Activity #5

I had taken some time while on vacation to look at Google apps and went a little crazy. I now have 4 pages of apps.  I was able to find RAZ-Kids, for which I pay a yearly subscription fee.  I had used it on iPads, so was glad to see it in Chrome, although when I typed in RAZ-Kids in the search bar, the app didn't show up. I found it in the list of apps as I was scrolling through.

I loaded the Ancient History app.  I don't think my 3rd graders will use this much. I was hoping to get something that would help with the ancient civilizations standards that 3rd graders need to meet. I like the information that I have access to to share with students.  There are so many words linked to other sites that this could be frustrating, but the pictures of artwork look like they could be very useful.

I also loaded Fluency Tutor.  With the free version, students have access to quite a few short pieces of text.  The texts can be assigned by a teacher for a student using lexile or age levels, which I like.  Students can record and listen to their own reading, and send the recording to the teacher.  It has a nice picture dictionary feature.  It is advertised as a time-saver, but the teacher still needs to go in and listen to the student recordings outside of school.  There is a $99/year subscription for the more useful Premium version, which allows the teacher to score and comment on the student recordings.  I think I'll stick with RAZ-Kids.  Students can record in this app, have access to leveled books, work with comprehension questions, earn stars to create robots . . .

I was trying to work with an app called Math Trail, which combined geography exploration and math, which looked pretty useful, but when I signed up, no trails showed as available to me.  No explanation, so I didn't get to try anything.

For the apps, the free versions can be frustrating and costs for upgraded versions are prohibitive.

For extensions I liked Snagit which I have been playing with for screencasting, and the  goo.gl URL shortener (although I'm not quite sure how it works).  I loaded Lastpass, but heard on the radio a week or so ago that they were hacked ;)  Lastly, I really like the Google translate option for ELL students.  To be able to create directions and questions in more than one language could be valuable, but, again, time consuming to create materials for students to use.

For Add-Ons I explored Gmath.  I create a lot of math materials for students but often have difficulty formatting math expressions.  This tool takes care of that pretty easily.  Google Translate also is an extension, very handy to have available write in the documents being created.

I can get lost in trying things out, burning a lot of time exploring individual apps, extensions, and add-ons.  I hope to become more efficient with these in the future.