iPad literacy & Disciplines

Chinesepad offers different settings, including practice mode, tutorial mode and users can also choose either simplified character or traditional character.

It allows beginners not only to learn how to say a word but also to offer them a chance to practice how to write characters by demonstrating on the iPad.

Essentials free app offers couple hundred vocabulary with pronunciations and meanings, so learners can easily follow the app to progress, however it mainly focus on helping learner building vocabulary and pronunciation and it does not show learners how to handwrite the characters. In addition, it only offers traditional version, which means learners who have been learning simplified characters might find it is hard to use it.

Learn2play is a very integrative app. It is organized in different themes, such as fruit, sports, animals and so forth. It offers two different modes to integrate with the app. First One is to present a picture with different objects and learners can tap the different objects to see how to say in Chinese and then the characters will pop out. Second mode is to say different objects in Chinese and then students can paint them. If they paint the wrong ones, the app will make a sound to tell students they did not get the right answers. Students can use the first mode to learn the new words and then move on to the second one to check and see how much they really understand after the first mode. It offers a chance to repetitively practice until students fully comprehend it. The whole process is interactive so students might find themselves actually enjoy the learning. 

Spelling Test is a simple app for teachers to design an electronic test instead of paper-based one. It allows users to type in words and record the pronunciations. A designed test lists words on the left, and recording on the right side. Students who take the test can listen to the recording and then write down the spellings. If students do not give the right answers, the app will show the right answer immediately. This immediate feedback helps students remediate right then and by showing the correct answers further reinforce the learning process. However, when I tried to use this app to design a Chinese character test, it does let me record the sound and type characters, but when it comes to taking the test, the app doesn’t recognize the characters and the recording. 

Dictionary is a free app that I have been using in my daily life for almost two years. I mainly use it to look up the new words I encounter. It offers two types of phonetic symbols and one of them is IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)  which is what I was taught in School. It offers sound recordings, meanings, examples, synonyms, antonyms, origins and translator. In addition, it has Word of the Day and How Word Blog. The Word of the Day send users a new word or phrase everyday, which can help English learners build up their vocabulary. The How Word Blog explains how the word has been used and how the word evolved. I think Dictionary can be beneficial for both non-native and native English speakers.

Another dictionary that Ben and I use a lot is the iCED ABC, which is a Chinese dictionary. It is mainly designed for non-native Chinese learners. But Sometimes I use it to look up some Chinese idioms and phrases in order to teach Ben how Chinese people think differently. It really helps the communication between my husband and I.

Show Me is such a great and user-friendly interactive app. It allows me to create my own short videos and share with people. It can record my sound and what I write on the screen. I think this is a great tool for teaching students how to write Chinese characters. I have been designing a series of short video for Ben. I also use it to record a short video to send my friend birthday wishes. Recently I have a chance to help a Chinese girl who cannot speak any English. I am going to use this app to design short video lessons to teach her English. Here is the link to one of the lesson Color I made. But it does have its drawback. I can only use one page at a time so if my video requires a lot of demonstrations, then I have to spit my lesson into different parts. Overall, this is a great tool!

Storykit is a really neat free digital storytelling app. Users can use camera to take pictures or import pictures from photo albums to the editing page and add texts to go along with the pictures. They can also add audios to record the story. After this, users can also use paintbrush to draw. It is also a really interactive app. Students can use it to create digital stories. It is so easy to use that all students need to do is to add a picture from photo album or taking one with embedded camera, write text, record story and if they like, they can use brush to paint on the page. After this, students can start reading or sharing stories with others. Students can also go back and edit it again. Overall, Storykit is a simple, easy app that even young little kids can learn how to play. More importantly, it engages students in creating, writing, and learning.

Google Form

This is the first time I have ever tried the Google Forms and it turns out to be such a great tool. I checked out the link Tutorial -Self Grading, and then followed it to make my first self-grading quiz Chinese Test 1 for my husband. He actually likes it after the sample test and even asks me to make this kind of test more often to help him with his Chinese. I am so surprised to hear that. I think Google Forms can be a great tool with ease of use to enhance students’ learning. If I want to design a quiz, all I need to do is to create a new form and type the questions, choose the question type and then I can send the form to my students. There are different question types I can choose, such as text, multiple choice, choose from a list, checkbox, scale, grid and so on. I can view the summary responses to see what percentage of each question the whole class made. Then I can decide whether I need to reteach some of the content or it is time to move to the next subject. With Google Form, I can design a survey with ease. I still remember I had to use Word Processing application to design a survey in college, email to the participants and then count the result manually. It took so much time to do the whole process. I wish I could have used Google Form and Spreadsheet back that time, and then it would be so much easier.

Another great feature of the Google Form is that it puts all the responses into a spreadsheet automatically. I can modify, rearrange and analyze the response without affecting the original form responses. I can use the spreadsheet to do self-grading. All I need to do is to know how to use right formula to get the spreadsheet going. This is the link to the spreadsheet I made to self-grade the Chinese Test 1. Google Form and Google spreadsheet can really make my life much more productive.

Google Forms offers an easy way for schools, students, teachers and parents to connect with each other. For example, Schools can design surveys to evaluate teachers’ performance; schools also can send home a parent survey to gather information from parents about certain aspects of school life; teachers can create forms that will track specific students’ grades, behavior, and assignments; teachers can also email the parents the information of students and share it with other teachers, so much more with Google Forms and Spreadsheets.

