocacy, and Speech Writing. After all, never in real life are genres categorized. They blend together; and the Common Core assessments to come recognize the desegregation of writing genres and the need for performance-based assessments.
I'm basing this blended unit on TED.com, and the plan is to host a middle school TED-esque conference, combining it with a book drive for our media center. So, in a series of posts, I am going to describe some key steps I'm using with my eighth graders in order to scaffold our way towards our TED conference. On my own website, you can learn about how students chose topics and you can download the worksheet that I used to guide them towards their choice.
In this post, I will describe how I introduced the concept of the project and the development of our student-created resource library, a tool that helps everyone to research more deeply. So follow me as I describe real-time writing in a real-world classroom. Hope this helps in your own possible blended genre unit.
Sent from my iPad
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Check out Mental Case Classroom Edition, FlashcardExchange & Quizlet
Check out Mental Case Classroom Edition (Free) as a tool for creating and posting web based flashcards and study aids. You'll also want to investigate FlashcardExchange.com and Quizlet.com ... both sites that can be used as stand alone tools or in conjunction with Mental Case.
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Monday, November 7, 2011
Teaching and Learning: Using iPads in the Classroom | Edutopia
In this post Ben Johnson shares his thoughts about using a classroom set of iPads to empower student learning. He also mentions and links to apps which might be of interest ...
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ipad-teaching-learning-apps-ben-johnson
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ipad-teaching-learning-apps-ben-johnson
Sent from my iPad
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Memonic - free note taking, web clipping and note sharing
Memonic
David Andrade is a Physics Teacher and Educational Technology Specialist in
In this same posting he mentions several related services and links to those reviews within the article. Additionally, he states he learned about Memonic from the Online Tech Tips blog: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/
Ten Sites for Educational Games
Top 10 Sites for Educational Games
David Kapuler is an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment. In this blog post he profiles 10 of his favorite educational gaming sites on the web.
http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&EntryId=3281
Free Education Apps
Free Education Apps
Vicki Windman is a special education teacher at Clarkstown High School South. In this blog posting she recommends some apps in response to a common question "Are there any good apps for free?" She highlights 14 apps in the subject areas of math, ELA and foreign language.
http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&EntryId=3258
Friday, September 23, 2011
iPads in Education Tales from the Classroom from Discovery Education
From: DiscoveryEducation | May 13, 2011 | 874 views
“Educators from around the country who are rolling out iPad initiatives take a few minutes and share what they're experiences have been to date. Join us to hear a variety of stories about how these devices are being used to revolutionize classroom learning.”
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Collaborize Classroom | Online Education Technology for Teachers and Students
With Collaborize Classroom:
- Get 100% student participation.
- Save on monthly printing costs.
- Reduce grading time by up to 2 hours a week.
- Receive detailed participation reports
With the new Topic Library:
- Access the best curriculum online.
- Create and share topics, lessons & assignments.
- Download peer-reviewed topic-based lessons
Sent from my iPad
Thursday, August 25, 2011
PBS Program Will Promote Engineering to Middle School Students
PBS Program Will Promote Engineering to Middle School Students
§ By Mike Hohenbrink
§ 08/23/11
PBS program "Design Squad Nation" has announced it will partner with Rocket21 to engage its community of tweens in the show's content and activities to help meet the demand for engineers in the job market in the years to come.
"Design Squad Nation," produced by WGBH, is a program for middle school children that includes television episodes on PBS, an interactive website and hands-on engineering activities. The show is designed to increase kids' awareness and understanding of engineering.
On the program's site, kids can post real-life solutions to real-life problems and respond to challenges from the show by sketching and building their own prototypes. The site's blog features engineering and DIY content from across the Web.
Design Squad site http://pbskids.org/designsquad/
Rockt21 site http://www.rocket21.com/
iCivics, Prezi and Online Counties Work Game
Check out this great, web-based, game-based civics education project:
What is iCivics? http://www.icivics.org/
iCivics (formerly Our Courts) is a web-based education project designed to teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy. iCivics is the vision of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who is concerned that students are not getting the information and tools they need for civic participation, and that civics teachers need better materials and support.
