I love this blog post from Suzanne Tiedemann on Brunswick Acres Art. She tells about a lesson for 5th graders in which they pretended to be app developers, and went through a simulation of the design and creation process. The students drew their own “icons” for the apps, and created descriptions that would appear in the app store. This idea could be used in all kinds of creative ways in the classroom. Wouldn’t it be fun to have the students design their own app ideas for apps that would tell about them as a Beginning of the Year activity? Or, how about design an app that a character in a book would find useful? What about an app that reflects an understanding of a science lesson or that would have changed a moment in history? The great thing about this is that you do not need to actually know how to design apps – as it can all be in your imagination. But, just in case you have an aspiring app designer in your classroom, you can always show him or her the TED talk video of 6th grade app developer Thomas Suarez that Tiedemann helpfully includes in her blog post.
