Week Four Review:
TechEDGE: Mobile Learning in the Classroom
TechEDGE is a wonderful resource for students and teachers. This group has shared over 200 podcasts on YouTube, each about 5-10 minutes in length and full of app recommendations and classroom management tools. TechEDGE's goal is to create a new generation of tech-savvy teachers, educators who can keep up with their students in a globally connected, modern world.
Being a social studies emphasis, I chose to watch the "History Apps" podcast. It was very straightforward, listing helpful and classroom-friendly apps, their strengths, and comparing their differences. I personally downloaded three of these apps and have explored them in order to evaluate the recommendations given by TechEDGE.
Being a social studies emphasis, I chose to watch the "History Apps" podcast. It was very straightforward, listing helpful and classroom-friendly apps, their strengths, and comparing their differences. I personally downloaded three of these apps and have explored them in order to evaluate the recommendations given by TechEDGE.
Two of the apps that I downloaded were Khan Academy and History Atlas.
Khan Academy "allows you to learn almost anything for free." It is an app full of how to videos and podcasts in numerous subjects and sub-topics. In the History section, Khan Academy offers virtual tours of ancient cities and general overviews of history in addition to descriptions and analysis of specific events in time. A student or teacher would have an easy time finding helpful and insightful information on certain subjects from this app. It could also be used collectively by a class studying a certain place or time period. Exploring the same map or city at the same time could turn into a virtual field trip.
|
History Atlas offers a "pinchable, zoomable timeline [that] gives you instantaneous access to anywhere in history." By choosing a region or location, it is possible to scroll forward and backwards in time and see how cultures, people, empires, and power have all shifted and changed. The location also lists facts about the time period being shown. This app will help students grasp the concept of change and its inevitability. No matter how vast or great a place may seem or may have been, the locations we know today will continue to change, as they have always been changing. It would be interesting to give an assignment on one location and multiple time periods to see how different aspects of the geographical location affected the culture and the people living there.
|