My Favorite Evergreen Apps

iPads are wonderful tools, but in order to use them to their full potential, it's important to look at evergreen apps. Evergreen apps are "non-subject apps useful throughout the year for speaking, writing, listening, drawing, annotating, curating, collaborating, sharing, and more." (Daccord, 2013.) I find evergreen apps more convenient than content-specific apps, as students (and I) can use them for a variety of projects, regardless of the subject or grade level.

Here are my favorite evergreen apps:

1. The "does everything" app:  Seesaw (free) or Explain Everything ($3.99)

If you teach elementary school, Seesaw is the app for you. While I've seen high school teachers use Seesaw, Explain Everything might be a better bet for the secondary crowd. (Secondary peeps: if you prefer a free app, Educreations is good -- it just doesn't have all the features Explain Everything does.)

Both have a whiteboard feature (among many other components!) that allows students to draw on the screen with their finger or a stylus and a recording option where students can record their voice over a project. This link will show you a series of blog post I wrote on my technology blog about Seesaw.

2. The tutorial app: Shadow Puppet Edu (free)

Users can string several photos or videos into one slideshow, and then record their voice over the entire presentation, adding text, music, and drawings where needed. The Shadow Puppet website has great examples from classroom teachers on how to use the app.

3. The poster app: Tackk (free)

Tackk (available in both an app and on the web) allows users to create online posters with a variety of media inside. Tackk is much like Smore, except Tackk allows users to create an unlimited number of posters per account, and teachers can easily create lesson plan template for students. Click here to learn more about Tackk.

4. The interactive images app: ThingLink (free)

ThingLink (available in an app and on the web) allows users to upload a photo and then apply "tags" -- in the form of plain text, links, or other embedded content -- across the photo. Click here to learn more about ThingLink.

5. The mind map app: Popplet Lite (free)

Popplet is a brainstorming app that allows users to create bubble maps. You can save bubble maps as PDFs or image files, and then import into another app such as Canvas or Seesaw to share. Click here too see a popplet my students made when discussing science tools. Click here to view public popplets for more ideas.

6. The assessment app: Socrative (free)

Socrative (available in an app and on the web) is my favorite paperless assessment tool. Teachers can ask questions on the fly, give students a pre-planned quiz, or engage students with a "space race" competitive assessment before receiving data quickly in the format of their choice.

7. The brainstorming app: Padlet (free)

Padlet (available on the web and in a brand new app) lets users create a central hub for collaboration. It's great for discussion questions, mind maps, virtual "parking lots," and much more.

8. The collection app: Google Forms (free)

Technically, users can only create Google forms from a computer. But since finished forms are accessible from a mobile device, I'm throwing this one in the mix. Google forms are so versatile! Once you create a form from the computer, send students the link or attach it to a QR code for students to scan at their convenience. This blog post tells you how to create a Google form and suggests ways for using it in the classroom.

9. The collaborative drawing app: Whiteboard Lite (free)

On the surface, this just appears as a plain whiteboard app, but there's an awesome feature that will help students write/draw collaboratively from different devices: users on the same WiFi connection can draw on the same whiteboard simultaneously, and the other person's drawings appear in real time on your device.

10. The note-taking app: Paperport Notes (free)

This is a nice alternative to the widely-hailed but expensive (for an app) Notability. Paperport Notes lets users add blank or lined pages, camera images, files from cloud services, web snippets, and clipboard contents to digital notebooks. Users can then type, draw, or highlight with their finger or stylus, and/or record a voice over each page.


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• 10 awesome evergreen apps for iOS via @ckarasedu

References

• Daccord, Tom. "The 'Evergreen' iPad: Why All Your Apps Should Fit on One Screen." eSchool News: Daily Tech News and Innovation. 28 May 2013. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. 

App Smashing: Using 3 Apps to Create a Virtual Food Chain

Sometimes one app just doesn't cut it, you know? Combining two or more apps into one project is called "app smashing." Here is how my 3rd grade students used 3 apps to create a virtual food chain:

Step 1: Think of a food chain. My third graders had been studying barn owls -- their adaptations, their prey and predators, and their owl pellets. For this lesson, my students were instructed to create at least a 4-step food chain.

