Teaching Slate

Minnesota school goes iPad

pete — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:15:25 +0000

An adventurous school district here in our own MN is purchasing hundreds of iPads for students and staff. Over the summer they’ll be evaluating apps and deciding how to integrate the devices into their curriculum.

I think this is very forward thinking, and will save on money and trees as more textbooks are converted into electronic (and interactive!?) form. They don’t mention how much money is set aside for purchasing apps; that could end up being significant.

Full article here: http://bit.ly/dlPdKe

Word Magic

cass — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:11:39 +0000

Word Magic is a fantastic app for emerging readers. It’s a fill-in-the-blank style spelling application that offers a wide variety of options to suit a range of abilities. The word to be spelled is displayed in a multi-sensory fashion: picture, sound, and letters. The child is then given four letters to choose from to spell the word.

The parent can set the preferences in many ways, such as the length of the word, where the blank is placed in a word, timer, pronunciation, whether or not vocal and visual praise is displayed, words displayed in lower or upper-case letters, and the level of difficulty.

We enjoy playing this app with our three-and-a-half year old daughter. Together we sound out the words focusing on letter sounds, which is an essential first step in learning to read. Our daughter loves this app, and chooses to play it regularly. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and most importantly, fun. We give it five stars!

The first batch of iPad games for kids.

admin — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 04:24:48 +0000

FreshPlanet has gotten their Red Fish iPad app into the iTunes store in time for the iPad release. They are one of the few companies specifically targeting the younger kids with educational material. Hopefully we’ll see a lot more developers venture into this area, as we think the iPad has the potential to be a great interactive learning device.