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as in Raki's Rad Resources. The author of this blog is Heidi Raki, a 3rd/ 4th grade teacher in Casablanca, Morocco. She shares tons of ideas using technology in her classroom and gives real examples of lessons. She writes posts about twice a week, contributes to multiple websites, and she can be found on Pinterest here. She also has a a free download that contains a list of websites she uses with her students.
I recently read a post by Raki recommending the Google Maps app. Her class uses this app to map out places where you can find evidence of the Roman Empire or locations the students have visited. Have students who don't travel away from home? No problem! Just use this free summer scavenger hunt to get them exploring nearby places. She wrote an entire post about Google Maps and how to create a Google Map. Many ideas are given at the end of her post for using Google Maps. Yep, this is Social Studies
Another app that Raki recently recommended (alliteration, miss-smarty-English-pants) is the Morfo app. The Morfo app (It's free!) allows you to take any picture and add a moving, talking mouth to it to make a short video. Raki introduced this app to me a few weeks ago in this blog post. She suggests using the Morfo app for Language Arts lessons. I particularly like the idea of using the Morfo app to summarize important points from a book. Imagine how the students would enjoy the principal's photo talking in their own voiceovers recommending a fabulous book they just read about Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor. Check out the Morfo app for yourself!
The third app I like is called the World Book's World of Animals which you can find here. While this app is not free, it is useful to research animals that you may be studying about in the library. For example after reading the book Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester, we could further research penguins. The World Book's World of Animals app would provide pictures and videos as well as important penguin facts. Students love learning about science, particularly animals in their world. (Insert Happy Feet background music here.)
The fourth app I recently found which is perfect for the library (my favorite subject area :) ) is called Too Loud, and it is free! Obviously by its name you can infer that this app is used to manage noise levels in your classroom or library. Shush! However, the levels can be adjusted based on what type activities are going on. (This would be an excellent tool for studying sound and decibels!) Matt B. Gomez introduced me to the app in this post called Regulating the YELLING.
So that's it for today's
Do you have any new favorite apps?
Isn't it amazing we are learning ideas for our classrooms
and libraries from a teacher across the world?
and libraries from a teacher across the world?
Now leave me alone and get lost!
Oscar the Grouch
Dana :)
I never thought of using Google Maps in the classroom. I think this is a wonderful idea. So many children could not even write out directions to their own house after they have grown up in the same spot all their life. This gives a way for them to learn about directions and can see it for themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe animal book app would be so useful in my classroom. We do a huge penguin unit as well as a zoo animal unit. This would be perfect!
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