iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

science

Rugged Rovers – Design and Test Space Rovers

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rugged rovers Rugged Rovers is a free iPad app in which students can create simple designs for space rovers. Students draw a design for their rovers then add up eight wheels to it before taking it for a virtual test drive. Students test their rover designs by driving them across a Mars spacescape. To help their rovers over obstacles students can use a small power booster. The power booster must be used in moderation because it cannot instantly recharge. The object of the activity is to design a rover that can travel as far as possible. When students get their rovers stuck, they can go back and try a new design.

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Rugged Rovers could be a fun little app for students to use to see how balance and engine strength work together to influence how Mars rovers travel.

Three iPad Apps for Creating Multimedia eBooks

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One of my favorite things about iPads and the web in general is the ease with which anyone can create a multimedia product. Teachers can create and organize multimedia reference materials for students and students can create multimedia products to show off their ideas. The following three iPad apps allow you and your students to create multimedia ebooks.

story_creatorStory Creator is a free iPad app that makes it easy to create narrated picture books on your iPad. To create a narrated picture book on Story Creator start by inserting a picture as your book’s cover. To create a page just tap the “+” icon and import a picture, draw a picture, type some text, or do all three. After completing one or all three of those previous actions tap the microphone icon to record your narration. After making your recording you can quickly adjust it so that each word of text is highlighted to match the timing of your narration.

storymakerLittle Story Maker is a great little app that adults and children can use to create their own custom books on their iPads. The app provides book templates that you complete with your own images, text, and voice narration. All of the books that you create are stored in your Little Story Maker bookshelf. To create a book in Little Story Maker start by adding a title, add a cover image by selecting from your iPad’s camera roll, then choose a template for your book. On each page you can add an image from your camera roll and type the text for your page. If you want to add narration to your book simply click the “record audio” button after typing your text. Then you can add narration that will play on the page.

book_creatorBook Creator allows anyone to create their own books using images, text, videos, and audio recordings. You can arrange your book in three different formats; portrait, square, or landscape. Each page in your book can include pictures and videos from your iPad’s camera roll and or from your iTunes library. In addition to the pictures and videos you can include as much as text as you can fit on each page. In fact, if you just want to have text on a page you can do that. If you would like to narrate your book you can tap the record button to add your voice to each page of your book. Every page in your book can have a custom color scheme. Your completed Book Creator projects can be sent directly to your iBooks library or shared to a service like Box or Dropbox where they will be available as ePub publications.

Three Free(ish) iPad Apps for Creating Narrated Stories

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Creating narrated slideshows is one of the easiest ways to introduce students to digital storytelling practices. Students can create narrated slideshows to illustrate and explain their research findings, to tell a personal story, or to outline the framework for a story that will written down later. The following three iPad apps all provide an easy way to create narrated slideshows.

shadow puppetShadow Puppet Edu is my favorite app on this list. Shadow Puppet Edu is a free iPad app that students can use to create audio slideshow videos. The app offers an integrated search tool that students can use to find pictures from the Library of Congress, to search for images from NASA, and to find Creative Commons licensed images from Flickr. Students can also import pictures from the camera roll on their iPads. After selecting a set of images students can arrange them into any sequence by simply dragging and dropping them into order. Then to create a story students press the record button and talk while flipping through their images. Students can share their Shadow Puppet Edu projects through a variety of avenues including YouTube and email. Shadow Puppet Edu projects are automatically saved to the camera roll on a student’s iPad.

Screen Shot 2014-11-20 at 9.57.30 PM30hands is a free iPad app that makes it very easy to create a narrated slideshow. To create a basic narrated slideshow on 30hands all you need to do is import images from your iPad’s camera roll then press the record button below each image to record your narration. If you don’t have any pictures on your iPad you can take pictures using the 30hands app. 30hands also allows you to draw images instead of importing pictures. You can combine imported pictures with drawn images in your presentations. And you can draw on top of imported images. When your project is complete you can save it on your iPad or share it with the 30hands community.

30hands is also available in a pro version. The pro version of 30hands allows for integration of Google Drive and Dropbox for storing and sharing projects. Additionally, the pro version offers the option to insert video clips into your slides.

pixntellPixntell is an iPad app for quickly creating simple narrated photostories. To create a story using Pixntell all that you need to do is start a new project, select some images, place them in order, and then start talking about each of your pictures. You control the timing for each image. If you want to talk about your first picture for twenty seconds, your second picture for just three seconds, and your third picture for fifteen seconds, you can do that. Pixntell allows you to crop your pictures, add text them, add filters to them, place fun stickers on your pictures, and draw on your images highlight a portion of them. When your project is complete you can upload it directly to YouTube, save it in your Dropbox account, share it on Facebook, or send to friends via email. The free version of Pixntell allows you include five images in your projects. The paid version allows you use an unlimited amount of images in your projects.

Explain 3D for iPad – Visual Explanations of Machines and Systems

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Screen Shot 2014-10-24 at 10.48.19 AM A few years ago Explain 3D launched as a website to showcase 3D animations of simple machines. Later the site expanded to include 3D animations of elements of the universe. This week Explain 3D launched a new iPad app for the same purpose as the website.

Explain 3D’s iPad app includes the same animations that you can find on the website. The animations allow viewers to zoom-in, zoom-out, and rotate animations 360 degrees. Students can manipulate animations of simple machines like elevators and hand pumps. The app also offers models and animations of space shuttles and the International Space Station. To help students learn about electricity Explain 3D offers 3D models nuclear power plants, wind turbines, and hydro-electric dams.

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Explain 3D could be a good source of models to include as part of a larger lesson that you’re constructing for your students to view online. To get the most out of the models your students will probably need you to explain what is happening and or the connections to the larger lesson.

Marco Polo Weather – A Fun App About Weather

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Screen Shot 2014-10-03 at 9.09.44 AM Marco Polo Weather is a new iPad app designed to help young students learn about weather. The app features cute little animated characters that children can move and dress. Children can also alter the setting surrounding their characters. Changing the setting includes changing the weather from sunny to cloudy, from warm to cold, from calm to windy, and from raining to snowing. Of course, children can combine those variables to develop almost any type of weather condition. As children change the weather they will hear a narrator explain the weather. For example, when children select rain the narrator explains what rain is.

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Marco Polo Weather doesn’t provide the most scientific or thorough explanations that you’ll find, but they are adequate for the audience that app is intended to educate. The app is free, but it does require an in-app purchase to unlock all of the available weather variables.