Programming

As with the programming apps the problems solving can help teach students valuable skills of working through problems with trial and error. One must sometimes fail to succeed but only if they build upon these failures and learn from them. Obstacles for these types of apps relate directly to the trial and error approach if students lack to stamina and patience to learn from multiple mistakes.

Problem solving

I tried the Bubble Ball and Cargo-Bot app. Both are very addicting and for me anyway required a lot of investigation through trial and error along with patience. I would really recommend both because of these features. Students in particular could learn valuable lessons in life just through the patience and perseverance required of both apps can. Students could also learn through trial and error that learning and succeeding will require error and failure. Along with these two reasons I would also recommend Cargo-Bot because of them patterning skills that it teaches through practice.

Diigo

I have used apps such as these in the past. One that comes to mind is Delicious.com. I am not sure if it is still available. What I had found through the years is that many of the sites that I saved were not accessible later. Many websites can be accessed through google but there are those that are not as easy to find and it is a struggle to find them again. This app would help with something like this. It would also be useful to share websites through this app with parents and other teachers.

Dictionary

I liked features of both the Merriam Webster app and the Dictionary.com app. I will start with a few flaws. I could not use the screen turn feature of my IPAD on either of these apps. I immediately tried using this feature on other apps to see if it had something to do with my device or settings but it worked for other apps just not these two. I'm not sure if this feature is not available with these two apps or if something went wrong when downloading them. For the Merriam Webster app the font was huge and the definition and word could not be seen on one screen. This is why the definition does not appear in the screen shot. In fact the definition requires multiple screens. Both apps had a word of the day feature. The Dictionary.com app has a "Learners" feature, which explains the word in user friendly sentences for children. The Merriam Webster app did not have the "Learners" option. The Dictionary.com app also has a thesarus feature. I would have thought that the Merriam Webster app would have had a thesarus option but if it does I could not find it. The Merriam Webster app had an option to use the Ipad's microphone to say the word but rather than type it in a box but it would not detect any word that I would say. The Merriam Webster app also had a games feature for testing one's knowledge of vocabulary. I would recommend the Merriam Webster app to my school district because of the game feature and the microphone feature but the microphone feature did not work and because the size of the font made it difficult to use this app efficiently I would have to go with the Dictionary.com app.

Citations

It has been years since I have used citations, but it has not been too long for me to realize that this app does streamline the process, making the process of citing sources much more efficient. This would be a great tool for high school and college students who are writing research papers. One glitch that I noted was that the scanner on this app would not always work and that it was quicker to just type in the name of the publication.

Poplet

Poplet could be used in the classroom in a variety of ways to support instruction. It could be used as a story map for a how to paper. It could be used as a story map for a comparison and contrast paper. It could be used to support math story problems with students creating picture cards.

Study Skills

Quizlet could be useful at the early elementary level for teachers making flashcards for letters, vocabulary terms and math facts. In middle and high school teachers could create a virtual study guide for quizzes and tests. Students could also create their own study guides. I would have used this tool in my high school and college years.

https://quizlet.com/130415326/first-grade-math-flash-cards/