iPad App

Knowledge Quest: Timeline Builder app {Crew Review}

April 19, 2013 by Dana

The creative team at Knowledge Quest has done it again. Well-known for their creative black line master maps and timelines, Knowledge Quest is continuing to invent products that are easy for any homeschooling family to use. The Knowledge Quest Timeline Builder App for iPad is no different.

This app allows the user to create a full timeline to use with any history program. You can create a sample timeline using a specific time span, adding to it as needed or removing things that aren’t needed. The user can also create a new timeline with the specifics needed at the time.

Sample timelines come with facts from the time period already introduced. The most important characters of the time period are covered, complete with photos for the user to learn with. This can be added to as needed or removed from as needed. Images can also be uploaded or found and added from various places online.

New timelines are completely blank, much as they would be when creating your own timeline with weekly and daily lessons. Images can also be added by uploading or by finding them various places online. The time period can be set and adjusted as needed with the user able to choose from BCE, BC, AD, and CE periods in time. Any start or end date can be chosen per timeline.

A name can be specified along with a full description of the timeline you create for any timeline created. The user can also choose a background to further customize the timeline being created. And timelines can be switched between simply by clicking on the tabs shown on the app.

Inside the timeline, the user can choose to show the images or hide them as needed. Zooming in and out to specific periods is also available. You can edit the timeline at any point in time so change background color and specific years needed, as well as era.

Creating a New Event is easy. Simply click “New Event” at the top of the timeline. Create an event by entering the event name, description, start and end dates. Then import an image from the iPad image library or pasteboard. You can delete images in this option too.

Searching Wikipedia is also an option here. Clicking this option takes you to Wikipedia to the specifics of the event in question where you can find details, images and learn more about the events. This allows the student to find more specific information about the event at hand.

Once the timeline is created, you can then share it. You can save the timeline or event images to photos, send the timeline or events by email and save the event descriptions and timeline event images to a folder for sharing in iTunes. This allows you access to the timeline in other places than just the app and also allows printing of the timeline specifics as needed. This also allows you to store the information for future use without needing to keep the timeline on the iPad permanently. When the timeline is no longer needed you can simply use the delete timeline option to remove it from the app.

I have personally been using Knowledge Quest products in our homeschooling for quite some time now. We began with their old printed black line maps and now use the available apps and digital programming in various ways in our homeschooling. Timeline Builder is a great addition to our family of products and is definitely something I plan to continue to use in our homeschooling. We used it with our current history lessons, adding various persons and places that we have learned about over the past few weeks. The great thing is that it doesn’t matter what period of history we are in, we can simply go to our timeline and add. Once the event or person is input into the timeline app, they show up in the appropriate place on the timeline. If I make a mistake, then it’s simple and easy to edit at any point in time.

Knowledge Quest Timeline Builder app is available for iPad through iTunes for $6.99 and is worth every cent. Stop by Knowledge Quest to purchase your Timeline Builder today!

Click the image below to read more reviews of Knowledge Quest products!!

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Mobile Education Tools, Rainbow Sentences App {Crew Review}

June 13, 2012 by Dana

Mobile Education Tools

Every year when our taxes come back, I look over what we need for school and try to invest it in things that would be useful for us educationally while we have the money to do so. Last year was no different and I chose to invest in one of our favorite classroom products, our iPad. This has been such a blessing for our homeschooling and has allowed us to be able to review great products like this one from Mobile Education Tools.

Rainbow Sentences is an iPad app available on iTunes from Mobile Education Tools. It’s designed to help students recognize grammatically correct sentences by using visual color coded cues. The basic structures of Who, What, Where, and Why of sentences are color coded so that students can better understand how these combinations work together to create basic sentence structures. With this app, students learn to recognize nouns, verbs and prepositions and have the opportunity to record their sentences in their own voice to improve their speech and other language skills.

Rainbow Sentences features 168 unique images to create a sentence from, 6 levels of sentence complexity, and color coded words for added visual support. Words are dragged to create correct sentence placement and are spoken for non-readers who may be using the app. Students also have the option to record sentences in their own voices and to save and email recorded sentences. Throughout the app, as lessons are completed, students earn puzzle pieces to encourage continued play and those puzzles come to life as they are completed, keeping the students interests active as they work through their lessons.

Rainbow Sentences was a HIT in our house. All three of my children loved using this one from ages 4-11. I set the app up with their log-in and allowed them to play freely as long as they wanted. Each of them found a different interest while using the app and all enjoyed completing the fun little puzzles as they worked through it. This is definitely a product we will continue to use.

Since this app is encouraged to be used with Special Needs children, it was perfect for us. I will be able to continue using it with all three, and especially with my 4 year old who is in speech therapy once a week. The ability for her to hear the words in the sentences and also record her own voice reading the sentences will be a great help for her auditory skills, as well as for her brother and sisters skills too. This app has truly been a huge blessing in our family.

Rainbow Sentences from Mobile Education Tools is available through iTunes on the iPad for $7.99. It’s recommended for ages 3-10 as both an educational and special needs tool. It is compatible with iPad’s system iOS 4.3 or later. For more reviews of this product, please visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog!

*Disclaimer – This app from Mobile Education Tools was provided free for me to review in exchange for my honest opinion in a blog post both by the company and the Schoolhouse Review Crew.

Time Timer {Crew Review}

November 23, 2011 by Dana

Time Timer was one of my favorite products to review. Time Timer’s main product was created over 20 years ago by Jan Rogers in an effort to meet the needs of her then 4 year old daughter. Her daughter needed to “see” time’s passage in order to understand it. From this need, Time Timer was born.

This timer isn’t like your normal everyday kitchen timer. Time Timer shows the user how much time is left in red as it ticks down the time. This allows the user to physically SEE how much time they have to continue working on their project or simply just to wait, whatever use you choose to use it for.

For this review, I was given the new Time Timer App free of charge for use with my iPad and I must say I really love it! I have looked for a similar app in the past for my own personal use at home that will allow me to countdown several timers at once in an effort to keep each of my children on different tasks. Time Timer allows me the ability to do that.

Each timer is completely customizable. You can select from four colors for each timer: red, blue, green and yellow. You can customize the hours, minutes and seconds for each timer. You can turn on or off the time display and signal. You can select and change the number of times each timer plays. You can also change the sound for each timer to fun tones like Robot, Game Over, Explosion and even a Truck Horn. You can set up to 19 different timers at once!

Simply put, this timer is a whole lot of FUN!! I completely enjoy setting timers and my children love them too. I set up different timers with a different sound each time for them to do chores, schoolwork and various other things. They love hearing the sound go off at the end and it often gets some kind of laugh! Time Timer actually helps make kids chores fun! And honestly, Mom’s housework is more fun because of them too. I set my own timers throughout the day the same as the kids to keep myself on track.

I completely recommend the Time Timer app to everyone, homeschooling or not. It’s absolutely wonderful! You can read more reviews for Time Timer at the TOS Homeschool Review Crew Blog. But trust me on this one, this is one app you will LOVE!

*Disclaimer – Time Timer and TOS Homeschool Review Crew gave me this app for free in exchange for my honest-to-goodness opinion to be shared in a blog post on my personal blog. No money was exchanged for this product.