Step 2: Open drawing desk. (I prefer "doodle desk" or "kids desk" mode.) Draw the first step of the food chain, save it to the camera roll, and then make your way to a blank screen in Drawing Desk. (Learn more about Drawing Desk by reading this blog post.) Draw all 4 parts of your food chain this way, making sure to include only one energy source/plant/animal in each picture.

Drawing Desk (free)

Step 3: Open Shadow Puppet Edu. Each of the 4 pictures students just drew in Drawing Desk and saved should be in the camera roll. Students should load each of the 4 pictures into a Shadow Puppet Edu slideshow in the correct order. Use the narration feature to record your voice on each picture, telling us what the item is, if it's a producer or consumer, and if it's a carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore.

So, for example, we might hear these narrations:

• First slide: "This is the sun. It is the energy source for the plant, so it is not a producer or a consumer."
• Second slide: "This is grass. It is a producer because it uses the sun's energy to make its own food." 
• Third slide: "This is a grasshopper. Its prey in this food chain is the grass. It is a consumer and an herbivore."

...and so on. :)

Shadow Puppet Edu (free)

Step 4: Export the Shadow Puppet Edu show to Seesaw and submit under your name. 

Seesaw: The Learning Journal (free)

I think the kids had a good time "app smashing" to make our digital food chains, and I love that the creation process allows me to see each child's personality in their work! Here's one example of the work I received:

 

Fun!

Tackk

If you're a fan of Smore {read my post about it here}, you'll love Tackk! I heard about it over the summer, but I figured there was no reason for me to have accounts at two very similar websites. Now I'm kicking myself for not investigating it earlier... 

What It Is

Tackk allows users to create online posters with text, videos, audio recordings, pictures, and embedded widgets and links. Each Tackk {poster} is stored at its own unique URL for easy sharing. 

Features

• 100% free
• Account not necessary to create a Tackk {only downside? Anonymous Tackks are deleted after 7 days.}
• E-mail address not needed to create an account or sign in -- kids can sign in with a social media account or with Edmodo! 
• Free iOS app
• Customize the poster's text, colors, and design
• Add headlines of different sizes, colors, and fonts to make them stand out next to regular body text
• Add photos -- upload your own, grab from Instagram or a specific URL, or use Tackk's partnership with 500px or Giphy to find a photo to use
• Adjust the size and add captions to photos
• Add video from 150+ {YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, U-Stream, Animoto, ShowMe, etc. included -- here's the complete list}
• Add audio from 22 sources {SoundCloud, Spotify, Rdio, Grooveshark, etc. included -- here's the complete list}
• Add a button to make links more visible:

• Ability to add "listings" of things you can sell directly from your Tackk {PTO and spirit shops, I'm lookin' at you.}
• Add a contact form -- all responses are sent to your e-mail inbox
• Embed widgets to things like other Tackks, a Poll Everywhere poll, Prezi, Listly, Screenr, SlideShare, Twitter, etc.
• Add an RSVP {I'm thinking of field trip, class party, extracurricular group event, etc.}
• Make your Tackk public or private
• Option to add password protection to a private Tackk
• "Tag" Tackks -- similar to tagging in Blogger or Evernote -- as a way to collect and/or organize data. {For instance, I would have my students tag their Tackks with special phrases to ensure I could find them easily.}
• Customize the URL {only downside? the URL is an extension of tackk.com and not your profile, so no other Tackk user can ever personalize their poster with the same name}
•  Add an interactive comment stream -- great for encouraging conversation between your students. {Admin rights gives ability to moderate.}
• Create an assignment template so students only have to click and edit {more about that below}
• Saves automatically every few seconds -- similar to LiveBinders 
• Duplicate your Tackks to save yourself time creating similar posters
• Transfer ownership of your Tackks to a different account
• Variety of sharing options when you're finished:

I like that I could embed all the class's Tackks onto my school webpage, or even create a Tackk that links to everyone's Tackk {how's that for a confusing sentence?} to show off student work to parents and the community.

Assignment Template Feature

I have to  share the assignment template feature with you. There is currently no tutorial on the Tackk blog that tells how to utilize the lesson template feature, but I got the inside scoop from a sweet and knowledgeable Tackk rep {shout-out to Andria!}. She's going to write a blog post about it soon, but I thought I'd share here, too. 

