Tech Tip: Accessing Free Images on Your iPad

Many project apps include an opportunity to insert an image.  It's important to make sure that our students use copyright-compliant pictures.  There are a number of websites that offer free use of images for educational purposes (see the list below).  You can add bookmarks to the home screen of your iPad and drag the bookmarks into a folder labeled Picture Resources. Then your students will have easy access to safe images that will support their learning. Here is a short video that will explain what to do:

Scan this QR Code with your iPad to access the resources listed below:

Discovery Education Clip Art
Florida ETC Clipart
NASA Images
National Park Geology Images
NOAA Photo Library
Pics4Learning
The Library of Congress Photographs
 

Apps Gone Free

Your daily free app finder!

Each day several iPad apps that are available free for a limited time are featured in Apps Gone Free. 

Reviewers handpick the best of the apps that have gone free for a limited time.  You can read a short review of the app, see it's star rating, and also see the regular purchase price of the app.

Apps Gone Free has a scrollable calendar on the left for checking out previous days, too!

Tech Tip: Learning to use the Search Function on your iPad

Learn how to quickly find apps, pics, files, and emails on your iPad.  Easily accessing content on your mobile device is essential to your own use of the iPad and for your students.  Please watch the video below to learn more and consider sharing with your students.

Bill Atkinson's PhotoCard Lite

Bill Atkinson's Photocard Lite is an app that you can easily create postcards that include text and an image. You can add images from your camera roll (including images you have saved from the web to your camera roll).

Tips:

• This app works the best when you hold your iPad in portrait mode. It lets you see both the image and the writing. 
• It will keep one postcard at a time. Starting a new postcard will erase the previous postcard.
• Tap outside the signup stuff - you don't need it.
• Document images from the web using the caption option underneath the picture. 
• From student iPad in portrait mode, click on the arrow on the bottom left to save the postcard to the camera roll. You can then use Webdav to upload the image to the network. 

Classroom Applications:
Write a postcard to a book character or author.
Write a postcard to a historical figure or as a historical figure.
Write a postcard about a historical event as if the student was there.
Write a postcard to their parents talking about a science lab or other classroom event.
As a class, write a postcard to parents about a classroom activity.
Teachers can individualize postcards to students and parents as a classroom communication tool. 

Tech Tip: Speak Selection - an iOS tool

Below you will find a video tutorial that describes how to use the Speak Selection tool in iOS6.  This tool has many classroom applications for both struggling and advanced readers and writers.  Please take a few moments to watch this video.

Please add your comments about how you will or have used this feature in your classroom!

Read Me Stories

Read Me Stories is a free app that contains picture book stories.    You can choose to read the story by yourself, or you can have the app read the story aloud.  As the story is read, each word is highlighted to help students track the words. There are 8 categories of stories and the app contains one sample book in each category. Other books are available for purchase.

Classroom Applications:
The purpose of this app is to foster independent reading for students in Kindergarten-2nd grade.

Trading Cards

Trading Cards - This is one of my favorite new apps! It allows students to show what they know about people, places, or things in an original format. This even has an option to practice and show learning of new vocabulary!







Here is what the developer said about this cool app:

Create trading cards for any number of categories, including:
• Fictional person
• Real person
• Fictional place
• Real place
• Object
• Event
• Vocabulary word

Each category has  guiding questions for creating the card.

You can send the completed trading cards to the camera roll and then save it to WebDAV so you can move it or print it later!

Classroom Applications:

* summative project on famous historical figures

*culminating project-based learning activity

*formative checks for new vocabulary terms

*formative/summative assessments of literary characters

and, MUCH MORE!