Apps top 10

Top 10 Apps tips

1. App creation has a really low barrier to entry, which means that no matter what you're thinking about, there's an app for that.
2. Some of them are even really good.
3. Apps have a tradition of being very inexpensive, or even free, which is ideal for a teacher's budget.
4. Many students have access to smart phones, and the number is increasing rapidly.  You might be able to make use of great technology without spending a ton of money on hardware.
5. There's a good chance that students are already familiar with the interface, and if the app is really great, it might become something they will use all the time.
6. They're going to use their phones no matter what you do.  You might as well encourage them to learn something too.
7. There are a huge number of apps, and new ones being created all the time.  If you don't want to make a full time job out of evaluating new apps, you need a good strategy for filtering.
8. The best advice I heard for that was to follow a particular blog.  But because I wrote it down, instead of putting it in my blog, I don't know how to get to that blog.  Doh!
9. Apps can enable students with disabilities to do things they might not be able to use otherwise.
10. Graphing is intensely important in building understanding of mathematical principals, but graphing without technology is slow and annoying.  Technology makes graphing so immediate that you can understand ideas in whole new ways.  It's possible to build intuitions that used to take many weeks of work in only a few minutes.  Woo Hoo!