iTranslate Voice

iTranlate Voice is a way to instantly speak another language voice to voice. This app is very easy to use. There are 36 languages to accommadate any culture of student you may have in your classroom. Once downloaded, all you do is click the record button for English and it will translate it into whatever language you choose or vice versa. I find this app very helpful for my Spanish speaking parents. I have had several parents to not speak English and this app is very quick and easy to pull out to help. We had registration at school this week and this app was used quite often. Check it out!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itranslate-voice/id522626820?mt=8 

Evernote

Evernote is pretty much a notebook, but a lot more organized and digital. I have not used this app yet in my classroom, but I wanted to share how I am going to use it this year. You can make folders with many notes and add pictures and videos. So what I am going to do is use this to for my Guided Reading notes when I meet with my groups. I am able to make a note for each student and continue to add to the note. I can record the student reading and refer back to it or show it to parents to report progress. I can take pictures of the books so that I always know what books we have read in our group and my notes are always there. I will date my notes and add to them throughout the year. I also think this is going to be great to show my reading coach especially if I have questions for her. This is a short tutorial, but there is much more you can do with the app. Let me know if you have used it and if so how? A teacher at my school started this late in the year last year and I am excited to have it instead of a big notebook with lots of papers!

Class Dojo-Classroom Management

     


Class Dojo is pretty awesome app (which is FREE) or it can be fully operated from your computer as well. With Class Dojo you do not need a fancy chart, sticks, tickets, and whatever else we have all used over and over. This behavior management system is kid appealing, easy to use, portable, and includes everything you need to keep tract of behavior for yourself and the parents. At the beginning of the school year, I explain Class Dojo to my parents and students. I enter all of the students names into the system and each of the students have been automatically chosen an Avatar beside their name. The students help me decide what they should be awarded for and what they should have consequences for. After we have decided this I show them what happens when they get so many points during a week and what happens if they are in the negative of points. Examples are change their avatar picture, sit with a friend, no shoes in class, read a book off the shelf, and many more for positive reinforcement. For negative consequeces students have time off recess or silent lunch or I like for them to walk laps around the playground so they are at least burning some energy off! At the end of the week you can print each students report and send it home to be signed for their behavior each week. You can show the students how the class is doing over all or as individuals in a pie graph with how many positives and how many negatives they have. This system works very well because you can take it with you anywhere in your room or outside of the room on your iPad or iPhone. I keep it pulled up on my board so that when the students hear a positive or negative bell all they have to do is look at the board to see if it was them or not. I do not even have to say anything just press a button if someone is off task. I have enjoyed using this app for the past two years! Enjoy!

Tutorial link: http://youtu.be/zDsaXR3Zq6k

website- www.classdojo.com

Ways to use the app Educreations in your classroom

Check out Educreations!!! A FREE app that your students will love for presenting to their classmates. Educreations is an app that has blank pages that students can create a presentation for pretty much anything they are doing in class. Students can search for pictures on the web and import them as well type text, write or draw with the pen, and record their voice. I have used this app in my room for projects and station work. I used this app when we were studying weather. I grouped my students and they had to use their research information that we had already gathered to present what they had learned about severe weather. The students searched for a picture of each type of weather and pasted it on a separate page with the title typed or written at the top of each picture for their heading. The students could also include captions for the pictures and any other nonfiction text feature they would like to include. Then the went back to their first slide and began recording their information that they learned about each type of severe weather. The only downfall to this app is that you can only record once :( If you mess up there is no starting over. You have to start completely over with everything. This is hard for younger students, but I stress that it is very important to know exactly what you are going to say. I really hope that the company is working on this aspect. 
Another way I have used Educreations in my classroom is in stations. I may have students read a book and then summarize the book and include a picture, text, and their voice. I have also given the students math problems and they must write the math problems on the pages, write in words how they figured out the problem because it hard for second graders to explain their work in words, and they can also record what they wrote so that if there are spelling mistakes I can easily check their work with the recording. 
Any work done on Educreations can be saved and sent to your computer account. You can then pull up all of your presentations on the computer and share them via email, smart board, and other technologies. 
Most of the tutorials show how teachers use the app, but I have mostly just let my students use the app so far. Teachers can also make presentations to teach content or for anything you may need to present. There are also featured lessons available that others have made that may be useful to what you are teaching. 

Here is a tutorial with more information!

http://youtu.be/oer20QtZdMo

Here is a link of how a student used Educreations.

http://youtu.be/1CjCiDmGyaU

Here is an article on the impact Educreations in a school system. (you may have to copy and paste the link)

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/educreations-series-a/