Appedia

If you’re an EYFS teacher having the 2Build a Profile app (created by 2Simple) is a great way to record evidence of any progress made by the children in your class. It’s extremely easy to use and you’ll only need one iPad to record evidence for every pupil in your class.

As the app is controlled by the teacher and not the child, I’m going to write this as more of a tutorial than a recommendation…

If you’re looking to ensure your children are fully engaged with their work or a specific project, then Google Expeditions is definitely an app you need.

What The Children Do:

The children are given an iPad and select an expedition to join – an expedition which you will be fully in control of. Once they’ve joined the expedition, the screen will fill up with a large image (perhaps a scene under…

A Creative Idea for an e-Safety Assembly

It was e-Safety day recently and schools across the UK were asked to help promote an awareness of staying safe online.

I’d thought I’d share with you all how I helped raise awareness of e-safety through a creative assembly.

My Prep

In order to prepare for this assembly, I hooked up our speaker system to a small microphone and placed an iPad in the corner of the hall. Using AirServer I was able to…

Developing Computational Thinking with a 2 Year-Old

Whilst I was playing with my son and helping him to organise his toys, I realised that this was a great opportunity to develop his computational thinking skills.

So, I’ve decided to do a series (1 video per week) where I’ll demonstrate how I’m doing this. Whilst my son and I focus on his development, I will say that the most important thing is that he has fun making this series – and I’m pretty…

81 Cross Curricular Computing Activities for Your Classroom

Not every school can teach a discreet Computing lesson, especially not on a regular basis. So we need to rely on cross-curricular learning to boost ICT standards in schools.

Here are 101 ideas for incorporating Computing into a lesson.

1. Animation

You can turn almost any science project into an animation using apps such as StopMotionStudio. Children in my school won a competition for creating an…

5 Simple Hacks to Increase Your E-Safety Score

e-Safety is quite rightly becoming more and more important in education. As children now have access to various forms of online communication, it’s important that we help them understand how to use technology safely.

Whilst we can’t actively control what the children sign-up to at home or what computer games they play, we can make simply changes in the classroom to boost our e-Safety score.

Using…

Thinking Blocks: The Best App for Teaching Singapore Maths

Singapore Maths has become extremely popular in schools across the UK because of the impressive success rate of students in Asia. You can incorporate this method into any lesson using the Thinking Blocks apps.

The app is great for helping children to understand different mathematical concepts – especially as the questions are all word problems. The activities could be used as starter or extension…

The Best Computing Lesson I’ve Ever Taught

In 2014, in the last week of the summer term, I felt confident that my Year 6 class had succeeded in working their way through the entire Computing curriculum. With that in mind, I decided that their last every primary school Computing lesson had to be both special and memorable.

After a lot of thought and consideration about which aspect of Computing would engage the children the most, I settled…

I Took a Class to Mount Everest with Google Expeditions

I recently arranged to have Google Expeditions come to my school to run some virtual reality-based workshops with the children in Years 1-6. Before I discuss the day in more detail, I want to mention how amazing the experience was for both the children and the staff.

What is a Google Expedition?

When Google visited our school, they brought with them about 60 mobile phones and 60 headsets. This…

35 Fantastic Ways Technology can help EAL Children Excel in School

Helping an EAL child access the curriculum can be challenging, but using the right type of technology can make this a lot easier. Some children can not speak a word of English whereas other EAL children only really require work on their sentence structure and basic grammar.

Whatever it is your child needs assistance with, you’re bound to find an idea on this page to help them engage with school…

How to Teach Coding using a Jam Sandwich

When I first began to teach Computing, I was initially very nervous about teaching children to code. I’d never studied coding before and had certainly never programmed anything either – so I sat down and began to learn and research.

One of the greatest ideas I came across was the “jam sandwich” coding lesson.

I recently touched on this lesson during a recent article about teaching coding without…

30 Ways To Teach Computing Skills Without A Computer

A lot of people will often say they can’t introduce Computing into their school because they simply don’t have the hardware to do so. However, it’s very easy to teach Computing skills without even touching a computer. On this page you’ll find practical, easy-to-implement ideas which teach a variety of computing-related skills and can be used across several different subjects.

Tweet as a Famous…

10 Ideas for Using Pokemon Go as a Teaching Resource

Pokemon Go is a phenomenon that took the world by storm last year, with millions of people (adults and children alike) downloading the popular app within days of it becoming available. Whilst it aimed to combine fitness with computer gaming, I also think you can use Pokemon Go as a teaching resource to enhance different lessons.

What Is It?

Pokemon Go is an augmented reality centred app which…

How to Teach with Social Media

Whenever somebody mentions social media in a school setting it’s almost always because the staff are worried about e-safety and can’t understand why the children are so obsessed with social media platforms such as YouTube and Snap Chat.

However, I think it’s time that we, as educators, change our mind set and begin to look at social media in a different light.

Personally, I’m still developing my…

Pages: Who Needs Microsoft Word?

A common complaint about iPads is that they don’t feature the same word-processing software as a laptop or computer, but it’s easy to create outstanding documents using Pages.

Pages features many of the same basic features that Microsoft Word has, but has an advantage in that it has the same autocomplete/predictive text function as many mobile devices.

This means that the iPad automatically…

Hour of Code: Anybody Can Learn

A lot of educators hear the word “coding” and instantly begin to worry about the complex system of symbols and computer-based terminology they’ll have to learn.

However, it’s actually really simple to teach coding without having to master the subject yourself.

In a bid to encourage more children to code, Code.orginvented the Hour of Code. A website dedicated to helping people understand the basic…