YOU Must Try This App!

If you teach primary children you know how long it takes for a child to type in a website.  At all costs I try not to have my children do this.  Imagine, twenty 7 year olds trying to type in a 30 character  URL on their iPads all at the same time.  It is true madness, "It's not working," "I need help!" "Is that an i or a l?" and this is why the app that I am about to tell you about is pure genius.

A couple of weeks ago a colleague of mine asked me to participate in "Talk Like A Pirate Day."  Of course the catch was that Pirate Day was the following day.  It took me two seconds to respond with a yes.  I quickly drafted up a letter and sent it home.  We decided we would use todaysmeet to connect the classes.  Sarah's class would pretend to be pirates and my class would ask them questions.  The following day my pirates walked in and it dawned on me that I had not made QR codes for my students to scan to go to the todaysmeet site, nor did I put the website on their home screen of their iPads.  From my description above, you knew that I was not going to put the website on the board for them to type out....I would rather walk the plank.

This is when the must try app comes into place.  The app is called chirp.  Don't go looking for it in the iPad apps, it is an iPhone app.  This app shares links using sound.  All you need to do is download it to all of your devices (it is free!) and turn it on.  You type in the website you want to share and press the chirp button.  It sends out a noise that all of the devices will hear and it goes to that link.  GENIUS!  I am not done...my classroom is a NOISY place and Chirp is designed to cope with music, speech, TVs blaring in the background, and so on!  It can share pictures too. 
Here is video showing you how it works:





This app has made my life so much easier in sharing information with my students.  I would love to hear how you use it in your classroom!