Unleash The Superhero In You - NYSCATE 2016

Source: NYSCATE

The theme for the 2016 annual conference of the New York State Association For Computers And Technologies In Education (NYSCATE) was "Unleash The Superhero In You." This effective branding throughout the conference hall — and the colorful capes given to every attendee — spoke volumes to the notion of teachers as heroes in seizing opportunities and embracing technology, and often struggling against the curmudgeonly villains standing in their ways.

Source: NYSCATE

After three days of sessions and keynotes, kiosks and meet-ups, it was more clear than ever that educators are feeling they have the necessary tools to invigorate the learning potential of their students. Every teacher we met was excited to try a new web app or a backchannel to decentralize daily instruction. As Chromebooks catch up to (or surpass) iOS devices, the Google Apps For Education (GAFE) suite of tools is clearly permeating state-wide districts. As videos and online media put information squarely in the hands of learners, both children and teachers feel more empowered than ever to chart their own courses in meeting the various standards.

For our part, we are grateful to the 60+ participants who sat on the floor and stood against the walls for our presentation on Sunday, November 20, 2016, about “Student Videos & Animations Empower Creativity.” We apologize to those who were turned away for space reasons, and we have put all of our resources and slides online to share with any interested parties. Thank you to all of the attendees for the insightful questions and terrific recommendations about lessons and tools related to student projects and videos.

In hearing from the other experts in the terrific workshops during the conference, highlights that stood out included the tips on formative assessments from Steve Garton (@sgarton121) and Jeff Mao (@jmao121) of Common Sense Education, as well as the annual App Smackdown from Rich Colosi (@richardcolosi), Ryan Orilio (@ryanorilio), Mike Amante (@mamante), and Monica Burns (@classtechtips).

Other eye-opening sessions were engaging the writing process using Google Apps, WeVideo, and Recap with Megan Hugg (@Megan Hugg) and Lindsey Peet (@LindsMariePeet); liberating students from paper using ePortfolios with Betsy Hardy; and tapping the lesser-known features of Google with Carol LaRow (@larowc). Student coding, blended writing, and shared collaboration also emerged as recurring themes within the high-quality professional development. Perhaps the keynote comment by Adam Bellow (@adambellow) summed it up best, "Technology does not drive change; it just enables it."

Source: ASIDE 2016

The lake-effect snowstorm that blanketed downtown may have kept some New Yorkers homebound, but it made for a tight-knit group in the warm confines of the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center. It also meant that Dinosaur BBQ was blissfully quiet on Sunday night, as we savored our favorite fried green tomatoes and spicy pulled pork. Pane Vino on North Water Street continued to rank as one of the best restaurants anywhere in the nation. And we also recommend Starry Nites Cafe in the arts district as a short hop away for a quick latte and chicken chili after perusing handmade jewelry at Craft Company No. 6.

Finally, we want once again to give a big shout out of thanks to the NYSCATE conference organizers for all they did in staging this seamless annual get-together. The smoothy run sessions and the high-quality breakfast / lunch / dinner included in the overall fee, as well as the warm welcomes and conversations throughout the event, confirmed once again why this is the best confab of the year. See you in 2017.

Source: NYSCATE

10 Ways Pokémon Go Augments Real-World Education & Student Learning

Source: Pokemon Go iTunes

In just ten days, the cultural sensation of Pokémon Go has attracted over 20 million players. It is the most popular U.S. mobile game ever, surpassing Twitter in daily active users and crashing its Niantic host server.

For those who are over the age of 30, or who have been been in a self-imposed digital blackout, or who did not luck into an 11-year-old at a Sunday BBQ to explain the intricacies, here is a one-sentence description of Pokémon Go: the goal is to explore one's neighborhood, using virtual GPS map data, to catch as many animated creatures as possible, building up their strength to defeat other players in head-to-head duels. For a more complete (and accurate) rundown, here is a better explanation, as well as a helpful video.

