Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Appy Hour

I have been asked to attend our district's monthly Leadership meetings to help present an "Appy Hour" time of the meeting. The hour in the title is a little misleading. We have 15 minutes and Appy Quarter-hour just didn't have the same ring to it.

The first month we were asked to present Google Apps for Education as it is new to most of our leadership team. So we did. It seemed to go over well and we are seeing an increase in GAFE usage with teachers and students. Not really an app, but useful.

The second month we were asked to present the SAMR model. Ok, I know you are asking when are we getting to the Apps of Appy hour. Because we were. SAMR is rushing through education at the moment as a model for helping teachers take a look at their classroom assignment and help layer technology to either enhance the lesson or transform the lesson.

A pretty good video explaing the SAMR model.





So, the third month, a review of SAMR with a look at some TEKS and some substitution and augmentation examples, and finally some apps.

So we decided on these three apps to mention.

Mastery Connect TEKS - displays core content TEKS. There is an iOS and Android app
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/texas-state-core-standards/id892241715
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.masteryconnect.tx 

Then we did a small App Smash with the next two.

DocScan HD - take a picture of a document and turn it into a PDF or JPEG. The free version allows you to save to your iPad and email the document. The paid version allows you to upload to cloud services like Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doc-scan-hd-scanner-to-scan/id467016332?mt=8 has in App purchase of $3.99 to upload to cloud services.

Since we can upload to Google Drive, the third app we showed as Drive.
Basically we showed the same functionality of the web version with creating, editing, and sharing documents.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-drive-free-online-storage/id507874739?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.docs&hl=en

Not sure what the fourth meeting will hold yet. It will be in December, so I am thinking some photo and video editing apps since the holidays are times for taking pictures.
Any suggestions?