TECH- Disciplines in Education

Doodle Buddy is an application our Kindergarteners use at Bonny Kate. The kids use them during their reading stations to help them practice their letters. This app offers the children freedom to create and acts as a mini-white board of sorts. It allows users to change formatting, as well as insert backgrounds, photos, symbols and emoticons. It also offers a variety of  font styles and colors. 

Using this app has really cut down on paper use in the classroom as well. This is paper that is in limited supply and we would otherwise have to give the students a maximum number of sheets per day. I could see this application also being used in an art classroom or as a free choice during a brain break. 

Solar Walk is an application that is designed to help students gain a foundational knowledge of Astronomy. It is free for download, but the full version does cost $2.99. This program is interactive and allows students to “move through space”. As they tap on a specific planet and zoom in, some general information pops up at the left hand side of the screen. 

The information displayed includes planet size, appearance, distance from the sun, history of it’s name, as well as the planet’s internal structure. At the top of the same screen, the app offers the answer to the popular question: Can the planet support lifeforms? This application would be great for introducing lower elementary students to the planets located within our solar system. It would prove most useful for the upper elementary grades who delve into the discoveries and chemical properties of our planets. 

Stack the States is an application I would download to my personal iPad. It offers so much more than the task of locating and labeling a state on our map. Perhaps it offers a better retention for geographical location of our states because it requires students to select from a list of states that potentially border the state in question. 

This application can be played by multiple students at one time. It is designed for older elementary school students because the nature of the sentence structure is more complex. It keeps students engaged as they play by allowing them to “drop it” once a question is answered correctly. The app uses a variety of questions including knowledge of the state “nicknames”, as well as recognition of the shapes and sizes of the states. I appreciate that when a question is answered incorrectly by the user, the app provides additional information about the missed topic.