Holiday Wiz Quiz by Applicable2U

Holiday Wiz Quiz

by Simul Consulting Corp.

As we near the holiday season there are characters and songs that many individuals will recall and traditions that are repeated each December.  Whether you are a child or an adult, we all know Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Christmas elves and the variety of decorations that are shared for all to see.  Who knew that these things could be interconnected with academic skills.  Simul Consulting Corp recently launched a special Christmas edition of Holiday Wiz Quiz.  This engaging, colorful resource will stimulate your child(ren) or student(s) ages 4-8 years.  By playing this educational app, your  child will be academically preparing themselves as they enter their school years and engage in learning with the help of seasonal connections.  With your trial download of Holiday Wiz Quiz, your wiz kid can explore 40 questions on the go via your iphone, itouch or ipad device running iOS3.2 or later.  Applicable2U highly recommends gaming for a reason and Holiday Wiz Quiz is guaranteed to do just that.  As your child(ren) or student(s) games for a reason they will be developing such things as their logical reasoning, spelling and math skills.

With their eye catching owl all decked out for the holidays, quiz takers will be supported in a number of ways.  As the developers have indicated, this is an educational app for children as young as four, however, there may be some learners that need parental guidance as well.  Applicable2u was impressed to see how they have incorporated verbal and pictorial directions, various types of reinforcements, and hints. Quizzes are made up of 20 multiple choice questions. Questions will be read aloud, however, if after hearing it your child needs it repeated, simply click the repeat button at the top of the page.  Like any MCAS, SAT or state exam, children are expected to review each answer.  There will be obvious incorrect answers, however, if one is chosen, the holiday owl will give a hint.  After reading the hint, a second chance will be provided.  It is important to note that the more frequently the owl supports your child, their final test results may be lowered.  A note to the developers - when hints are needed, is it possible to have those hints read aloud.  Or even for the developing reader, could they tap on each word as it is announced.  To visually guide your child along the road to success, the holiday owl will travel a 1-20 number line at the bottom of their screen. At the completion of each quiz, stars will have been earned and a report will be generated for the benefit of a parent or teacher.  These reports will provide both recent scores and an average of all your quiz experiences.  It will share their total score, how long it took to complete, the number of correct answers, how many times a second chance was given and those incorrect answers.  Quizzes can be repeated and new reports will be generated.

As you and your child experience the trial version, Applicable2U is certain that you will want to update your trial to the full version through an in-app purchase.  In the updated version, users will now have access to close to 300 multiple choice questions. An additional to note to the developers – might it be possible to offer multiple accounts within the full version?  This would be an added support for parents with multiple children, teachers and homeschoolers.  This time of the year is a very exciting one, why not maintain that excitement as they build their confidence as they play, learn or reinforce a great deal of academic and high order thinking skills.  To learn more about Simul Consulting Corp, please visit their website here.  To begin your trial today of Holiday Wiz Quiz click hereto add to your iTunes library.

Reviewers website: www.applicable2u.wordpress.com

Lorax Garden

App Title: Lorax Garden (app review by 7 year old first grade students)
Grade Level: Elementary (all ages)

My students have been interested in sharing their opinions about some of our apps. Before school was out this year, I had them write the what, why and how of their favorite apps. The Lorax Garden (Dr. Seuss!) was featured as one of Apple’s Earth Day apps. What a find! And just in time for our Natural Resources focus in science.
I would recommend this app for anyone. It’s a great companion to the book, The Lorax. Contributors to this review are: Jack, Nate, Daven, Trent, Joseph, Caleb, and Ethan. Thanks guys!

Purpose: A   You will learn that water helps trees grow. If you water trees, you will help them grow and help the earth.

Program Functionality: A  You get to plant trees and flowers. The trees come out of a machine. When you grow flowers you get hearts. The hearts help the truffula trees grow, then you put it in the forest. When your forest is finished, you can get to another level. On the levels, push continue and have fun.

Overall Educational Value: A  When you start learning about plants and natural resources it is good to play this game then. It feels exciting to help the earth.

Cost: $1.99
Developer Website: Oceanhouse Media
iTunes Link: Click here!
Reviewer Name: Carolyn Wojtera
Reviewer Blog: Teach with Tech

Chore Pad - Get to Work!

App Title: Chore Pad

Grade Level: 6+ years

Purpose: Track Chore Completion

Program Functionality: This app is extremely easy to use. You can easily create users that can stored in the app. You can also assign saved tasks to each user, ranging from one to countless tasks they need to complete. Each chore can be assigned a value and an icon for easy tracking. You can also assign rewards for each user when they reach a certain amount of attained points (points attained by chore completion). Tracking who got the reward already is easily found in the payout history of the app.

Overall Educational Value: I assume this app was created to be used at home with parents and their children, but it nicely works in the classroom environment.

Cost: Free (Lite), $2.99

Recommendation: This is a must for anyone trying to manage classroom job assignments.

Classroom Use Examples / Ideas: I use this app every day in my classroom. Each student is assigned a class job for 2 weeks. One of the jobs is for an acctual student to track who has completed their job on this app. This really puts the majority of the responsibility in the hands of the students. Students will check in with my assigned "Chore Checker" to show that their job for the day is completed. At the end of the week I can look back to see if someone is completing their job every day.


iTunes Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chore-pad-lite/id412811415?mt=8
 
Reviewer Name: Ian Snyder

Reviewer Blog: http://ateachr.blogspot.com/

My Pictures Talks

App Title: My Pictures Talk

Grade Level: Any

Purpose: A - Think "Photo Story 3 meets the iOS." A simple to use slideshow creation tool. 

