Thursday is app day!

In order to achieve some routine to posting, I am planning to have Thursday be "app day." I have never considered myself a technology expert and I have only owned my iPad for a year but I have become more and more convinced of its importance to powerful student learning. Over the last year, I have been using my iPad to not only engage students but also to customize learning objectives and monitor their progress. As a Special Education teacher, I have aligned many IEP goals and objectives with specific apps that I will talk about on future Thursdays but these apps are not just for children with disabilities.


Last week, I downloaded the Showme Interactive Whiteboard app onto my iPad. In just a few minutes, I learned how to create a presentation for students that showed them how to order decimals. My struggling math students watched the presentation once. Then they watched it a second time, pausing it before the presentation gave them the correct answer to see if they remembered how to fill in zeros for decimal places and accurately order decimals with different place values. I had these same students create their own showme to explain the process with a different set of decimals.

 I have watched more complex presentations on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Hk2PA8Diw&feature=related) where it shows how students can download a picture in order to narrate a presentation. What a great app for helping students not only understand and review concepts, but also practice explaining and verbalizing sequences and procedures!