Saturday, September 29, 2012

2 Favorite Apps to use for Graphic Organizers and Mindmapping

Tools 4 Students (99 cents, iPad only)
This app has 25 Language Arts templates for the classroom or speech and language therapy room, including Compare/Contrast, Reality/Make Believe, Problem-Solution, Story Elements and much more. You can fill in the templates, save them and email them. A dollar well spent!



Comparing Apples and Oranges




Working on reality versus make believe (and language expansions) with a second language learner. The book we used is Rabbit Stew.
 


Inspiration Maps ($9.99, iPad only)

This is a really nice app for getting thoughts and facts down quickly. I have tried other mind mapping apps in the past, and found this to much more intuitive. The really easy node making is great- tap a shape once and pull at the arrow at the lower right of the shape in the direction you want to place a node.  You can go simple or get fancier with different ways to manipulate shapes, font and text.  You can insert pictures as well. You can save the finished product to your iPad Photos, or email it to yourself, or send it to iTunes, Dropbox, or another app as a PDF or text.

There are about 30 templates to choose from- many geared towards older kiddos than mine, but there are a handful we will continue to make good use of with my upper elementary kids- and making our own is easy anyway. 
Inspiration Maps' KWHL Template: What I Know, What I Want to Know, How Will I Learn, What I Learned

Special Apps, Special Kids
Phew! You can easily zoom in closer, even closer than this screenshot!
Here's a quick brainstorm we made in Inspiration Maps to get all my students' thoughts down on the topic "Sports".



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