Originally posted by Kim Ducharme on February 10, 2019
Have you ever wondered if there was a better way to learn math and physics than through text books and tests? Meet the Noticing Tools suite of apps — a great use of mobile technology for teaching middle and high school students how to notice and actively understand the world around them through the lens of science. The apps were created by Local Projects in collaboration with the New York Hall of Science.
The apps
Playground Physics: This app allows students to take videos of each other running, jumping, swinging, and skateboarding, etc. Then, by tracing the lines on the screen, you can calculate their speed, force, and energy to discover and analyze physics principles at work.
Choreo Graph: Students play with graphs and geometry to create fun and funny choreography for animated characters.
Fraction Mash: Students can create crazy photo mash-ups by playing with fractions.
Size Wise: Here students can explore ratios and proportions and make objects look wildly bigger and smaller than their actual size.
Volumize: This app lets students to take 2D photos into 3D modeling canvas to explore the relationship between surface area and volume.
Picture dots: An open-ended discovery tool the helps students notice patterns and tell stories by adding dots of color, words, music, and sounds to photos.
A collaborative approach to prototyping
Local Projects invited a community of educators to collect data on how their students were using the app. This helped the design team ensure that the tools were useful for teachers and students. On the website, you can find standards-aligned lesson plans that you can remix and make your own.
This suite of apps truly embrace the affordances and opportunities of mobility, and have a huge potential for engaging learners through serious play by opening up the world to them through a new lens. What a great way to challenge them to investigate and understand complex concepts and principles in science!
Have any of you that are physics teachers heard of these apps, and do they get a thumbs up from you? Have you come across similar resources that similarly embrace the affordances and opportunities of mobility?
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Images source: https://noticing.nysci.org/apps
References
Noticing Tools – Teacher Hub. (n.d.). Retrieved February 8, 2019, from https://noticing.nysci.orgAverage: 4.7/5 Stars
Any time you can bring in hands-on learning to create deeper understanding and connections is powerful. In particular this site focuses on five apps for math and science that are available from the App store. These apps help take the learning beyond the four walls of the classroom and can be done almost anywhere, which, given our current situation of at-home learning, is an advantage to help engage students. Now the catch is that these apps are only available for the iPad which limits the ways in which the apps can be accessed. I do like how each app has lessons, tips and a place to be inspired and learn how other teachers have used the app.
There is a cost to purchasing the apps which could be a deterrent in using this in the classroom, however, there are bundle options instead of purchasing each app separately.