iPod Touch Devices

It is amazing how many of our students have iPod Touch or iPhone devices. It is not unusual for 60 or 70% of the students in a particular class to have access to these devices. I had a conversation with a primary school teacher the other day and she had the same situation in her class. She had already started to get her students to bring these devices to school. I started to look at some of the more basic apps we could be using with handheld devices that our students already owned.
I do not profess this to be an exhaustive list nor will every one of them be appropriate for all situations but if you conduct a survey and many of your students already have access to an iPod why don't you have a go at using some of these apps - even if it is as extension work or homework. One teacher I know is   using them as warm exercises with Maths and English.

Maths	English	Science	Music	Art
Numberline	Notes	LED Banner	Touch chords	Art
Smart Maths	Idioms lite	Touch Physics	Sheet music	Idoodle2
Flash Maths	I Quotations	Molecules	Bebot	Vincent
Pop Maths Lite	Spel it Rite	Pocket Universe	BPM	Colourwheel
Mathemagics	Stanza	Google earth	Pocket Shaker	Lego
Brain Tuner	Englits	Nanosaur 2	Ocarina	Symmetry
Brain Thaw	Dictation	Weather Bug	Stylophone	Artist’s touch
Solve 24	Flipbook Lite	NASA Apps	Synth Pad	Juxaposer
Basic Maths	Stiry Kit	Space Images	Aura	3d Gallery
Flowmaths	Shakespeare	Star Map	Churchorgan	Comic Touch
Diamaths	Lit2Go	Planets	Harmonium	Light painting
Touchplot	ereader	Apollo 11	Rainstick	Jazz Sculptor
4D Spin	Storyboard	Eagle	Tap the Beat	Eyetricks
Geometry	Blanks	Spider Study	Dr Beat	Tanzen
Maths Flash Card	Miss Spell’s Class	Crayon Physic	School of Rock	Musee du Lourve
Maths Drills Lite		Mars Study Guide	Simple Drummer	Sculptmaster 3D
Dot to Dot Number quiz	Talking Books Network	The Chemical Touch	Dubreq Istyophone	Gallery of Painters
Mighty Maths Lite		Charles Darwin writings	Mixmeister Scratch	Artisan Pixpop Art
Maths Cards				SpawnLite

Pages - Worksheets

One for Mac Users - The most underrated program on the Macs.

Pages is a wordprocessing application that also allows you to use layout and colour to produce professional looking documents. For teachers the best thing about Pages is that we never have to hand out another boring photocopy to our students again.

The easy thing about pages is the templates that come with the program. When you click on the Pages icon the template chooser  immediately opens. This gives you the opportunity to design how you would like your document to look. Use Pages as a wordprocessor or use it as a professional page layout tool.

Once you have chosen one of the layouts your document will open. Each of the design aspects on the layout is there only as a placeholder. This means that you can simply drag a new image or cut and paste new text into the format on the document. 

You can change the size of text box by dragging the arrows on the corners. 

You can change the size of your pictures or even change the amount of the picture you use by playing with the slide bar on the Edit Mask.

All of the colored shapes are added by clicking on the shapes icon in the toolbar. The colour of each shape can be changed by clicking on the small coloured box next to the Font Size box.

DESIGN HINTS:

Design hints are numerous, but there are some very simple rules you can follow when designing a worksheet or booklet. Like everything else these rules are meant to be broken. The more confident you get the more rules you should break.

1. Three colours only per page. These three colours should come from any images you have used on the page.
2. Repeat these colours throughout your design to help pull the design together.
3. Balance your design. If you have a big heading, then a block of colour may be necessary elsewhere on the page.
4. Include one (1) large image or if you want multiple images keep them the same size.
5. Do not be afraid to include text of different sizes. Place different concepts in different coloured boxes.
6. Stick to one font per document. There is nothing harder than trying to read different styles of fonts on the one page.
7. Finally, in this age of digital information it is vitally important that our students see us doing the right thing. We should reference properly any material that we use that is not our own.
8. Use your favourite magazine for design inspiration. Have FUN.