Education Apps and Eval Forms

We have chosen and annotated five apps for education.  I am a secondary adolescent teacher and I for my content area I explored Discovery Education Techbook and People HD. Discovery is a great app that covers all content areas and delivers content in a way only discovery can do, and its content aligns with Common Core.  With this you can organize content, organizers, maps, quizzes etc. per class and student so teachers are organized and students know what expectations are.  People HD is more of a note taking and studying app, it comes loaded with dozens of important historical figures and allows users to add their own important figures they are studying.  This app is much more limited than Discovery but will be a quick and easy way for students to use technology in the classroom.  We also found a childhood app called BrainPop; this provides learning activities for students with score tracking and opportunity to improve scores.


We found a couple of management tools for teachers, Teacher Kit and Common Core Standards.  The Common Core Standards app will make lesson planning a lot easier because it make finding and using standards a much quicker process.  Teacher Kit is to be used as a classroom management tool providing seating charts, attendance, grade book, scheduling etc. Neither app is a groundbreaking idea but both have potential to make me work a little more efficiently.


People HD was put to the test with the evaluation forms and I found the Critical Evaluation of a Content-Based Mobile App and the Evaluation Rubric for iPod Apps.  Traditionally, I like rubrics for evaluating because it uses a scale but the rubric did not provide for the name of the app, comments for content; it was just a rubric.  The other form asked 10 questions that dealt more with student learning, levels of Bloom's addressed, and a summary space.  This gave a more well-rounded evaluation and will allow the evaluator to share their information. I especially appreciated the Bloom's portion and the opportunity to provide a summer; a description of the app can explain the utility of the app beyond the yes and no questioning.

Weebly Teacher Website

My Weebly teacher website was a little more of a challenge than I was expecting.  I found that Weebly's formatting was neither very easy to use or customizable; I had trouble placing text and images where I wanted them and I did not like that I could not preview how my page would look to visitors before publishing.  I would have liked to move and arrange my text boxes and images, as they are now things are not very tight looking (especially my 'about me' page.  The next time I create a teacher website I will likely explore the Google option. 


Creating a website that is easy to navigate and visually appealing proved to be a difficult task, but this practice certainly helped me understand how a good teacher website might function.  In the future, I want to be able to use my website to communicate with both teachers and students.  I want to be able to use a blog format to post classroom information and newsletters to parents, and on another page I would like to have a space for assignments, podcasts and videos that appear on a page in like a blog;  I could use this in a flipped classroom model.  Having a space with all this information would be great for studying and it also keeps parents up to date on what is happening in class.  My research paper was on the flipped classroom (see my blog post) and one important point I made was that parents liked the flipped model because they were able to view lecture posts with their children and help them with their homework; seems like a great way to maximize my class time and get parents more involved in the learning process.  Beyond that utility, I had not planned any other pages to be apart of my site, but I will definitely be incorporating a fun homepage with class info and course goals and an 'about me' page.

Response to: Understanding Learning Disabilities

I watched the full episode of Understanding Learning Disabilities from youtube, this can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYg8sX2fv90.  What an eye opening experience; the presenters fast paced lecture was used to simulate what a natural or standard paced classroom would feel like for a learning disabled student.  The video used well-educated working professionals in the demonstration and the presenter put them under pressure, and simulated several different experiences a learning disabled student would have on a day-to-day basis.  Processing was the central point exhibited through the video, and how various processing issues impact a learning disabled student.
The presenter assumes that the teacher (his role in the demonstration) is impatient, pushy and considers LD students to be "lazy and dumb."  By exhibiting how these adults struggle and their reactions to the challenges he clearly exhibited how a LD student can get lost during class and ultimately lose interest in class and school rather quickly.

