Blog Entry #6: Digital Writing

 There are so many apps out there for helping students with many aspects of writing.  As a kindergarten teacher, I think the best apps I saw were Little Writer: The Tracing App for Kids and Book Creator.  The Little Writer app looks very engaging and extremely child friendly.  There are bright colors and fun images included, not as a distraction, but to help the child with practicing their handwriting.  The one picture shows a little crab at the top of the letter.  This is where the child should put their finger to start the next stroke.  They will then follow the string of pineapples until they get to the end.  It’s just a really great way to make it maybe a little more fun for the kids.  I also love that there are multiple options for what children to practice tracing, upper and lowercase alphabet, numbers, shapes, and words, making it an all-in-one app for handwriting practice.  What I liked about the Book Creator app is that students can draw and illustrate as normal with their crayons, pencils, and markers, but then take a photo of their drawing and upload it in as their page.  Students can then record themselves reading their words or speaking to tell the story of their picture.  I looked at some pre-school and kindergarten examples that were included on their website and they were very cute.  They look like very nice finished and polished books.

I know there are so many more wonderful apps out there.  It is hard to say which is really the best until you try it out with your students in the classroom.