Source: Pokemon Go

With little marketing or publicity, the enormous success of Pokémon Go speaks to an obvious and inherent appeal. The game combines popular culture, virtual reality, physical movement, problem-solving, and person-to-person competition. Teachers, for their part, are breathing a sigh of relief that this app debuted in July, so children (and adults) can spend the summer getting it out of their systems. But educators also appreciate the many learning opportunities that exist within the Pokémon Go app.



As with all sudden fads, a host of important caveats have emerged this past week, including safeguarding private information, respecting hallowed locations, and ensuring personal safety. Also, as with most fads, this one game will not revolutionize education. That being said, here are 10 ways that Pokémon Go can support the skills of contemporary learning:

1. Visual Literacy - The essential premise of the game is to interpret a virtual world. Users must recognize symbols and signifiers, which are the building blocks of visual literacy. Students must decode the augmented reality (AR) by "reading" images and internalizing pictorial stimuli. This fundamental skill is known as graphicacy.


2. Map Decoding - The only way to succeed in the game is by following a colorful map, which by definition necessitates a proficiency with direction, navigation, and geography. Much like the geocaching craze, Pokémon Go draws from the Google Maps API to turn everyday sites into Gyms and Stops.


3. Problem Solving - This Poké-distraction employs the best of gamification. It requires critical thinking, advanced planning, strategic puzzling, and dealing with uncertainty to keep all of the animated balls in the air.


4. STEM & Big Data - Educators have been wrestling with the world of Big Data for years. Here, the foundation resides in math and numbers; how much combat power does each creature have, how much candy and/or stardust is on hand, and how long until an incubation period ends?


5. Collaborative Learning - The app offers a mild distraction for a single user, but the expanded components come alive when a player engages with other combatants. In face-offs and in personal conversations at community sites, the game subtly draws students into cooperative play.


6. Financial Literacy - Perhaps one of the most under-heralded benefits of the game is the tutelage in budgeting, saving, and allocation of resources. Players accumulate Poké Coins and consider micro-transactions, as they earmark incense, lures, and other commodities. The game is already hitting the FinTech world by storm.


7. Physical Education - It's no secret that Pokémon Go promotes activity to walk and engage. Users must progress a certain number of kilometers before they can hatch an incubated egg. The app relies on the phone's sensors to distinguish between physical and automobile movement.


8. Social Media In The Classroom - This app furthers the benefits of social media in learning. It encourages the emerging discipline of the Digital Humanities, as it also promotes crowdsourcing, sharing, teaming, and student avatars.


9. History & Civics - A blessing of the game is that most Poké Stops are local landmarks. The designers have placed an emphasis on points of historical interest. In order to move up in the challenge, users must acknowledge the civic value of nearby, consequential events.


10. Language & Lexicons - The superimposition of an animated Pikachu atop a real-world venue inspires countless prompts for creative writing. Also, the Pokémon creature world embodies an encyclopedia of names, abilities, and vocabulary that together accomplishes what all good reading does: it builds a facility with language and meaning.

Full disclosure: we are Pokémon novices, and for years we have never understood what our seventh graders were talking about at the lunch table. But admittedly, we are excited by the potential. For other ideas about apps and augmented reality in learning, check out:

• Visualizing The Future Of Apps In Education
• Mapping The Visual Beyond The Visible
• The Boy Who Beeps - Who Can Speak The Language Of EdTech?
• The Uber Generation Of Learning - Fast, Efficient, And Driven By Tech

The Power Of Student-Made Videos - Easy Apps For Projects & Primary Sources

Source: ASIDE 2016

The use of videos in learning is no longer exceptional. Whether via classroom viewing, flipped instruction, or self-directed YouTube searches, kids expect a multimedia accompaniment to their otherwise humdrum lectures and daily note-taking.

Having students create their own videos upgrades the internalization of ideas to a much more nuanced level. Inviting learners to produce their own content is the difference between input and output, content and skills, decoding and encoding, passivity and activity. 

Luckily, an array of user-friendly (and largely free) websites and apps has made it easy to incorporate video projects into any humanities or scientific classroom. For example, we’ve written before about how much we like Adobe Voice and Renderforest in giving students agency over their own learning.

