#TCEA17 Favorite Finds

This is a guest post by Ann Astrin, 2nd grade teacher at Old Union Elementary.

My School Avatar
I am excited to begin using this app so my students can have a new way to express themselves and share their learning!  With this app, students can design and personalize their own avatar to create their own animated, talking, video presentation.  I plan on using My School Avatar with my students so they can retell stories, explain new concepts in math, science, and social studies, as well as to share their writing orally.

My class will be using this app to share their latest economics project by taking a picture of it, uploading the picture for the background of video, creating an avatar, and using it to explain the process to others.  We will upload the video to Seesaw at the end to save and share -- app smashing!


Shadow Puppet Edu
I LOVE this app!  With this app, students can easily create videos in the classroom! They can make videos to explain ideas, tell and retell stories, record learning, and more!

My students have recently used this app during our character study unit to profile the inside traits of a main character in our read-aloud series. After creating the video, they uploaded it to Seesaw to save and share -- again, app smashing! This app allows students to take and upload pictures, record their voice, explore and type text, and even sequence the pictures they have chosen.  It also has a tutorial for you to view before attempting to use.

Click here to view work one of my students created using Shadow Puppet Edu.


Fab and Free
Wish you had access to tons of great educational sites and apps without having to pay a single penny? Well, this site has them! I know you will find lots that you will be able to use in your classroom - for FREE!

#TCEA17 Favorite Finds

As always, TCEA's annual conference was amazing and did not disappoint. Here are a few of my favorite finds:

G Suite Training Extension - This free Chrome extension provides interactive training lessons on the various G Suite (formerly Google Apps) products. Once the extension is installed, the simple, interactive trainings can be accessed by clicking the question mark in the top right corner of the browser window. When activated, the training lessons appear within the application....meaning you don't have to leave the application to learn about it. The extensive training topics vary from beginner to advanced and are arranged in short videos that are chunked by category. If you are a Google user, this extension is a must!

FlipQuiz - Ideal for interactive whiteboards, FlipQuiz is a quick way to create gameshow-style boards (think Jeopardy) to use as a fun review game with your students. Using this tool, teachers can create new, customized game boards, or search the community for shared resources. FlipQuiz is free, but also offers additional features and options in the Pro (paid) version.

CuePrompter - CuePrompter is a free online teleprompter tool. Simply type your script in the box, adjust fonts, prompter window size, and font colors and you're all set for a professional video!


To access over 500 TCEA handouts, please click here. You can also follow along on Twitter by searching for #TCEA17 to read everyone's tweets, or by searching #TCEADragons to read just what CISD employees tweeted about this conference.

#TCEA17 Favorite Finds

This is a guest post by Bailey Buck, 1st grade teacher at Johnson Elementary.

That Quiz

• Not an app; it is a website but you can add to your iPad screen from Safari 
• For math quizzes
• You can make your own quizzes (if you have an account) or use quizzes that are already made
• Great differentiation (number of questions, level, time)
• Topics include (but are not limited to): time, money, arithmetic, shapes, number lines, place value
• Free

I have already used this with my students, and it is awesome! The kids love it and ask to do it all the time. It has great feedback and gives me an idea of areas that we need to work on and skills that we have mastered either individually or as a class!


Quizizz

• Free app
• Like Kahoot BUT…
• Students work at their own pace (able to change the time length)
• You can turn music on/off
• The questions and answer choices are on the student individual iPad (not on your board like Kahoot)
• Questions go in different orders
• You can have the questions and answer choice read aloud to the students (so awesome!) 
• Takes the “race” aspect out of the game (in contrast to Kahoot)

THIS IS AWESOME! It's favorite app that I learned about at TCEA! My students loved Kahoot, but I had some students who would just press a random answer to be the “first person who answered.”

With Quizizz, it is not a race, and the students are working on their individual iPad to answer and read the questions (rather than looking on the board for the question). The students love it just as much as Kahoot!


Virtual Manipulative Apps (all free)

• Number Pieces
• Money Pieces
• Number Rack
• Pattern Shapes
• Pieces Basic
• Click here for more great apps to use for math

I downloaded all of these apps, and the students have been using them, taking a screenshot, uploading in Popplet, saving it, uploading to Seesaw, and sharing…triple app-smashing!!

Here is an example of students have done:

1. Used the app “Pieces Basic” and made a number using tens and ones blocks. 
2. Took a screenshot, went to Popplet, uploaded the screenshot, and added more text to describe their blocks.
3. Saved the Popplet and uploaded to Seesaw…

And my students are first graders!!!! 


Chatterpix Kid

• Free app
• Make your photos, friends, or drawings talk (students take a photo, draw a line over the mouth and record their voice...then save and share on Seesaw…app-smashing!!)

The students have so much fun with this app! One way that I have used this app is during our unit over Famous Americans. We studied each Famous American and learned why they are important.

The students then drew a portrait of the Famous American. Students took an iPad, took a picture of their drawing, drew a line over the mouth, and recorded their voice acting like they were that Famous American, saved it, then uploaded to Seesaw! Click here for an example.


Newslea

• Free app
• Safe news site for kids to use
• Can change the Lexile reading level (there is a writing prompt and quiz to go along with the article)
• Can change grade levels
• News Article writing template free on Teacher Pay Teachers

I have not yet used this tool, but it looks fun!


Draw and Tell

• Free App
• Cn be used for telling stories: draw, color, and record voice
• Create a story: talk about your drawing or tell a story, move the stickers as you talk, save drawings with recordings, and then upload to Seesaw…app-smashing! 

I have not yet used this app, but it's on my "to do" list.