Bored? Flipboard!
Type of technology: Web Based, Ipad
SAMR Model Rating: Augmentation
Grade level: All grades
Subject area: All Subjects
Cost: Free
Flipboard is a self created emagazine application accessible on iPad, iPhone, online, and many other platforms. It’s a great tool to use to gather and collect research about topics you are interested in all over the web and from other magazines. The magazine has an auto-formatting feature to make the magazine you create come out visually and spatially appealing, It has a clean appearance with images and brief highlighting statements of the web articles. You can then click on the images to open up the full article. To truly understand what it does, how it looks, and how it can help your class, you have to check it out!
How do I use it? My class is working on an independent inquiry project based on a business that they want to create. The business is something that they can actually start right now, so the students must take into consideration financial constraints, logistical constraints, and capability restrictions. Their group helps each member drive their inquiry with probing questions about these constraints and other helpful ideas that may further their inquiry or even redirect them into a new inquiry. When they have a inquiry question that they want to research, they can look at others magazine and flip articles into their own Flipboard magazine, or use the Flipboard web extension and flip articles straight from the web. It’s an engaging and easy way to collect and categorize student research. It feels especially robust when you use it on a iPad and turn the pages as you would a magazine. The student below wanted to create a non-profit business that would rescue dogs and provide a home. He researched fundraising to investigate startup costs and researched rescuing dogs. See the image links below.
Over all this is a great resource to use for researching, such as inquiry projects mentioned above. Also, the students absolutely enjoy the process of gathering information in a user friendly and visually appealing format. You will need a flipboard account to view others flipboard magazines, but the signup is simple. Feel free to review the flipboard magazines some of my 4th grade students made below.