Source: Magisto

One of our favorite (and effortless) apps for creating videos is Magisto. Intended as an automatic editor, Magisto’s algorithm self-selects the best parts of your video clips and images, and it splices them together into a stunning finished product. Even using only still photos, the app does a magnificent job of melding photographs into a powerful short film. Yes, there are free and paid options, but the free version offers a nice buffet of styles and songs to allow for customization. In addition, setting up student accounts is a breeze, with no concerns for firewalls or emails.

In our history classroom, we’ve used Magisto to particularly worthwhile effect in studying primary sources. For example, in our investigation of assimilation and the Dawes Act in the American West, our eighth-graders examined the photographs of Edward S. Curtis in his documentation of Native Americans. Among historians, Curtis owns a difficult legacy. On one hand, he was the only Easterner who committed years of his life to record and preserve the vanishing tribes of the continent’s First Peoples. On the other hand, he posed his subjects in deliberately disingenuous headdresses, choreographed untimely rituals, and removed contemporary technologies from the photographs he thought should speak only to yesteryear.

Whether “true” or not, Curtis’ choices invite valuable conversations about historiography and ethnography. In the end, all photographs involve making choices. They are, therefore, by nature artificial. Every kid who frames and retouches an Instagram snapshot knows this. All primary sources, in this mold, are less-than perfect, because they all emerge from the lens of their creator. But does that detract from their value as illuminating historical relics? Or put differently: the lesson here is for students of history to be rightfully skeptical, while still appreciating the value of evidence.

Using Magisto, our eighth-graders made videos with Curtis’ photos, using the following determinations:

• Selection - which images would properly relate to their theme?
• Sequence - what progression would make sense from start to finish?
• Style - what editing suite would complement the intended mood?
• Music - what instrumentation would add value to the theme?
• Text - what title and summary would help teach others?
• Tone - what overall feeling or motif would wed the images together?

The father of data visualization, Edward Tufte, likes to say that 1 + 1 = 3. He refers primarily to white space and spatial adjacency. But another corollary suggests that when combined, two visual elements create a third sense of meaning simply because of their union. The marriage of two parts establishes a separate sensibility via their juxtaposition. Nowhere is this more true than in producing videos. The images, text, editing, soundtrack, transitions, and effects all fuse together to give birth to a wholly original animal that is more than the sum of its parts.

When kids design their own films, they become the educators of their peers. They must stitch together a narrative and storyboard each moment in a process that combines logical reasoning, cause-and-effect, and content mastery. They also must employ their graphicacy skills to fashion compelling and appealing visual displays. On a most basic level, students also genuinely like making movies. It’s a low-cost, high-reward project that gets them excited to dive into primary sources and eager to engage with the material.

The Uber Generation Of Learning — Fast, Efficient, And Driven By Tech

Source: ASIDE 2015

It’s no surprise that the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission is lobbying for limits to Uber’s expansion. In fact, municipalities across the country are fretting over Uber’s intrusion.

Uber’s appeal — and its rapid, unmitigated ascent — is exactly like the edtech groundswell in contemporary learning.

Uber is a private car service currently taking the country by storm. It allows anyone with an app to instantly summon a professional ride. It takes away the guessing about street corners and hand-waving. It offers customized choices, such as a car seat or SUV. Uber provides real time, visual tracking of how far away the car is and how much the trip will cost. 

Uber takes the frustrating tasks of flagging a phantom taxi or confronting a gruff phone operator and replaces them with immediate, digital satisfaction.

This is exactly what today’s students expect from their lessons and teachers.

For better or for worse, children enter our classes with a ready affinity toward online tools and an understandable assumption of digital learning. They are used to texting in realtime, chatting in realtime, Googling in realtime, and creating in realtime. When anachronistic teachers give them paper worksheets and bubble tests, it’s no wonder they roll their eyes and feel like they’re being intentionally stranded on the side of a high-tech boulevard, while the wired world seems to be passing them by.

