I’ve been using the Lego Movie Maker app with our students for a while now.
The app is free (yipee!) and although it’s a bit clunky in places it’s proven a real hit with children from ages 6-14.
If you do any stop motion animation on the iPad or iPhone give it a go. And feel free to download the manual I put together for our school.
I saw the Socrative student polling app demonstrated at the Music Ednet ‘Daytime‘ music conference.
Socrative is free (basic use) and consists of a teacher module where quizzes, questionnaires and resource materials are assembled and a class module where students logon (via the website or app) to take part in the poll.
Our demonstration had us answering questions about our music-technology abilities and our involvement in courses focusing on scoring for movies.
The app worked flawlessly, updating voting / scoring in real time.
Once home I tried out the teacher app (on iPad) and found it to be easy to use if perhaps a little bare-bones.
Socrative should prove useful in any curriculum area and could be used to gain student feedback, test basic concepts or administer assessment tasks.
The app provides a range of reports and the option for responses to remain anonymous. The help facilities are impressive, with a free pdf manual to make operation and quiz creation painless. Personally I liked the idea of the ‘Space Race’ the best; students are placed in teams which compete to race across the screen. Huge fun!
First term is program writing term. With existing courses in desperate need of alignment, I used the information on the Australian Curriculum site to create a short, easy to read summaries of the relevant Music Skills & Knowledge and Drama Skills & Knowledge. The summaries are in pdf format; contact me for the editable Word documents.
