Rather than typing a comment to discuss and review a few of my favourite apps, I thought I’d post a short screen recording and chat about them: http://youtu.be/yoiaoihTPrw?hd=1 The apps discussed are: Thicket – A free interactive gesture based audio creation app. 123D Sculpt – A free 3D sculpting app. Leafsnap – A free interactive field […]
Continue reading iOS Edu Apps Worth Checking Out Posted in: Week 05:
Grockit, Founded by Farb Nivi. This is a Social Learning Company that is sure to continue to succeed. Grockit offers a wide variety of services and has a strong management team…
Continue reading Grockit, the Social Learning Company Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
I appreciate reading about companies, founded by educators for educators. I see that there approach is to provide a review for specific tests, what appears mostly are university level, with some 7-12. In your research, I was wondering how the social aspect functions within this environment?
Secondly, as seen in other posts. I appreciate people from the education world, going forth with their ideas, teachers helping teachers, instead of non-educationally formed companies trying to cash in on our already limited budgets. What are your thoughts regarding the potential success of this company? Are they providing a unique service, or simply an old service packaged in a new way?
Thoughts?
Tom,
I think the biggest social aspect comes in the form of the group study sessions, collaboration, and competition as students work through the materials. There are SAT prep materials and other standardized assessment. There are grades k-12, Virtual School materials, included AP course materials.
So far the company is looking very strong. Their latest launch, Learnist, looks to be a Pinterest style of learning. I have not loaded the app yet, so I can’t be certain. The company lists some of its investors here: https://grockit.com/about_us. They claim to be the world’s fastest growing online test prep for students.
There have been other test-prep services in the past. I think that Grockit is trying to take a new approach at the way test-prep has taken place and trying to match the social focus that has been surging in the past few years.
Thank you for furthering my understanding regarding the service, greatly appreciated.
As well, you mention “competition”… What does that look like inside of Grockit?
I’m not entirely sure how this looks. I did here in the video that students can earn points, badges, and connect with Facebook. I think in this sense and maybe in the quizzes or study sessions they may be able to compete. Again, I am not certain how this works from a user standpoint. Hope this info addresses your question.
More than addresses, thank you for the information. I realize, it is not what we are entirely supposed to be focussing on for this portion of the assignment. It is just that my inquisitive nature took over.
Well, well – this is an intriguing product! I took time to view your posted Grockit video. Very impressive. The product seems to offer so much it was difficult to keep track. A long elevator pitch, but well produced and I had to watch it all. My biggest concerns I guess, for deciding whether I would invest in this product or not – you mention that the company began in 2006. It is now 6 years later, and I have never heard of Grockit before now. Why not?
Peggy
Good point Peggy about the video…it was actually a marketing commercial so it was longer than an elevator pitch. I’m not sure how popular it is in Canada since many of the standardized tests may be for university entrance in the USA. It is funny how ed tech works, I have been teaching in Canada for almost 10 years and I only heard of Moodle last year. Of course now I know how huge they are. It is always surprising when we find out about a technology and it already has millions of users. That just proves how big the market really is.
Ken
The NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition aims to provide an overview of the top trends of today and predict what will be coming on the ‘horizon”. The report was completed with the help of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the EDUCAUSE Program. The use of the report is granted under a Creative Commons […]
Continue reading The NMC 2012 Horizon Report Posted in: Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
I find the comment you made in your final paragraph, regarding the speed at which some of these technologies are adopted by districts to be very powerful. For myself, districts are both an educational, political, and legal entity, all of which sometimes bogs down the system creating a delay in the large scale implementation of these services. Conversely, teachers within those districts could implement change more quickly, but might run the risk of creating controversy with either fellow teachers or the district itself, if they adopt unsanctioned technology.
Furthermore, the speed of implementation in some cases is so great, that by the time the technology is adopted, it is usually out of date, which creates further implementation issues for other technology initiatives.
Thoughts?
Great point. It seems that while the advancements in hardware and software may be increasing according to Moore’s law, our educational infrastructure is having a hard time meeting demands. It seems to all come down to funding… Or perhaps it might be the fact that Moore’s law has been turned into More law by the corporate giants through a design for the dumps approach to satisfy consumer demands. Take a look at this video to find out how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78
James
I thought that this report gave a great overview of several technologies and broad technological ideas for implementation in education. it also gave excellent examples of the educational use and purposes of such technologies and provided great specific examples of technologies that are in current use or are being developed. I very much agree with you that this was an easy read that provided a lot of information and in the future can be used by educators such as myself to get quick access to ideas in time for the technology to be relevant.
I greatly appreciated your review of the NMC Report. I also reviewed it, and felt it was eye-opening. Like you, I started to follow links and started to download apps. Are there any things that you are already using or know that others are using? I’m trying to find a good way to keep track of all the links that I pursue in readings and even categories for new apps. Perhaps there is an app for doing that? I sympathize with your last comments, since many public high schools will likely not adopt many of these things. The same goes for higher ed. However, I do believe that there are elements of this report that can be implemented in small-scale ways, (especially apps).
