I know. I said "lucky" and "ipad" in the same sentence.
Those of you who regularly read this blog will remember that I am not always that kind to the ipad. A few of my blog posts are testament to that.
However, I have always stated that rather than give tech to teachers and say "get on with it", schools should be providing staff with training to use it properly.
My wonderful department employed the services of ipad, MFL and all earth-based technology expert Joe Dale this week.
So what did we learn?
Well, obviously the best thing would be for you to contact Joe and get some training first hand.
I'll go through some of the apps ( I still hate this word!!!) we used and provide some links:
Tap roulette
This is a simple app to decide which person in a group gets to go first.
Easy to use and free.
Decide Now
This is a paid app (£0.69) but very useful. It can be used as a random name selector a random question selector or a random topic selector. Easy to set up and use but wheels can't be shared.
30 Hands
This free app allows the user to create a narrated story or presentation by adding a commentary to photos or pictures. This is an ideal way to get students talking about lots of different topics and can be edited so that only the "perfect" version is saved.
Tellagami
I've used this for a while and I and my students love it. I 've been using this for quite a while and it featured in my workshop at #ililc4 in February.
This app allows student to create a talking avatar and customise its expression, clothing, features and choose or upload a background. The user can upload 30 seconds of dialogue or use the text to speech facility. This application is free but, after its most recent update, some of the features are now "in app purchases" (I hate that phrase!!).
Yakit Kids
Yakit kids is free and jolly good fun. Again, I discovered this at my #ililc4 workshop.
It allows the user to upload a photo and add eyes, noses and mouths to puppetise inanimate objects and make them talk. Great for getting students to speak in the target language and they can have fun changing the pitch of the voices, too.
We also learned about Cloudart, Tag Cloud, QRReader, QRafter, and were shown classtools.net's QR code Treasure Hunt Generator.
Joe also demonstrated Voicerecord Pro and Visioprompt which could help GCSE students with their controlled assessments.
The session ended with Joe showing us Book Creator, an app which we can use to create a virtual record of everything we did during the afternoon, photos, presentations, videos, etc.
The afternoon was a huge success.
My colleagues were really impressed and have spent the last few days practising with their new knowledge and planning some fantastic activities for the students.
Needless to say, I would recommend hiring Joe for a session at your school.
