Bill Nye The Science Guy App Review

Guest post by Ms. Neumeyer, our online student teacher from Canada.(Dean Shareski's class) Today Ms. Neumeyer continues her series of iPad app reviews. 

Check out her other reviews! 

Virtual Manipulatives 

Toontastic

Hopscotch 

I don’t know if you have ever heard of Bill Nye- but he was a big part of my learning about and coming to love science. He is an excellent science teacher who really knows how to bring science topics to life for kids through humor and interesting experiments. Here is a picture of this humorous and intelligent guy:

Bill Nye The Science Guy

Disney recently released an app called Bill Nye the Science Guy.  When you first open the app a voice over by Bill Nye exclaims, “You’ve arrived at my desk!” and a desk full of objects is shown.  Users can choose from objects on the desk, such as a rocket, a robot or a sundial, and the app will bring users into a different lesson. There is a huge variety of options to learn from such as: games designed to teach users about the solar system as you take pictures from a rocket, learning about planet Earth’s geological history while digging up a backyard, and cool optical illusions woven into a storyline about alien invasion.

In addition to games, there is also a book of do-it-yourself experiments and the six science experiments require nothing more than everyday household items. Be sure to check out the bobble head. It has interesting science facts to share.

My favourite part about this app is the original videos from the Bill Nye the Science Guy show! A quick tip is that despite the buy button on the right hand side, if a user just taps the video it starts playing.

This app also displays Bill Nye’s typical humour as you can see when you open Bill Nye’s desk drawer and learn when he started wearing bow ties and even how to tie yourself!

Here is a short video of some screenshots I took while trying out this app:

Had you heard of Bill Nye The Science Guy before? 

What part of this app seemed the most interesting to you?

Toontastic! Ipad App Review

Guest post by Ms. Neumeyer, our online student teacher from Canada (Dean Shareski's class) Today Ms. Neumeyer continues her series of iPad app reviews. 

Other Review: Virtual Manipulatives 

Toontastic is a great app which teaches and improves storytelling, by allowing users to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons. 

Characters and settings for the cartoons can either be chosen from templates or drawn from scratch. 



Toontastic is very easy to use: after picking out setting and characters, a user just needs to press the record button, move their characters onscreen, and record their story by speaking out loud and using the iPad's built-in microphone. 



Users also have the option of including music to their story by picking an emotion which best suits the story.  Toontasic also has a global storytelling network for kids, called ToonTube, where they can share their stories. Toontastic is a fun tool that skilfully explains the essential aspects of storytelling (character, setting, story arc, etc.), and gives students a great way to practice the storytelling process.  

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Let me share the making of my Toontasic video with you!

First, the app shows the opening screen which shows the arc of a story. Then I picked the setting. Next, I selected the characters or toys. After that, I recorded my voice reciting a poem while the characters appear to be talking! Lastly, I picked music to go with my poem. 

Below is my Toontasic video of one of my favourite childhood poems,  "My Robot" by Shel Silverstein.  

Take a look!

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What did you think of my video?  

How could you use this Toontastic app?

What is the arc of a story? 

Virtual Manipulatives! Ipad App Review

Ms. Neumeyer is our online student teacher from Mr. Shareski's class in Saskatchewan, Canada. She loves teaching and even sent this special Valentine to the class!

Today she kicks off a new series called Ms. Neumeyer's Ipad App Review! In this series, she will introduce a new app to the class, explain a special feature or two, and explain how the app can be used by students. 

Virtual Manipulatives! is a free app that allows students to move around blocks, called manipulatives, to make fractions and decimals more understandable. 

A student can drag the manipulatives onto a workspace and match them up to compare and contrast. The student can also draw on the workspace to indicate instructions. What I enjoy most about this is that it is a free way to have students working with manipulatives, just as the name of the program says.

This is the opening instructions page- it does a good job of explaining how you can use the app’s functions.

Virtual Manipulatives uses traditional rectangular or pie-shaped objects to represent fractions and decimals. These objects can be dragged around a screen into groups for a range of activities, such as comparing fractions, adding, and subtracting fractions. There are a lot of manipulative options for the student to use. A very useful feature is the ability to press and hold on the fraction to see its decimal form and percentage. You can also save your workspace as an image and email it.

  

  
 What do you think of the Virtual Manipulatives app?

What are some fractions that are equivalent to one half? 

Equivalent to one third?

(Equivalent means equal to.)

Teach us about a feature you discovered!