It is often a challenge deciding how much time should be spent teaching students how to use an app, especially when that time is at the expense of curricular time. For this reason, I always seek out the most simple, intuitive apps to use with my students, and it’s even better when those apps are free. Case in point, I am planning several short documentary activities with my students, including rock and mineral snapshot activities. I plan to have students create short videos about a particular rock or mineral sample. I will then stitch these videos together in iMovie or Final Cut to create a complete video gallery of rocks and minerals which can be used for content review. So, the question is, what app do I use for this? In a perfect world, where 54 licenses of iMove for iPad were free, I would be able to spend some time teaching basic video editing and create some fantastic products. However, in reality, I need something quick, easy, and cheap. Enter Videolicious.

Videolicious is a free, native, universal app which allows users to easily upload photos and short video clips, add music and a video narration, and have a simple, professional documentary created. This app requires no prior video editing experience, nor does it even require teacher instructions. Check out a quick overview video here. I plan on explaining the assignment and letting kids get to work…the way it’s supposed to be. I expect them to gather images from the web and take photos and video clips using the iPad cameras. They will write scripts and put it all together to create their videos, which can be easily emailed to me for final compiling and editing. I’ll be trying this out for the first time next week, so I’ll have to re-post with the results. I’m pretty psyched to try videolicious out as it may prove really useful throughout the rest of the year.

Tags: Apps, Videolicious, Science, Rocks and Minerals, Documentary, IPad Video Editing

Like in many disciplines, in Earth Science, students must be comfortable explaining their thoughts through the use of diagrams. Throughout the year, we create dozens of illustrated notes to help students visualize complex science concepts, including thes seasons, the rocks cycle, plate tectonics, and weather fronts. One particularly drawing-intensive unit is our mapping unit. Students must be able to draw isolines on both weather and topographic maps. Since I got my iPads, earlier in the year, I've been searching for a simple drawing app. The app needed to be incredibly simple and easy to use, inexpensive, and most importantly, it had to allow you to set an image as the background. I don't have styluses (styli?) for my students, so it also had to be easy to control by finger. After exploring dozens of apps, varying in price from free to more than $19.99, I stumbled across BusinessBoard. This simple app does everything I need. It is really just a bare bones whiteboard app with simple photo background and email sharing options. When I got the app, it was free, but it seems to have gone up to $0.99, still worth it in my opinion.

So my first experiences using BusinessBoard involved students practicing the drawing of isolines. I uploaded a dozen or so field maps into the iPad photo albums for student use. These maps are simple diagrams with some sort of data values all over, including temperature and elevation values. Students then used their fingers to draw in isolines. It was great as it was easy to start over after mistakes were made, and it was easy to switch over to new maps. I didn't collect any work from this app yet, but the process should be simple using the email sharing options. The only thing missing from this app is an undo button. If you're looking for a very simple, minimal whiteboard app, check this one out.

Tags: Topographic Map, Contour Map, Isolines, Drawing, Whiteboard App, BusinessBoard App, BusinessBoard

An important concept in Regents Earth Science is that the altitude of the star Polaris above the northern horizon is approximately equal to the observer's latitude. In this case, the term altitude simply refers to the angle of something above the horizon. Traditionally, this measurement would be made with instruments called astrolabes, sextants, or even clinometers. For years, I had my science students create their own astrolabes using this template. They would then use these instruments to measure the altitude of a cardboard Polaris I hung in our school's atrium. They would measure the altitude from various locations, simulating what it would be like to measure the actual altitude from various locations in the northern hemisphere. When I got my first set of iPod Touches, I was excited at the potential uses of the built-in accelorometer for this lab. Low and behold, developers designed a variety of astrolabe apps that accomplished the same thing as the more traditional instruments. Using the iPods instead of the astrolabes made the activity more engaging and fun, and it allowed students to really undertstand the concept of altitude.

This year, I have been using iPads, and so I immediately sought out an astrolabe app that was native on the iPad. I was very excited to find SeeLevel. This app allows the user to look "through" the screen using the device's camera. A bullseye on the screen can be lined up with any object while the angle above the horizon is displayed on the top of the screen. Despite my constant fear that students would drop the iPads, the activity went well and students really grasped the concept. Check out this photo of the kids in action. By the way SeeLevel can also perform a variety of other measurement tasks, and is definitely worth checking out. It's currently available for $0.99 on the iTunes Store.

Tags: Polaris, Latitude, Altitude, Clinometer, Astrolabe, Sextant, SeeLevel, SeeLevel App