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INTERESTINGWAYS TO USE

iPADS IN THECLASSROOM

Marla H. Mallette ■ Diane Barone

In this next column of By Educators, For Educators , we searched the Interesting Ways Series ( http://

edte.ch/blog/interesting-ways/ ) , Tom Barrett ’ s

crowdsourcing initiative that provides a forum

for educators worldwide to share transformative

classroom practices that infuse technology into their

teaching. The series is licensed under a Creative

Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike

3.0 License, which allows educators to contribute and

share these innovative classroom practices.

For this column, we chose one of the largest collec-

tions in the series, Interesting Ways to Use iPads in the

Classroom , which has more than 100 ideas. However, to

remain consistent with previous columns, we selected

only 10 interesting ways to highlight in this column and

we focused on literacy. Each interesting way is identi-

fied by its original slide number, title, and the author ’ s

name or Twitter username. The descriptions include the

authors’ text and writing style, with some slight modifi-

cations to fit with The Reading Teacher ’ s readership.

Slide 32: Story Buddy This app is great for children to make their own

e- books and save them. They can write using their

finger straight onto the pages or open a text box

and use the onscreen keyboard. It helps my class to

sequence the story that we are reading by thinking

what page would come next. It ’ s a great way to share

stories that children write themselves. (Marc Faulder)

B Y E D U C AT O R S , F O R E D U C AT O R S

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Slide 28: i- Prompt: Helping Children Gain Fluency When Reading or Presenting Orally

Slide 56: Use iTranslate to “Speak” Many Languages When two students who were new non- native speakers of English entered my

class, we used iTranslate to assist in conversation. Later we used this app for

learning endeavors. (@lookforsun)

Use i- Prompt, which is in reality, an

auto cue. Children, or grown- ups,

can copy text into i- Prompt. You

can change the speed of the text as

it rolls through the auto cue to suit

the skills and fluency of the reader.

It ’ s hard to show in static images but

works well. Great for speechmak-

ing and helping children read more

fluently. (@allanahk)

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Slide 68: Writer ’ s Hat Writer ’ s Hat is a word generator. You can generate who , what , where and when words for younger children and nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs for

older students. I use it for lightning writing (short, sharp writing pieces) and

for reluctant writers who sometimes struggle with coming up with ideas. It

can be used for oral storytelling too. I have also used it for acting out scenar-

ios, which the children find hilarious! (no author named)

Slides 91, 50, 24: Evernote A simply superb cross- platform notetaking app with the ability to take typed

notes, audio, and photos. Also, photos of high quality printed text are searchable.

Notes can be organized into notebooks and shared with others too. Coupled with

Evernote Peek as a revision tool, this is one powerful free app. (@ICTEvangelist)

Record a Student ’ s Reading: The student reads a text and records it into

Evernote using the audio record function. At the end, they can listen to what they

have read and follow it in their book. Once they have completed this, they set one

goal to work/continue working on. Each audio recording can be tagged with a

student ’ s name. Once synced, these recordings are accessible from any computer

through your Evernote. (@heymilly)

Have Evernote logged in on the data

projector in class. Students can write

their notes/ideas when brainstorming

and then sync to the Evernote account.

The class will be able to see each idea

pop up as they sync to Evernote. Also a

great tool for sharing writing from the

iPad. (@heymilly)

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Slide 9: Dragon Dictation Dragon Dictation allows iPad users to quickly and easily convert speech

into editable text that can be copied or sent via e- mail. Great for learners

who prefer talking over writing. (@jamesclay )

Slide 96: Online Stickies Hundreds of uses for this app, but the ultrapopular online stickies app “LinoIt”

now has an iPad app which is brilliant for crowdsourcing or sharing of ideas in

an online noticeboard/sticky board kind of way. Stickies can be formatted to

different sizes, colors, you can add hyperlinks, images and more. A great addi-

tion to the classroom for lots of different activities. Boards are also accessible via

desktop browsers too. (@ICTEvangelist)

Slide 29: Puppet Pals Puppet pals is a fantastic app—students can create their own

story, record voice, and make the actions with the characters they

have chosen—record and play back, save their play or perfor-

mance. (@craff2008)

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Slide 80: Story Wheel A great collaborative storytelling app that can be used in little

groups—really useful for developing speaking and listening/story

structure work. A real favorite! Players record a story by spinning

the wheel to get a picture, and then narrate a portion of the story.

When done, you can listen to your story with beautifully animated

pictures. (@tombarrett )

Slide 45: SoundNote If you are familiar with the LiveScribe pens and enjoy using an iPad, check out SoundNote. SoundNote will allow you to

type notes as well as adding handwritten via your finger or stylus. Here is a great feature within the app as stated on their

website: “When you ’ re done, share your text, drawings, and audio notes via email, or transfer them directly to your Mac or PC.”

(@dmantz7)