One of my favorite reference charts is taped to my classroom’s iPad cart, and the other is prominently displayed in the front of the room.
My students email their classwork throughout the school year and this chart helps them remember what to do before hitting send:
There are plenty of lessons you can email in my Teacher Store!
One of my favorite topics to teach in the classroom is healthy eating. There are lots of great free apps to support this subject at all grade levels.
Here’s my Common Core aligned QR Scavenger Hunt “Intro to Healthy Eating” and the “Food Plate (aka Food Pyramid)“
The World Wildlife Fund
has a beautiful free app that contains high quality pictures and lots of information about different animals. Whether you’re looking for information on pandas, whales, turtles or tigers, this should be a go-to app to gather facts and find inspiration.
Check out my Common Core aligned iPad lesson plan using this app in the classroom!
SlideShare is a great resource for PowerPoint presentations. This website allows you to view presentations created by teachers (and all sorts of people) that may be useful for your classroom. It’s also a fantastic place to share your presentations with others.
Check out my SlideShare presentations:
If you’re looking for a good resource for documentaries, SnagFilms is a fantastic app. Completely free, with no requirement to sign up, SnagFilms offers a great variety of award winning documentaries. Whether you’re looking to extend a lesson, kick off a unit or just learn more about a topic before teaching, you’ll want to check out this fantastic free app!
Check out my Common Core aligned lesson plan using this app in the classroom!
I love learning new things and SnapGuide is a fantastic free app that you must explore! Pinterest is a great place for gathering new ideas, and SnapGuide takes this concept to a whole new level. SnapGuide is full of how-to guides that show step-by-step instructions on how to complete a variety of tasks. You and your students can even create your own how-to guides using this free service!
Check out my Common Core aligned lesson plan for using this app!
The iPad is a fantastic tool for completing research, publishing, and sharing your work. There are two free apps from PERRLA that make it easy to record citations whether you’re using MLA or APA style references. This app is perfect for elementary students completing a biography project or high schoolers writing a term paper.
Check out my Common Core aligned iPad lesson plan using this app in the classroom!
A great way to replace or extend a biography project is to create a resume of the person you are studying. Have students use the Pocket Mobile Resume app to demonstrate their knowledge of a historical figure’s personal information, experience and education, while choosing contemporaries to act as references and identify the skills and strengths of this person. Try it out in your classroom!
Check out my Common Core aligned lesson plan using this app in the classroom!
Here’s another Common Core aligned lesson plan using this app in the classroom!
If you are looking for a new formative assessment tool check out Understoodit. Whether your students are on iPads or have access to the web from desktops, Understoodit is a fantastic free assessment tool that is perfect for collecting data when presenting new information to students. As you speak, students press one of two buttons on a website unique to your class: “Confused” or “Understood” You’ll receive real-time data on how well your class understands your presentation.
At first I was hesitant to try Understooit with my fifth graders, since it seemed so perfect for university professors and high school teachers, but it worked great with my group. I don’t normally teach by lecture so I had students first try it out while watching a BrainPop video. This way it was easy for me to know when to pause and initiate a discussion when they were confused. I’m gathering formative data and can alter my instruction by the minute!
I’ve discussed how much I love HaikuDeck as a presentation tool and the way I’ve used it to create memes with my students. There are lots or free apps that make it even easier to create memes (I like Mematic), and I’ve started using them across subject areas.
Have students….
Check out my Common Core aligned lesson plan that would be perfect for this app!
I usually only recommend free apps since I’m using a class set of iPads in my classroom and don’t have access to a volume purchasing plan. But for $0.99 Explain a Website is a must have teacher tool! This app acts as an internet browser and allows you to record your actions and voice as you navigate a website. You can write all over the screen, discuss features of the website, and save your recording to your iPads Camera Roll. Check out the clip I uploaded onto YouTube that gives a quick introduction to ClassTechTips.com!
Use Explain a Website to help show students how to navigate the websites they’ll visit in one of my common core aligned QR Code Scavenger Hunts!
Lots of websites display images of popular search terms, tags, or keywords to show what’s trending on their site. I love using Wordle, an online tool that takes the most popular words from a text and displays them according to how frequently they appear. You can copy and past text from an article your class is reading or an encyclopedia entry.
After students in my class emailed their essays on deforestation in South America, I copy and pasted the text into Wordle. Now I can display what’s trending next to a bulletin board of student work!
