Word Bingo

Word Bingo Version 1.3 My students used this app to help them drill sight words. The app uses three different games to make memorizing sight words fun. There is a Bingo Game, a game called "Word Up" and a game called word fling. Each of theses games tests fluency with sight worlds but in a slightly different format than the other games, keeping it interesting. I think that is one of the strengths of this app, the games are fun but truly are educational. They really do help the student with recognition of sight words. Since recognizing sight words is primarily done in the early grades, there are difficulty levels in the app for first through third grade. This is fitting because according to the common core standards there are sight words that students should be working on in first grade and even more in second grade. The app offers a nice support or review to this learning as well as an introduction to the words, that it calls "primer" and "pre-primer." It also has a spelling section with various amounts of support that can be provided. Word Bingo has room for 30 student profiles and provides a report card for each one at tells the frequency that each word is missed. This is a very relevant app for use in the classroom. It is also not difficult for a student to use or learn to use, the games are straightforward and not confusing. The students I let use the app caught right on. They quickly learned from errors that they made, I saw that when a student made an error with a word they really paid attention to that. Word bingo holds students attention and made them care about their errors because the students want to do well. Word Bingo cannot go in place of teaching but as a support to teaching. It is good practice, is educational, entertaining and provides feedback for the teacher. All of these things considered, I would recommend that if interested, teachers use this app.

Writing Trek

I chose to look into the program, The Writing Trek. The Writing Trek allows students to learn about different types of writing, through a computer program. There is a poetry component, one about writing essays and a piece about writing paragraphs with correct grammar and punctuation. I'm sure that in 1995 the program was groundbreaking but now, it seems pretty archaic. The menus are confusing and there is no tutorial nor are there directions. That makes The Writing Trek pretty difficult to figure out. It's layout could easy be redone with power point, making it a lot more functional, current and specific to an individual classroom. I think that the program is a good idea to help a student who needs extra writing support. A teacher could send the student to work on the Writing Trek while the rest of the class works on other tasks. That's nice because in theory the student would not need the teachers assistance and could still be catching up. I don't think I would use this in my classroom though. After quite some time just trying to figure the menus all out, I was still a little confused. The graphics are not very good and I think that there are more effective ways to do what this software is attempting.