Thing 28: App-palooza!

After completing this "thing" last year I knew that this would be one to complete every year as the world of technology and apps are always changing. Learning about new technology and apps that can better inform and help students is always important. It is very difficult in the world of education to stay on top of the most up to date information. The "best" that is out there is always changing. The needs of your students are always changing as well. 
First I looked at the "Should I download this App?" Checklist. I found it a great review to view the checklist. It is important to put pedagogy and student needs before the price and an app. Many people forget this and just look for the best app to get the job done without looking at the needs of the project and the students. This is an important checklist to share out with your faculty and staff and I plan to create a document from this checklist to do just that as our school is slowly adding Chrome books to the school. It is important for all teachers to read this checklist so that they can better fit the needs of themselves and their students. 

I also found it very interesting in an article about having an AUP for personal devices. My school is still not allowing personal devices to be used unless the teacher wants to allow it. If the teacher doesn't want a device in their classroom the students are supposed to leave it in their lockers or keep it in a pocket where it isn't a distraction. This as you can imagine has caused a lot of issues for many students. We are however adding more and more devices to the school so hopefully soon many of the classrooms will have Chrome books or other devices for student use. 

I then looked at the best apps for teaching from the AASL website. I enjoy that the website goes back to previous years as well so you can compare the changes in what is being used for apps. 
One of the apps that I use in my daily life is Google Keep I was happy to see that it falls on the list for best apps.  I have not used this with any of my students but I feel that it would be beneficial for the kids to know about. I will use this app when teaching my after school program (ASP) for college prep 101. This will be beneficial to the participants in learning organizational techniques and more. 

I"m interested in exploring The New Immigrants: NYC 1880-1924 by Vanguard Direct/New York City Department of Education. This app caught my eye because I just finished working on an immigration inquiry project with my 11th grade teacher in Morristown. I would like to look into this app to use in the future with the class. We followed the tool kit from engageny.org just to keep it more in line with the regents exam for the students but I think that this app would help to benefit the students. I look forward to learning more with this app in the future. 

I have also saved a few of the app tasks in my Google drive so that I can go in and try them. They look great and like they will be very beneficial. This is definitely one of my favorite "things" to complete.