23 Mobile Things: 18. Education

Catch-22 was originally supposed to be named Catch-18 to represent the significance of the number in the Hebrew language. The author opted to change the name to 22 in order to avoid confusion with another novel, Mila 18.

I guess it's kind of a Catch-18 that the phrase Catch-22 became extremely popular while not maintaining the integrity of the author's original idea.

Oh well.

So 18. Thing 18 is all about Education. And here I was trying to apply all the other ones to Education :)

This things starts off by prefacing that there are a lot of apps in education, which we all know. The lists are endless and ever growing. This Thing then goes on to share a "mishmash" of interesting apps that spread across various grade levels and subject areas.

I've had a chance to play around with most of these, but a few were new. Therefore, I decided to jump in and check them out. The four apps that were new to me were artCircles, B-Rhymes Dictionary, colAR Mix and Show of Hands. Here are my thoughts:

artCircles: Great app for art or any time when using meaningful visuals would be a good idea. Offers various "circles" of categories such as Nature, Texture or Colors. Within each circle are various components, and each component is tied to a visual gallery. The interface is fantastic.

B-Rhymes Dictionary: iPhone only. The tag line is finding words that "almost rhyme," with the purpose being that students will find words that sound good together. When I search for "animal," the first three returns I get are "trigeminal, seminal, and sentinel."  A search for "orange" (intentional trick!) returns "lozenge, goldfinch, and scavenge." I see very limited though interesting educational uses, but it's a bummer that the process for getting to the actual definition of the returned words is cumbersome.

colAR Mix: This app sounds super cool -- apparently it turns drawings into 3D images. However, I couldn't figure out how it works. I might be dumb. Also lots of in-app purchases. I'll not so sure.

Show of Hands: A real time anonymous polling tool. At first I assumed this would be like a polleverywhere tool where the teacher could poll students in the classroom. Instead, it's an open polling medium wherein students could explore the poll results to various questions posted by users that are as in depth as "The UN Panel on Climate Change has issued a report calling for a 70% reduction in global carbon emissions within 30 years, and complete elimination by 2100. Do you think it's doable?" or as superficial as "Coke or Diet Coke?" While viewing each result, you can segregate by gender, age, income, state, and political party. Could lead to some interesting discussions.

Alright. I must know...what are your favorite Education apps?