Kids (and adults) live on their smartphones. They demand instantaneous answers via Siri or Wikipedia to any question that might pique their curiosity. In this way, they are uber-researchers. They seek information more actively and more frequently than any prior generation. The gift of the Internet offers them answers, but they still need to know their end destination. They still need to have a conclusion in mind, to drive their scholarship in the right direction.

Source: ASIDE 2015

The greatest gift from laptops, iPads, SMARTboards, and phones is efficiency. What used to take a middle schooler an entire Saturday now takes a split second. Kids can diagram the locks of the Erie Canal or study the bricks of the Giza pyramids in the same time it takes to tie one’s shoelaces. The “Internet of things” is a powerful encyclopedia. Any school district that blocks access to YouTube or Twitter, therefore, is closing the doors to Alexandria, erecting antiquated barriers in the face of authentic learning.

We expect our Uber driver to know our name, know our route, and know our credit card number. We expect service with a smile and quiet satisfaction in skipping the crowded van to the airport or the late-night carpool quest.

This is modern education — personalized, differentiated, and affordable.

This is technological learning — satisfying, searchable, and immediate.

As a point of reference, check out this current ad for Microsoft Windows 10:

Many educators still fight against this disruption, against these invading technological hordes. They demand professional development and budget studies to delay the inevitable. Many administrators side with city districts, viewing apps as interlopers seeking to upset the status quo.

Many still resist the arrival of a learning alternative, because it’s not “the way we’ve always done it.”

But the rabid popularity of Uber speaks to a communal need. The instinctive embrace of real-time learning by students means that if educators don’t change, kids will be chauffeured off into the sunset without them.

10 Ways To Use The Meerkat Streaming Video App In Education

Source: Meerkat

The new Meerkat app has taken the tech world by storm. Especially in the cubicles of Silicon Valley and the newsrooms of political sites, early adopters of Meerkat are trying to figure out how this real-time streaming video app will transform both social media and news reporting.

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, major news personalities have been signing up for Meerkat like their jobs depend on it — and maybe they do. Now, no political candidate is safe from a phone’s camera lens. More than ever before, any citizen solider can become a news maker. Just like the Internet heralded the slow demise of the daily print newspaper, Meerkat may spell the end of corporate news conglomerates.

Source: Meerkat

Essentially, Meerkat merges the best of real-time video sources into one app. It is a combination of FaceTime, Skype, Vine, Instagram, and Google Hangouts. It makes any person with an iPhone capable of broadcasting live TV. 

Once you authorize Meerkat, all of your Twitter followers will see your video, live, immediately in their stream. The video is saved on your device, but for your followers, à la SnapChat, the video disappears after airing. Because it piggybacks onto your already existing Twitter network, Meerkat has no barriers to entry. Your current followers will see whatever you are broadcasting. Compared to prior technologies, it elevates a time-delayed recording or a static photograph into an instantaneous, interpersonal communication.

The possibilities for using Meerkat in education are only beginning to emerge. Here are 10 possible uses for the Meerkat app in the classroom or in working with students in general:

1. Real-time streaming of class lessons to kids who are absent or at home
2. Genuine remote learning for children in rural or inaccessible environments
3. Super-chats of study groups before tests and quizzes
4. Global connections across continents for widespread cohorts of schools and learners
5. In-the-moment broadcasts of school plays, sporting events, and assemblies for families
6. Authentic connections for working parents to classroom events like speeches and projects
7. Sincere professional development for teachers to join educational conferences remotely
8. Democratization of TED talks and other "experts" to reach all audiences without webinars
9. Immediate access to major news stories and current events on mobile devices
10. Tracking of political candidates for 2016 in history and Social Studies classes

Source: Meerkat

Meerkat follows the same privacy safeguards as Twitter. There are, however, potential risks in welcoming Meerkat into the classroom. These concerns echo similar abuse of apps like SnapChat, Yik Yak, and others, but to a possibly magnified degree. For example, if a student were to broadcast live video from the locker room, or during an altercation, or without peer permission, it could lead to serious ramifications. Like all use of social media, though, regular and meaningful education regarding digital citizenship can help young people avoid improper usage and instead reap the benefits of its learning potential.

