New Dropairs Games

There are some new Pair Boards available for Dropairs from K12 Handhelds. These include some early elementary games (matching letters, numbers, colors, rhyming words, telling time, counting money) and upper elementary/middle school games (fractions/decimals/percents, geometry, algebra, inequalities).

Thanks to NorthGlide for making this software available free of charge, and thanks to the teachers who suggested ideas for these games.

Mini-movies for learning sight words

I've written before about the power of mini-movies to engage kids and teach core content with mobile technology.

One use of this is for teaching sight words to beginning readers. Here's an example:



These videos are relatively easy to create (or inexpensive to have someone else create). Once they're done, they can be viewed online, on handhelds (Palm or PPC), on iPods or other mobile video players, on game machines, and on DVD players.

One interesting thing we've seen in using mini-movies with kids (especially older middle school kids) is that they are more likely to watch an instructional video repeatedly if they can do it in private. This is one of the advantages of mobile technology.