![]() This blog entry will look at the different Ipad educational apps that I have seen being used in the primary classroom. Tellagami Tellagami enables students to create an animated character and record audio for that character to say. They can use the tellagamis to create their own speeches, pretending to be characters from a book or to narrate it, for example. In the lesson I observed the teacher had made a tellagami of a policeman who then told the students what his job was. I think Tellagami is a great app. Not only is it fun and engaging but it also enables those students with less confidence to pre-record what they want to say and then to share it in front of the class. This means that they can still share their opinions with their peers but they don’t have the pressure of having to stand up in front of the class to do it. ![]() Explain Everything Explain Everything is an interactive screencasting whiteboard and can be used by both students and teachers. I saw one teacher using it to screen grab parts of a text into one screen and record audio instructions for the students which he then shared with the class. The students could then turn on their ipads, access the file, listen to the teacher’s instructions and record a response. A real advantage here was that the students were able to work independently. Explain everything allows you to create slides to teach a learning point, but unlike Powerpoint and Smartnotebook, you can zoom further and further out in each slide meaning is an ‘infinite canvas’ which you can continue to add to. ![]() Aurasma Aurasma is an augmented reality app which allows teachers to bring the curriculum to life. The app allows you to create augmented reality experiences by pointing a mobile phone or tablet at a photo or object that acts like a trigger and plays an ‘aura’ attached to it. The aura could be an animation, video or an image. One teacher I observed had used Aurasma to make a Stone Age treasure hunt. The students were each given a list of questions which would lead them to auras he had placed around the school. Upon pointing their iPads at the photos or objects, which acted as the triggers, they would be shown a video, played a recording, shown an image or given a task to do. The students were really engaged and thoroughly enjoyed the activity. In another class the students were reading a book. To incentivise the students to read as well as to help them with difficult passages, the teacher had created auras for certain pages. The auras might ask the student a question to think about or show them a picture or a video to help them better understand the text. It worked well in engaging the students and keeping them on task. It is clear that Aurasma has unlimited potential in the classroom and is a great way of creating fun and engaging lessons which hook students in from the start. Instagrok
Instagrok is a search engine for education. It allows you to research with interactive concept maps which you can customise and share. Unlike Google searches, the ‘groks’ are dynamic and allow students to explore different aspects of a topic whilst just staying on the same web page. Look at the image below to see what options were available to me when I searched for the Tudors. Instagrok seems like a great application and I would like to use it in the classroom. I have observed several classes where the students have been asked to research a topic and within a matter of seconds they end up on Wikipedia and within minutes many are bored or disengaged. Whilst Wikipedia is text heavy, Instagrok displays the key facts, images and videos related to a topic and then allows the student to explore other related areas. Instagrok seems a lot more engaging than just using Google for research, and more structured too. I would like to use it in my teaching and will seek out opportunities to do so during my second placement.
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Paul LArchives
January 2016
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