Photostory, I would bet would be selected by many teachers as one of the most popular classroom tools in the last twenty years. Since its demise, the quest for a replacement video storytelling app has rivaled the search for the holy grail. Last year, Microsoft did another “Photostory”, by buying a company with an interesting …
We have all witnessed over the past 20 months the huge increase in the number of tools, apps, and platforms available to support learning and teaching in the classroom, whether virtual or in the return to the face-to-of face environment. Some of us were aware of these tools beforehand, but perhaps didn’t really see or …
The desire to enhance parental engagement seems to be permeating schools more and more. Immediately after taking over as Home School Community Liaison teacher last year, I naturally enough started looking for a suitable application that our school could use to further drive parental involvement in our establishment. Some teachers have previously experimented with edmodo …
As we enter the ‘crazy’ final weeks before end of the term, you think I am going to have time to engage in professional learning activities. Well this is an interesting twist on professional learning and one that has been running successfully for three years now, it is called the Twelve Apps of Christmas. It …
Pocket size Professional Development for Christmas Read More »
In a post last month we looked at Promethean’s Cloud Based Lesson Creation and Presentation tools – ClassFlow. In many classes at primary and post-primary level, pupils are using tablet devices to enhance learning and classroom engagement. To facilitate two way communication between teachers and pupils, Promethean have developed a number of Smartphone and tablet …
Last month Google unveiled a new development for Google Drive (Google’s web-based office suite) called Add-ons. Essentially this introduces an app store for Google Drive, although it is only in place for Google Docs and Google Sheets at this time. Add-ons are tools created by third-party developers that greatly expand the capabilities of Docs and …
As an IT coordinator and Learning Support teacher in my school for the past 20 years, one of the questions that I am asked ALL of the time is…. “Do you have any software that you recommend for x….” Be it place value, reading, spelling or maths concepts… teachers and parents want to give their …
The latest fad, according to my Facebook timeline, seems to be Bitstrips, an app for Android, iOS and Windows devices. The premise of Bitstrips is that you can make a comic strip and add yourself and your friends to the story. My sister is addicted to it and everyday she posts up something that’s she …
Learning to read is a long and difficult process and many pupils struggle to concentrate and stay on task when using books alone. Using a tablet offers the advantage of increasing motivation and concentration, introducing a level of variety and helping to reinforce and consolidate key aspects of the reading curriculum. There are now many …
A number of people have been asking me how to make picture collages using personalised graphics. The reason I became interested in this myself is a heightened awareness of copyright law and a desire to create unique designs for our school website. Schools obviously don’t have a budget to pay for a graphic designer or …