The video was filled with pedagogy that you should not use and then the presenter would inform the class how a student perceives certain teacher behaviors and directions.  The most valuable point that this video gave to me is for a teacher to accept that a student is LD and develop a strategy with that student to make them feel comfortable and confident in the classroom.  While questioning the class for understanding, the presenter suggested creating a plan with your LD student to prompt them and prepare them to participate in class.  In this situation, it was as simple as walking over to your LD student's desk standing there briefly to prompt them to listen to the upcoming question or direction because they are the next to be called on.  Because of processing issues and the pace of class, this strategy prompts the student to focus their processor on the ensuing question so they can manage that sentence.  This example and other strategies give LD students a chance to participate and give the correct answer.  Successes like this will build confidence and as a result the student will be more comfortable to participate in class.

In light of my last post and research paper, the flipped classroom would benefit a LD student.  The student centered classroom, collaborative learning, and parent involvement all implied by the flipped classroom can greatly improve the learning experience for a learning disabled student.

Flipping the Classroom

As researched continued I adjusted my topic from using self-directed learning in the flipped classroom to flipping the classroom and using the teacher website.  The self-directed learning theory did not work well with the flipped classroom model, so I decided to add depth to my research on the flipped classroom.  The research on this subject is what I called a social analysis because to this point there is no formal research on the effectiveness of the flipped model or the methods that have proved most effective. That is not to say that there is not a large amount of strong anecdotal evidence from schools and teachers demonstrating great learning gains, improved test results and an overall improved school/classroom atmospheres. 

But before I wrote this paper I really didn’t know what the flipped classroom was, and I don’t expect any of my classmates to have a great understanding either.  In short, students will learn content before they come to class and class time is used to strengthen understanding, analysis, and application.  According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, pre-class learning involves low-level cognitive work while class time focuses on high-level cognitive work.  Rather than reading a chapter in the textbook, teachers are posting 10-15 lecture videos that they create and post to their teacher website for students (and parents) to view at home before class.   Even teachers trying this for the first time claim that any adaptations they had to make were well worth it as class was more enjoyable for both teachers and students.  One survey of 453 teachers who used the flipped model found that 99% of them planned to continue using the flipped model the following school year. 

Looking to become a high school social studies teacher I am looking for a way to maximize my time in the classroom.  Critical thinking skills and primary source analysis skills are going to be essential for my students’ success, and in this model my class time can be used to build those skills through independent and/or collaborative learning exercises that I am able to guide.  This is different from assigning homework assignments and projects that students may struggle with without their teacher’s support. I fully intend on using this model and creating my own teacher website in my future classroom, maybe even giving it a try during student teaching. 

WebQuests cont.

Creating my own WebQuest furthered my understanding of how I will be able to use this teaching strategy as a Social Studies teacher.  I want to start by saying I am drawn to the concept of guided learning, a principal based on community learning, leadership, self-direction, and group reflection; WebQuests effectively fall into this approach to teaching.  From a teacher's perspective I see myself giving a WebQuest assignment and allowing my students to work through the process while I observe group communications and aid group research.  As much as I enjoy directing instruction and discussing content with the class in a traditional format I believe it essential to student development that they are able to work and communicate on their own as they work through problems or research.  Not only does this build research skills, problem solving skills, and interpersonal skills; these skills are not acquired through the traditional classroom format.  Lastly, granting students the responsibility to work independently, and in the case of my WebQuest they present and teach the class of their discoveries, will boost learning confidence as they successfully complete tasks.

As for the teacher, it gives us a chance to stand back and observe interactions among students and their approach to independent work.  We are still able to facilitate learning and control the classroom but we are not necessarily in the foreground.  Further, I am lead to believe that when teacher (or parents) give students this responsibility they will appreciate the opportunity and meet expectations if instruction are thorough and expectations clearly stated.  My goal as an educator goes beyond instruction and assessment; I want to give them useful and lasting skills.  Education is not effective if the student does not come away with skills that they can apply to continuing their education and/or their career.  In closing, I will be using WebQuests often in my classroom.

Eric