If Parents Can Work From Home, Why Can't Students? A Snow Day Doesn't Have To Be A "No" Day

Source: ASIDE 2015

We have another snow day today. The relentless snow this winter has forced many schools into crisis mode. Teachers are panicking about missed curriculum and make-up days. But with today’s access to mobile technology, shouldn’t there be a middle ground between all or nothing learning? Genuine remote learning should be a regular practice, not just a prediction. Even amid record-breaking blizzards, a snow day shouldn't have to be a “no” day.

Students frequently get sick and miss school. Consider, too, how many times you've seen a kid in your classroom who really shouldn’t be there. He has his head down, or has bags under his eyes, or has his mind clearly elsewhere. How many times have you noticed a student who truly needs a break? She's been burning the candle at both ends, or has been bearing the weight of a bully, or has been negotiating a tough family situation.

Source: ASIDE 2015

A kid sometimes needs a personal day. It used to be that a student’s absence meant a day of missed learning. Today, this not only seems strange, it seems unforgivable.

For parents, “working from home” is a common occurrence. Many companies have no problem with their employees telecommuting at a distance, staying in contact via phone, email, and instant message. With all of the dynamic digital tools available to schools today, why can’t students work from home? Many teachers post all of their assignments online anyway.

Source: ASIDE 2015

Video conferencing and social media and collaborative documents all offer easy avenues to engage a class of home-bound learners. Many teachers use these resources daily inside of the classroom. Why can’t these tools also be tapped to coordinate a corps of kids, either in real-time or at the students’ own paces? 

Backchanneling, for example, has emerged as a valuable way to invite feedback and questions during an in-class lesson. If we can turn backchannels into forechannels, then we can transform these supplemental tools into primary vehicles for distance education.

Tools for remote learning:

Sources: Company Logos

• TodaysMeet - The leading real-time channel, TodaysMeet creates discussion groups for instant message communication.
• Twitter - The ultimate social media tool for education, Twitter mimics the classroom environment with chats, text, links, images, and videos.
• Croak.it - Both teachers and students can create a 30-second audio file with a url that can be embedded in a backchannel, website, or tweet.
• Remind - This free way for teachers to text students protects everyone's privacy and instantly reaches kids on their phones.
• Cel.ly - Cel.ly creates individual social networks via its texting feature that can be moderated directly from a smartphone.

Sources: Company Logos

• Verso - Flipped learning with Verso can include videos, images, or links in self-contained classes with rich commenting features.
• eduCanon - This site collects videos from across the web and allows teachers to add flipped learning elements.
• EDpuzzle - Teachers can crop videos and add questions and explanations to fit any age group.
• Zaption - Zaption makes videos interactive by adding assessments.
• audioBoom - Teachers can record podcasts to pass lessons on to students, and kids can capture their own answers, readings, or projects.

Sources: Company Logos

• Nearpod - The teacher guides the presentation, and students on their own devices see the slides progress as they interact from anywhere with polls and assessments.
• Issuu - Intended to publish webzines, Issuu turns any .pdf into a scrolling web document for students to read and save at their leisure.
• iBooks Author - The ability to publish customized content on iBooks is becoming easier and easier.
• Wikispaces - Still one of the most flexible platforms for a class website, Wikispaces accepts any media and any embedded content.

Sources: Company Logos

• Skype - Teachers can broadcast themselves in full video and audio to reach students in their homes.
• Facetime - As more and more schools opt for iPads and Apple TVs, Facetime provides an easy way to videoconference.
• Google+ Hangouts - Multiple participants from any device can come together in a live-streaming video chat.

Sources: Company Logos

• Google Docs - Google Drive keeps getting better and better, and the real-time collaboration is still the industry standard for essays, presentations, and spreadsheets.
• Padlet - Padlet is an infinitely customizable public space with customized urls to post text, links, images, videos, and student projects.
• Dropbox - The larger storage capacity of Dropbox makes it ideal for file-sharing.
• Email - When in doubt, simple email can allow students and teachers to swap instructions, questions, and assignments.

