Favorite Finds from TCEA

Guest post by Tracy Brandt, 2nd grade teacher at Johnson Elementary

My name is Tracy Brandt, and I’m a second grade teacher at Johnson Elementary.  I attended TCEA for the first time this year as a part of the Dragons Go Digital program and came home with many new and fun ideas.  Below are some of my favorite finds. I hope they will benefit you as well!

Here are my top 3 favorite finds:

SnapType is a free app available for iOS that allows you to take a photo of any worksheet or workbook page with an iPad, and then use the keyboard to type on the page. You can save the annotated document as an image, make it a PDF, or a SnapType Document. Then you can print, email, or message the document.  SnapType is very useful for students who have handwriting difficulties or occupational therapy.

Smarty Pins is a feature that turns Google Maps into a geographical trivia game.  You can start a game immediately or choose from a variety of topics such as Arts & Culture, Science & Geography, Sports & Games, Entertainment, or History and Current Events. Players start the game with 1,000 miles (points).The goal is to correctly answer as many questions as possible before running out of miles (incorrect answers subtract from your mileage.). To answer, you drop a pin on the city or area that correctly answers the question. Players get bonus points for answering within 10 seconds without using any hints.

Canva.com is a powerful, versatile, and easy creation tool. It uses formatted “canvases” for multiple forms of social, business, and educational media such as infographics, brochures and email headers, invitations, posters, etc. Canva comes with a library of photos, graphics, symbols, layouts and text arrangements for you to use and most are free.  It is also available as an app.  It is very simple to use, just drag, drop, and create!