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Apps for Education/Personal Tech in the Classroom

So, the big question is, "Should we allow students to use smartphones in the classroom?"  In many classrooms, that question has turned into "How do we prevent it?"  Teachers have creative solutions like the cell phone jail block.  However, and please let me stand on my soapbox for a minute because there is no getting around it, nearly every student has a personal smart device, and they are going to bring them to school, instead of banning a perfectly awesome learning tool, teachers and parents could incorporate them into a blended learning model like the flipped classroom.  To begin, there are lots of awesome learning apps that teachers can encourage students to use in class and at home.  There are also a lot of online reference materials, starting with online dictionaries.  When teaching ESL to my adult students, I always walk them through the steps of downloading at least two major English language dictionaries, not bilingual ones.  Normally, I like them to have the free Merriam-Webster apps for North American English, and the Oxford , Cambridge for Android or iOS, or Longman's.
Those are good to start with, but you should consider building a teaching/learning environment around personal tech.  Like any learning skill, students will develop good habits if they start early, so listen up elementary teachers!  Yes, children have personal smart devices earlier and earlier in life, so they should learn the most appropriate ways to put them to use for learning.  There are some great guides available now for implementing blended learning, and more are appearing all the time.  One I like is Lexia by Rosetta Stone, and you can download a useful report from the International Association for K-12 Online Learning.
During my Master Degree program at American College of Education, I discovered in my research that blended learning is ideal for teaching English Language Learners because it allows students to learn content with home culture and language support, and then get more personalized teacher guidance and peer support back in the classroom.  There is growing interest in this teaching/learning model for good reason!

-Dan


Note: The graphic was created using a template from canva.com

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