Students with Diverse Needs

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #21: Puppet Pals HD

Puppet Pals HD is a highly regarded animation / storytelling app for iPad, which is suitable for K-10 students, and has a variety of educational applications.

To use Puppet Pals, students select characters, settings, and a title; and then narrate a story while animating the characters and props using their fingers. You can create your own backdrops and characters using pictures from your Camera Roll, and export the finished video files to iMovie, YouTube, etc.

The app itself is free, but we highly recommend purchasing the Director’s Pass (about $3 via in-app purchase), which allows you to download and use a wider choice of characters and backdrops, including any future content. 

For: Students (Early Childhood – Secondary), English Language Learners

Cost: Free, but (recommended) Director’s Pass costs $2.99.

Dec 2012 Release – Puppet Pals 2 – $5.49 (Introductory Price)

Requires WiFi?: No.

Educational Applications

  • Create short instructional videos (in different learning areas)
  • Storytelling, News Reports, Historic Retells
  • Help reluctant public speakers present to the class
  • Help ESL students practice their fluency & language skills
  • Check out this website for some great literacy ideas!

Classroom Examples

Further Reading

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #20: Comic Life

Comics and cartoons have a HUGE range of educational applications across the primary and secondary curriculum, and can be easily integrated into a range of subject or topic areas.

Comic Life for iPad is an easy-to-use comic / cartoon creation app for students from Grades 1-12. It provides a range of templates, and enables users to import pictures (from their Camera Roll, or Creative Commons sources on the Internet), captions, and special effects (thought balloons, onomatopoeia).

This app mirrors the Windows / Mac version of Comic LIfe, and allows users to print, email, or share their comics on Facebook. Comic Life for iPad also features an “in-tray” option, which allows users to share comics with other iPad users nearby).

For: Teachers, Students (Grades 1-12)

Cost: $5.49 (Download Link)

Requires WiFi: No (only for sharing comics)

Comic Life Tutorial for iPad from Jessica Pack on Vimeo.

Educational Applications

  • Social Studies – Timelines, history retells
  • Literacy – instructions, grammar practices, story retells, information brochures
  • Science- instructions, reports on learning, explanations of concepts
  • Cartoon Tutorials for students and teachers (e.g. The Daring Librarian)
  • Food Technology – illustrated cookbooks
  • Inspiring Examples from Porchester Junior School (UK)
  • Click here for more ideas, or check out the links below!

Tutorials and Lesson Ideas

Recommended Reading

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #18: GoodReader

GoodReader is a good file management app. You can use it to save, organise, and read PDF files, MS Office & Apple iWork documents, Pages, Keynote, Numbers), images, webpages, audio, and video → all in one application on your iPad. You can then project these files on your IWB using the VGA connect kit (approx $30).

GoodReader can handle files in excess of 1GB, and allows users to easily transfer files via USB (here’s how), internal school WiFi networks, Internet, or email. It seamlessly integrates with Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, and WebDAV servers, and comes with built-in security options.

While setting up WiFi and school server connections can be a little technical, this app is highly recommended for iPad classrooms! It is a fantastic app for reducing paper-use in schools and classrooms – just make sure you read the User Manual first!

For: Students, Teachers

Cost: Around $5 (Download)

Requires WiFi?: Yes (for syncing)

Educational Applications

  • Annotate running records
  • complete observation surveys and  assessment checklists
  • Store important documents e.g. professional learning resources
  • Store and manage eBooks, textbooks, and worksheets
  • Annotate PDF files (note-taking)
  • Reduce paper use!

Further Reading

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Tips2012 iPads and Special Needs in Franschhoek

I had a very productive meeting with the leadership team at Bridge House School in Franschhoek in South Africa on how iPads can be used in contexts of scarce resources for community upliftment.

Caryl Lane, Director of the Educational Support Unit, discussed the groundbreaking Franschhoek Charter where the whole community are working together for common good. I think the iPad technology can give access to all students to high quality learning support.

If you are using iPad technology for community access please share your ideas with us.

