Annie Lou

I miss this app. I used to love it. However, it has been assimilated into the Evernote app and is no longer a stand-alone app.

Perhaps I am missing something obvious, but I have not been able to get the new assimilated version to work anymore. :(

In addition to my own children, I also homeschool some neighbors’ children. I have been evaluating web sites to help me manage my classroom. Though I have not settled on a web site yet, my experience with Classroom Carrots motivated me to write.

I found this web site incredibly difficult to use. It was very slow to load, to the point of being unusable. The web site looks pleasant, but unfortunately I was not satisfied with my experience and would not recommend it at this time.

I used this game as a supplement to my basic math exercises. Sometimes, I was even able to use it as a reward, which was like a double bonus — I was able to “sneak” some teaching in while making it seem like a fun game. I would recommend this game to colleagues.

When my son found out about Angry Birds, a fellow homeschool mom recommended Amazing Alex to me. It is made by the same company and has the same quality that you see in Angry Birds. What a great recommendation. My only complaint is that it is TOO addicting.

I would recommend it as a fun game for children that can give parents the impression that it is more educational than something like Angry Birds, because honestly, I am not sure how much real learning is happening here. But if I had to choose between Angry Birds and Amazing Alex for my son, it would be Amazing Alex.

PBS Kids is a staple at our household. The family friendly shows are great and, dare I say, even entertaining for me. I downloaded the video app for a last resort measure on long car rides. We have only had to use it once so far. Thankfully, my son has not requested the app again on other car rides, though I don’t think that is a statement about the app’s quality. It has all of his favorite shows.

I downloaded the Zoodles browser a year ago and have felt much safer about my son’s online activities. We use the free version, which has more than enough activities to keep my son busy. I did not know they had an iPad app too and will be downloading it for our family iPad.

SlideRocket is a nice way to create engaging presentations. I generally use Keynote, but SlideRocket makes it much easier to include videos. I haven’t had a chance to take advantage of their versioning feature yet, but it seems helpful. There is a learning curve, but tutorial videos help. Once over that curve, I was impressed with the type of presentations I could create. I have one small complaint though. Sometimes it takes a long time for SlideRocket to load. I thought it was my Internet connection, but this has happened several times now. I hope they fix this soon.

I had some trouble setting Flubaroo up. The tutorial videos here helped. Once set up, I found Flubaroo easy to use. It was straight-forward and let me use my favorite tools – Google Docs – to manage my son’s performance. I am already using Google Docs to track his performance, so Flubaroo was a perfect fit. Best of all, Flubaroo is free!