The App Map

It's absolutely crazy how many apps there are, and quite sad how many of them are rather funky in their usability. After scrolling through hundreds of them, these three appealed on several levels. Read on.

Total Recall—Mind Map is a brainstorming app that allows for unlimited canvas size, to truly explore your thoughts. 

Not a map created in Total Recall, but instead a clever visionary paraphrase. A paravision?

Maps like this are used many times during an exploration of a text, and some students really don't like the process. For the more spatial learners this would be a fun way to explore the theme of a play or short story, rather than the standard pen and paper method.

Room Arranger gives students the ability to create a floor plan of their apartment or a whole house. This would allow spatial learners to get a better idea of where the characters are in a story. For instance, in Of Mice and Men, the bunkhouse is a key setting, and students could build the bunkhouse based on the descriptions in the text. 

We'll be reading The Diary of Anne Frank (the play) soon, and with eight people hiding out in a setting no bigger than 800 square feet, students could get a very real sense of the limitations on space that Miss Frank and her people were subjected to. Of course, you have to be sensitive to the reality that many students live in similar conditions with their families. This would actually allow them to relate to the story more, and once they've created the physical space in this app, the connection will be complete.

iTunes U I cannot over emphasize how huge this resource is. There are hundreds of lectures, lesson ideas and collaborative and differentiated courses. As an example, a course that I subscribe to, Comm 2221: Writing and Editing for News, posted an assignment called a Police Reporting Exercise.

The assignment gives you some facts, a deadline, and a source you're supposed to 'call' to fill in the gaps in the details. The finished piece is posted to a class blog.

If nothing else, iTunes U is a source for lesson ideas. If you take it further and students have access to a device, they can follow some prompts as to what "class" they need to find. This could be multi layered, as they might do the assignment from iTunes U, but post the answer on EDU, then discuss their answers and the concept in class the next day.

Endless opportunities.