Mr. Brett T. Butler

While looking not only through the great applications to use in the classroom, iTunes U has a great section towards lesson ideas to integrate into the classroom! You have 30 sources of innovative ideas that teachers can bring into the classroom and collaborate lessons effectively to your students! For directions on how to get to the Inspiring Lesson Ideas page you simply open up iTunes U on your electronic device, scroll down to the Learning Resources title and click on For Educators. Once you click on that, the heading for Inspiring Lesson Ideas will be listed at the top and you can see all 30 of the ideas teachers have implemented onto this site by clicking See All.

While browsing on iTunes U I saw this Digital Tools for the Visual Arts which is some incredible graphic art design and techniques affiliated with art studios. It mentions that “Graphics software are the news tools of artists and designers these days.” With the way graphic design has made its way as a means on the internet, plus advertisement everywhere, and other sources importance and background in this field for your student is an important advantage to have. Looking through this book there is a plethora of beginner to advanced techniques dealing with graphic design.

While also looking on iTunes I found another course outline talking about Secondary Music (my content area) which is very beneficial. iPad as Expressive Sound Canvas is a great course available for anyone which makes this a great book to take a look/subscribe too especially for music education majors. This is about the focus of “strong links between the visual and aural senses begin to augment each other. With guidance from the instructor, the development and fine tuning of the listening skills and tastefully imaginative musical choices necessary to successfully perform a collective group improvisation can be learned.” Throughout my education in school I have seen countless times during my jazz band classes the students can be afraid to express themselves through the art of improvisation. The contents inside help the student along their musical journey through the improv process.

The final book of contents I looked through was on the Best Practices & Professional Development. This content covers the primary grade students in the classroom and discovering ones views of interest. With this part being the main focus we can reach for optimal learning environments in the classroom more efficiently with the student using the iPad and a variety of applications to help them along the way. In the educational world is important that we monitor the feedback from the students and view where their learning levels of comprehension and the parts of educational difficulty lay.

Brett T. Butler

This week I explored on iTunes U which is free on the App Store, and viewed under the Learning Resources title For Educators, a list of excellent resources for teachers in the classroom. The heading I looked at was titled Using Apps in the Classroom, there are 18 different courses that teachers can view and check out on how you would implement them into your classroom. I also found a helpful guide written by Apple Inc. that helps describe specifically how to use these applications in the classroom as well.

While browsing on iTunes U, I came across an application I had recently just heard of called Explain Everything free on the App Store. The main focus quoting straight from Apple says, “The Apps in the Classroom series was created by Apple to provide teachers with a few ideas on how to integrate apps into daily classroom instruction. Inspired by Apple Distinguished Educators, this book is a collection of activities that let students ages 5 to 14+ use Explain Everything to demonstrate their learning across a range of subjects.” While reading through this book of lesson ideas I noticed some awesome activities that are classified depending on the grade level using the Explain Everything Application available for $2.99 on the App store. Exploring through this book you’ll not only see a vast range of actives across different content areas of literacy, math, and history including age ranges too!

Inside this book the developers explain the objective for each activity helping assess student learning as well as topics, target age, ideal group size and timing to complete the activity of the content area. There are great rubric to help assess and observe the student learning going on as well. The application Explain Everything will help students who are visual learners understand more deeply while creating projects in real time and being able to present the lesson of the content area.

Another book I came across called Aurasma, free on the App Store on where students can “enhance their learning experience by overlaying videos and other media to make digital content interactive and fun. They can share their work and extrinsically motivate other learners to look at information in a new and innovative way.” This application will help students think outside the box and become creative learners and reach higher thinking levels on the specific content they are working on. They can actually illustrate and bring the pictures they have drawn to life using this application. Again this application is fantastic for those visual learners so they can see exactly the illustration of the main points to comprehend the lesson. Get the book here! 

]

Lastly, I found another book on iTunes U, called Tag Journal Lesson Ideas. This book is great because students can make a journal, take notes, record events and lessons, and voice recordings to help apply their learning. This journal can also help student think on real-life events and help relate their understanding to applications on realistic standpoints. Again the age range can be from 5-11, 12-14 to 14-18 in the categories of Science, Mathematics, Literacy and History! Reflecting and making notes of daily activities throughout the classroom will help the students comprehend better with documented information to refer back to like study guides and final exam reviews as well. The Tag Journal app is available on the App Store for $2.99.

Brett T. Butler