[Also … if you are not familiar with prezi as a presentation tool, then you might want to see its functions in action via the “What is iCivics?” prezi presentation at http://prezi.com/pfornjdkfizq/what-is-icivics/ Prezi is free and would be a great instructional tool.]
New on the iCivics site …
New Free Online Game Lets Students Run a County
§ By Dian Schaffhauser http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/08/11/new-free-online-game-lets-students-run-a-county.aspx
§ 08/11/11
A free online game can help students learn the basics of being in county government. "Counties Work" was created by the National Association of Counties (NACo) and non-profit gamemaker iCivics. The game puts participant avatars through the paces of directing citizens to the right county department to deal with their specific requests or rejecting the requests outright, depending on budget availability and the relevance of the request. At the same time, they're busy setting tax rates and managing town growth--which comes with development expense and new tax revenues--and dealing with unexpected county emergencies. Every four years in game time the player has to meet or exceed a citizens' satisfaction ranking of 50 percent in order to be re-elected.
Intended for students in grades 6 through 12, Counties Work was designed to communicate the roles and functions of various county agencies by letting them run their own county. Students learn about the various services provided by county departments, such as road maintenance, law enforcement, courtroom and jail services, parks and recreation, and health and human services. A curriculum and Webquest has also been developed to assist teachers with preparing lessons on county government.
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"This is a great opportunity for students to better understand the programs and services that counties provide," said
iCivics was initially the vision of former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was concerned that students don't get the information and tools they need for civic participation and that civics teachers need better materials and support.
"We are thrilled to partner with NACo to make the first video game about counties and teach students about the intricacies of local government," said iCivics co-founder Jeff Curley.
Counties Work can be played as a guest or registered user at icivics.org.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Back to School Apps for Teachers
Back to School Apps for Teachers by Vicki Windman (TL Advisor Blog)
8/13/2011 9:29 AM 
It's time to get your iPad ready for school. I suggest at least one grade, attendance, note taker and lesson plan app.
Gradebook Pro $9.99 - allows you to grade and take attendance. For high school teachers, it supports weighted and standard grade scales.
Gradepad $2.99 - Assess a variety of behaviors and performances with GradePad rubrics that have criteria and scales. Manage groups of individuals and track their performance over time.
Essay Grader $5.99 - allows teachers to grade essays with three banks of prepared comments for a multitude of topics within the categories of praise, organization, content, mechanics, style, and documentation. All comments are editable, and Essay Grader comes with three empty banks where you can write original comments of your own.
Smart Seat $3.99 - create seating charts, record attendance, choose random students for class participation, make student notes, and store student photos all in one place. Update allows you to import photo of student.
k-12 Attendance Free - Attendance application lets you enter your students' attendance and check for any missing attendance in the last ten days.
iPlanlessons $9.99 - a concise planner that allows teachers to define lessons, set target dates, prioritize and report to administrators.
Noteshelf $4.99 - An all note-taking app that allows you 17 different color pens, different kinds of notebooks and the ability to lock notebooks. One place to write your student notes, department notes, and ideas without paper.
If you have more than one iPad in your class this is a great addition to the class:
Splashtop $9.99 - Splashtop Whiteboard allows teachers and students to turn their iPad into an interactive white board. Once connected to their computer over Wifi, they can watch Flash media with synchronized video and audio, control PC and Mac applications, and annotate lesson content from an iPad. View the tutorial to see it in action.
Vicki Windman is a special education teacher at
How to Load Photos onto the iPad
Frank,
What is the best way to transfer pictures from my home Mac to my iPad?
Anne
Frank Kampen wrote:
Several ways to try:
- Sync with your home Mac
- Use DropBox on both devices and then save the photos to your iPad Photo Album
- Email them to your self as attached files and then save them to your iPad Photo Album ... Depends on how many you have to send
- Use the iPad Photo Dock to transfer them from a flash memory card ... I have one you can borrow
- There are some apps that let you access photo sharing sites from your iPad
Hope this helps ... let me know what route you'd like to try!
