Thinking Kit Creator is a virtual brainstorming kit that allow teachers to outline projects that give students the opportunity to collaborate, organize content and record their thought processes from their iPad. In most cases, teachers would use the Thinking Kit website to create a task that includes individual content "slips" (text, pictures, etc.) that they want students to organize and discuss. Students can then access the directions and content from their iPads and follow the teacher's step-by-step instructions. For example, the teachers instructions could be "first discuss what these 25 items have in common. Based on that, agree on a name of your project. Next, identify a criteria and categorize all of the items in at least three different sub-categories. Explain your thinking as you put each slip into its category." Students follow the directions from within the app. They can easily move the slips around the screen as they organize and re-organize their thinking. As they go, their movements can be recorded so they can then replay them with the teacher and reflect on why they organized their slips the way they did. Other features include virtual sticky tape and highlighters so students can add comments, highlight their thinking, etc., similar to how they would work in a non-digital brainstorming activity. While students can work independently, the app is optimized for multiple students to work together. Teachers could have students create their own brainstorm from scratch, wherein students create all the slips, add pictures, and create the organizational structure. Overall, this is a very neat use of technology that students might really enjoy working on collaboratively while teachers can gain insight into everyone's thinking without just seeing the end product. However, the app will require significant teacher preparation to create projects and monitor progress and results.

• Provides sufficient and varied types of practice problems to maximize understanding and generalization of the targeted skill/concept
• Manufacturer claims alignment with Common Core/Known Standards
• Presents educational concepts accurately
• Explains answers so students can learn from mistakes
• Better for teaching the skill to new or struggling learners
• Better for practicing or refreshing the skill
• Skills are practiced through authentic, meaningful problems (not just rote practice)

• Appropriate for a broad age range to use and enjoy
• Subject matter and problems are relevant, interesting and authentic to students
• Visually appealing to children in the target age range
• Provides virtual rewards or incentives after meeting specified goals or objectives
• Provides a "break activity" between academic problem sets
• Offers ongoing, progressive challenge
• Overall - Enjoyable. Given the option, students would choose this option

• Has a free or trial version
• Provides teaching guidance for adults to support the child and set appropriate goals
• Provides an age-appropriate tutorial/first time users can work independently
• Student should be able to use independently after first use
• Has a multi-player option to foster in-person collaboration or cooperation
• Multiple users can save a profile
• Student graduates to the next level or topic only after meeting a benchmark
• Can play without sound and not distract others
• Students can save work between sessions
• Can effectively understand and monitor student's progress (email report or in product)
• Provides options to play in languages other than English/Good for ELL
• Presents information in multiple formats (voice over, pictures and text, etc.)
• Overall - Easy to use

• Attention
• Age inappropriate amount of work which could overwhelm or discourage students
• Directions may be confusing for students using independently
• Visually distracting with too many pictures, problems or moving objects
• Fine Motor Skills
• Requires challenging finger movements, motor precision or physical manipulation
• Organization
• Age inappropriate amount of work which could overwhelm or discourage students
• Directions may be confusing for students using independently
• Requires remembering and completing a sequence of visual steps
• Students might need support with navigation
• Reading Basics
• Directions may be confusing for students using independently
• Spatial Perception
• Requires scanning in multiple places for words, objects or numbers
• Requires remembering and completing a sequence of visual steps
• Visual Discrimination
• Requires scanning in multiple places for words, objects or numbers
• Words used during activity can be too small or difficult to read
• Visually distracting with too many pictures, problems or moving objects
• Students might need support with navigation
• Working Memory
• Requires scanning in multiple places for words, objects or numbers
• Directions may be confusing for students using independently
• Requires remembering and completing a sequence of visual steps
• Students might need support with navigation

Thinking Kit - the easy way for educators AND learners to create simple but unique learning activities for iPads. It can be used with any age and any topic whilst building essential and higher level skills.

Thinking Kit activities consist of a number of movable and scalable pieces of information (e.g. photos, text, diagrams, or maps) – and one main Task Question or Objective. The focus can be anything from reading, grouping and/or ordering, to very challenging and open ended problems.

Download the app now or go to www.thinking-kit.com for more details.

WHY WOULD I USE THE THINKING KIT?

* QUICK – Just fill in the task template, upload images (if you like), then save to get a Task Code. Enter that code in the Thinking Kit App and it downloads instantly. If you have the contents ready, creating a task and getting it on the iPad can be done in 5 minutes.

* CONVENIENT – While the tasks themselves are used on the iPad, they can be created on laptops and PCs. When you save, tasks are saved to the cloud, so no worries about storage or remembering that memory stick!

* BALANCED – You cover the topics you need to with students and while they learn about them, they develop key skills too.

* SHARING – You can share your tasks with colleagues and use or modify tasks shared by others.

* PROJECT BASED LEARNING – You can ask students to prepare their own contents which can then be turned into an iPad activity (for them or others).

* STORY TELLING – Thinking Kit can be used for creating stories, telling stories, or getting engaged with text and picture based stories that you or the students create.

2 QUICK EXAMPLES OF TASKS:

* Using the creator, you (educator) would add images of animals and a definition of ‘vertebrate’ and ‘invertebrate’. Set instructions: ‘Put the vertebrate animals on one side and the invertebrate animals on the other. Then, create some named groups to sort them into different kinds, e.g. ‘Fish’.

* Add a few facts, diagrams and photos about a flood. Set instructions: ‘Put these diagrams, facts and images in order to reflect why you think the flood occurred. Use the Sticky Tape to join things together and add notes to explain why.’

HOW DOES THE APP WORK?

Students of any age learn in the Thinking Kit App by visually moving, grouping and linking pieces of information set by you or another creator. Learners can do this together (2-3 on one iPad) for a truly collaborative experience or they can do this alone.

The Thinking Kit App is designed to trigger group discussions on any topic being worked on, through the use of tools such as Sticky Tape, Arrow Sticky Tape, Group and Note. Such discussions, depending on the type of task created, can lead to the development of collaboration and higher level skills (such as critical thinking and problem solving). This is as well as the retention of whatever information that is in the created tasks.

A Reflection Stage at the end allows a quick playback of the full process. This promotes the importance of the process as well as the outcome. It can be carried out alone, with a group, with the educator or even as a class.

A PDF report of completed activity sessions can be opened in the app. It’s a summary of a session with screenshots of the process and includes things that learners have added, such as groups or notes. If learners can’t quite finish their session, they can simply save then resume another day.

MORE TASK EXAMPLES

3 example tasks are included in the app. Here’s some other quick examples of possible tasks/objectives:

* Place these images and bits of text on the right location on the background map

* Use the Sticky Tape to create a chain of these information slips to show the chronological order of American history. Fill in any gaps with notes

* Look at these clues, do the sums then explain which machine you think Trev the Triff’s alien employees should use