The CCSS requires that students will “present information, findings and supporting evidence. ” Google Forms is a great tool that students can use to gather real information from peers, parents, and the community and to use that supportive information to make decisions or form conclusions about a certain topic. Another Anchor Standards requires students to make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations. Students can use Form to design a survey and send it to the participants. After the participants took the survey, all of the responses were collected in the attached spreadsheet. Students then can use spreadsheet to organize, analyze and interpret data as well as turning numeric data into a chart that graphically illustrates the relationship of the numeric data. With the ease of use feature, Google Forms can help students meet and excel the requirement of the CCSS.

iPad Basics

Keynote and PowerPoint are both presentations creating applications. They both offer basic features, such as adding new slide, choosing different slide layouts, adding Shapes, Table, Charts, Animations, transitions and so on to meet the users basic needs. They both carry a lot of theme choices for business, wedding and so much more to meet different users’ needs. One of the differences between Keynote and PowerPoint is that Keynote offers the Share button to allow users to share the presentations with others, while PowerPoint doesn’t have this feature.  Keynote features a wide array of templates and transition effects.

I have used Keynote on the iMac; however, this is my first time to try the Keynote on the iPad. Because its multi-touch technology, it feels so different than using Keynote on the Mac. Keynote on the iPad offers a lot of simpler features but enough to make good presentation. The animation effect of Keynote on iPad really amazes me. I can create sophisticated animations using the same objects on two slides; change the position, size, rotation or opacity of the objects; when I finish presenting, I only need to simply pinch anywhere on the slide. I can also tap the tools button and choose Share and Print, and then I will be able to email my presentation or copy it or iTunes on my Mac, in Keynote, PDF or PowerPoint format. At last, I can use iCloud to store my presentations and keep them up to date across my iPad, iPod. Any new presentations or changes I make will automatically appear on my other iOS devices.

iBooks and Kindle app both are free and each is linked to its own dedicated store. There is a significant difference between the two apps. Amazon’s selection of books is far more than Apple’s. Both can be customized and modified the text to suit my needs. Like the Kindle app, iBooks offers its own brightness slider. The two apps take strikingly different approaches to design. iBooks attempts to recreate the feeling of a real book, while Kindle skips details, and just shows the text starkly bare. The Kindle app displays what percentage of the book I’ve read and the actual page numbers. By contrast, the page number on iBooks will change entirely if I switch to a larger font. But iBooks has a tiny line of text that indicates how many pages left in the chapter I am reading, which is a wonderful way to see how close I are to a good stopping point. Since both apps are available on iPad, I have both of them. I cannot only download free books from both iBooks’ store and Amazon but also find the cheaper deal out of the two.

Rover is the browser especially designed for education on iPad. Some educational games require Flash enabled browser. Because iPad cannot open Flash content, in order to browse content with Flash, users have to use Flash-enabled browser. Rover does allow me to access Flash content, however, gestures don’t work well and lag causes delays and problems for interactive sites. It does not support other common web plugins like Unity and it takes tons of bandwidth, if whole class uses it at the same time, it might significantly slow down the Internet speed. The Safari is an Apple designed browser to allow users to browse the Internet. It does not support Flash content. Personally, I prefer using Safari because it does not take as much bandwidth as Rover and can access to the Internet faster. I would like to keep the Rover just in case I need it to access some Flash contents.
           I have registered an Box account and upload some pictures and files to my account. Box can be a great cloud storage. There are Box for iPad, iPhone, Android and more. I can view, manage, and share all of my files while I am on the go using Box from my computers and mobile devices. I can also import my contacts from my email account and collaborate with people on Box. Box does not only offer a great cloud storage, but also provides a platform for collaboration. By adding collaborators on Box, I can send them email, message to collaborate tasks. 

Google Spreadsheet

I have learned a little bit about spreadsheet back to when I was in college. My major is something to do with finance, so I got a chance to learn how to use spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel to collect data, analyze it and apply to decision making. I really enjoy having spreadsheet, because it really helps me organize personal information, especially financial data, such as income, budget and much more.

This is the first time I have ever tried to use Google spreadsheet but it turned out to be a pretty good experience. Google Spreadsheet is kind of like simplified Microsoft Excel, simple and ease with use. However, it does have its own special features. Just like Google document and Google presentation, Google spreadsheet is an online application and is cloud-based storage. Users can access to the spreadsheet from any computer or mobile device that is connected to the Internet. With this feature, users do not have problem with leaving the most up -to- date version at home. Moreover, it provides share feature to allow users collaborate with each other.  

However, Google spreadsheet does not have as many features as Microsoft Excel. For instance, Excel has a lot more layout choices than Google spreadsheet. I think if someone wants to make really professional spreadsheet, then more sophisticated applications, such as Microsoft Excel, Apple Number will be better choice.

I feel that it is not too hard to learn how to use the basic feature of the spreadsheet, but when it comes to the advanced spreadsheet features, it is kind of hard to grasp it.

The requirement of CCSS states that all grade levels share the standard of representing and interpreting data. A shared Spreadsheet is an excellent tool to use to meet this standard. For instance, one of the CCSS of Math is that students need to learn how to design a survey and analyze it. Students can use the Google document to design the survey and use the spreadsheet to collaborate on their survey data, share it, as well as receive comments on it from an authentic audience. This would be a great way to promote the use of higher-order thinking skills that can increase students’ critical and problem solving skills.


Here is the link to the  Google Spreadsheet.