iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

College

New Content Previews in the Latest Google Drive iOS app

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Screen Shot 2014-09-22 at 8.28.40 AM Google Drive users who have allowed updates their iPhones in the last few days, may have noticed a slick new feature in the Google Drive app. The latest version of the app supports “peek and pop” previews of files. Note, this feature is only available on iPhone 6 and 6s.

An update that is available to all Google Drive iOS app users is the addition of support for four additional languages. Those languages are Hindi, Indian English, Canadian French, and Chinese (Hong Kong).

Source: Google Apps update blog. 

A Helpful New Feature Coming to the Google Drive iPad App

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Screen Shot 2014-09-22 at 8.28.40 AM In a week full of Google Apps updates, here comes another one. According to the Google Apps update blog, over the next week the Google Drive iOS app will add the option to select multiple files for offline use. Enhanced file organization functions will be added to the app too.

This might not seem like a huge update to the app, but it will be helpful to students who don’t have regular access to the Internet at home. Likewise, it could be a good back-up plan for those times when your school’s network bogs down or crashes entirely. Just make sure that you remind students to select files for offline access before they go offline.

Click here to learn more about the Google Drive iOS app.

5 Apps for Creating Digital Portfolios on iPads

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ipad-606766_640As the end of the school year nears you may find yourself asking students to create collections of examples of their best work of the year. There are a lot of ways that your students could go about accomplishing that task. Here are five free apps that can be used for the purpose of creating a digital portfolio.

Seesaw is a free iPad app through which students can create a portfolio to document the things they have learned. Students can add artifacts to their portfolios by taking pictures of their work (in the case of a worksheet or other physical item), by writing about what they’ve learned, or by shooting a short video to record something they have learned. Students can add voice comments to their pictures to clarify what their pictures document. To get started with Seesaw create a free classroom account. Students join the classroom by scanning a QR code (you will have to print it or project it) that grants them access to your Seesaw classroom. As the teacher you can see and sort all of your students’ Seesaw submissions. Seesaw allows parents to create accounts through which they can see the work of their children. As a teacher you can send notifications to parents when their children make a new Seesaw submission.

WeLearnedIt is an offering from Adam Bellow and eduClipper. WeLearnedIt offers many of the great features of eduClipper that you currently enjoy along with additional digital portfolio elements. Through the WeLearnedIt iPad app you and your students can create digital portfolios that contain files from Google Drive, Dropbox, links from the web, images and videos captured with your iPad, and whiteboard videos created within the WeLearnedIt app.

Pearltrees allows you to organize collections of links, videos, images, and files. All of your collections appear in your Pearltrees homescreen and from there you can access and add to any of your collections. The new format makes it easy to drag-and-drop files from your desktop to a collection in your Pearltrees account. The Pearltrees browser extension enables you to quickly add content from a webpage to your collections. Pearltrees works the same way on an iPad as it does in a web browser or on Android tablet.

Tackk is a free service available to use as an iPad app, Android app, or web app.  By using Tackk you can create a page to announce an important event, to advertise an event, or to show off your best digital works. To create a Tackk page you do not need to register for an account, but unregistered Tackk pages expire after seven days. If you register for the service your Tackk pages stay up indefinitely. I registered for the service before creating my first Tackk page. Creating my Tackk was a simple matter of uploading an image then adding text in the customizable fields above and below my image. Tackk pages can accommodate videos, audio files, and maps.

Featured on this blog yesterday, PopBoardz is a free iPad app for organizing collections of images, videos, links, and notes. If you went by just that description you would think that PopBoardz is another Pinterest clone, but it’s not. Unlike Pinterest, PopBoardz is designed for organizing resources for yourself rather than publishing collections to the web. When you do want to share a board you’ve created, you can do so by exporting your board as a document that can be shared via email, Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud. PopBoardz could be a good tool for students to use to create and present digital portfolios. They can create boards by importing content from the camera rolls on their iPads and or import content from Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud. Students an also add simple text notes to their boards. Students who want to include work they’ve published online can add links to their PopBoardz.

Bonus Item – Teacher Only App

Three Ring is a fantastic, free service for digitizing and organizing your students’ physical work. With the free app installed on your iPad or iPhone you can take a picture of a student’s assignment and upload it to your Three Ring account. In your Three Ring account you can add note about the assignment for yourself, the student, and the student’s parents to see. You can create folders for each student in each of your classes. Three Ring provides a great way for teachers whose students produce a lot of handwritten, drawn, and hand-built work. Three Ring could be used by art teachers to create a digital record of each student’s work. Three Ring is also useful for mathematics teachers whose students do a lot of work on paper rather than typing as they solve problems.

Disclosures: I have a small equity stake in WeLearnedIt. SeeSaw’s parent company advertises on one of my other blogs. 

The eduClipper App Works on Apple Watches

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educlipper

Disclosure: I have a very small advisory and equity interest in eduClipper.

The Apple Watch was officially released today. I don’t expect that a whole lot of teachers and or students will be sporting these soon. That said, I’m sure there are a few early adopters who are looking for an educational app for their new watches. If that’s you, take a look at eduClipper’s updated app.

eduClipper has updated their app to work on Apple Watches. With the app installed on your Apple Watch you can view your own clips (bookmarks), view the clips of those people you follow (including your students), and comment on clips. The commenting feature includes the option to leave voice comments.

educlipper watch

The eduClipper app on an iPad has many more features including creating whiteboard videos, organizing projects, and managing students’ accounts.

Try RefME’s iPad App for Quickly Organizing Reference Lists

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refme RefME is a service designed to help students create citations and organize bibliographies. The free RefME iPad app enables students to scan the barcode on a book, periodical, CD cases, and many other media cases to have a citation formatted for that item. RefME provides more than 6,500 citation and bibliography formats for students to use.

I tried RefME’s free iPad app this afternoon and found it easy to use. To get started open the app and create a RefME account. After creating an account create your first project in RefME. A project is essentially a folder for the citations that you are going to create for a paper. Select your project then add a reference by scanning the barcode on a book or other media. When you have finished scanning all of your references (you can also add references manually) you can export your list of citations to Evernote, email the list to yourself, or create a Word document from the RefME website.

reme in action

RefME could be a fantastic tool for students to use as they develop research projects. The app could be particularly handy when students are using books or periodicals that the cannot take out of the library.