The Student-Centered Classroom - Liberate Learners To Flip Their Own Lessons

The expanded availability of easy tech tools has empowered educators to rethink homework and daily instruction. Flipping the classroom with teacher-made videos allows students to self-direct their at-home learning. Many of these clips, however, still involve a one-day delivery of information, from teacher to student. Another approach is to allow children to make their own educational videos. They can enlighten their classmates with their creations, and they can teach themselves the material and the skills during the process of production.

Adobe Voice is an ideal tool for this kind of student-generated video. Free and simple, Adobe Voice for the iPad encourages four key proficiencies:

• Symbol and visual metaphor - Students must choose images and icons to pair with their explanations, which fosters an understanding of figurative meaning.
• Narration - They must unite each visual frame with a seamless spoken narrative, to relate the core information via a smooth story.
• Text - Children must select crisp words to highlight vocabulary and terms, while avoiding large paragraphs and irrelevant language.
• Design - As filmmakers, they must combine colors, music, transitions, and layout, to assemble a compelling video that clearly conveys the content.

Our eighth-graders made videos for their final exam review. It proved to be a perfect way for the students to teach each other. It took only one class period to create the clips, and now they can be embedded and shared for review at home. The kids have been watching them on their phones and tweeting them with a shared hashtag for online archival. Here is the page featuring all of their videos.

Create Your Own Motion Graphics - Adobe's App For Making Explainer Videos Is Child's Play

Adobe Voice may be the app we've been waiting for. This effortless video creator may finally fulfill the promise of tablet computing. With a simple, intuitive interface and clean, effective visuals, the Adobe Voice app allows anyone to design animated videos in minutes. It finally turns the iPad into a seamless device for content creation, not just content display or interaction.

Source: Adobe Voice

We made the video above, entitled "Why Writers Write," in only 15 minutes. We actually made it just to experiment with the themes, music, and symbols, and we now see even more potential for producing instructional clips or flipping our lessons. This week, we're even going to turn the app over to our students and let them design videos to review together for final exams.

David Pogue at Yahoo! Tech has a terrific write-up all about the possibilities for using Adobe Voice in making explainer videos. Sometimes called motion graphics or video infographics, these short animations combine icons and text to communicate a message. Often employed for online marketing purposes, explainer videos are perfect for the classroom. They blend voice, image, and language into compelling presentations for students to learn. For more information about the definition of explainer videos, check out the clips below from Column Five and Plainly Simple Studios. As Column Five notes, motion graphics like these achieve the "dual channel hypothesis," in which the brain receives information through both the eyes and ears. Learning tools that can tap into both modalities have greater effectiveness in fostering understanding.

Pogue's piece in Yahoo! Tech outlines all of the easy steps in choosing a layout, selecting a template, adding icons, pictures, or text, choosing music, and then publishing. The app automatically searches images from the public domain, and it even generates a credits page at the end. The app's tutorial can lead any user, teacher or student through the painless and exhilarating process.

With such a quick and open-ended interface, the capabilities for Adobe Voice in the classroom are incalculable. Young entrepreneurs can plan advertisements. History students can make multi-sensory travelogues. English learners can design book trailers. Scientists can explain chemical processes. Foreign language students can demonstrate spoken understanding with written text and oral comprehension.

Every video is linkable, sharable, or embeddable on any platform. Best of all, Adobe Voice is free.

20 Ways To Use Twitter's Vine In Education

Source: iTunes

Twitter's new Vine app has gained a cadre of followers, but it has flown under the radar in educational circles. The application allows users to create six-second video clips. Just like Twitter's defining limit of 140 characters, the time constraint on Vine is meant both to encourage pithiness and to conserve bandwidth.

We haven't yet experimented with Vine in the classroom, but already we can imagine a range of uses for future projects and lessons. Just as some educators were slow to embrace Twitter's open platform, they may gradually enjoy toying with Vine's easy-to-use interface and immediate gratification. For 1:1 iPad schools, the free app could prove particularly useful.