The assignment template feature lets you create a Tackk that is editable and share that with students. So instead of sharing a static page that no one can edit {here's example I created about ABCD drawings in a science notebook}, you share this editable page that acts as a template for the assignment. For instance, here's an editable template about the scientific method. If you give students the special link to your template, they can edit a copy of your template without ever changing your original. 

To create an editable assignment template:

1. Create a Tackk. 
2. Customize the URL under "Tackk options." 
3. Make the Tackk private, and then publish it so it's live.
4. Before sharing the link with students, edit it so that "/create/copy" in written after tackk.com. For instance, my scientific method page is www.tackk.com/scientificmethod. So to let kids edit it, I would share this link, instead: www.tackk.com/create/copy/scientificmethod

I love the idea of this for my elementary students! 

Because I only have 50-60 minutes total with each class per week in Science Lab, I often print a recording sheet to glue into the notebook -- especially for my youngest students. Not only does it help prompt them about what step in the scientific method comes next, it's a way to help speed up their writing so that we have time to do an experiment and write about it in our notebooks, too.

I can definitely see myself transferring some of my recording sheets into Tackk templates. From there, I envision students tagging each assignment with a specific phrase so that I can assess and share. 

I'll leave you with my first full assignment created on Tackk {link here if you want to see the full version on the Tackk website}. My fourth graders are actually in the middle of this assignment, so I probably will not get to use Tackk for it until next year. But now that I know the process, I'm sure there will be plenty more Tackk projects to come.

     

Tellagami

Our librarian loves to use Voki with our kiddos. And I have to say: our kids respond well to Voki. But with the rise of iPads in our school, I thought it might be nice to know about an app version.

The app is called Tellagami, and it's free to download.

Tellagami works a lot like Voki, except there are only male and female options {no aliens or animals like Voki offers}.

Customize skin color, hair color and style, clothing, eye color, and even head size.

There aren't too many customization options -- for the female avatar, there were about 4 top options in 3-4 colors each in clothing, for instance -- but it's enough to get the job done.

Once your avatar looks the way you need him/her to, move on to customizing the background.

The app comes with 2 free sets of backgrounds {"free" and "road trip"}, but there are plenty of other background packs you can purchase if you so choose. I particularly liked the educational backgrounds. One of the edu sets appeared to be for college, while the other set was geared more toward elementary; the elementary backgrounds have alphabet/color borders above the blackboard and brighter colors.

 I chose to customize the emotion of my avatar after my background. Choose from 7 emotions:

Finally, add some speech. You can either record your own voice, or type something in and choose from a dozen or so male and female voices.

Preview your Tellagami to make sure he/she sounds the way you need it to, and then share your creation. I like that you can share on social media sites + e-mail + text messages.

I e-mailed it to myself to see if I could figure out how to embed it on my blog, and wouldn't you know it? Clicking the link in the e-mail takes you to a screen that offers a link to the video and an embed code. Yay! Here's my sample Tellagami:

One thing I love about this app is that you don't have to have an account in order to save anything.  Just open the app, create, and send. I don't see a way to edit the Tellagami after it's made, so that may be the only drawback I see so far.

For reference, the maximum length of time for a recording on Tellagami is 30 seconds {which is the same for Voki, if I remember correctly...?}.

Ideas for using Tellagami or Voki in the classroom:

1. As a getting-to-know-you activity, all students could create a Voki or Tellagami to represent themselves. The avatar could speak essential information, favorites, etc. about themselves, and then al students could play their creation for the class. 
2. After reading, students could create a Tellagami or Voki project to summarize what they read. 
3. After reading a story, students could pick their favorite character and create an avatar that speaks from that character's POV.
4. On a similar note, students could create an avatar of a famous person or a historical figure; the avatar could speak facts about that person's life and achievements. 
5. After writing a story, students could make an avatar of their choosing, and then use the call-in feature to read their story to world.
6. Instead of always posting things to your classroom website in words, create a Voki or Tellagami video to get the information across. For instance, I once embedded a Voki into a class blog entry and used it to prompt students on their next assignment. {I included text, too, in case students didn't have speakers available, but this is a good option in the paperless classroom for those kiddos that may struggle with reading or just prefer verbal instruction.}

This article tells you about 6 other free avatar-creating apps for iPad.