Each week my Flipboard app, Twitter responses, my kids, my Kindle Fire and my Google reader deliver a collection of new web tools, apps, books, crazy experiences and must read articles.
Here is this weeks collection:
Face Film App
My thanks this week goes to Yan Jiangguo, who provided me with a code for his FaceFilm app. The app lets you morph
two faces together with the whole smooth process outputting as a movie or an animated gif. So, as you can see opposite, you can use your iPad to stage your own Doctor Who style regeneration.
In terms of classroom use, this is one of those apps which could act as a writing stimulus. I would get my class to morph themselves into a character and write about how it feels to be that person, perhaps a soldier or a knight or an alien. These would look brilliant displayed on a class blog with the writing coupled with the gif as an illustration for each story or poem. Possible themes could be going back in time or becoming a celebrity or world leader.
Addition and Subtraction for Kids
Back when I had Year 1, I used to make a lot of worksheets and flip charts involving visual addition and subtraction. For younger children and those with processing difficulties number operations can be just too abstract. As a visual learner myself I have always been keen to bring Maths alive with pictures, role play and objects. Fast forward a few years and Leo my middle son presents with autism and learning difficulties. This means that though he can memorize almost all of the Tube network and a whole collection of number facts by playing Bond Bubbles, he still struggles with simple addition and subtraction. We can spend quite a while battling with 9-0 or 8 + 6 and yet he knows lots of pairs of numbers that will make 100 from rote memory.
Enter this app, Addition and Subtraction for Kids, with the visual prompts and scaffolding of moving sea creatures. It is an app that works well for him and has great promise. Though, I am not going to leap too far up and down for this app as it really lacks the customization and options that other developers like Frogmeleon or Teacher’s Pet give you. In fact if you are listening guys, please make an app like this but with the understanding of teaching and learning that I know you both have!
Purple Mash – Face Lift
I have recently moved schools and I am introducing new colleagues to Purple Mash, a project I began with 2Simple over two years ago. I am thrilled to see how the front page and navigation have moved up a gear. The screen now adjusts seamlessly to fill the browser window and the search tool for activities including drilling down by year and subject is fantastic. It is still not IOS compatible yet, though you can now view the front page on an iPad and further 2Simple apps are on the way.
Teaching Packs
Mark Warner, the man behind Teaching Ideas and other tried tested and enduring Teacher resource sites has created a new site. I was privileged to be able to test this new project over this last weekend and as expected it all looks good and will be another place we all go to for quality resources. Teaching Packs, hosts a small but growing collection of teaching and display resources on themes such as punctuation, times tables and pirates, though that list is growing. A small fee will allow you to download each very comprehensive pack or you could subscribe for the year, which costs around the same as a decent CD!
And finally
David Pogue: 10 top time-saving tech tips
How many of these tips, tricks and short cuts did you know about :
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