Basics for Education

Word and Pages.  

Similarities

  Word & Pages

• The features between these two are very similar.  On both you can format the pages to meet your specific needs, fonts and sizes are available to design your work however you want it, and images can be added in order to spice things up a bit to not overwhelm your readers with a giant block of text.  The editing feature on both is quite similar so you can organize works on both in the same way.  
• Both are great for taking notes in class and since you may have one system and not the other you can depend on either to take notes in your class.    

Differences

   Word

•    More user friendly that pages.  On word you can find all the tools and features you need up front instead of filtering through a bunch of options in order to find one thing.  The layout of word "feels" better than pages because it's all right there in the open.  
• The tools on word work easier than on pages.  An example of this would be if you wanted to type something that had a list with bullets or roman numerals.  On word it is easy to make subsection in each main section, where as on pages you have to do a bit more in order to get it just right.  
• Word has awesome features that would allow you to do math work on the document.  This was not present in pages.  
• Office apps do not transition well between PCs to Macs.  It messes up formatting and can cause you to put more time, that you may not have, into a piece that was, at one point, completed.  
• Windows Office is expensive.

   Pages

•    On pages you can place pictures in the word document.  This feature is available on Word but on pages you can freely manipulate the image to the size you need were as on Word it is awkward and frustrating for the most part.  
• Work you have on pages can easily move from an Ipad to a MacBook to the desktop without much, if any, hassle.  This would make sharing work in the classroom a very simple process compared to how we normally share.  
• Pages in already include in most models that you would buy now.  Even if it isn't included on your device it is very inexpensive compared to Windows.  

Box.net

This site was very interesting.  I wasn't sure as to what it was at first but once I figured out that it was online storage it was all cleared up.  After looking at it a bit more I sort of felt like it was very similar to iCloud or other storage systems I have seen.  Though the one thing I did really enjoy was how simple it seemed to be to set up and store things onto the site.  I have hardly messed with iCloud but from what I have done Box.net seems to be a better solution, for me personally.  

iThoughts 

I had never heard of iThoughts, until today.  When I first opened the app I knew immediately that this would be an amazing tool to use in the classroom.  The organizational values that come with this app are astounding and as stated before, can be used across the board in education.  I can see in Reading using this app to do story planning before a creative writing project or mapping out key elements in a story that we have read.  In math you can use this to map the process of solving equations and since Common Core adds a written element this would be so much better for students than just paragraphs.  In science you can map out the scientific method and your findings within each step.  Social studies is full of timelines and this would be a great tool to create those.  One of the biggest applications of this would be in Metacognition.   You can have to students literally map out their thought process as they work through a difficult subject in order to have them see where they need to improve or change things.  

Rover vs. Safari

   Rover

• Costs $10 for the app
• Cannot multitask, use multiple tabs
• Perfect for kids, younger preferably, because if filters material.
• Is flash compatable

   Safari

• Free
• Not filtered so caution is advised 
• Can use multiple tabs without losing work. 

Like iThoughts I had also never heard of Rover until today.  I can see where Rover can be a great tool in the classroom for teachers to find and use educational material on the web, but this is conditional.  I would only use Rover in my class if I was teaching 4th grade or lower.  The sites that it recommends or do not have blocked may seem "kidish" to older students which will prompt them to not want to work.  I would use Safari in my class but not before teaching digital citizenship to my students.  Safari is not filtered, like Rover, so the students can find themselves in a bad place pretty quickly.  In order to prevent this I would monitor closely and teach them how to use the browser properly.  Over all I do see great potential in Rover, but only in the lower grades.  As for my specific teaching I will be sticking with Safari.