Sent from Frank's iPhone
From: Anne SawyerSent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Frank,
I used Dropbox and saved them to iPad. it worked great and was very easy now that I know what I am doing.AnneSent from my iPad
Thursday, August 11, 2011
TechLearning Advisor Blog: Assessment Apps
TechLearning Advisor Blog: Assessment Apps by Vicki Windman
As administrators and educators, we need to find ways to assess staff and students. If you work with special-needs students, part of the process is documenting goals that are measureable. We now have apps that can assist us with tracking students' progress.
There are quite a few free observation and data apps but you must commit to their software to sync your data. Examples include: Ecove, Stride walkthrough, RANDA, Observation 360, OASYS.
IEP checklist Free - A great tool to have at your fingertips when you need to track IEP goals for your students. It allows you to input relevant data so you can keep track of your student’s goals. Additionally, it now allows you to record individual notes while tracking student progress.
Percentally $2.99- Many of the IEP goals are looking for percentage benchmarks for an assigned goal. This app allows you to customize the goal for each student and mark progress using percentage. You can export your information to Google Docs so you have a back up record.
GoDocs $4.99 - Allows you to sync with your Google Docs, even if you have more than one account. It also allows you to edit on the iPad.
K12 timed Reading $1.99 - Fluency app. It allows more than one student levels K-4th grade. improving fluency allows readers to read smoothly and quickly so they can focus on comprehension rather than on decoding words.
Super Duper Data Tracker $1.99 - Organize your students into groups. Then enter your student’s names and their goals. Track incorrect and correct responses discreetly and efficiently.
Behavioral Tracker Pro 29.99 - Tracks behaviors and automatically graphs them. Supports unlimited number of children and observers!
Teacher Assistant Pro $3.99 - Keeps track of student actions, behavior, infractions, and achievements in the classroom.
SMART Response VE - Will be available shortly. If you use the Smart Board, this tool will allow you gain immediate insight into student understanding.
PAR Assessment Toolkit Free - Provides assistance to psychologists, mental health workers, and anyone else who administers standardized assessments. The scoring modules allow for conversion from raw scores to T scores for our most popular assessments.
Google doc teacher evaluation template- Add this to your Go Docs as a template to evaluate teachers.
Vicki Windman is a special education teacher at
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Education Week's Digital Directions: E-Portfolios Evolve Thanks to Web 2.0 Tools
E-Portfolios Evolve Thanks to Web 2.0 Tools
Web 2.0 and other technology tools are making it quicker and easier than
ever to create digital portfolios of student work, a method of
assessment experts say increases student engagement
Web 2.0 and other technology tools are making it quicker and easier than
ever to create digital portfolios of student work, a method of
assessment experts say increases student engagement
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Digital Kindergarten
FYI ... this blog by teacher Sue Holt may have ideas and reviews of interest to a wide range of teachers. Check it out.
Digital Kindergarten
Using technology in meaningful, developmentally appropriate ways to make learning come alive and differentiate instruction so that all students achieve. I hope this blog is helpful to anyone utilizing technology with children. If you have found it useful, I appreciate you letting me know so I know it's worth the time to keep updated.
Frank Kampen
ScreenChomp - Whiteboard App
From the developer ...
Description
Share a great idea... Explain a tricky concept... Help kids with their homework...
ScreenChomp for iPad helps you do it all.
A simple doodling board, markers, and one-click sharing tools make spreading your ideas and know-how easy and fun!
Just - Record It. Sketch It. Share It. - to create a sharable, replay-able video that tells your story clearly.
1. Touch RECORD to capture your touch interactions and audio instructions on a plain background, or an image from your iPad camera roll.
2. SKETCH out your ideas and talk the viewer through the "how" and "why" of it all.
3. Stop and SHARE your video snack to ScreenChomp.com to generate a simple web link you can paste anywhere - or - post it to Facebook with one-click!
Why share to ScreenChomp.com? Because…
… it serves up a short URL that's easy to share anywhere.
… you can download your video as an MPEG-4 file.
… there's a Twitter sharing button.
… there's no account to manage. Just post and go (perfect for schools and teachers)!
Users at every skill level can create bite-sized teaching morsels they can share online, again and again, with this delectable app.
ScreenChomp
TechSmith CorporationEducation
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