iPad Apps for School

Ocean Science is a free iPad app that at least six people have recommended to me over the last few weeks. The app is essentially a seven chapter, multimedia ebook about the basics of ocean science. Each chapter includes animations, pictures, video, and text. You can toggle back and forth between the multimedia elements and [...]

Kids Boats is an iPad app through which students discover animals of different climate zones. In Kids Boats students navigate a boat down a river avoiding obstacles and collecting stars. Along the river students will find animals native to the climate zone that the river is in. At the end of each river students will [...]

This morning I stopped by my friend Mike Morrell’s 9th grade science class. It was water rocket launch day so I knew it would be a fun day. Mike’s students have been working on rocket designs and building their rockets for a while. The water rockets are the first phase of the unit. Full model [...]

iNaturalist is a community website for sharing pictures and observations of plants and animals. To enable easy sharing of observations, iNaturalist offers a free iOS app. Using the app you can take a picture, geo-locate it, write your observations, and upload to the iNaturalist community. If your observation is incomplete, for example if you’re not sure [...]

Audubon Owls is an iPhone app (it will work on iPads too but it’s not optimized for them) that is small, multimedia encyclopedia of North American owls. Through the app you can learn about nineteen types of owls. The app provides maps of the range of each owl. To help you identify owls that you [...]

Last week I reviewed Exploratorium’s Sound Uncovered app which is a nice app that will help students understand the science of sound. Today, I tried out Exploratorium’s Color Uncovered iPad app. Color Uncovered is essentially a seventeen part ebook with some nice interactive activities and videos built into it to support the articles. In Color [...]

Essential Skeleton is a free iPad app that students studying the human skeletal system should download. The app puts a 3D skeleton on your students’ iPads. Students can zoom-in, zoom-out, and rotate the skeleton 360 degrees. When students zoom-in and tap on a bone they will see its name in English and Latin, have the [...]

Solve the Outbreak is a free iPad app produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The app is a game that contains three epidemics for students to research. In each investigation students have to read the background, read clues, analyze data, and answer questions. The questions put students in the role of a [...]

NOVA Elements for iPad is an excellent, free iPad app that science teachers should take note of. The app is “hosted” by NY Times technology reviewer David Pogue. There are three primary features of the app. Those features are called Explore, Watch, and Play. The Explore feature of NOVA Elements for iPad contains and interactive [...]

Google Sky is one of my favorite Android apps, but unfortunately it is not available for iPads so I set out find an alternative to Google Sky to use on my iPad. I found three that I think are worth noting. All three of these apps use your location (enable location based services in your [...]