Big Bird’s Words: eSchool News App of the Week

It comes from Sesame Street, works on Apple and Android devices, and features Big Bird, games, and fun. Big Bird’s Words, an eSchool News and Metro Bistro App of the Week, encourages children ages four and up to learn vocabulary and read written text.  The App ($.99) uses Big Bird’s wonderful Word-O-Scope to get children hunting for words in their real-life environment. Finding words is fun, especially when they get to use their devices’ camera to click on images of the words—like cereal on their breakfast table. Wired Magazine recommends it as a great app for children who are just starting school. Take a look at the demo reel from Qualcomm to better understand what this app does.

Piaget and B.F. Skinner Tweets

Malbert Smith III, in an Education Week Commentary, wonders what would have happened if great thinkers in education had digital communication available to them. Would they have been able to spread their research and ideas or would modern ways of communication have limited their time to think deeply and engage in continuing observations? Although, Smith says that “our digital toolkits allow us to analyze and publish data faster, connect immediately to scholars about the globe, and disseminate findings instantly”, he suggests, when considering the time we and our students spend engaging in digital communication, that we have become “prisoners” of our devices. If Jean Piaget had tweeted about his children, Smith says, they “would have rebelled with tweets, blogs, and the ultimate rejection: Facebook unfriending.”

ALA Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2013

The American Library Association, always a trusted source for recommendations, provides a list of apps that it considers “of exceptional value to inquiry-based learning . . .”  These are apps that encourage students to be innovative and creative as they engage in collaboration with others. Categories on the list include: Books, STEM, Organization & Management, Social Sciences, and Content Creation. A few of the apps on the ALA Best App List are: Shakespeare in Bits, Got to Have Music, Operation Math, SimplePhysics, Tinkerbox, Dropbox, Evernote, Socrative, News-O-Matic: Daily for Kids, GarageBand, and Educreations. There are links to all the apps on the list.

Storia: A Scholastic Reading Experience

Scholastic’s Storia is a place for your students to find over 2000 eBooks to read at home and at school. There are Read-to-Me books with highlighted text; Enriched eBooks that tackle topics in mathematics, science, geography, and history; reference tools and a dictionary; books with puzzles and quizzes; personal bookshelves; and tools for teachers. Many Scholastic favorites and classics are part of the Storia list, which is divided into categories according to Age (2 to 13 and up), Product Type (eBooks, Enriched eBooks, Read-to-Me Books, Reading Challenge, ePacks, eCollections), Reading Level, Grade Level (Pre-K to 8 and Teen), and Character & Series (Clifford, Harry Potter, Magic School Bus, etc.). Prices vary according to the book or pack selected. The eBooks may be used on iPad, Kindle Fire, Android devices, and Windows PCs. A Mac version will be out soon.

Good Listeners Are Successful Students

Tales2Go and eSchool News offer the whitepaper, Listening, the 21^st Century Learner, and the Common Core Standards. According to the paper, a good listener is not necessarily one who sits quietly or keeps eyes focused on a lecturer or storyteller; it’s one who understands. Students who are good listeners are those who understand skills and how to use them. Good listeners know how to participate in conversations and to “reflect on what they’ve heard.”

Students with reading difficulties profit from listening to audio books—audio books allow teachers to differentiate instruction. But, where do Common Core Standards come in? They offer “a ‘staircase’ of increasing complexity for the student as he strives to comprehend more and more of what a book provides.” Students are better able to achieve the goals of Common Core if they have been exposed to audio versions of fiction and non-fiction stories. There is a lot to be said about learning through listening, especially when it comes to modeling human voices that are fluent in reading.

Free Scholastic Reading Timer

It’s often difficult to turn students on to reading. When parents tell me they can’t get their children to read, I often suggest that they require their children to read as much as they play video games or watch television. A new app from Scholastic may help as well. It tracks children’s reading minutes, provides a weekly log, and offers book lists, tips, and articles about children and reading for parents.  The Timer motivates children to have fun reading every day.

The Scholastic Reading Timer app works with iPod Touch, iPad, iPhone, Android devices, and Windows phones.

Spotting Future Dropouts by Grade 1

In Montgomery County, Maryland, administrators have identified early-warning signs for students at risk of dropping out of school. They can identify flags for 75 percent of dropouts—by the second semester of first grade.  Some of the warning signs are reading below grade level, absences of nine days or more, report card grades, incomplete assignments, and behavior.  Montgomery County Evaluation Specialist Thomas (Chris) C. West, who created the formula for his district, commented in an Education Week article (07/29/2013), “You will not reduce dropout rates by identifying] the students; it’s what you do with them. Early-warning systems are not an intervention strategy; they are part of an intervention strategy. They are not a magic bullet.”

textHelp: Lots of Great Resources for Reading, Writing, & Speech

Dedicated to the development of innovative software for those with reading, writing, speech, and language difficulties, textHelp provides excellent products that students can use with Macs, PCs, and mobile devices. The software is especially designed for students with literacy problems and those learning English as a second language. New to the textHelp library of resources is Read&Write for Google and the iPad app, Reading Champion. Read&Write for Google works with Google Drive in the Chrome browser making Google Docs, PDF files, and ePubs all available on PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks. The Reading Champion app gives students the impetus to practice and enjoy their reading. (You can try the $6.99 app free for 30 days.)  Other products offered by textHelp include Read&Write, Fluency Tutor, BrowseAloud, English Hero, Lexiflow, Read&Write app, and SpeechStream.

Reading Eggs & Eggspress—Edmentum

Edmentum’s Reading Eggs helps PreKindergarten through Grade 2 students become proficient readers by giving them lessons that feature phonics, sight words, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, in addition to spelling and writing. The self-paced program is interactive and treats students to “egg” awards. Eggspress, for students in Grades 2-6, focuses on reading comprehension and motivation for reading. The library includes more than 600 full-colored fiction and non-fiction ebooks and a wealth of exciting educational games.

Bookabi

There are 2D and 3D characters, fun backgrounds and stickers, and lots more in Bookabi by Tamajii, Inc. Your students can make up their own stories by using the resources available and adding speech bubbles. Students can take their own photos and use them as backgrounds in the story.