The annual Texas Computer Education Association Convention I am attending this week in Austin is always a great time to hear some of the latest and greatest uses of technology in education.
This morning I attended a session called "Apptivities" which focused on using mobile device apps in ways that are active, independent, divergent, multi-disciplinary and take advantage of mobile features. What a cool way to engage students. Take a look at www.apptivities.org to get a feel for the concept.
During the middle part of the day I "dug deeper" into Google Apps and then ended the day with a session on using Google Maps to create multi-disciplinary GoogleTreks (http://googletreks.org/), a very interactive way of looking at the world.
What do you think? Would some of these approaches have made your learning experiences better?
5 comments:
Hello Professor Jungman!
That convention you're at sounds pretty interesting! I find it interesting that you learned about the Google Apps today. During our CLT Tour, we learned that Trinity is in the process of allowing access to the Google Apps but under the Trinity domain. It all sounded very interesting! In regards to your question, I feel that if my high school had incorporated mobile devices in our daily learning I would have had too big of a temptation to do other things, not academic related. Can't wait to see what other cool things you learn and bring back to class!!
I just went through the Apptivities website, and I think that using Apps is a great way to engage students. I personally love word games such and scramble and scrabble. My vocabulary has actually improved since I started to play these games. If children start playing in school, I can only imagine how much their vocabularies would improve. I also liked the idea of practicing writing on the iPad. With the current push for being eco friendly, that would be a great way to save the trees. The most surprising App, in my opinion, was the Cookie Doodle App. When I first saw the title I was pretty skeptical. I guess I'll have to play it to see all that it has to offer to a student. Overall I think Apptivities is a really cool concept.
Hi Professor Jungman!
I hope that you are having a good time and learing a lot of new and exciting things at the convention! I took a look at the Apptivities page and I agree with Haley that Apps can actually increase a students skill in spelling or vocabulary! I would really be interested to try using Apps in our classroom sometime!
Hi Professor Jungman,
I just went through the Apptivities; apps are really interesting and I'm surprised educators can use it to teach students. The art talk app and the gps tool would be fun activities that teach students about things in real life. The Googletrek would be a good supplement to what the students learn.
After browsing some of the Google Treks, I think using them within a classroom setting could be quite interesting and engaging for students of any age. Not only can you travel to new places via the internet, but you can learn more about them in a way that brings the world to you in a sense. I espcially liked that the program could be used across cirriculums instead of being limited to just geography or science. However, looking closer at the language arts Google Treks, I noticed they had more science based questions to them. Since only two had been created, perhaps more should be designed around prose and other literary devices. Overall, though, they seem like a neat way to use Google Maps within lessons.
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