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Jenny’s iPad Tip: User Guide #4 iPad = document camera+

A while ago I bought a document camera costing about $700, a really useful device to replace the overhead projector. A document camera can be used to capture an image and project the image onto a large screen.

Then I bought a VGA connector to connect my iPad to a data projector or any other screen or monitor, and for just $30 my iPad became a portable document camera with a heap of extra functions.

How To:

Secure the iPad to a small tripod / retort stand to keep it stable. Then select the camera icon to use the the camera function to project and share any image.

There are fantastic ways to use this in education, for example if you are doing a dissection, you can capture the image and project it for the class to view. You can capture images of objects and plants for science experiments. You can even demonstrate mathematical concepts using concrete manipulative.

I would love to hear how you are using this function in your teaching.

 

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #12: GarageBand

GarageBand turns your iPad (iPhone, iPod) into a full-featured (touch-screen) recording studio, where you can play instruments, record music, and share songs / podcasts via iTunes or email. It includes a music library (including sound effects, instrumental loops); and was recently updated to allow up to four players play or jam together.

With the iPad Camera Connection Kit (around $10 on eBay) you can even connect and play your own instruments (guitar, keyboard) through USB in GarageBand, or record audio using a USB microphone headset. Garageband is suitable for beginning to advanced users, although it takes time to learn its full potential.

GarageBand for iPad is ideal for music, songwriting, podcasting, or simply jamming with your own (virtual) band! It truly is a must-have app!

For: Teachers, Students

Cost: $4.99 (Download Link)

Requires WiFi?: No

 Educational Applications

  • Create alternative movie soundtracks
  • Broadcast radio “news reports”
  • Create educational raps & play music
  • Click here for more great ideas & lessons
BHS iPad Band

Further Reading


Excellent GarageBand Video Tutorial (40 mins)

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Jenny’s Most Useful App Today- A Document-Scanner

Today high in the Japanese Alps, my partner had a skiing injury. The medical insurance wanted copies of airline tickets, passports, receipts and contracts sent through immediately. Fortunately I have a portable document scanner on my iPad. Making it my most useful app of the day!

This is a really useful tool in the classroom, office or when you are traveling. There are a number of scanning applications. Some use OCR optical character recognition, that turn the text or image into digital characters. You can edit these, adjust shades and contrasts to create the text or image that you need. These images can be saved as pdf’s or jpg’s and can be used creatively to create artworks.

My current favorites are Doc Scan HD and Perfect OCR. Doc Scan Hd claims to be able to scan curled or folded documents. You can scan diagrams on the white board,receipts and business cards and pictures from your photo collection. What I like is that you can edit and annotate the scanned images. This is very useful as a teaching tool.

You can save the image as a PDF and email it or place it in ibooks, drop box, evernote or google docs and send the link to share it with a colleague or your students. The free version of Doc Scan Hd allows you to scan a three page document for longer documents upgrade to the paid pro version for $4.49

Perfect OCR works well with high quality script recognition for text in different languages and typefaces.I would like to hear your comments on how you are using these scanning apps in your teaching.

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Tips2012 iPad App Guide #7: Dragon Dictation

Dragon Dictation is an speech-recognition app that allows users to instantly dictate text, emails, tweets, etc on their iPad, up to five times faster than typing on a keyboard.

While it takes time to ‘train’ Dragon Dictation to recognise your voice, this app can be very helpful for students with dyslexia, and struggling writers. It’s worth experimenting with.

For: Students, Students with Diverse Needs, Teachers, Administrators

Cost: Free (Download Link)

Requires WiFi?: Yes

Tutorial: Dragon Dictation from Jessica Pack on Vimeo.

Educational Applications

  • Practicing fluency and pronunciation in LOTE, or English as Second Language classes
  • Supporting struggling writers – note-taking, brainstorming
  • Dictate memos, short documents, etc (productivity)

Recommended Viewing

Dragon Education Case Study
Dragon Dictate on iPad – Video Tutorial