Tag Archives: App

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: Humanities and Arts: English Central

Last summer, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2017. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration, and encourage discovery and curiosity.

 

Level: Kindergarten +
Platform: iOS  and Android
Cost: FREE

The app English Central helps students learn English through the thousands of videos it makes available. Videos range from casual to formal speaking situations. The app also includes courses specifically for those entering certain professions like hotel and service and offer levels from beginner to advanced. Students can focus on specific skills like grammar, pronunciation, and useful expressions and also take assessments to see how well they are learning material.  Students can even have daily lessons delivered to their phones, if they choose. A tip to make English Central even more useful would be to suggest that ESL students take the app home with them to share with other family members who might also be learning English.

English Central has a Teacher Portal which offers webinars, video lessons, and other tools specifically for teachers. The app has been reviewed by the MidAmerica Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, and also by Busy Teachers.org who posted this detailed review.

Watch this quick video to see English Central in action:

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: STEM: Lifeliqe

Last summer, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2017. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration, and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Lifeliqe is a digital science curriculum that helps to engage students with its interactive 3D models. The app is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core curriculum. Students can use augmented, virtual, and mixed reality to learn science concepts. Educators can make and share their own 3D lesson plans and presentations or customize the ones that come with the app. Check out the Lifeliqe blog for more more ways to incorporate the app into your classroom!

Level: All
Platform: iOS
Cost: Yearly plan $99, school discounts available

Common Sense Education has this review of Lifeliqe which includes lesson and activity ideas, and this article from Emerging Ed Tech has more information on the app, including some short demonstrations.

Watch this video to see how Lifeliqe works:

 

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: Organization and Management: MeisterTask

Last summer, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2017. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration, and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app MeisterTask is a way to manage tasks and projects in a visual way that allows easy collaboration. Students and teachers can make project boards for group tasks, where the group members can see tasks in progress and also ones that have been finished. Members of the group are able to assign tasks, get notifications when tasks are finished or edited, and use widgets to see active tasks. Plus, if your school uses Chromebooks, you can use the Chrome extension to access your dashboard. In addition, “if a school has purchased the mind mapping tool MindMeister, maps can be exported directly into MeisterTask to create a connected project with task synchronization. MeisterTask is an intuitive tool to help streamline collaborative projects, keeping groups organized and on task.”

Level: Middle School +
Platform: iOS and Android
Cost: FREE

Looking for reviews of this app? Finances Online has this favorable review, and this post from GetApp includes testimonials from real-life users.  And if you are interested in using MindMeister in your classroom, here’s an article from the Focus blog that has some useful suggestions!

Watch this video to learn how to use MindMeister and MeisterTask!

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: Content Creation: Bloxels

Last summer, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2017. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration, and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Bloxels is “a hands-on platform for kids to build, collaborate, and tell stories through video game creation.” Their site proclaims “You don’t need to understand fancy code and own super expensive computer programs to make video games anymore. All it takes is your Bloxels Gameboard, some blocks and a mobile device and, of course, your imagination to take the guesswork out of building your own video games!”

Level: All
Platform: iOS and Android
Cost: FREE app, the Bloxels Gameboard is $34.99 (CMLE has one available to lend to our members! Contact us for more info!)

Orville wants to share his Bloxels with CMLE members!

Tech Age Kids has this pretty detailed review of the app that includes tips and a parent perspective. This article on the site Makerspace for Education breaks down the app with links to tutorials, lesson plans, and videos.

Watch this quick overview video of how the app works:

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: STEM: Cosmic Watch

Last summer, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2017. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration, and encourage discovery and curiosity.

This app is a celestial watch based on a 3D model of the solar system as experienced from earth, and is a world and astronomical clock.
“It shows time as what it really is – our position and motion in the cosmos. Students can learn more about astronomy and our solar system, watch the real time movement of sun, moon and stars or simply enjoy the beautiful design of the celestial sphere.” The app’s website features tutorials as well as some educational resources that  feature images from NASA missions.

Level: Middle School +
Platform: iOS/Android
Cost: $4.49

Read this review from PC Mag for a detailed description of the app as well as pro/con items. You can also read a review by a teacher here, from EducationalAppStore.com.