App of the Day: Story Creator

Story Creator is a great app to use for digital storytelling. With Story Creator you can easily create beautiful story books containing photos, videos, text, and audio all in one gorgeous collection. Story Creator truly brings your best stories to life and easily allows you to retell and share your most memorable moments.


Application for Education:
"Digital Storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. Digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music. Digital stories can vary in length, but most of the stories used in education typically last between two and ten minutes." (University of Houston)


Benefits of using Story Creator:
☆ 100% FREE
☆ Add as many stories as you like
☆ Sharing stories with friends and family is as easy as email
☆ Backup stories online so kids can't accidentally delete your hard work
☆ Download stories on multiple devices - create once, experience anywhere
☆ Can add photos, videos, audio, and text
☆ Can add photos from device, Dropbox, Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook
☆ Supports drawing tool to make stories truly your own
☆ Create a personal book cover for every story
☆ Add your own voice - bring stories to live by adding your own narrative
☆ Add audio highlights - highlights makes it really easy for kids to learn how to read
☆ Leave comments on stories shared by friends

App of the Day: Doceri

Doceri combines screencasting, desktop control, and an interactive whiteboard in one app, you’ll never have to turn your back to the class or audience again. This definitely is my new favorite app for presenting material. Download the Doceri Desktop for your Mac or PC by clicking here (there is a cost for the desktop version and is needed to run the app from your iPad).

Application for Education:
Forget Apple TV and try Doceri. With Doceri your iPad becomes a wireless interactive whiteboard or take control of your laptop/desktop with the app. The app provides multiple whiteboards to choose from, i.e. chalkboard, grids and graphs of different sizes, maps, music staff, construction paper, ruled paper, etc. Run software from your laptop/desktop from your iPad. This app allows the teacher the freedom to move around the classroom freely, give the iPad to students to solve the issue in hand (math equations, graphing, etc), annotate still images or PDF files, and have visibility on a whiteboard instead of a blank white slate.

Benefits of using Doceri:
☆ CREATE hand written or hand drawn Doceri projects on your iPad
☆ CONTROL a computer through your iPad.
☆ PRESENT anything from your Mac or PC connected to a projector, using Doceri’s desktop software.
☆ SHARE still image captures, multi-page PDFs or audio/video screencasts via email, iTunes, YouTube or Facebook.

App of the Day: 9Slides

What is 9Slides?
9Slides is online interactive presentations. With 9Slides you can add video or audio commentaries to upload PowerPoint presentations or PDF files. Users can access 9Slides via their website or the app. 

Application for Education:
With 9Slides teachers could turn their instructional presentations into a video that can be uploaded to their blog or website for students to view at home. This could also be a tool for "flipping the classroom"...delivering instruction online outside the classroom and bringing homework inside the classroom.

Benefits of using 9Slides:
☆ Cloud-based solution
☆ View on most browsers
☆ Password protect available with upgrade
☆ Add video and audio commentary directly from iPad
☆ Import from Microsoft PowerPoint or Adobe presentations from SlideShare, Dropbox, Google, or Box

Pricing Options:

App of the Day: Socrative

What is Socrative?
Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets.

Applications for Education:
Socrative is a great tool for collecting immediate feedback from students via mobile apps or the internet on laptops or tablets. With Socrative teachers gather assessments via short answer, multiple choice and/or true or false questions. Socrative auto-grades multiple choice quizzes. All quizzes can be exported to Excel or viewed online in a Google spreadsheet. One of my favorite features is the exit quiz. Exit quizzes quickly check a student's understanding before the end of class.

Benefits of Using Socrative:
☆ Engages students through the use of technology
☆ Quick response from formative assessments
☆ Exit tickets to check student understanding
☆ Games to track performance while playing
☆ Multiple choice quizzes auto-graded
☆ Quizzes can be exported
☆ Up to 50 students logged in at one time per room
☆ Accessible from multiple devices (iOS/Android app, smartphone, laptop, tablet)