App Hunting

By Kris Walsh

From time to time, I get asked by teachers about apps that they can put on their iPad for their students (or children) to use. That is often a difficult question to answer. There are over a million apps in the iTunes app store, many are great and many are not-so great. I don’t fully know what a particular teacher is doing in their classroom and am often not sure about what need they are trying to meet with a particular app. I can sometimes give general suggestions, but my suggestions are often missing great apps that may be more suited to specific concepts or needs in their rooms.

I would like to share a few good ways that I learn about good apps:

1. The main way that I find out about new apps is to browse the app store. Most of us know how to do this in general, but there are a couple of tricks that you can use to help you in your search. Recently, Apple has added an area for educational apps that you can use to browse for apps that may be useful. This is now located near the top of the right-hand column on the app store on itunes. You can click on the all categories link and change the category to education.

On the App Store on an iDevice, tap the explore button at the bottom of the screen to change to a desired category.

New apps come out on a daily basis, but the featured apps change every Thursday for both iPad and iPhone. This is a great time to check for new apps in general.

2. The use of sites that feature and give reviews on apps for education. There are more, but my favorite is www.appitic.com This site breaks down available apps down by subject areas and skills. This is a great place to start your search for apps
   
   
   

   

   
   
   
3. I recently learned about a new email subscription list that I have been using to find out about apps. It has been a great resource that I have used to download several new apps in the 2 weeks that I have been a subscriber. The website is called www.smartappsforkids.com . They have a long list of apps with reviews. Enter your email to subscribe to an email that will alert you when apps go on sale or even free. Though the site skews more towards apps for younger students, I have gotten several new apps that are for students in junior high or high school as well.

If anyone has questions, I would be willing to sit down with you and help you look for apps and help you decide on apps that may be a good fit for you and your classroom! There are lots of great apps out there!

Getting out of the way for magic By Jamie Guillaume

Passion-based learning, 20% time, Genius Hour, Google Time, Maker Space, whatever you call it, the goal is the same, give students the opportunity to discover and pursue their interests and talents! There are books that can guide a teacher when starting this initiative in the classroom such as The Passion-Driven Classroom by Angela Maiers and a book I recently discovered, Pure Genius by Don Wettrick, but at some point you have to be brave and just dive in!

After reading, researching, and consulting with other teachers and even the author of Pure Genius, I finally went for it-I started what I am calling Genius Hour!  I began our first lesson by introducing my passions outside of my family and school.  I brought in homemade strawberry jam made with strawberries from my strawberry patch, salsa, made with tomatoes and peppers from my garden as well as biscuits and chips.  After all, you have to have something to go with salsa and jam, right?  While they made their plates, I had Sara Bareilles’ song, “Brave” playing in the background.  While they ate, I read them entries from my blog, Many Titles of Chic.  The students were shocked, mostly I think because I am an actual person, not just Mrs. Guillaume the crazy lady that teaches them math and social studies. 

The second week, I gave the students a graphic organizer and we toured the entire corporation and looked at the signs the teachers made describing their passions.  They were surprised by some teacher interests and questioned many too.  This week we used kidblog to journal our experience so far and created folders to hold items we come across that lead us to our passion.  In the weeks to come we are going to visit the STEAM classroom, take personal inventories, and then-I am going to get out of their way!

I am by no means an expert at beginning Genius Hour in a classroom, but I am learning. Although I understand that after we finish laying the groundwork,  I am going to have to turn them loose and let them make their own discoveries, I am most nervous about this because I will be releasing control but I also know that this is where the magic will happen!

Google Glass

By Hayden Hilgnhold

            Google Glass is probably one of the most important devices that has been created since the smartphone. There are a lot of people who would disagree. They’d say there’s not a lot it can do yet; it needs your smartphone to work, making it little more than a Bluetooth headset plus visual.  They’d say it takes a toll on your phone battery and it has to be charged separately as well, making it a hassle.  They’d say that there is absolutely no point in having your display put up in front of your field of vision; that it is extremely disorienting.  While all of this may be somewhat true they are forgetting one thing; the potential that Google Glass, and technology like it, has.   

            So it is true, as of now the Google Glass doesn't do too much.  It has a few apps, a couple of games, it can take calls, and also record/stream video.  Still nothing you can’t do with even the most basic of smartphones.  And look at the price tag of fifteen hundred dollars, no thank you. But let’s not dwell on where the Google Glass is at fault, but let’s look at how useful it can be.  It does voice commands better than most other devices.  It has been used as a convenient note taker by recording the teacher while they talk, and it does a fairly decent job with capturing audio and video, and it is always looking where you’re looking.  By opening up several windows of research and scrolling through them, it is very convenient for scanning through information for your latest project.  The commands are quite simple, as I learned firsthand at IU this summer when we were actually allowed to mess around with the Google Glass.  It’s very light; much less bulky than my favorite pair of sunglasses.  It is very durable for how lightweight it is and the Google Glass 2.0 while it may appear to be a little bulkier is even more durable meaning a simple accident doesn’t equal $1500 down the toilet.  Also coming with the consumer version, is a better price and hopefully a better battery life and ton of new features.  The estimate for the Glass’s price when it hits the consumer market is $500ish but it should come down quickly afterwards.  This is because the Glass itself is very inexpensive to make.  However all the research hours put into it have to be paid for, making the price astronomical for the time being. 

            So, in conclusion, Glass has massive potential.  Granted as of now it doesn’t do much, has a short battery life, and an ungodly price tag.  But this is like the first release of anything.  It will get better as time goes on and will most likely be worth purchasing before the end of the decade.  More than anything the Google Glass is something we should definitely keep an eye on, because it could become something really special.      

Wii-Purposing the WiiMote- A homemade whiteboard sketchpad

By Sean Bybee 

Since becoming a part of LEAF, I’ve gotten a few requests from others in need of my “talents.” Of course, most of these requests have been random people asking me to build them top of the line gaming computers for free, so I didn’t take them very seriously. Recently, however, I was approached with an actually reasonable request! During one of LEAF’s after school meetings, Mr. Risse just happened to walk through the Ag building. He pulled me aside, and told me about an interesting project that he wanted to try out with his classes.

            We’ve all heard of the Wii, a console (paper-weight) made by Nintendo. For most people, a Wii is good for exercise “games” and Mario kart. For Johnny Lee, however, the Wii, or rather its signature remote, have a much more useful application. Johnny Lee, using a Wii Remote, a pen that emits IR light, and a few lines of code, created a program that allows any projector screen to become an interactive sketchpad. A Wii remote typically operates by picking up short range radio waves from the Wii, but it can also pick up the Infrared light put off by special LEDs such as the one in the pen. By rigging up a mount for the remote and facing it towards the screen, you can use it as an input for your computer and project it onto the screen. The program written by Mr. Lee allows this input to be translated into lines on the screen. Essentially, this is like the sketchpads already used by many teachers, but more convenient, and certainly more cool!

            After a short Beta test with Mr. Risse, I have no doubt that more teachers would become interested in this for their own classrooms. There is already widespread use of the projectors in almost all classrooms, so this could be easily incorporated into the teaching style of most of our instructors. Once it has been proven to work, this could even become a cheap alternative to whiteboards. With a Wii remote costing roughly 10 dollars, and an IR pen costing slightly more, the cost for one of these units should range anywhere from 20 to 30 dollars, substantially cheaper than the sketchpads that we currently use.