Appy Iteration

Happy New Year! Welcome 2014!

In the spirit of the New Year, I've been doing a lot of reflecting over the past, very busy, month or so. I've been thinking especially about the apps I teach and how I teach them to my students. I have been focused on creation, rather than content practice apps for a good while now, and I feel good about that. I am feeling, however, that the hodgepodge of apps on our classroom set of iPads needs some iteration.

Definition from Wikipedia 

I spent a great deal of time at the beginning of the school year using Apple Configurator to add more great apps I had discovered over the summer, arrange them, and then set up each of our First grade iPads to be the same (each classroom has 4 iPads, so 8 total). 

After spending a semester creating projects with my students I discovered I had loaded WAY too many apps! We just aren't using all of what I loaded on there, and I think it's confusing when there is too much to look at. 

After some careful iteration of the apps and the arrangement on my class set, here's our new main page of content creation tools. 

            

I want to continue reinforce the use of these apps, and encourage app smashing with them. I know that there is more app iteration to be done, but here's my new starting point. My goal is to teach app fluency for these specific apps, and then let my students create from there. More on how I do that to come.

How do you choose the apps for your classroom? What are your criteria for honing and choosing the "just right" apps for your students and yourself?