Apps for A – M – T: Exemplars and Feedback

This page supports Choosing Apps by Design, an article co-authored by Jay McTighe and Tom March and first published in the May2015 issue of Educational Leadership.  Besides linking to the “Core Apps” referred to in the article, a more comprehensive collection of Apps and sites follows that have been divided according to the Acquisition – Meaning-making – Transfer framework.  Our point is not to “get the category right” (because most Apps have an array of uses), but to frame sets of tools in such a way that can suggest targeted achievement of students’ acquisition of information, meaning making and transfer of new understandings.

We encourage you to use the comments section at the bottom of this page to suggest core apps that you have found effective or to share classroom anecdotes and tips for their use. Also feel free to share this page across your networks (links below).

From the Article

Tools to Promote Acquisition Goals

Tools to Promote Meaning Making

Thinking Tools and Graphic Organizers

Productivity Tools

Tools to Promote Transfer Goals

Additional Apps sorted by A – M – T

Acquisition

Content Providers

RSS Info Feeds

Tools to “Know”

Skills

Meaning-Making

The Apps and tools listed below can be used for many things, but we place them into this category because they can be used by teachers and learners to facilitate the construction of new understandings and thus, can facilitate meaning-making.

Tools that Facilitate Meaning-Making

Organizing
Gather Original Information
Communication
Collaborative Teaming
Constructing Information

Analyzing

 Interpreting

Generalizing

Testing

Evaluating & Synthesizing

Transfer

Again, many of the Apps and tools listed above could well be used by learners to transfer their understandings to new contexts and for novel purposes.  We list the Apps and site below because they are particularly suited to knowledge creation.  Like any software, use does not certify transfer, so rich tasks that help students “earn” enduring understandings will keep these Apps from facilitating mere copying and pasting.  In essence, many Apps listed below fall into a “tool” category – things people use to get real thinking work done.  Often, they become the foundation for on-going content-creation, rather than a one-off product (so think “video channels,” “podcast series,” “syndicated cartoons,” etc.).

Video Screen Capture

Design

Create

 Publish

References

 

2 thoughts on “Apps for A – M – T: Exemplars and Feedback”

  1. Hi Tom,
    My 7th and 8th students use Evernote to collect and organize their notes for research projects. One great feature is that most information databases we use can share articles directly into Evernote, so it makes collecting the information relatively easy.

    The other site my students are using is Choosito. They use it instead of Google. Some of the features I like are the built-in tools to help students evaluate the websites they find, the citation tool and the ability for students to create and share collections of websites. The site also has analytics which allow me to evaluate the work my students are doing on the site.

    Reply

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