You're a Movie Director!

With the Reel Director app, you can be a movie director or star (or both!) in no time flat. By inputing your videos you can title, add sound, text, transitions, and music to your video. Once you've put everything together then you can email it and even upload it to YouTube! Check out our first shot at Reel Director by viewing our movie.



I can think of a thousand uses for this app in the courses that are taught at the high school where I work. From making a tourism video for Tourism to creating a movie for your favourite book, the options are endless!

Apps for Children with Special Needs

Apps for Children with Special Needs (http://a4cwsn.com/) is a site that I stumbled upon when searching online.  This site provides information, videos, and advice on products designed for educating students with special needs.  There is lots of great options to explore when visiting this site, including one that I’ve bookmarked: Featured App of the Day (http://a4cwsn.com/apps/featured-video-of-the-day/).  What a great way to see a new favourite every day!  Do check it out if you have a moment.  They also have lots of great videos on Pictello which is one of Barb’s favourite apps for making story books using your own pictures and voice.

Sharing Favourite Apps

Apps can be amazing tools for our students!  This week we got to share our favourite apps.  I appreciated this activity since there are so many apps out there that you could spend hours and hours browsing without finding the one that your neighbour thinks is worth a million bucks!

Favourite apps in the class included:

ü  Pocket Whiteboard (just as it states – a pocket sized whiteboard!)

ü  Collaborative Whiteboard (two people can work simultaneously on the same board)

ü  No Fear Shakespeare (learn Shakespeare in today's language)

ü  Audiobooks (free reading of classic books (lots of them!), does not follow along w/ the words)

ü  iScroll (free reading of books, lectures, more adult oriented content, does track the print)

ü  tapSpeak (works like a switch to provide preprogrammed words)

ü  flash cards (use for test study, pre-made ones available)

ü  Model me Going Places (provides social stories for going to different places)

ü  SpeechTutor (work to improve speech delays w/ pictures of mouth formation)

ü  OverDrive Media Console (borrow digital books w/ any library card (may put on computer to avoid due date), includes audio)

ü  Shakespeare in Bits (Hear it, See it, View it, define words, etc.)

ü  Cookie Doodle (use the recipe to make virtual cookies)

Apps for Student w/ Anxiety

One evening this week, I spent an hour looking up apps for one of my students with high anxiety, particularly noise anxiety.  My student is working on strategies to avoid feeling anxious from noise and also for ways to bring his anxiety back down.  One of his strategies is to listen to music or white noise, and another is to use an app to refocus.  The following were apps that I recommended to him this week:

1.     Eye Tricks ($0.99) – optical illusions

2.     Collision Effect ($0.99) – puzzle/action game

3.     Sound Massage (free) – sounds of nature

4.     Fluid Monkey (free) – use your fingers to create

5.     Bubble Wrap ($0.99) – pop the bubbles

6.     Kid Fireworks (free) – tap to ignite

7.     Pocket Pond (free) – manage your own fish pond

8.     Virtual Earplugs (free) – neutral soundscapes

9.     Improve Your Attention (free) – improve fast reasoning skills

10.  Insect Smasher (free) – squash the bugs

11.  Fluid (free) – liquid surface w/ rocks

Favourite Apps for Reading

	Top Ten!	App	Cost	Uses
1		Shmoop	Free	This app is similar to Coles Notes; it provides users with notes on many classics used in high school English classes.  It provides a wide range of text overviews, summaries, plot& character analysis, study questions and quizzes to help students review their knowledge.
2		Prizmo	$9.99	This app allows you to scan text and have it read to you.  It can translate into fifteen different languages.  It recognizes printed text, whiteboards, etc… It includes image processing and text-to-speech is available in 10 languages with 35 voices to choose from.
3		QuickVoice	Free	This app allows you to record for seconds to hours students can save their recorded files as an MP3, and then be able to email their work to the teacher.  It is available for use in 6 different languages.  It offers students another method of sharing their knowledge.
4		vBookz	$3.99	This app comes with over 30,000 copyrighted books, it reads it chapter to chapter while highlighting the text, and it comes with a magnifying glass interface.  You can scan a text into Kurzweil (save as ePub format - Pages) and put this into vBookz.  You can also adjust the speed of reading and the voice.
5		Body Talk	$1.99	This app is a body language guide to help you to read other people and situations.  It includes text, photos and videos to help the user.  You can search by body part, motivation or significance of movements.  This app is great for anyone, especially those who struggle in social situations.
6		No Fear Shakespeare	Free ($0.99 for each play or $4.99 for all 18 plays)	With modern-English language translation of each play, side-by-side of the original version, students can read the play and understand it too!
7		Canada Driver’s Ed	$1.99	Students can read the manual, study topic-by-topic, take a mock test, and get detailed results that indicate areas for further study.  The ‘Progress Meter’ is a great motivator!
8		Conversation English	$4.99	Common idioms and expressions are worked into 20 English conversation lessons.  Each lesson incorporates listening, reading, comprehension, vocabulary, and sentence completion skills through matching, fill-in-the blanks, and other activities.
9		English at Work	$4.99	The sister app to ‘Conversation English,’ this app provides 14 lessons for English in the workplace.  Common idioms, phrases, and expressions are worked into lessons on listening skills, telephone skills, email skills, conversation skills, and more!
10		English Grammar In Use Activities	$9.99	This app is full of grammar activities that are designed to be fun for students.  With imagery, audio, recording, and instant feedback, students will be engaged in the 16 areas of grammar.  There is also a sister app with tests!

Reading Process

Wow!  Completing a task analysis of the 'Reading Process' was not an easy task.  Trying to think through every step of the reading process provided challenges.  I understand some aspects of the process, but certainly am not an expert in this area, so through reading a few articles and viewing other's maps of the process, my partner and I were able to piece together all that we learned to create our own version of the steps in the reading process.  I am hoping to use this map in my class with students that are struggling to read.  Hopefully it will be helpful to students in understanding why they may be having difficulties.  There are so many elements that have to be 'just right' in order for reading and comprehension to occur - it is easy to see how the process may go astray!

Thinking about Reading

On Tuesday night, we had our first class of EDUC 5163: Assistive Technology - Access to Literacy w/ instructor Barb Welsford.  One of the things that we spent a bit of time on, and are going to continue to look into is the process of reading.  It is essential that we understanding the process of reading if we are going to be helpful to our students that are struggling with reading.  In our task of creating a preliminary task analysis of reading, I was shocked by how little time I have ever spent thinking about reading!  Since it is something that most of us learn and master at a young age, it is not something that I, as a high school teacher, have investigated.  One site that I came across that provided a more general, but still somewhat detailed examination of the reading process was that of "Teaching Language and Literacy K-6: Dr. Janette M. Hughes" (http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/Reading/ReadingProcess.html).  The site provide me with a taste of the process so now I am looking forward to diving deeper into this task analysis and learning how to support my students effectively!