With all that I have seen on education blogs proselytizing the advances that will come from such things as: Twitter, Facebook, Amazon.com’s Kindle readers, the iPad, and even the iPod touch…I finally found a few very simple applications which might be of some real use to today’s teachers.
I have worked as a substitute teacher in several school districts and the biggest annoyance I have is how slow and kludged taking attendance is (almost across the board). Every classroom I have worked in has several PC’s, an interactive white board, and every other modern ‘game changer’ you could think of… you’d think that this fundamental activity could be upgraded into the late 20th century’s technology (instead of scribbling names ion a scrap of paper…).
After having dealt with this ongoing annoyance for months, I ran across a couple iPhone apps which would seem to solve this problem for classroom teachers. I presume that these apps would similarly work on the iPod Touch too… If you are a teacher with a smart phone (i.e. an iPhone) this might be worth looking into.
The first app, Attendance ($3.99 at the iTunes store) looks to be a powerful, clean, and efficient tool to take care of all kinds of these prosaic daily activities (i.e. you can email your results to the school office from your phone…). If you go to the application creator’s website, you can see a large number of YouTube videos showcasing how simple it can be.
The second app, Attendance IQ ($2.99 at the iTunes store) looks similar…I haven’t had a chance to try out either of these apps to let you know how well they work (…yet). Also, the difference in cost ($1.00) between these two apps seems to be down in the realm of pocket change. While they both look good, I would likely go with attendance if only because it is documented so well (via YouTube) that it makes purchasing it less of a wild guess…
Of course this is the middle of July, and I can see that looking over iPhone apps for the school year may be traveling a bit further into the future than many would like. So, I have something which might relate to July a bit better…
I found one of many interactive maps of the current Tour de France (here). The race is drawing to a close, so this is in some ways one the harbingers of the end of summer (it comes to an end so quickly…).