Program Functionality: B+ - I really like how easy it ease to create a new slideshow. It's simple to pull in pics or video synched to your device or use your devices camera (hopefully iPad2's also?) to add. It's also incredibly easy to add text and audio directly on to slides. The only drawback is, once you finish a slide, you are directed back to the slideshow home page to create a new page. I would love to see a "save and make new slide" button. Files are also shared as a zip file, not as a movie.

Overall Educational Value: A - The app bills itself as a "video modeling tool." Our original purpose for this app was exactly that - using it with special education students to work on video modeling. But the app is so flexible, I could see it being used for a LOT of different purposes in the elementary classroom.

Cost: $9.99 ($4.99 if you buy 20 in Apple's VPP)

Classroom Use/Ideas: Again, the flexibility of this tool is amazing and really only limits you to your imagination. Combining real pictures or video with the text and audio can be huge for the special education student needing extra guidance or any student wanting to share what they know. And all of the creation can be done on the iOS device.

iTunes link: My Pictures Talk

Reviewer: Josh Allen

Blog: The Tech Fridge

More Pizza! and More Toast! by Kathy Burdick

Name of app: More Pizza! and More Toast!
Grade levels: K-5
Free or Fee: .99
Rating: 4/5
Company: Maverick Software
Why you like it: These two apps are by the same developer so I am reviewing them together as either will work in the classroom. The apps may seem pointless - one gets to make their own toast or pizza by choosing the ingredients they want. However, this make a great pre-write activitiy when used in teaching students how to write a how-to or procedural paper and what is the best is -  there is no classroom mess!  So have students write step-by-step the steps they took to make their toast or their pizza. Way cool!

Reviewer website: Mobile iEducator (http://mobileieducator.com/)

iPads, New to our District

I am excited to join this community and learning how more people use these type of devices within their classrooms.  My district just recently purchased 20 iPads for use throughout our building.  For us, a K-8 building with only 8 to 15 students per grade and 84 total student population, this is a great chance to use something other than a text book, because in theory every student can have one right in front of them during the entire class.  I, being the "techie" of the group, decided to really pursue them being used.  That led me to this site and to Mr. Meech. 

I would love to hear from anyone who uses the iPod or iPad technology in their classroom.  At this time, we have three of thirteen teachers using them on a weekly basis in their classroom.  Not bad for us, but I want to see more.  I look forward to posting more about our experience here and learning from everyone within this community.

Alien Equation

App Title: Alien Equation

Grade Level: 3rd - 6th grades

Cost: $0.99

Purpose: A 

As the old adage says, practice does indeed make perfect. Learning and mastering basic math facts is a necessary skill, evil or not, for everyone early on in their schooling.  However, mastering these necessary skills isn’t always the easiest of tasks for some students.  While some students seem to be born knowing their basic math facts inside and out and some even pick up on how to form and solve equations almost immediately, other students need plenty of practice. 

For those students and teachers looking for an engaging, more challenging way to not only test their mathematical expertise, but their ability to form equations as well, Alien Equation by Funner Labs, offers an interactive interface that is both fun and educational.  Designed to improve one’s understanding, cohesion, and fluency in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, Alien Equation offers three levels of play; beginner, expert and practice levels so students can feel comfortable and not pressured and develop at their own pace.

The storyline behind the game is based on the fact that the navigation computer on your spaceship has a virus and if you re-teach the computer math it will save the day rather than having it shut down with the inevitable destruction of your planet. The storyline itself can be interesting enough for students and draw them into the game.

Program Functionality: A

This mathematical game is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.  It is user-friendly and easily navigated by students. The game begins with a brief tutorial that takes you through the basics of the game play. The game is played on a grid comprised of numbers and operators which you can move horizontally and vertically to completely form valid equations.  By moving the rows and columns you can align the numbers and operators to form these valid equations and each time you complete one your progress bar will fill up across the bottom of the screen, complete the progress bar and you complete the level. As you progress the board will also get larger and larger in that there will be more tiles available making more options available.

Each level introduces a new operator to the puzzle board and each time you complete a level the board will be updated with an additional operator until you have addition, subtraction, multiplication and division all available for you to calculate with. Filling your progress bar, along with the points you get each time you complete a calculation are your only targets. However as you get through the earlier stages of the beginner levels or immediately as you start the expert levels, viruses start to be introduced and they add an extra level of difficulty to the game. Some of the viruses prevent the tiles from being moved while other will get more and more aggressive and if you leave them untouched for too long they will eventually explode taking your computer and your spaceship with it. In addition to the difficulty levels, there is also a practice mode that allows you to choose which operators are used and allowing you to isolate certain ones if you want to focus on them.

Overall Educational Value: A

With such a progressive way of adding new challenges, offering a storyline as a ‘reason’ for them to practice their math skills, and being engaging, students are able to learn at their own pace and improve their skills while having fun at the same time.

Recommendation:

I recommend this app for both classroom and personal use at this time.

Classroom Use Examples / Ideas:

This application can easily be assimilated into the classroom as a way for students to practice the mathematical concept in a visual and entertaining way or use it as ‘homework for added practice.

Developer Website: Funner Labs
iTunes Link: Alien Equation
Reviewer Name: Cheryl Lykowski