EDUC 630 APPS REVIEW

I chose two apps discussed by other classmates for this blog entry. The two students
whose app discussions I chose are Rebecca Stokes and Lik Tsu. Both students use these
fascinating apps in their practice as teachers. I personally downloaded and familiarized myself
with these apps. Rebeccas discussion was about the free iTunes 18.2 (MB) size app
Educreations. This app meets all levels of Blooms taxonomy, all grade-levels, in all content
areas, and for Rebeccas class it meets the K-5 TT.1 required standard for her state. Once I
downloaded this app I was immediately ready to set up a class. I easily started to create a
makeshift class and emailed the invitation to myself just to see how it would look to the invitee.
The app works best on an iPad so as to allow for audio recording during a presentation while
drawing on the whiteboard or selecting slides. Using the app with an iPad allows the teacher or
student to download videos or pictures from the web. I can use this type of an app for creating
lessons and emailing the invitations out to students. The other fascinating app used by Lik Tsu
was Stellarium Mobile by Noctua Software Limited. The app size is 55 (MB). It covers
astronomy content and meets Blooms Taxonomy levels of remembering, understanding, and
applying. There are no standards provided for China. The guidelines provided were from the
Physics Curriculum and Assessment Guide (secondary 4-6) which is issued by the Education
Bureau of Hong Kong. For Common Core Standards this app can be used to meet ELALiteracy.RST.K-12.10 standards. The cost for me to download the app was $2.49. Studying
astronomy was never a strong point of mine, but the app was intriguing because it opens up to an
extreme amount of information and appears as if one is looking through a telescope that has
satellite views of the sky and coordinates positions of objects. Settings can control landscapes,
locations, and starlore. It offers advanced settings for more detailed star gazing. Objects have
different symbols depending on its type. When one taps on an object, information is provided

EDUC 630 APPS REVIEW

immediately in the upper part of the mobile device. When students can bring a planetarium to
their fingertips (literally) the learning experience can be much richer and more meaningful than
just reading the information out of a book, or waiting for a field trip.
I can envision the church using these apps for teaching and/or organizing purposes. One
can see the practical ways a lesson can be created and provide an effective way to teach with
very minimal technological ability once set up using the Educreations app. Setting up lessons
implementing videos and pictures for discussion can be done by someone with more extensive
training in its use and emailed to the Sunday school teacher in order to prepare. I once attended a
teaching from a former atheist scientist who turned to Christianity who was able to discuss the
argument for the existence of God as supported by astronomy. He taught using power point
presentation of pictures. He was very knowledgeable and an awesome speaker. I could envision
his lesson, if taught using the Stellarium Mobile app adding a great effect to the argument. I
believe these technologies, and technology in general, testifies to the awesome creativity our
God has. We are just scratching the surface of that creativity

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References:

Educreations app, 2016 Educreations, retrieved from https://www.educreations.com/

iTunes, Copyright 2016 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.
Stellarium Mobile, Stellarium (open source), retrieved from http://www.stellarium.org/en/