Finger Count

Teaching early numeracy is can be challenging; one to one correspondence, base 10, addition.

 

An app was just released that allows students to count on their fingers. Finger Count - Mulit-Touch by Joe Scrivens asks students to count objects shown and then place that many fingers on the screen. It allows for any combination that equal the number shown.

This app makes unique use of the iDevice's ability to process multi-touch input. The iPad can handle 10 touch input points while the iPhone and iPod Touch can handle 5.

It has the option for students to count each object individually by tapping on them in any order while it counts out loud.

This offers teachers a new and unique way to transfer mathmatics learning from object manipulatives to the iDevice.

There is a great introduction video on youtube that explains how it all works.

Happy counting!

Free Apps for Autism Month

This is a direct quote from an email that I received. If I find more apps with reduced/free for April I will add them to this post.



"The Apple apps store has all the ABA flashcards from kindergarten.com   and they are free for the month of April in honor of autism awareness month. They regularly are .99 each but are now free!  These work for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Good news! At least two application vendors have decided to celebrate the World Autism Awareness Day by offering their apps for free. And some other vendors offer their apps with a discount reaching 50%. In some cases, discount will be effective for a month. Our thanks to all of them.

UPDATE: Special offers for Expressive, First Then Visual Schedule, I Get… Easter Egg Hunts, My Choice Board and Scene Speak are still valid. (I think that they will be for the rest of this month)."

I haven't checked to see if this is still valid information, but I will make any changes needed to this post as I find out.

So busy!

Things have been busy around here lately. There have been meetings, planning sessions, interviews, oh, and classroom teaching!

At the end of last week three of us went to London, Ontario for the annual OADE Conference. We were there presenting on using iPads in classrooms for students with developmental disabilities.

The keynote speaker was Dr. Derrick MacFabe from the University of Western Ontario. He was speaking about some of the research that his group is involved in.

There were two representatives from L'Arche Canada talking about their philosophy and communities. They showed a wonderful video called "I Am ..." prepared by people in L'Arche Cape Breton.

It was a great experience and we hope that those who attended our workshop were able to take something away with them back to their schools and back to their students.

Mirroring

Everyone from Apple and other retailers that I talked to about the mirroring accessory assured me that it worked with iPad1.

It turns out it doesn't.

Careful reading of the package label says that the mirroring is only available with iPad2. It will work with other devices to show video and photos.

We are lucky enough to have been able to purchase an iPad2 and one of the first things I did was plug in the digital AV adapter.

It works like a charm!

Now I just have to figure out how to connect it to non HDMI equipment!