TOOL #9

I think it is a silly question to ask why it is important to tie technology to the objective.  If a teacher is asking students to do a task or learn a skill, there needs to be a reason for it (a.k.a. objective).  There are too many aps on the itouch that claim to be educational, yet really don't require any cognitive actions.  So that connects to the second question about why hold students accountable for activities they do in centers.  Today's 5th grade students are savvy enough to get out of doing work or looking like they are busy while playing, so that is just one more reason to make sure they are accountable for their learning while they have fun. 

I always have thought that rubrics were the best way to assess center work but this year I want to try to do menus like the math teachers did last year.  Judy and I already discussed how we can use them in literacy centers.  When I was a math teacher, practing skills and problem solving in centers was easy to create an answer she I could check later, but with literacy activities creating an "answer sheet" is not easy and definitely not as fun.

I checked out several different websites listed on the 11 tools lists like http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/, but all of the capital matching and speling activites seemed too easy for my students so I am still looking for ideas.  The great thing about teaching 5th grade is that I an actually assign my students to surf the web and give me one or two ideasfor content related cites that I can then post for my students to do as homework or in centers. 

I did find some cool aps to add to the ipads on a cite called http://www.tabletpcreview.com/.  For example, here is one of the aps described below that looks perfect for us to use in the spring.

Civil War: America's Epic Struggle ($4.99)

History is one relatively under-served area in the App Store, though MultiEducator is aiming to change that with a large variety of apps that include a wealth of information about various periods in history. One of the first is Civil War: America's Epic Struggle and it does contain a great deal of material, from maps and photos to summaries of key battles and biographies of famous generals on both sides of the conflict.

The sidebar on the left organizes the information into categories, and a search bar at the top helps you to find what you're looking for fast. I found everything to be well organized, and the articles are interesting and informative. The rather text-heavy app is livened up by timelines, photos, multimedia presentations, and even recordings of music made popular during the Civil War.