Be Creatively Subversive with Windows 8

Its very often the case in education that we stumble across things by accident. And as educators, we often get to thinking – “hey, I could use that with my classes”. It’s very often not the way the thing we stumble across was meant to be used, but you know, actually, it could work with students in an education setting if we get creative with our thinking.  I guess this is a kind of  creative subversion (a term first used by Debra Myler back in the dim and distant last decade) and if we look at the Windows 8 tiles, a couple of examples jumped out at me recently. I'm sure I'm not the first to have thought about these, so I apologise in advance if I'm about to steal someone’s thunder.

The first is the Bing Health and Fitness tile. If you swipe through this, loads of teaching and learning opportunities jump out at you. There are the workouts for different times and places. Great for PE, obviously, but also for the life sciences as well. I mean why would you have a different work out when you are in a hotel to  the one you might use at your desk or even in bed? There are some fab fitness workout and individual exercise video clips too. Then consider the opportunities for cross curricular project work; the exercise, health and diet tracking tools are a really cool way to engage youngsters with really important health and well-being life skills.There’s shed-loads of useful info about healthy foods, additives and nutrition as well.

Continue swiping and you come to a section

which allows you to explore every part of the human body in 3D,and in incredible detail (some schools and colleges pay big bucks for software which does this – but this app comes free with Windows 8 …  happy days! ) as well as pretty detailed information on some common diseases and medical conditions.

The second example is the Bing Travel tile. Swiping through this opens up the world right in front of your students without having to leave the classroom! Not only do you get a huge list of destinations, but  wonderful 360 degree ‘panoramas’ of the chosen location to explore.

For each destination, you get loads of useful information including up to the minute weather reports, historical information, useful guides and even currency exchange rates. used in conjunction with Bing maps, this is surely a fantastic free resource for schools? Have your class plan trips around the world, compiling their itineraries in One Note workbooks and with more detailed research about each stop on the way like local flora and fauna, customs and traditions, national dress and foods. Plot the changing weather conditions on an Excel spreadsheet and graph the data, working out averages, means and other statistical measures like distance travelled and flight times. What about the cost of the trip,and currency conversion calculations? Get them working on group presentations as slideshows or even movies with narration and soundtracks relevant to each stop along the way. 

I’m pretty sure there are loads more things that could be done with each tile. And I’m pretty sure the developers had more than a sneaking suspicion that their apps would find their respective places in the classroom.

Creative subversion is a term I've liked to use for many years to describe what we do as teachers and educators every day. Here it is with with Microsoft Windows 8 in action! And how many other ways might there be? I'm off now to carry on exploring….

(Images are, of course, from Microsoft’s Bing apps )

Android Apps for Education – have they finally come of age?

I wrote a blog post recently about the three ‘killer apps’ you can find on Apple devices – Garage-band,  iMovie and Book Creator. And yes, its true these are far and away the best of the bunch in terms of creativity apps, pushing iPads ahead in the education tablet market stakes. However, the scene is a fast changing one and Apple will soon be facing an even more determined challenge for education market space from Windows and Android tablet devices, not only with better machines, but also with a new generation of apps for the classroom as well as a rediscovery of some existing ones…

Windows 8 and Android are finally gaining their education spurs. And looking at the Android platform, there are some great apps out there that you can use. So what can we get for our Android tablets that would be really useful in the classroom?

The folks behind the brilliant Book Creator iPad App are apparently working hard on producing an Android version, so I hear. We hopefully won’t have to wait too long for this (and Tablet Academyare about to launch a Windows 8 version called ‘Create Books’ )

Android Studio is a really good movie-making tool. OK, so it doesn't  have the Movie Trailer feature which is such a popular part of Apple’s iMovie, but you can only make so many movie trailers until the novelty wears off and boredom sets in, can’t you? This Android app is really easy to use and great for team project work.

When it comes to Garage-band, there are a few good Android apps out there doing much the same job – we just don’t generally hear about them do we? after all, Garage-Band is so utterly awesome. But Pocket Band,Groove Box and Walk Band do much the same thing on your Android tablet.

Pocket Band in particular has a great community of users offering help and advice  - I think its far and away the leader of the Android pack and you can even try it out for free before you buy by downloading the Pocket Band Lite app….Happy days:-).

Also worth exploring are…

• Simple Note (a note taking app like Apple’s Notes, but with many more export options. Great for use with a class on filed trips or outdoor class sessions).
• Create a Comic (get your students explaining bite sized concepts or parts of their course by creating a comic strip. They’ll love it and it really helps with deep memory retention of whatever it is they are doing).
• Sound Recorder (great for quick-fire observations and useful for recapping learning objectives or for taking home to help with work on essays or projects)
• Science Penguin (loads of great science resources and lesson ideas although the small banner adds between resources can be annoying)
• People (a contacts app which links to GMail,Google+ and hangouts for video calls. I find this app very useful for organising)
• Talk (Another great Google App for instant messaging, and VOIP audio and video calls)
• Quick Office (A productivity suite of tools for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, compatible with Microsoft Office which can be saved or exported to Drop Box, Edmodo, Microsoft One Drive, Google Drive or sent by email).
• Periodic Table (Lots of information, video and quizzes all about the elements. As a science teacher, I always look out for apps like this. 3D Brain and Anatomy Guide are other good science teaching apps)
• There are hundreds of amazing Primary school apps for reading, numbers, spelling, memory,  languages, and science. I’ve like to use many of these with my grandchildren. And they love them too:-)

There are Android apps for almost every iPad app you could mention, if you look for them. And I guess this begs the question, what is it which really determines our choice of tablet, especially for school use? Are we pre-conditioned by what we’ve already seen or heard or is it just the very clever marketing which has positioned the iPad at the top of our mental ‘must-have’ list? A really comprehensive needs assessment is a must before diving in to large scale tablet purchases. This will help you figure out which tablet device (or mix of devices) is the right choice for your school or college. And this could be iPads,Android, Windows 8 or a combination of all three…

Perhaps six months or a year ago, there might have been no real competition for the iPad in education,but I think this has now changed. Android has come of age with some fantastic tablet devices at really competitive prices (just look at the Tesco Hudl) and it’s slew of great education apps is now a match for most if not all of the IOS App store offerings.

So why not go check out the Android options before making purchasing decisions….