Architory - History of Western Architecture App for Students

For those with an interest in Architecture but don't know where to begin, there is a handy architecture app for use iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

Architory - History of Western Architecture is a reference app that efficiently indexes hundreds of architects, buildings and their locations along with thousands of photos and concise, informative descriptions about each entry. 

Squarely aimed at 1st year Architecture students; Architory introduces student to notable architects throughout history and explains the importance of their works and various styles. From Andrea Palladio to Frank Lloyd Wright; the Renaissance to the modern era, Architory guides you thru a sea of information and organizes it into easily digestible chunks for better memory retention. 

Architory, also offers a helpful glossary of architectural terms, their definitions and relevant images. In addition, Architory educational app gives student the ability to read the Twitter streams of the most popular Architecture-related blogs. No need to have a Twitter account, student can just tap on one of the blogs on the list (or add your own), sit back and catch-up on the latest architectural news or info being shared and discussed. As you learn about Architecture's past, you can keep up-to-date on today's events and issues that will no doubt affect Architecture's future.

Architory, is an app for architecture student and will help those that need a quick introduction to Architecture to help familiarize with notable architects of the past and their works in the shortest amount of time. Architory will also support student looking to create a solid foundation and broader understanding of architectural history. Architecture students will find this app useful and like its quick and easy accessibility to the most pertinent information.

TumbleBooks ToGo Munsch 6-Pack

App Title: TumbleBooks ToGo Munsch 6-Pack Grade Level: Pre-K - Grade 3 Description:

At the heart of early literacy experience is the storybook, which marks the young children’s entrée into literacy around the world. Its powerful role in literacy development is well documented in family literacy and early education. A staple of the bedtime (or nap) routine, the storybook shared between adult and child mediates what Don Holdaway referred to as an emerging literacy set: high expectations of print; models of book language; familiarity with written symbols; print conventions; listening skills; and de-contextualizing abilities (e.g., imaging) (Holdaway, 1979). Substantial research supports the claim that storybook reading prepares children for the learn-to-read process (Bus, 2001).

Roskos, K., & Brueck, J. (2009). The eBook as a Learning Object in an Online World. In A. Bus & S. Neuman (Eds.), Multimedia and Literacy Development (77-88). New York: Routeledge.

TumbleBooks is a popular eBook provider to schools and libraries across the country. Their TumbleBooks Library, an online collection of animated, talking picture books offers over 300 titles for elementary age children to access. Recently, TumbleBooks has launched a mobile arm, TumbleBooks ToGo. From the TumbleBooks website:

TumbleBooks are animated, talking picture books that feature text, narration, animation, and sentence highlighting! They make reading accessible and fun, and are a great tool for early readers seeking to improve their reading skills. 

TumbleBooks is the leading publisher of online interactive animated picture books for children. Tumblebooks have been enjoyed by children for over ten years and currently distributed through over 10,000 schools and libraries across North America. TumbleBooks are created from existing picture books from North America's biggest and best children's publishers such as Chronicle Books, Charlesbridge Press, Annick Press, Simon and Schuster, and many others.

Robert Munsch is the author of over 50 popular, children's books including I Have To Go!, Thomas' Snowsuit and Love You Forever. His stories have delighted children, parents and educators for over 30 years. In the TumbleBooks ToGo Munsch 6-Pack for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, users are presented with an opportunity to experience 6 classic Munsch titles in one tidy little app. Stories included in this app are: 50 Below Zero, The Fire Station, Wait and See, Pigs, Something Good and Mud Puddle. All the stories in this app are read by the author himself!

Purpose: A

The electronic equivalent of the storybook is the eBook and it is proliferating as a reading source for young children in a media-saturated world. Most major publishing houses, and many major libraries now offer eBook collections for young children. eBooks, like those available in the TumbleBooks ToGo Munsch 6-Pack app offer a completely new reading environment for early reading experiences at a very young age.

Program Functionality: C

The downfall of this app lies within this category. Subscribers to the TumbleBooks Library will be familiar with the TumblePad, which provides basic "player" type features such as PLAY/PAUSE button, FORWARD/BACK buttons, MUTE and an AUTOMATIC/MANUAL mode. When using automatic mode, eBook pages turn by themselves while they are narrated. Manual mode deactivates the narration and allows young readers to turn the pages on their own.

Unfortunately, users of the TumbleBooks ToGo Munsch 6-Pack app will not find these TumblePad features available. Instead, all six storybooks play much like a Quicktime movie would. While PLAY/PAUSE is possible, there is no way to turn the pages. Also, the AUTOMATIC/MANUAL modes and MUTE features are noticeably missing from the app. One prime feature that the app does retain, is the highlighting of the text that is being read. In this case, each sentence read is highlighted. If the full features of TumblePad were incorporated into TumbleBooks mobile apps, I would be willing to consider a higher rating in this category.

Overall Educational Value: B

Reading aloud to children at an early age is important for the development of reading skills. Children with strong reading habits and access to books at home often learn to read at an earlier age, which can lead to more success in school. With the addition of TumbleBooks ToGo into the literacy environment, a new take on a sound pedagogy will provide valuable learning experiences for children both in the classroom and at home.

