All the apps you'll ever need

As I prepared for an upcoming presentation at a local University I unloaded my test iPad of all its applications and created a new iPad, complete only with apps which I use at school every week. This iPad would become my "essentials" iPad, strategically and efficiently full of apps I wholly recommend to every educator I meet.

I went through the apps and I developed a list, indicating the apps purpose. I found that these purposes consistently fell into 3 categories: Consumption, Creation and Collaboration.

Consumption

Safari
iTunes U
iBooks
Khan Academy
Zite
Free Books
YouTube
Quick Math
Gamification apps

Creation

Camera
Pages
Keynote
iMovie
Explain Everything
Book Creator
Show Me
Sonic Pics
Photoshop Touch

Collaboration

Edmodo/Schoology
Google Sites/Wikis
Showbie
Dropbox
Mail
Nearpod
Skype/Facetime
Twitter
*AirDrop

I found I had many educational gaming type apps (gamification of learning) which fitted into the Consumption category. These gaming apps could be easily subdivided further into learning areas, English, Maths, Science, SOSE, Humanities etc, and i'll do this in another post soon.

Today I chose to focus on these 3 "C's" activities, and it was clear that they could be easily aligned to Blooms Taxonomy objectives. In fact if I moved around this venn diagram twice (Round 1 and Round 2) not only was it easy to see how the different levels of Blooms was attained, but you could even align the tasks to the SAMR level as well.

When you are considering your teaching tool kit, consider a concise balance between these apps.

Which apps are you consuming (researching, learning specific facts) with?
Which apps are you collaborating (sharing, building, assessing) with?
Which apps are you creating (combining, presenting, concluding) with?

As you get comfortable with this process and the apps you are using, try it again. Except this time, look to further your classroom activity by exploring your existing apps further with new objectives in Blooms, or use new apps to challenge your students to find new tasks - which were considered inconceivable before you had an iPad. It is at this second visit that you will see your classroom practice truly transforming.

I would value your opinion on this alignment of 2 models made possible with the iPad.