iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

writing

Home KG – A Free iPad App for Learning to Write

by

Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 7.23.25 AM Home KG is a free iPad designed to help children learn to write all of the letters of the alphabet, numbers one through nine, and ten basic shapes. Children trace the letters (both uppercase and lowercase), numbers, and shapes. Children can save their work in the app. The app has a couple of sound options that can be turned on or off. The first sound option is simple background music. The second sound option is hearing the name of the letters, numbers, and shapes read to the child using the app.

Evernote Camera Roll 20130927 072306

Home KG is a nice, free app that could help pre-K and elementary school students learn to write their letters and numbers. The app also helps students learn to recognize the names of basic shapes. Unlike similar free apps that I’ve tried, Home KG gives students the complete alphabet without the need to complete an in-app upgrade purchase.

Drawp – Kids Can Safely Send Digital Greetings to Family Members

by

Screen Shot 2013-09-16 at 12.06.05 PM Drawp is a nice iPad app that I recently learned about from Jo Villis. Drawp allows children to create drawings, take pictures, and create audio recordings to send to parents, grandparents, and other family members in a safe environment. To use the app parents have to register themselves and their children. Parents approve the list of people that their children can send messages to. After creating their digital greeting cards students share their work by tapping the share button and tapping the pictures of the people that they want to send their messages to.

Drawp could be a good app to have elementary school students use to send a weekly update to their parents about what they have done in your classroom.

Evernote Camera Roll 20130916 120233

 

Evernote Camera Roll 20130916 120241

Drawp is a freemium app. The basic uses of the app are free. You can purchase extra themes through in-app purchases that range in price from $0.99 to $4.99.

Maily is a similar app that you might want to try as well.

Things to Think About – A Free iPad App Built By Students for Students

by

Screen Shot 2013-09-05 at 9.07.01 AM Things to Think About is a free iPad app that offers 100 writing prompts created by students for students. The prompts were created by 2nd through 5th grade students in Jackson County, Michigan. The app itself was built by two high school students in the same county.

Things to Think About has writing prompts spread across twelve categories. Each prompt has a picture drawn by a student. A short audio recording of a student reading each prompt can be heard too.

Evernote Camera Roll 20130905 092511

Sentence Builder for iPad Helps Students Learn to Write

by

Screen Shot 2013-01-06 at 8.18.08 AM Sentence Builder from Abitalk is a series of iPad apps designed to help elementary school students learn to construct sentences. The app asks students to build sentences about the pictures that they see in the app. Each picture is accompanied by a set of words that students drag and drop into place to write the sentence that they hear read by the narrator. For example, in one picture children will see two people running and they will have to write the sentence that they hear the narrator read. Sentence Builder will tell students if they have written the sentence correctly or not.

Photo-1_6_13,-8.26.50-AM-2

Sentence Builder allows parents and teachers to create their own lessons. To create a lesson start by selecting a picture from your iPad’s camera roll then write out the sentence that you want students to create. You can use your own voice to narrate the sentence or use the app’s native voice for narration.

Photo-1_6_13,-8.26.50-AM-4

Sentence Builder Free is a free app for Kindergarten through grade 2. The full version of Sentence Builder costs $2.99. The full version offers more pre-made sentences, more complex sentences, and more word choices.

Maily for iPad Gives Students a Safe Place to Learn to Email

by

maily Maily is a free iPad app that provides young children with a safe and fun way to send emails to parents and selected family members. To use Maily parents have to create accounts for their children. Parents select and add contacts for their children. After the account is created children can then send and receive emails only from the people that their parents have added to their children’s contacts list.

mzl.womdifnu.480x480-75

The user interface that children see in Maily is very kid-friendly. Using Maily children can draw pictures, use templates to create emails, and or upload pictures to send. To send an email children click the send button and the select the image of the person to they want to receive their messages.

Evernote Camera Roll 20120907 084859

Maily could be great for introducing young children to email in a safe environment. You could have your students use the Maily app to have students send weekly emails to their parents about what they did in your classroom each week.