App Highlight {Secondary Teachers}

As our teachers are acquiring different devices that meet their needs, as well as the needs of their students, the district has been working to support a variety of devices.  As many teachers are finding iPads to be a good solution to their classroom needs, the question that is most commonly received is, "Which apps should I use?"?  While there are many app recommendations that one can make for a fellow educator, the power of apps lies in that of their implementation and applications.  We surveyed our secondary teachers who currently have access to iPads to find out which apps they find most useful and how they are using them in their classrooms.  Below are their favorite apps and how they are implementing them.

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Teacher: Brian Conway

Grade: 7th Grade
Favorite App: Class Dojo
How do you use this app in your classroom?  This app goes along with the classroom management program found at classdojo.com where students are assigned an avatar and receive points based on positive behavior and lose points for poor behavior. It is nice to have the app because you can have it open during the class and can quickly and seamlessly adjust points with out having to go back to the computer. I set up a two week period where students compete to score the most amount of points. This seems to work well with middle school students and below. I am not sure how well it would go over in the high school.

Teacher: Vlad Borza

Grade: 6th Grade
Favorite App: Socrative
How do you use this app in your classroom?  Similar to the online version of the popular quiz program, I have direct access to all of my stored quizzes at my fingertips. I can start a pre-made quiz or quickly create a new one to use as an exit slip.
This app also allows me to see the live results and student progress to know how far along in the quiz each student is.
Any other comments or helpful hints you would like to a teacher who is trying this app for the first time? Students can also download the "student version" on their personal devices, alleviating some issues with not having enough working computers in the classroom. The platform is extremely easy to use for students and even has built in games where students can race each other or other groups while taking a quiz.