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It’s what you wished you had when you were a kid — apps on smart phones that can help with homework.
Your kids have them in their hands. When ninth-grader Tyrone Barnes told his mom he was using his smart phone to study, “She just said what old people say… like ‘Technology is getting interesting by the day.’ ”
It is getting more interesting, but it shouldn’t make us feel old at all. Getting up to speed is easier than you think.
A variety of educational apps on smart phones allow students not just to check homework problems but actually solve them in some cases. Here’s one example: Quizlet lets students create their own flashcards, study off of flashcards other people have made and study on the go.
A Cleveland Metropolitan School called E3agle Academy has integrated technology into its teaching methods, including the apps.
“When I see a kid with a cell phone out, my first instinct is not to say put that cell phone away,” Peggy Schauer, the principal of E3agle Academy told Channel 3’s Hilary Golston. “My first instinct is to go over to the student and see ‘What are you using your cell phone for?’ ”
Schauer is no stranger to educational apps. She has used them herself. Quizlet for example, helped her study for her Ph.D. “Somebody in my class said do you know about this Quizlet app? I said what!!!”
Her own child brought her attention to a new app that can solve math problems, called PhotoMath. The free app translates the problems kids find in their textbooks into solutions. To solve a problem, hover over the expression and as long as it’s typed and not written, the answer will appear.
The program can solve roots and linear equations, but not word problems or math as advanced as geometry or calculus.
But is this way of getting to answers OK? Is this cheating?
Schauer says it really depends on how the technology is used.
“If it only said the answer, I would say “You know what? No. That’s not cool,’ ” she said.
The program can also explain how the problem was solved, so, for that reason, Schauer says it’s OK to use.
“It told you the answer, and then it also told you the steps. It’s a tool,” she said.
The world is also changing, and the reality is many things are only a click away or a finger away, in the case of smart phone apps.
“I think we need to re-define what cheating is,” Schauer says. “Cheating in an old traditional model is the only resource you can use is what you’ve memorized and that’s just not the world we live in today.”
A few other apps for this seemingly new world order:
RefME: Lets students scan book or journal barcodes to create citations, bibliographies and reference lists.
iFormulas: Has a bunch of math formulas students can look up.
StudyBlue: Another app that will let you look over online flashcards and class notes.
inClass: +Helps students study using an easy to use note-taking option.
Duolingo: A top-ranked app that can help you practice six languages. It also uses voice recognition.
iBooks: A variety of free eBooks.
AP Flashcards: Should work well for all those students who are prepping for the standardized tests. It comes equipped with almost 3,000 flash cards.
Studious: Silences your phone during class. It can also let you know when assignments are coming up.
And then there are some “oldies but goodies” study guides now in app form — like Spark Notes.
“We just want to make sure that our kids are going to be successful, so we default to what we know, and we know that that workef … paper, pencil and all that worked for us, and here we are today,” Schauer said. “The bottom line is that the careers that our kids are going to go into haven’t even been invented yet, and they’re all dealing with technology.”
Most of the apps are free. Some however, are not available on both iPhone and Android platforms.