Thanks Eva,
I have used Delicious as one way to track links that I like. I have even created a Google doc for my own use where I copy & paste links and ideas. There are other ways to find similar links as well. You can use Twitter and follow other educators that you know have similar interests or concerns. This may help you as you build your list of resources to check out. The problem is that there is always something new, that is why I think this report and others like it are so important.
Very good review. I agree that many of us tend to rely on other teachers and ed. tech. specialist for information on the ed. tech. market. This is only natural; other teachers and ed. tech. professionals in our circles are great resources. However, as you have pointed out, reports like this make the search for information easier. It also provides us with additional credible ammunition. As a decision maker, a valid concern in this technologically dynamic environment is purchasing technology now that will become obsolete within the next second. While this report does not solve this concern and this maybe nothing will, it is provides decision makers with a tool that they can consult. Great that it is under a Creative Commons License.
Thanks Sophiabb, I think that the investment and length of time the technology will be in use is a major concern for the purchasers in education. The course ETEC 520 is a great course (if you haven’t already taken it) to help one deal with how these decisions are made.
After reading your post, I took a closer look at the NMC Report and had to agree that this was an easy-to-read report that could come in very handy for future technological requests. I also thought it was useful how they had created a “Relevance for Teaching, Learning, or Creative Inquiry”section that helped relate the projected technologies to these ideas. I found when reading through some of the research reports or market projections many of the technologies were interesting but I couldn’t always think of a way I could use them in my teaching.
You stated in your last paragraph that many school districts were behind in technology movements. Sometimes, even within a school district you will see a big discrepancy. My middle school is 4 years old and we have a lot of new technology within the building. We have also asked for certain things and have gotten them. A colleague of mine recently moved to a high school within the district and she couldn’t believe how many devices they didn’t have. I guess there are different priorities and use of funds at various schools.
Thanks Lisa,
We have the same issue in our district where some schools have and some do not. We also have the problem where we have some schools that have allowed certain products (Apple computers as an example) and other schools being told that they won’t be supported by the same centralized IT department. Very frustrating.
I agree that the “Relevance for Teaching, …” section was a nice feature.
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teacherben 7:09 pm on October 4, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Nice list. The Autodesk 123D apps are great. There are desktop version for some of those too, but it’s nice to see some good content creation tools finally coming to these handheld devices to challenge the notion that they are only really consumption devices. I only just read about move the turtle this morning from the Geekdad blog on Wired. I wish I had an iPad to try it on (still waiting for my budget stuff to get processed:(
Here’s a list of IOS apps for education that another tech guy in my school sent around a couple weeks ago. There are some good things on it:
http://www.tcea.org/ipad
stammik 11:32 am on October 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’m a big fan of the Geekdad blog as well, along with Wired in general, for tech news. Flipboard and Zite are my picks for Apps that aggregate news feeds, to try and keep up on these rapidly changing topics. Truth be told however, my teenage students are my best resource – I learn so much from them!
Jonathan 7:52 pm on October 4, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Just bought Move the Turtle and I’m loving it! I’ll have to spend more time on it– might bring it into the iPads at school 🙂 I like the programs that teacher basics of computer programming. Teaches so many different concepts while trying to learn to program. Scratch is a good example of this for sure.
Thanks for the list.
kstackhouse 11:07 am on October 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is great! Thank you for sharing. I think that the tree id app is great. When I was little my Dad asked if I could name the trees we saw while driving….”Of course I can, ” I replied. “Bob, Mark, Jessie, ….” He got a good laugh over that. I wasn’t trying to be funny i didn’t know what they were. Maybe this will help. 🙂
sophiabb 7:02 pm on October 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Love the list. I will be purchasing “Move the Turtle”. Let’s see what my kids and I can come up with.
melissaayers 5:35 am on October 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great format/video for posting your thoughts thanks Scott!
Lisa Nevoral 2:26 pm on October 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Scott,
Great idea to use a YouTube video as your response. Very original and awesome use of technology!
To add to Scott’s comments, I will review a couple more of the apps that were suggested this week by the Apps OER team.
Periodic Table App – At first I thought this app was too simplistic, but then I thought about what it supposed to do. It is to teach it’s users about the periodic table. There were some great features such as a quiz on naming elements, abbreviations of elements, and atomic #s. As well, there was a description of each element as well as a sound byte of each element name. There was a video chemistry section that explained more information than what would be found on the periodic table. What I would like to see as a link or add on that helps learners in naming compounds and formulas. Maybe I should make an app for that…
RealCalc – I really liked this calculator app. Student’s don’t need to go out and buy another instrument (ie. calculator) since they can use this on their IPhones, IPads, Androids, etc… I guess the next question is if teachers will allow them to be in the classrooms. I have had many debates with colleagues about students being allowed to bring mobile devices into the classroom. This is at the middle school level.
Lisa
Ranvir 7:47 am on October 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Scott, i really liked the short and snappy review of the educational apps you showed in the video. I am planning on using some of these for my 8 yr old to supplement classroom education. i am going to try LeafSnap today as that is an excellent example of how you can use something like google goggles to learn nature. finally, thanks for sharing the ipad apps list as it seems to be invaluable resource as well.
stammik 5:03 pm on October 9, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for your positive feedback Ranvir!