Source: Social News Daily

To be fair, Vine is not the only video capture service. It could just be a knee-jerk offering for a more grown-up version of Snapchat or a more dynamic Instagram. But at its best, Vine might be the next virtual playground for creativity. Ideally, it will become one of those applications where teachers cannot preconceive of the inventive directions that students will pursue.

Source: CIO

As with all unregulated social media applications, schools should be careful about letting students run rampant through all of Vine's content. Recent articles have pointed out that some of the early postings have been smutty in nature. Until Twitter adds filters to block offensive content, educational institutions should be guarded about allowing Vine's unfettered use in classrooms. In fact, a 17+ age restriction could be temporary or permanent.

Here are some of Vine's possible future uses for education:

Applications:

1. Pair with information on a class website or blog
2. Announce homework to students and parents
3. Model how students should execute a task
4. Market a school's upcoming events to followers
5. "Tease" new units for kids and families
6. Record student reactions to texts
7. Think-pair-share in a virtual field
8. Grab "preview" or "exit interview" understandings
9. Offer parent testimonials for admissions
10. Build advisory or homeroom unity

Projects:

1. Design mini-book trailers
2. Film solutions to math problems
3. Identify symbols and silent metaphors
4. Recreate drawing or painting methods
5. Document science labs
6. Capture instructions for computer tools
7. Create "real-life" Vokis
8. Animate stop-motion characters
9. Recite famous quotations
10. Impersonate historical figures

Visualizing The Future Of Apps In Education

Source: Clint Stephens

Even though iPads offer a lot of flexibility in learning, finding the right app can sometimes be a frustrating barrier to using them in the classroom. Often, as this article from Edudemic explains, schools focus only on "content" or "subject-specific" apps, without realizing that open-ended tools such as Visualize or Educreations can be incorporated into any curriculum.

One of the most helpful and illuminating resources for identifying appropriate educational apps is this mind-blowing Prezi from Regional Technology Integration Specialist Clint Stephens of the Southwest Educational Development Center. Entitled "60 Educational Apps In 60 Minutes," this visually stunning layout offers a full tour of relevant iOS tools for teachers. Organized into four categories of "Fun Time," "Productivity Time," "Core Time," and "General Ed Time," each recommendation includes an image, a description, and actual screen caps from the interface. Even if you have no interest in tablets or 1:1 devices, this Prezi is worth a look as an epitome of both information design and painstaking preparation.


Another targeted site with suggestions of iPad apps is "Teach With Your iPad." This wiki offers a thorough list of possible tools, organized clearly by subject and grade level in an easy-to-read table. It also includes a few recommended "starter" apps at the bottom.

"15 iPad Skills Every Teacher And Student Should Have" also presents a roster of recommended resources. For each of the 15 categories, the article offers the best apps to use with students in the classroom.

Visualizing Music - The Best Apps

Source: NodeBeat

These days, an iPad and five minutes are all you need to experiment with trippy, light-bending music interfaces. Anyone can become an instant composer. The proliferation of interactive sound apps has opened up countless lesson ideas for music instruction. Schools blessed with 1:1 tablet capability can set their students free to explore and create. Other options include BYOD meet-ups or group sharing. Even without hand-held devices, a teacher could show the functions on an interactive whiteboard to inspire children outside of the classroom. At the very least, the apps featured below are fun for anyone, whether serious musician, techy gear-head, or occasional fiddler.

Visual Music Apps

NodeBeat - iOS Music Sequencer from AffinityBlue on Vimeo.

NodeBeat 

NodeBeat is a visual music app from AffinityBlue where the user manipulates nodes and clusters to create cadenced tunes. Self-described as "intuitive and fun," the app is certainly easy to use. Check out the video above to hear a sample of the tunes.

Source: Orphion

Orphion 

The Orphion app combines string and percussion elements to express feelings and polyphonic music. The experience was created by a German jazz saxophonist with the Rowling-esque name of Bastus Trump. As Fast Company's Co.Design blog noted, "it's a Venn Diagram that you can play."

