Apps for Teaching Reading

Audiobooks

This site is great for high school students because it has a large collection of audio books.  The classic books (over 5,500) are free.  Students can read or listen to books like Romeo and Juliet and Treasure Island. Our English teachers can have students download books rather than buying class sets of classic titles. 

Blogger

I am planning on having my students keep their reader response journals online in a blog.  The blogs will allow for collaboration between students-- they can follow each other's blogs, comment and discuss.  

Good Reads

This app gives you recommendations based on books you have read and liked and allows you to join in book clubs.  What I like best about this blog is the interaction with friends component-- you can see what your friends recommend/ are reading.  I hope this will encourage my students to have more informal discussions about reading.

 Idea Flight

This app allows for students to share ideas and presentations on an IPad.  One person is the pilot who leads groups through a presentation-- others follow along through wireless technology on their own IPad screens.  I want to use this app for book reports.

Prizmo 

This app can be used to scan text.  It creates pdfs that can be shared.  I intend to use this app to convert text and allow students to listen to reading.

Reading Trainer  

Reading Trainer improves your reading speed and retention rate with 12 exercises.  I'm not going to formally use this in the classroom (I don't want students to think that good reading is only fast reading) but I am going to recommend it for students who want the challenge outside of class.  

Show Me

Students can create and watch tutorials.  I am going to use this for grammar exercises.

Skype

This app is great for video conferencing.  I plan on using this to connect with other classrooms for book talks. It could also be useful for guest author book talks.

Soundnote

This app tracks what you type and draw while recording audio, so you'll never worry about missing an important detail. This app is helpful when teaching notetaking.  Students can record a lecture and listen to it again while picking out main idea points. 

Talk to Me

This app can be used to read words out loud as they are typed.  This is helpful for students when they are writing and needing to make revisions. 



I don't use very many apps right now.  I have used Quizlet in the classroom for vocabulary but haven't integrated any other apps.  I personally use the app Good Reads because I am always looking for fun books to read.  Before listening to and reading the module resources this week, I was of the mind that apps were useful in the classroom but that students don't use them properly outside of the classroom.  I think there is still a skepticism about app learning among educators and parents.  Mobile learning needs a buy in from the student-- they need to utilize it with the intention to learn rather than just for the fun of technology. One of the benefits of mobile learning is the accessibility.  The apps travel with the student literally everywhere they go! .  However, a barrier in the way of mobile learning is the distraction and the view that mobile devices are for entertainment. Students need to focus in on the learning app rather than multi-tasking social media and text messages (Shuler, 2009).

I think that the best way that I can encourage my students to use mobile technologies in learning-appropriate, meaningful ways is to introduce them to useful apps.  Rather than trying to talk to students about their behaviors, I think it is best to first encourage and draw them in with what the technology can do.  Since most of these apps allow for collaboration, students will find that they enjoy working with them and habits will change.  Rather than using mobile technology as they did before-- almost primarily for entertainment, they will begin to use it for academic pursuits.

I would consider myself an optimist when it comes to mobile learning.  I have read about how effective it can be and I have researched apps that appear to be wonderful for my classroom learning goals.  However, I'm going to be cautious and not call myself an advocate yet.  I am eager to try these strategies out in my classroom and see the effectiveness for myself. At my school we currently have a ban on cell phone use from the start of school until the end of the school day.  Our internet filter also blocks out most social media so it will be a challenge for me to start integrating mobile technology.  I will need to get permission from our principal and will need to outline the reasons why I think that the technology is needed for our reading curriculum.  However, with the information that I have learned, I think that I will have a great case for the use of mobile technology in our reading program!