Wednesday, February 22, 2012

iPad Adventure Class - Week 2






I am slightly out of order - and I'm sure everyone is wondering "What happened during week 2"?  I am just a little behind this past week!  We used two apps this week to make a radio broadcast of a pretend news report for the Pumpkin Festival.  

Big Sounds by Dragosaurus ($0.99) - This app contains 117 different sound effects!  There are all sorts of animals, cartoon sounds, everyday sounds and much more.  I also really liked how you could turn off certain sounds!  I really liked a lot of the sounds - but there were some that I would rather my children not use!  You can also rearrange the buttons on the app so that all the sounds that you want are in one section. 
Audio Memos by Imesart ($0.99) - or free.  There is a free version of this app that has limited features which is probably adequate for most needs.  This app is a very simple audio recorded.  I have used this to record my son playing the piano or reading.  It's nice to play back and have him listen to himself.  


We also used a iRig microphone for this exercise.  I was very happy with how easy the microphone was to use and how well the sound was.  I highly recommend this microphone if you are going to be doing a lot of recording  It was a little pricey at $49.99.

Here is an example of our radio broadcast!



iPad Adventure Class - Week 3

The class had a ball today working with the Stop Motion Studios app.  We took a series of still photographs and put them together to create a stop motion animated movie.  Below is an example and here are links to all the movies on YouTube
Group1
Group2
Group3
Group4
Group5
Group6

The Stop Motion Studios app costs $0.99 and is fairly easy to use.  You can take the pictures and then remove or replace them.  You can adjust the frames per second and you can add sound and music.  Overall it's a really fun app to play with!  You can read more about it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stop-motion-studio/id441651297?mt=8

Friday, February 10, 2012

iPad Adventure Class - Week 1

This week I started an iPad afterschool adventure.  We will meet weekly for an hour for 5 weeks.  This week we used the Comic Strip App to create a comic strip that showed a character trait from the schools "Caught Ya Being Good" program.   Here's an example of one comic which demonstrates caring.


 ComicStrip CS by Sketch and Skotch ($0.99) -This app allows you to make your own comic strips or story boards.  You can add pictures from your photo library or take the pictures through the app.  You can read more about it at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/comicstrip-cs/id392197108?mt=8


Some of the students choose to use an existing app to find their images for their comic strip.  One app that has great graphics and is a lot of fun is My Playhome.  My son created this comic strip using images from that app.  Here the boy is learning to clean up after his breakfast!


My Playhome by Shimon Young ($2.99) - There is a free version for this app which contains two rooms (living room and kitchen).  Warning though - if you download the free version you will probably buy the full version shortly after!  The full version adds a bathroom, bedroom, and backyard!  This app is fun!  It's an interactive doll house where you can take family characters and have them eat apples, do laundry, listen to records, and much much more.  My daughter has a lot of fun playing with the characters.  It also has significant learning potential.  You can use this app to have the child follow a series of directions, labeling objects and actions, prepositions (put objects in front of, behind, on top of), and much more.  You can read lots of reviews of Playhome on the internet or here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-playhome/id439628153?mt=8

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Sight Word Apps

I have a kindergartener and a second grader.  For this age - sight words are very important.  There are two apps that we use often.  I highly recommend these apps.

Word Bingo  by ABCya.com ($0.99) - This uses predetermined sets from the Dolce word list.  There are 300 words split into the following categories.  Pre-Primer, Primer, First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, and nouns.  You can also choose all words.  There are four games included - Word Bingo, Spelling Practice, Word Fling and Word it Up.  My daughter loves Word Fling the best - I am a big fan of Word it Up.  Note that you must play word bingo before you can select Word Fling or Word it Up. 
Positive - the games are actually fun..... Also, you can program in a student name and track the progress.  You can go into the word lists and see what words they are getting right how often. 
Negative - you can not customize the lists

you can read more about it at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/word-bingo/id406264088?mt=8

Sight Words by Phototouch - free - This ap is a flashcard type app that drills on sight words.  It is actually pretty cool in that you can either use their predetermined list - or you can add or delete from their list.  They have 5 lists - preschool, kindergarten, first, second and third.  You can set which lists you want turned on for the quizzing. You can also use the recording of the word that it came with - or you can rerecord it so it is in your voice.

The "game" itself will show three different words on the page and then a voice will say the word.  The child should then select the word that was just read.  If right - "fantastic" and next slide appears.  If wrong the ipad beeps and gives the child another chance.  It will continue to beep until correct word is chosen.  Also - you can select the minimum and maximum number of words to show.  You can even set the min and max to 1 - which would be a good review.

If you set the min at 3 and the max at 10 (for example) - the app will level up and down accordingly.  So, for instance if you have three words shown and you get three right in a row - it will start to show you four words at a time.  Also, if you are getting the answer wrong on the first attempt two times then it will decrease the number of words shown.

Negative: This is just meant for one person and there are no reports on how they are doing - or tracking to let them start at a certain level.  Also - the game can get monotonous. 

That being said - it's free and you can put it your own lists - sounds like a keeper  : )

you can read more about it at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sight-words-by-photo-touch/id421341850?mt=8

Hope you enjoyed those reviews - I'll have more soon!