Friday, November 30, 2012

Unable to Root Out Any Root Word Apps

My second post and already I feel like a cynic.  Note to self: tame inner cynic.  So, I am trying to find some engaging and educational apps and/or games that will help students interact with word parts.  All of the links online require that darn Flash player (see earlier post), and there seem to not be any interesting age-appropriate apps for "fun with morphology." Am I missing something?  Note to self: stay far away from technology on Friday nights.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

(Non) Interactives on the iPad

As my students embark on a journey westward with Lewis and Clark, I wonder what kind of interactive resources are available through the iPad.  I want students to experience something that integrates primary documents, gripping graphics, narrative text, key terms, maps, and more.  Am I asking too much??  So I found something neat: Lewis & Clark--Into the Unknown on PBS (see link below).  This site had some, certainly not all, of the components I was looking for...but it needs Flash.  So out of luck.  Now, what's up with this oversight?  It seems that many tools are inaccessible on the iPad because of the lack of Flash player.  Is there a remedy in sight?  Is there a loophole in the system?  Or, am I forever limited to a similar, but not so slick, interactive on National Geographic?

http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/into/index.html
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/west/main.html

Note:  I tried to add a screenshot I created of the PBS site.  Blogger wouldn't save this post with the image.  Is the file too big?  How do I work around that?  Last year, I learned to save it as a JPEG, but I couldn't remember how to do it.  Ahhh, I LOVE technology!!  (60 minutes later when I should have been grading papers...)