Tool # 9; Incorporating Devices

We are in a technological age and it is very important to tie technology to the objective because it is what students use, interact, and engage with everyday, but most importantly they are attracted to technology like magnets. If we can tie technology and objective together, they will be more interested in learning using technology as a guidance. Students should be held accountable for stations/centers because it is a place where students show off what they know and give them a sense of accomplishment to their classmates. Also stations/centers is created so that each student have a specific task to accomplish by working together, not a specific person accomplishes all the tasks and distributes to everyone. Mangahigh and tutpup grabbed my attention the most based on their competitive nature. Students, same as adults, like to compete against each other. I have not thought of a way on how to use these as stations. It could be that set up a game at the end of each unit and put a time limit on each problem to let students compete against each other. This way, first students show off their skills, second they have a limited time on each problem so they need to think fast and not goofing around. A few apps that I think will be useful are Showme, storylines and Toontastic. Showme allow users to record their writing and voice, which is useful for explaining problem solving. Storylines is very interesting. A person starts with a topic and pass it along to the next one so he/she continues with the given topic then to the next person. I have not use this yet, but it seems very interesting. Toontastic allows user to create comic strip to tell story. All these apps are great for creating presentation videos of problem solving. Time is not an issue if expectations and time limit are clearly defined before beginning the "fun" activities. As a note, these are all free apps :). One other way I would use the ipads would be students making video presentations.