Recommendation: I recommend this app for personal use and school use at this time. I feel this app would be most appropriate to supplement or enhance classroom instruction. Children will benefit from teacher or adult modeling of use, but most early elementary students should be able to operate independently after their first interaction with the app.

Classroom Use Examples / Ideas: Reading aloud good books is both a tradition and favorite activity in the classroom. Developing background knowledge, increasing comprehension skills, and fostering critical thinking are all important reasons to incorporate the read aloud strategy in your classroom. Additionally, teachers can model the use of reading strategies that aid in comprehension for their students during a read aloud session.

TumbleBooks ToGo Munsch 6-Pack is the perfect app for teachers to use with students as a follow-up to their traditional read aloud session. I'd recommend reading one of the six titles in a whole or small group setting with your students. Follow-up this read aloud experience with independent re-readings of the corresponding title from the Munsch 6-Pack. Research has shown that independent reading builds fluency, leads to increased vocabulary development and builds background knowledge.

Cost: $5.99

Developer Website: http://www.tumblebookstogo.com/

iTunes Link: Click Here

Be sure to check out our Ning (Online Community) devoted to helping teachers utilize iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad to the their fullest. Please leave a comment if you agree, disagree, or have other creative uses for this app in the classroom or at home. Cross-posted at IEAR.org

IEAR Tips and Tricks #5

A few weekends ago my wife's parents were in town visiting for the weekend. During that time, our 3 year old son was eager to show his Nana and grandpa a few of his favorite apps on his iPod Touch. One of those apps was YouTube. He loves to watch videos of some of his favorite Nick Jr. shows. Usually, I use the SEARCH feature of YouTube to try and filter out irrelevant videos.

However, as my father-in-law quickly found out, that doesn't help in filtering inappropriate content. Take a look at these search results for Blue's Clues. The top results turn out to be actual episode content, but as you scroll down the list, you really begin to run into some objectionable content. Take a quick look at this clip which has been viewed over a million times. [WARNING! Explicit Song Lyrics]

After grandpa and the 3 year old watched that, you can probably imagine the issue that quickly arose in our house. While I'm not normally a proponent of blocking websites, I have to take issue with YouTube and the type of material that is available for children to access very easily. Gangta Blues Clues and material like it are not appropriate material for my 3 year old to be watching, so my wife and I felt that we needed to remove YouTube from all our iDevices.

With most iDevice apps, you can add or delete easily through the iTunes interface or by pressing and holding the app on the iDevice for about 5 seconds. Once you've done this, you can use the X in the upper left hand corner to delete the unwanted app. However, this is not the case with YouTube and other Apple provided built-in apps like Safari and iTunes.

Thankfully, there is a way to hide those native apps from use by your children or student though. To do so, you need to begin by accessing the SETTINGS menu. Next, locate and select the GENERAL menu. If you scroll down the menu a bit, you will find the RESTRICTIONS menu. By default this setting is off, however, by clicking on it, you can set an administrative pass code for the device and then pick and choose the restrictions you'd like to apply to your iDevice by sliding the ON/OFF buttons. In this case, we are going to turn YouTube off. Exit the SETTINGS menu by using the home button on your iDevice and when you return to your apps, you'll see that YouTube is no longer accessible on the iDevice. No more Gangsta Blues Clues, which is great!

While this option solves our problem of children accessing inappropriate content, it also limits the educational potential of iDevices. I think it would be great if Apple and YouTube could work to develop some type of parental controls for iDevices so that parents and teachers don't have to block the app entirely. There is valuable content on YouTube, but the bottom line is I can't take the risk as a parent or teacher of children coming into repeated contact with inappropriate content like Gangsta Blues Clues.

This has been another I Education Apps Review Tips & Tricks episode. I’m Jeremy Brueck from brueckei.org  where we are dedicated to helping educators meet the changing demands of 21st Century teaching and learning.

Be sure to check out our Ning (Online Community) devoted to helping teachers utilize iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad to the their fullest. Please leave a comment if you agree, disagree, or have other creative uses for this app in the classroom or at home.



Learning with the IPhone at NECC and WWII memorial

Helen Crompton posted in our NING community about a session that she attended at the National Education Computing Conference.  She has given me permission to post this as a blog entry here as well... 

... For the session we had to have phone with internet connection. The session began with a quick history of the WWII memorial the design and some opposition incountered towards the memorial. As a quick overview we were then given a leaflet that told us to go to certain parts of the memorial, when we reached those parts we looked at our leaflet, read the short information there, then used the program Scanlife on our phones to scan the code for that section in our leaflets. The code took us to a web page or a sound file etc. giving us more details about that part of the monument.

While we were doing this there were a group of students being lectured to by a tour guide and they were more interested in what we were doing with the phones.

We have iTouches in school and I could download the app, they could then connect to the local wifi. I could use this to send the students off on a tour in the classroom getting them to work through problems on many subjects. If they went on a tour to the museum I could plan beforehand, they could find the artifacts and after scanning they could find out further information, or even listen to me as I tell them that they need to pay particular attention to.

I could go on forever with tasks I can set with this tool. Even young children could use this tool and it could connect to sound files.

- Hellen Crompton

Thanks Helen...