An Incredible Way to Teach Music Using iPads in the Classroom 

This is not an "app" per se, but Neil Johnston of Store Van Music used a combination of tablets and traditional instruments to generate an upbeat, commercial anthem from a room full of students. This article from Edudemic features a catchy video of the kids in action. The resulting song is now even available for purchase.

Source: Interval Apps

Thicket  

Thicket triggers sounds and images by swiping fingers across the screen. It is equal parts toy and performance tool, with stunning modes such as "Cut Whispers." You can check out a demonstration by watching the preview video.

Finally, this Leo Burnett television ad, called "Love Unlimited," does a beautiful job of showing the potential of interactive apps in a human ensemble. We're not promoting (and have no affiliation with) Sprint as a cellular network. The visual choir of devices, though, is inescapably uplifting.



Check out our other posts about teaching with visual music.

Visualizing Music - The Best Blogs

Source: Abstract Bird

One of our school's traditions invites each senior class to offer a song during its graduation ceremony to bring voices and camaraderie together for a final time. Watching the nostalgic singers recently stand together in melody reminded us that the visual experience of song can add a rich element to musical interactions.

Users' interfaces with music have changed radically in the past five years. Hand-held devices, apps, and software are pushing the evolution of composing and listening. Music education in K-12 schools, however, has remained remarkably the same for generations. Some progressive teachers do encourage students to experiment with Garage Band or MIDI-connected keyboards and synth pads. But most children still stand near a piano and repeat familiar tunes in chorus.

A host of terrific resources exists to teach with visual music. This seemingly oxymoronic experience can invigorate those children who often shrug during music class but who spend every waking minute tethered to their iPods with ear buds blaring. Below is the first in a series of posts about tools for visualizing sound. The blogs below feature interactions that would be inspiring in teaching music, creating projects, enhancing lessons, or augmenting classroom routines. A good background on potential lessons and graphics comes from a slideshow called "Using Visualizations For Music Discovery."

Visual Music Blogs

 

Source: Ethan Hein

Ethan Hein's Blog - Visualizing Music

Ethan Hein's blog is the first and best place to start for a comprehensive introduction to sound optics, music politics, and tune imagery. As a writer, teacher, and producer, Hein presents a tour de force in visual music theory. His syllabus offers novel ideas for music notation, time frequency games, pitch space pictures, waveform graphics, chord progression maps, song structure visualizations, and other aural conceptions. As a disclaimer, we do know Hein from his days playing mandolin in Garman House, but that doesn't lessen the educational lessons of his blog.

Source: Visualizing Music

Visualizing Music - Finding Music With Pictures

This Visualizing Music Wordpress blog appears not to be recently updated, but it still establishes a strong resource of diverse posts about graphic representations of songs and symphonies. In particular, it shares eye-catching maps of pop artists and mp3 sharing sites.

VC Blog - Music Visualization: Beautiful Tools to 'See' Sound

The Visual Complexity site always highlights stunning graphics and data imagery. In this guest post on the VC blog, Portuguese applications developer Ricardo Nuno Silva showcases the many challenges and successes in rendering music into a visible show. Silva lays out an important litany of visualization types for teachers and students alike.

Live Granades - Visualizing Music

On this family blog, physicist Stephen Granade attempts to represent larger, deeper elements of sound through diagram displays. The videos show live examples of musicians at work.

Source: Brain Pickings

Brain Pickings - Synesthesia Spotlight: 3 Visualizations Of Music

In this post on Brain Pickings, one of our favorite sites, prolific curator Maria Popova shares three different mental amalgams of hue and sound. Her choices center on animations and "sonic color." By the way, if you're not following @brainpicker on Twitter, you really should.

Boring Like A Drill - Visualizing Music

This engaging write-up about exhibiting a score and adding graphic interactions to concerts comes from Cooky La Moo, the work repository of artist and musician Ben.Harper (there are lots of "Ben Harpers" out there).

Stay tuned for more posts in our series about teaching with visual music.