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Welcome to Ed Tech Tuesday. I'm Jennifer Gibson
And I'm Rich Dixon. We're going to take a look at an app, Jennifer, called
Long Division Touch. Have you heard of that? No I haven't, and yet
I am always looking for help with long division for the students that I have taught
In the past. This is a great app primarily targeting
Those students in the intermediate grades that are beginning to work with, or
Need some refinement an extra practice and help with, learning
How to accurately go about, from a computational standpoint, answering
Questions with long division in them
So let's take a look at this app by diving in. There are lessons that introduce
Topics
And what's really nice about this app is that it's very
Interactive, so it implies the step that needs to be done for students
What a student does is sees the action as it's modeled
There's a description down below of what this step is
And then a student just drags, in this case the 8, underneath
The 25. And then at this point, the student works through
Calculating how many 8s fit into 25 by using the plus symbol here
And we can see that there's one left there
They can check their work. What's really nice is that
Then the next step is also modeled for us with a set of instructions down below
So for students that see something and that's
Enough for them, that's great, but what I do love is that there's also
Written instructions as well to make it really clear. So that it's meeting both ways
Of learning and providing extra support. Absolutely, so I'm going to finish that
Once we're done, we see the results there. We can do more practices
We can get some more explanation as to what's happening. But I'm going to return home
And just walk through some of the additional features. There's "Zero
Up Top," there's "Remainders," "Decimals," "Repeating Decimals," a "Decimal in
Divisor." All those are just different styles, of course, of
Problems. I'm going to demonstrate this right now. We know
From our classroom time that oftentimes it's hard for students to remember when to
Move that decimal over
At least at first. And so this actually gives them an opportunity move the
Decimal over, just like that,
And they get an opportunity to check their work and get some feedback
Simply because it moves on, it doesn't tell them when it's right or wrong
Now there are some pros and cons that I see with this app. I see the pro being that it's
Very clear
In terms of systematically walking a student through how to perform
Long division accurately. The downside, though,
Is that if you want a student to practice the arithmetic that goes along with
Figuring out
The dividends, for example, they're not going to get that opportunity
I was wondering about that, does the help
Go away over time, or is it always there?
You're gonna see these here, when you go through on the practice
Opportunities, you're not gonna get those same hints. They'll disappear
Again in this case, I'm working through moving two decimal places over
And then I begin my problem here. It shows me what's happening
And then I can continue to work. You can see along the top, there's random problems that can
Be done
But there's one last feature that I'd like to call out, and it's this one right here
It's the "Activities" feature, and this is in the paid version. There's a free and a paid
Version
Paid: $1.99. Oh, not bad
But the free version does not include what I'm going to show you now. I can see
There's some ads here
Yes and what this is, and I'd like to point this out, is there's a service
That's separate from
This particular app, called "Kodiak," and there's only four apps that I know of
That use the Kodiak service. What it is is it allows teachers
And/or parents to be able to track the progress
Of a student. It can also show what's happening on
The iPad in real time, so as a teacher I could monitor what students are doing if
I have an
iPad or even a computer, because there's a web page interface for this
And how much is Kodiak? Kodiak is free at the moment. They're in beta
And so there's only four apps that are in the App Store that I know of at this point
In time when we're recording. That's a really neat concept though
I like that there's these partnerships going on, and as we go along
We're going to start to talk about how you can stack different apps to create
Activities and support your units in lessons
OK well let's see these activities. So there's a couple of different activities that we can go
Through in here
And what's really nice is I can take a look at this and I can start,
And notice I'm not getting the help prompt at this point in time, and
I continue through. Can you show me something
If you did it wrong? Let's see, if I
Don't do something right, it simply drags that and puts it right back
In its spot. There's no feedback that's given in terms of words
Or any print in that particular case. So we work through, and it continues to give us
Some feedback. But again what I do like about this service is that it allows for
An interaction
On the premium-service side of these different activities, and then
Also a way to monitor from a teacher and/or parent standpoint
So that's Long Division Touch. With the classroom application,
I see this as being a great support for students who maybe didn't get it the
First time through, and you want to pull out that group and they can work within a
Separate table
I can also see it as a center as you're introducing long division, so there's a
Number of applications
After school, of course at home, recommending for parents to purchase
So it seems like there's a number of ways this can be incorporated into the classroom
Thank you for sharing. That was just a great app