Her first post on which I commented was Three Options for Independent Reading on the-iPad. In this post she mentions three options for digital, independent reading in the classroom. The first option she mentions is Epic Books. This app is a library of thousands of books for all ages and is free to educators. The teacher can use his or her sign in on school owned iPads. Ms. Cassidy even mentioned trying it with 20 students all reading the same book at once with no issues. Many of the books on this app can be read aloud.
This app comes highly recommended by her.
The second option she mentions is Unite for Literacy. This website offers books for young readers. What Ms. Cassidy does with her students is to make a direct link to this site on her student's iPad homepages so that it is easily assessable to them. All the books on this site can be read aloud.
The third and final option she mentions in her blog is the Kindle app. The way she does this with her students is that each of the iPads in her classroom has their own account. She will wait and watch the books that become free for Kindle and when they do she will put them on the classroom iPads. She says she does this after reviewing the books on her own Kindle. It is not mentioned whether or not these books can be read aloud; however, according to How to Make Kindle Read Aloud to You on Your iPad : iPad Help this can be done through voice over. The unfortunate part is it seems this would read everything....I think I heard her read "comma" in the video.
My comment on her post was the following:
"I really enjoyed this post. It has great information and resources that I could use in my future classroom when I begin teaching. I hope I will have the opportunity to incorporate at least one of these into my curriculum down the road."
The second post of hers that I commented on was Blogging in a Primary Classroom-With Only One iPad! In this post, she details ways to make blogging effective in a one iPad classroom. The first two apps she suggests are Edublogs and Kidblogs. She suggests this because it can have multiple users on the same device. Some easier apps she suggest for younger kids are Easy Blogger Jr. (associated with Blogger) and Easy Blog Jr (associated with Edublogs). Easy Blogger is free, except for paying for the app, and the blog creators will even create the blog for you. From there the only task is to put in the names and pictures for the students. This can be made easier because in order to log in, the student just has to tap the picture of themselves. This can be very beneficial for younger students. There is even the option to add voice recording to pictures added. Also according to what she says, Easy Blog Jr. has the same abilities.
My comment on her blog was the following:
"This is definitely something I will have to remember. Because of where I live, it is very likely that I will be teaching in a classroom that has very few pieces of any electronics like an iPad in the classroom (if any). I will have to keep these options in mind for when I have my own classroom for use of my students."
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