iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

US History

Teaching With Primary Sources on iPads

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Screen Shot 2014-02-24 at 3.22.34 PM The National Archives Experience’s Docs Teach interactive tools center and is my favorite teaching tool from the National Archives. The free Docs Teach iPad app allows your students to access and complete a wide range of primary source-based U.S. History lessons. When your students open the app they have an option to browse for a lesson according to time frame and topic or they can enter a class code to complete an activity that you have created specifically for them.

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To create a Docs Teach activity specifically for your students you will have to create an account on the website. Docs Teach offers seven free tools that teachers can use to create interactive learning activities based on primary source documents and images. The seven tools are Finding a Sequence, Focusing on Details, Making Connections, Mapping History, Seeing the Big Picture, Weighing the Evidence, and Interpreting Data. To get a sense of how each of these activities works you can view existing activities made and shared here by other teachers.

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To The Brink – An iPad App About the Cuban Missile Crisis

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Screen Shot 2014-02-24 at 2.49.48 PM The Cuban Missile Crisis is one of the landmark events discussed in nearly every course covering the Cold War. To The Brink is an excellent free iPad app through which students can learn about the causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy administration’s handling of the crisis. The app uses archival images, videos, documents, and audio recordings to tell the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The app is arranged as a series of pages for students to flip through. On each page there are icons that students can tap to get more information in the forms of documents, images, and videos.

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To The Brink offers more detail and media about the Cuban Missile Crisis than I’ve ever seen in a middle school or high school history textbook (print or digital). As a free app it is a resource that I highly recommend to middle school and high school history teachers.

Kids Discover Washington, D.C. on iPads in 3D

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Screen Shot 2014-02-04 at 2.21.01 PM KIDS DISCOVER currently offers seventeen iPad apps for students. The apps are multimedia books about a variety of topics in science and social studies. Kids Discover Washington, DC is the latest app from Kids Discover that I’ve tried.

The content of Kids Discover Washington, DC is better than what you’ll find in elementary school or middle school social studies textbooks. In the app students can read text, listen to audio, and manipulate 3-D objects. The app also includes videos, cartoons, and plenty of other imagery. Students can tap the images to learn more about the people and places pictured. After working through all of the chapters of the app students can test their knowledge with review quizzes and puzzles.

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Kids Discover Washington, DC is currently priced at $3.99 USD.

Civil War by KIDS DISCOVER – Great History iPad App

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Screen Shot 2013-10-15 at 11.30.15 PMKIDS DISCOVER currently offers fourteen iPad apps for students. The latest KIDS DISCOVER app is about the U.S. Civil War. The content of the app is far superior to the Civil War section of any middle school or elementary school social studies textbooks that I’ve seen. In the app students can read text, listen to audio of things like the Gettysburg Address, and manipulate 3-D objects. The app also includes videos, cartoons, and plenty of historical imagery. Students can tap the images to learn more about the people and places pictured. After working through all of the chapters of the app students can test their knowledge with review quizzes and puzzles.

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Civil War by KIDS DISCOVER is currently priced at $3.99.

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The World’s Fair On Your iPad

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Screen Shot 2013-08-19 at 9.03.29 AM The New York Public Library’s Biblion: World’s Fair app puts the wonder of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair on your iPad. Through the app you can view images, videos, and documents all about the World’s Fair. All of the media in the app is arranged into thematic stories. These stories showcase the innovations that were on display in 1940 as well as the predictions for the future. Plenty of historical context is provided through the stories to help readers understand why the innovations on display were significant.

One of the fun things that you could do with this app with your students is to have them look at the stories that feature predictions for the future. Then have you students see which of those predictions were accurate, which weren’t, and which became part of our world today.

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