Three Pointer Tuesday: Download These Three Apps for Assessment
For this week’s Three Pointer post, I’m recommending three iPad apps that can be used for assessment.
- Easy Assessment
This app allows you to set up rubrics to assess your students across a wide range of activities. - Three Ring
Three Ring is an interesting way to create digital portfolios. Head over to threering.com to find out more. - Easy Portfolio
This app is another method for creating digital portfolios consisting of text, photos, videos, audio recordings, links and documents.
15 Apps for Digital Art Week
Digital Art Week 2013 begins on Monday. If you or your students have access to iPads then you might consider downloading some of these apps to use during the week. Some are free, some are paid. The free ones usually offer in-app purchases or feature ads.
Creating
- Doodle Buddy
An easy to use app that not only allows you to doodle, but also contains stencils and stamps to liven up your creations! - Create A Car
My classes always like this one, it allows you to piece together a vehicle consisting of various wacky parts. - Brushes
- Draw & Doodle
- Graffiti Art
- Drawing Kids HD
- RandomPollock
Create Jackson Pollock style images by running your finger around the screen and rotating the device. - Zen Brush
- MyBrushes
- Glow Draw
Looking and responding
- Louvre HD
Explore the numerous works of art housed in the Louvre from the comfort of your own classroom!
Image editing
Fotobabble - Talking Photos
Fotobabble is a simple app and web interface that allows to record audio to describe photos. It’s great to use for oral language and Gaeilge, and I’m sure it would be great for other languages too. You could also use it across the curriculum as a way for student to share their learning. They could snap a pic of a maths problem, then describe how they worked it out. On history or geography trails it would be a great companion to document the trails. I’m sure there are many other uses for it. The photos you upload can also be embedded on websites and blogs (see examples from my class here).
I’m always a fan of apps that do something simple and do it well. Fotobabble fits the bill. The app is free to download from the App Store.
Source: fotobabble.com
Using Weebly to Create a Classroom Website and Blog
Just over a year ago (February 2012) I helped redesign our school website. We had been using Incomedia’s website building program “Website X5” but felt that we had outgrown what it could offer. At the time it did not cater for blogs and the whole website had to be edited from one machine where the program was installed. We wanted to be able to edit our site on the fly from any machine. Having looked into a few different ways of doing this - Wix, Wordpress, Blogger - we finally settled on Weebly.
Setting up a Weebly account is easy, you can log in with your Facebook, Google or email credentials. Once set up you can dive right in to setting up a website. Weebly offers numerous themes to get you started. After that, content is added with an intuitive drag and drop interface. Want a text section on your page? Drag and drop a text box. Want to embed images, videos, html etc.? Just drag and drop the appropriate box anywhere on your page. It really is that simple. This really appealed to me as I could see how easy it would be to set up static and dynamic sections on our site.
Another essential feature for us was the ability to add a blog. This is done by adding a new page to your site and choosing to create it as a blog. After that, posts are created via the same drag and drop interface, allowing you to create interesting multimedia posts with ease.
Weebly also allows you to add multiple users to your site. As the administrator all you need is their email address. When you add a new user, you can choose which pages on your site they can edit. In our case, all teachers can edit the blog to add class content, but only administrators can edit other pages.
Password protected pages can also be added, another important feature for us as we wanted a page on the site that only staff can access.
All in all, we’re very happy to have made the move to Weebly. There have been no issues at all with usability or design, no downtime, and a very gentle learning curve for all involved. The Weebly iOS app also allows users to make blog posts from their mobile device, and an Android app is in the works.
Most of the features are free but some, including HD video upload and password protection, require you to sign up for a Weebly Pro account, currently priced at around $48 per year.
Check out my school website at stcorbans.com and my class website at mrlanesclass.com to get some idea as to the kind of site that can be created with Weebly.
There is also a Weebly for Education offering, but I have no experience of using this service.
Source: weebly.com
Easy Portfolio -
If you’re looking for a universal iOS app to allow your students to create digital portfolios then take a look at Easy Portfolio. The app allows you to add digital artifacts, store them in different folders and export them all via email or Dropbox. Photos and videos can be imported or recorded directly within the app. Audio notes are all recorded from within the app and are exported in .alac format. Documents can be imported from Dropbox.
Overall it seems to be an excellent way to keep things together in an organised fashion. A teacher might also be interested in using this as a way of storing student work. You could simply set up a class within the app and have separate folders for each of your students.
The app currently costs €1.79 and as it’s universal, one purchase will allow you to install it on any iOS device.
EdShelf - App and Website Discovery for Educators
This is a useful site if you’re searching for websites and apps used by other educators. You can browse through a large collection of tools that have been added and reviewed by users. All tools listed are also well tagged so discovering them is very easy. It’s like Yelp for educational technology! If you sign up you can create a profile and add “collections” of tools that you use. I quickly put together this collection to see how it worked. Another useful feature is the ability to follow collections so you can keep up to date with new tools added by the collection’s curator.
Source: edshelf.com
Haiku Deck
Haiku deck is a presentation app for the iPad that has been receiving a lot of attention of late. They have just raised $3m to help them bring their app to other platforms.
The app is very impressive. It allows the user to creative visually appealing presentations with ease. You can search for images within the app to use as backgrounds or import images from your camera roll. There are five free themes to help you create your presentations with others available through an in-app purchase. Text is overlaid stylishly and the presentations have a real minimalist feel to them.
You can share your presentations via Facebook, Twitter and email, embed them on your blog, publish them on your Haiku Deck profile or export them as Powerpoint/Keynote presentations.
Here is an example that I put together, I hope the facts are correct!
The app is free from the App Store.
Source: haikudeck.com
