TinyTap

Tinytap as a educational resource

Names: Tania Grijalba, Laia López and José Luis Rodríguez
Target users: Initial level: 1rst grade.
Type of resource: APP
Content topic: Classroom objects, shapes and colours.
Skills: Reading, listening and remembering. 
Material: iPads.

In this blog we want to present tinytap. It is an application for tablets thinking on students of nursery and primary schools, it is very easy and intuitive to use. With this app we can create activities ourselves or even teach our students how to create them for themselves. Here we present a video step by step of how to create an activity:

We have created some example activities where students work their LOTS. These activities challenge students to memorize vocabulary previously worked and learned in the class to settle down the knowledge in a fun playing way. We leave some videos where you can see our proposal:

Ideally, students are grouped in pairs sharing a tablet for the activities already created. If you want them to be those who create an activity then is better to group them in threes.

This app will be motivating and children will have more desire to learn English, because finally, learning English can be fun and, in this case, with new technologies! In these activities they are not only developing the verbal linguistic intelligence but also gives the opportunity to work the interpersonal and the visual spatial. Also, regarding Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, they are using the following lower and higher order thinking skills:

Lower order thinking skills:

Level I – Remembering the vocabulary and the content we have studied previously. 

Level II – Understanding the vocabulary and how to use the app.

Level III – Applying the knowledge they have acquired in order to create a new game.

Higher order thinking skills

Level VI: Creating their own game for the other classmates to play and learn.

Other skills involved in the activity are: reading and listening. But when they create the activity by themselves, the students will also use speaking and writing.

One of the possible disadvantages of using this resource is that we might not have enough iPads for such small groups, or maybe that some pupils do not know how to handle the tablet. For the first problem, we thought that can be done in groups with more members or dividing the class into two and choose to do it in two sessions. For the second problem we thought that ideally we can choose students as ICT experts and if at some point there are children blocked by something technological, these experts can help them.

Tinytap automatically has an evaluation system where the students themselves can see their own results. As teachers we can ask them when they finish, to bring the tablet and show us the percentage that appears in the screen to follow an accurate evaluation.

Finally, we present a brief summary in Prezi format:

We hope that this tool will be useful for your future lessons. 

Best of luck!