Educreations in Math

Technology is a part of our math workshop every day. Everyone seems to look forward to going to the Technology station (there are four stations: Meet with the Teacher, All by Myself, Technology, and Hands On). The technology station activities are on both the iPads and the computers in our classroom. It's been a while since students used the Educreations app, but they were invited today (and for some, tomorrow) to use this powerful demonstration app to teach about something they know in math--fact strategies, how to use function machines, and several other topics were suggested.

It's fun to listen to students' creations later on and to notice how much they take in during our math mini-lessons. It can be hard to tell sometimes whether or not students are truly "getting it" as I teach, but when I see/hear them teaching about how to use a function machine, use doubles facts to figure out other math facts, etc. it makes it clear that those light bulbs are indeed turning on! More importantly, students enjoy creating these tutorials and showing what they know.

In the past, I've had students use this app at home to create short teaching tutorials and then email them to me. If your family has an iPad, I'd encourage you to allow your child to use this free app to create something.

If you'd like to see some of the latest Educreations lessons, please visit the iPad tab at the top of this blog: http://mrssorensonfirstgrade.blogspot.com/p/ipad.html. I will keep updating it as we go!

Check out this student iPad lesson!

One of our wonderful first graders created this wonderful water cycle lesson on her own at home. We have used the iPad app Educreations quite a bit in class, and soon students will be creating their own lessons on our iPads at school to share about something they've learned. I was so happy to receive this in my inbox last week! (I'm also glad to see that the water cycle song was a very effective teaching tool!)

Magnets and the scientific method

Check out what we did with our iPad today!

Miss a math lesson? Check this out!

I keep finding incredible applications to use on the iPad, and there are some neat things to come in first grade using the iPads (STUDENTS using them, not just me!). Educreations is my latest find. I was playing around with it today and thought about two recent math lessons--Name Collection Boxes and Fact Families. We had a lot of illness in our classroom a couple weeks ago and several students missed these main lessons. I made a couple of short tutorial videos on the iPad, which I've embedded below. I am eager to have students be the voice on videos like this...showing something they know, explaining their thinking...the possibilities are endless!

(Press the Play arrow to see the "videos.")