Wordsalad is an app that let’s you do the same thing straight from your iPad!
Try Wordle using current events!
I chose this slogan because it contains domain specific vocabulary and demonstrates the courage of George Washington and the faith he had in his troops.
You’ve seen them in emails, on Facebook, even the Today Show features memes that have gone viral. Students can create their own memes using Haiku Deck on their iPads.
Follow these steps:
Check out my common core aligned lesson plan using this app in the classroom!
Here’s another common core aligned lesson plan using this app!
I’ve said it before – I love using QR codes in my classroom!
There are a lot of reasons:
I make QR codes using free QR code generators like Qurify and distribute them to my students as a scavenger hunt. I’ll have questions ready for each website so students are focused as they conduct Internet research. You can post these QR codes around the classroom, create QR stations, or simply give them to your students with their scavenger hunt activity sheet.
Check out my lesson plan on using QR Scavenger Hunts in the classroom!
Here’s another lesson plan using QR Scavenger Hunts in the classroom!
One more lesson plan using QR Scavenger Hunts in the classroom!
I’ve been using QR codes in my classroom for scavenger hunts and as a tool for research. If you haven’t viewed my presentation on making your own QR codes and using them in the classroom, check it out here.
If I want all of my students to visit one website (especially one with a combination of characters that might be hard to type in) I’ll project the QR code onto my board and have all students scan it straight from their seats. This eliminates the printing, copying and distributing of papers and makes for a quick, easy scan for all students.
Try projecting this QR code and scanning it yourself!
Check out my lesson plan on using QR Codes in the classroom!
Here’s another lesson plan using QR Codes in the classroom!
There are lots of apps that allow you to scan barcodes to compare prices of different products. Fooducate takes this to a new level!
When you scan the barcode of a processed food item, Fooducate connects you to information on “How Healthy” that product is – even assigning it a letter grade.
Students can use this app on a supermarket field trip or to scan items you bring into your classroom. The Fooducate website also performs the same function. If you’re teaching a unit on healthy eating, or discussing advertising during a persuasive writing unit, Fooducate can integrate technology into your lesson.
Check out my lesson plan using Fooducate in the classroom!
There are lots of ways to browse the Internet on your iPad. Besides the Apple Internet browser Safari (that comes built in with your iPad) one option is DiigoBrowser. Although Safari is my go-to when using the Internet, DiigoBrowser has one feature that I find particularly helpful in the classroom.
You might have noticed the annotated screenshot included on my post about accessing archived content on ClassTechTips. I followed a few easy steps to annotate an Internet page:
1. Bring up a website in DiigoBrowser
2. Press the gray and white starburst on the right side of the screen to access different features in DiigoBrowser
3. Choose the camera/crop icon (this allows you to drag a box on the screen to crop the part of the website you’d like to annotate)
4. Use the toolbar at the top of your screen to draw shapes, arrows, or add text
5. Decide whether you’d like to save this picture to your iPad’s camera roll or send it as an attachment in an email
1. Bring up a website in DingoBrowser
2. Press the gray and white starburst
3. Choose the camera/crop icon
4. Use the toolbar at the top of your screen to draw shapes, arrows, or add text
5. Decide whether you’d like to save this picture to your iPad’s camera roll or send it as an attachment in an email
Instead of just taking a screenshot of your iPad – which I do all the time. This tool could be used to show students where to look on a website to make directions specific and easy to follow. Try it when guiding students through the research process, or demonstrating how to access content on a new website.
Whether you’re a subscriber or not, the BrainPop app for the iPad (and the website for PCs) is a fun and interactive learning tool for students of all ages. The website as well as the BrainPop app, is full of video explanation on a variety of topics as well as quizzes that monitor students’ understanding and retention of what they’ve just learned. If you do have a subscription, you’ll be prompted to enter your login information when you click on a video that isn’t part of their free content. For younger learners, check out the BrainPop Jr app and website.
I’m always looking for ways to help history come alive for my students. The Perfect Captions app is a great way to incorporate technology in your classroom in an engaging way. Students can add captions to demonstrate their understanding of what a fiction character or historical figure might be thinking. They can use a picture found on the Internet, saved on a student’s iPad or taken with their iPad camera.
Customize the size, shape and color of the talk bubbles and text
Check out my lesson plan on using Perfect Captions in the classroom!
