Session 7

Hello again digital teachers,

I’m Amaranta and today I will explain to you the things that we learnt during Session 7 with Maribel. The last session was about Ipads, the new trendy thing in relation with education nowadays. The amount of applications and resources that Ipad offers us is amazingly growing. Currently, either teachers and students can access to and endless ways of learning and teaching by using ICT in the classroom. However, how can teachers and students chose the right application that they want to use?

Choose the right one!

In this session, Maribel showed us a useful tool where different applications are organized by the skills that students are developing or by what the teacher want them to focus on such as photo editing, recording, interactive writing, creating a game...etc. If you are looking for an specific app this website might be useful for you!

Here you have some other websites (examples, reviews..) where applications are well organized and will save you a lot of time when looking for the good one! Hope you find them all worth it.

• AppEd Review
• Educapp
• Top educational apps
• My first app
  
  
  
  
  

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In addition, if you feel that it is too difficult to assess Ipad work, here you will find some resources to do it such as rubrics and grids that will make it easier and faster: Ipads4TEACHING

Quizz response games

Related with the assessment, during the session we also learnt different apps or programs that you can use it as a way of assessment or if you prefer as a quizz response games that children need to answer faster. In this way, children use technology in a more motivating way that help them to review the content while using Ipads, computers, smartphones...Personally, I will absolutely recommend all teachers Kahoot and Nearpod. If you want to know more about Kahoot you can read my last post and you will find further information. As for the Nearpod, I have discovered recently and I’m amazed about all the possible things it can offers. Nearpod allows you to work in groups, write with a purpose, express your knowledge by drawing, develop your critical thinking...etc. In short, take part in a quizz where all the learning styles are taken into account.

The rest of the class we focused on StoryTelling. However, we didn't spend time reading books but we learnt lots of websites to create our own story! In this sense, children are the authors of their literacy creations and develop the four skills in a contextualized way. You can ask them to create whatever they want after exploring all the resources or let them read for a while. Here you will find good apps to do it! Want to know more about them? Scan this QR code:

	Price and Platforms	Skills	Purpose
Shadow Puppets	Free/ Ipod, Iphone, Ipad...	Communication Collaboration Creativity	Create and design Creating high-quality, versatile presentations is really easy. Students can use their own images or pull images from several impressive online resources

Puppet Pals

Free/ Ipod, Iphone, Ipad...

Communication Collaboration Creativity

Kids can learn how each part of the creative process works to form a story as they make decisions about which backgrounds and characters to use in each scene, how to size them and move them around, and which audio to record.

Toontastic

Free/ Ipod, Iphone, Ipad...

Communication Collaboration Creativity

A fantastic digital storytelling tool that empowers kids to organize ideas, transforming them into entertaining animated cartoons

Some photos of our projects and presentations:

ARLOON

What is Arloon?

Hello partners! I'm Tania and today I come to present an app that I discovered years ago. Is it useful for both teachers and pupils from P5 to high school. The ratio of difficulty is very wide because the apps by this Spanish company called Arloon thought designs for that purpose. What characterizes these apps other is the appearance of augmented reality. 

First of all I'll show you the different subjects such as proposals:

AUGMENTED REALITY: A REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION

Augmented reality is a hot topic these days. Special devices that use it, such as digital glasses, are being developed, but what is it really, and what does it do?

Augmented reality is about enriching our environment, the real world, with digital information presented in a way that makes it much more useful and accessible.

This technology, when applied to education, means incredible educational scenarios can be designed which would otherwise be impossible. For example, using virtual reality, we can hold something as small as an atom or as big as a planet in our hands, on a practical scale unconceivable in reality.

Augmented reality also makes it possible for us to study abstract concepts such as geometric and three-dimensional shapes, which are difficult to understand through a flat image in a text book, allowing us to freely manipulate and observe them from any angle, thus greatly improving our spatial visualisation.

All ARLOON apps include the possibility to use augmented reality. In order to use this technology, a code or special image is required which makes the 3D content available in your hand.

How it works?

Activity:

This resource is easy and intuitive to use as a teacher. Here you have a brief explanation of how to use these apps to different devices. 

Students love this app because the benefits when acquiring knowledge using augmented reality are considerable. It has been shown that by manipulating the concepts themselves children can learn not only having fun but also motivates them to want to find out more about the issues.

Here you have a video of teachers who have already used apps and give us their opinion:

Added value through ICT

These apps allow students to learn independently and progressively. All have a section of LEARN and following EXERCISES, so that they themselves assess their learning. 

Here we have prepared some videos of how students use these apps with augmented reality:

These apps are ideal both to introduce a topic and develop it or just finish acquire knowledge. So there is much flexibility to organize activities and depends on the programming of each subject and teacher. Ideally, teachers should group students themselves in pairs and each pair share a device.

This new resource allows students to work:

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy: This activity offers an opportunity to enhance both lower- and higher-order thinking skills.

Lower order thinking skills:

Level II. Understand (explain ideas or concepts): Understanding the concepts through augmented reality.

Level III. Applying (using the knowledge in a variety of ways):  Implement the ICT knowledge using Arloon.

Higher order thinking skills:

Level IV: Analyse (draw connections among ideas): Do the exercises provided by analyzing the concepts during the process.

Level V: Evaluate (justify a stand or decision): To evaluate the results of the exercises and show them to the teacher and once finished can analyze them together.

Strategies and competences involved

• Language and audiovisual communicative competence
• Information processing and digital competence
• Autonomy and personal initiative competence
• Knowledge of and interaction with the 3D world
• Verbal-linguistic intelligence
• Logical-mathematical intelligence
• Visual-spatial intelligence
• Naturalistic intelligence
• Interpersonal intelligence
• Intrapersonal intelligence 

Trouble-shooting

The problems that might appear would be to not have available a device for every to students in the same class. Also, the internet at school doesn't work. We could also have students who do not know how to properly handle the app, for it, would have already assigned the Expertics students in the class.

Assessment

As I said before, students at the end of the exercises are provided by the app the results and afterwords, they can analyze together with the teacher, seeing where have been the problem and improve in a way for the next time. As we can use this app on any device, the teacher could advise students to continue practicing at home.

I hope you liked it and will be useful as a resource for your career.

Good luck mates!