I have noticed a handful of times students walking around with their tutor's iphone or ipod's in hand. Sometimes I see a game of Angry Birds or Tetris floating around on the screen, which is all fun and everything, but not so educational. But, I totally understand....we are living in a digital native world. Our students are not interested in looking at paper anymore, that does not hold their attention. Think about it, we as Americans have access to A LOT of technology:
There are 240 million TVs in the U.S.; 2 million are in bathrooms.
Newspaper circulation is down 7 million over the last 25 years. But in the last five years, unique readers of online newspapers are up 30 million.
More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 2 months than if ABC, CBS, and NBC had been airing new content (with no reruns) 24/7/365 since 1948 (which was when ABC started broadcasting).
MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube collectively get more than 500 million unique visitors per month. None of these sites existed in early 2003.
The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper, a thousand times more powerful, and about a hundred thousand times smaller than the one computer at MIT in 1965.
-Lori Elliot "Teaching Smarter with SmartBoards"
One of the great parts about technology today is that it reaches all types of learners: the visual learner, the auditory learn, and the kinesthetic learner. I encourage you as tutors to bring in your laptops, ipods, ipads, etc. and let your students get to know technology today. They might not have access to these cool "toys" at home or at school. This is absolutely your choice, you do not have to bring in anything to tutoring, but as the days are becoming nicer and students are becoming more restless, having a tool that is eye-catching and engaging could make all the difference in your last few sessions together. Check out these FREE applications for the ipod/ipad that you could download and let your student use as free time after their homework is compeleted:
- McGraw-Hill K-12 eFlashcards – McGraw-Hill School Education Group
- Math Skills – Tellapallet
- Blackboard Mobile™ Learn for iPhone – Blackboard Inc.
- Free Graphing Calculator – William Jockusch
- Survival Guide – SusaSoftX
- Flashcards+ – Connor Zwick
- Learn to Read Body Language (Lite) – Feather & Moor, Ltd.
- Vocabology – ThatWith.Me, LLC
- NASA App – NASA
- HubbleSite – Stsci
- Glow Coloring – MobiTech 3000 LLC
- The IQ Test : Free Edition – Eknath Kadam
- BrainPOP Featured Movie – BrainPOP®
- How to Draw – Animals, Cartoons, Cars, .. – ArtelPlus
- Spelling Drills – Chesaning Enterprises, Inc.
- Youtube Videos for Kids – Kaya
- Pictorial – anwaltmap.de
- Free Graphing Symbolic Calculator – PocketCAS lite – Daniel Alm & Thomas Osthege
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