Class #3 Reflection

During our third class, we had an iTunes tour.  Now, I have been using iTunes for years but I still found this tour to be very educational.  I recently was given an iPad by my principal as I am the lead teacher for PowerSchool.  Not only have I been using it for this reason, I have been researching, downloading and using apps for use within my classroom.  However, I have to be honest that I have somewhat struggled and often have become frustrated with searching the App store on my iPad.  Oftentimes, it only displays about 10 educational apps and so what I’d do is go onto my computer and google apps for math, or apps for another subject.  I have found googling to be very helpful.  During our class, I am ashamed to admit that I never thought to go onto my laptop and do a search on iTunes.  I had assumed that doing so would produce the same limited searches.  I was shocked to see how many apps were actually identified so quickly. 

I am thoroughly enjoying working with both Jenna and Barbara on our presentation.  The 3 of us have the same work ethic and we work very well together as a team.  (Thanks, Jenna and Barbara!!)  After watching our webinar, we created tables for each of the six sections.  We jotted notes/descriptions/features on each app and then we found links to tutorials and information for each one.  Much of this work was done before class, so during our class time, we divided up the sections and continued working on this presentation.  During this time, I came across a website that identified apps for nonverbal communication disorders.  The website is an Austism spectrum directory blog- http://blog.autismspectrumdirectory.com/ .  In this blog, there is a ton of information on a variety of apps and it is well laid out and easy to follow.  We were able to obtain information for our presentation. 

I will admit that this presentation has been a bit challenging because of the amount of information we have to present and only a short time to present it.  Saying that, I am enjoying working on this project as I am always up for a challenge; condensing all of this information into a 20 minute presentation seemed overwhelming but when we talked about it as a team of 3, we sorted out what we wanted/felt we needed to share and the task was much easier to complete.