Thing 19

#19 Hobbies

Discovering new music and searching archives for some of my favorite tunes is my hobby; #2 behind reading. Spotify has been a great resource for supporting my hobby.  I regularly discover new music with their updated selection and easily find songs to create playlists appropriate for the library.  This is my most-used app.

Recently discovered was the Forgotify app - an app created encouraging people to play songs that are on Spotify and have never been played. (Apparently that's 20% of the songs on Spotify!)

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#18 Education

I became a bit lost in this Thing - so many apps; so little time!

The 3D-Brain app was easy to use and I see applications for younger and older students.  How interesting for students to manipulate and see the function of each portion of the brain - much better than a textbook indeed.

The artCircles app was categorized well.  I am not an art connoisseur so my judgment might be a bit simple.  I really enjoyed scrolling through the wheel; even view art based on color.  I think art classes would benefit from exploring what this app offers.  I'm going to use it in the library as we study the Caldecott titles.  Even though this is also an app for purchasing art it serves a relevant educational purpose.

The Bill Nye app provides exploration in a variety of topics. I see relevance in using this app with students. There is a great section on optical illusions with the scientific explanation behind each one.

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#17 Connecting to Community

I tried the Star Tribune "Going Out" app and might be using it this summer to seek out a few new places.  The categories are clear but a bit difficult to browse.  I think going online without using the app is more efficient.





I have used the MPR app and appreciate streaming it in places where a good radio station is difficult to find.






Finding a relevant app for seeking out a "rails to trails" biking routes was difficult.  The TrailLink app allows one free map and then the purchases begin.  This app is created by the non-profit Rails-To-Trails Conservancy - so the in-app purchases are tax deductible.

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# 16 Audio

Audioboo

 A number of our classroom teachers use Audioboo to track student fluency.  The example of students using this app, combined with QR codes, to create quick book reviews is a good one.  I'm going to give this a try with our MHL books next school year.

Voice Record

In search of an app we could use to record some quotes from parents and students at our junior high graduation events, we stumbled upon Voice Record.  It was extremely easy to use and the recorded quality very good.  The length of voice memos is unlimited and memos can be converted and exported to many places: Facebook, SoundCloud, YouTube, etc.  

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#15 Infographics

I downloaded the Viz app and struggled a bit with it shutting down numerous times as I progressed through the infographic construction.
Visualize will be a good presentation option for students; helping them move away from the habit of reading from a PowerPoint presentation.
There are many possibilities given the camera access on student devices.  I can picture students using an app like Visualize  after a nature walk - identifying and "counting" what they have seen, or presenting experiment results from a science experiment.

In the end I found this app easy to manipulate but a bit cumbersome - especially when trying to fit text into frames. A sample:

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#14 Videos

Exploring Vine has been entertaining, and I discovered some friends who have been using the app which made it all the more interesting exploring what Vine can do (or what people DO with Vine).
I'll experiment with this a bit more.  I like the archiving feature of the vine shorts.  It is also well-organized into categories.  The DIY section proves to be a bit challenging - explaining much in 6 seconds is a bit tricky; which would be why not much published in that category is DIY!
I won't be using the app in the classroom anytime soon - an educator account would help with content filtering for our young students.

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#13 Presentations

I found Haiku Deck  very easy to use and available in iPad and Web formats.
The tutorials on their homepage are helpful and relevant.  We had a group of students in need of an easy way to present an end-of-year project and this Haiku Deck recommendation came at just the right time.
A little experiment with this tool:

MN STATE BOOK AWARD - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires