As part of our continuing iPad App March Madness promotion, I’m featuring the “losers” from our March Madness bracket as they are eliminated.  Loser #2 is Popplet Lite.

Popplet Lite is a free app that can be used for any web-styled graphic organizing you need to do. A single entry on the web is called a “popple” and can quickly be made by double clicking anywhere on the screen. As you can see from the screen shot on the left, popples can contain text, photos, drawings–just about anything you want. You can adjust their size, location, color and connections to other Popples as well. Once the Popplet is done, you can export the creation as a PDF that can be emailed or like I did for this we article, y can take a screenshot that saves to your iPad’s photos as an image. The free version doesn’t allow for unlimited usage, so you’ll have to keep the account cleaned out as you use it more and more. Here is a link that references some Popplet projects done by Wetmore second graders as part of their study of important African Americans earlier this year:  http://www.usd113.org/vnews/display.v/SEC/Wetmore%20Academic%20Center%7CStudent%20News.

Another tech integrationist put together a couple of nice tutorial pages on this app.  You can see his work and learn a little more about using Popplet here: https://sites.google.com/a/franklin.k12.wi.us/ipad-bingo/popplet

As part of our iPad App March Madness, I will be spotlighting each of the losing apps as they get eliminated throughout the month of March with a “What a Loser” post here on my blog. I’ll try to give some screenshots, some links to instructional ideas for the app, and maybe a link to student projects if we have some for the losing app. During this second week of March there will be eight “losers” featured.

Our first featured March Madness “Loser” is Google Earth.

Google Earth in the App Store: (Price: Free)
Click to “buy” Google Earth for your iPad.

Outside links you might find useful:
http://www.livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=54477
YouTube Tutorial on Using the Google Earth Apps

Because Google Earth is a Google product, if you have a GMail account, you actually have an account to save Google Earth projects at http://www.google.com/earth/ The app allows you to use Google Earth on an iPad and if you have projects saved, access them as well. Pinch and zoom features when the iPad is connected to the Internet allow you to zoom in on a location. Play with various overlays to look at things like roads, buildings, and map boarders. Rotate the earth to change views. Be sure to look at the link above to the LiveBinder resource with lots of instructional ideas for using Google Earth.

I love basketball as much as the next person. In fact I spent a lot of hours as a kid out on our patio shooting hoops with my neighbor because his dad, Coach Baldridge, or JB to those of us who loved him best, sent him up to make me shoot! But each year during March Madness I get a little tired of all the talk of who has the best defense, who has the most players in double digits each game, who’s juniors might forego their senior year to head straight to the NBA, and on and on! So this year, I’m proposing an alternate bracket for these discussions: A head to head vote-based competition between some of the favorite iPad apps that are being used in our district right now!

I’ve chosen 16 apps that I know are being used with enthusiasm here and there in the district, and I have pitted them (very un-scientifically) against one another in a head-to-head bracket. Each week of March, there will be a Google Form emailed to staff to submit their votes, and I’ll update the bracket. If there’s an app in the running that you haven’t used, you might want to find it in the app store (they’re all free) and give it a whirl! If you have a favorite app that you want to see win the competition, generate some discussion and tell your colleagues why they, too, should vote for your favorite! You can see a portion of the bracket in the image below (drag the image around to see different parts), but use this link to visit the entire bracket online: http://brkc.co/3541

At the end of March, the winning app will get a featured entry highlighting it here on my blog, and I might even create a video featuring how to use it and what it brings to the classroom!

Think I left off an app that should have been in the running? Leave a comment on the blog and tell folks why so it can be included in next year’s iPad App March Madness!

Updates every minute – View full tournament