iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

Elementary School

Fun Apps for Designing and Printing Characters to Tell Stories

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Years ago I learned about the Foldify iPad app from one of my students who had used to create characters and buildings that he printed on thick paper then folded into shape. He positioned those characters and buildings on a flat background and made a stopmotion video in which the characters moved to match the narration of his story. 

Foldify is an iPad in which students can design foldable paper people, buildings, and vehicles. Students can design characters and buildings by modifying the many templates available in the Foldify app. Students can make freehand drawings, use block coloring tools, shading and highlighting tools, and erasers. And if students want to include pictures of themselves in their Foldify characters, they can do that by enabling the cameras on their iPads.

When students are happy with the design of their Foldify characters they can save them and print them in three sizes. Once printed students simply follow the Foldify folding lines to make the characters stand up. 

In addition to the classic Foldify app there are two related apps that students will enjoy. Foldify Zoo has animal templates. Foldify Dinosaurs has dinosaur templates. 

A Great Deal on a New iPad and a Cool Augmented Reality App for Kids

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Last week I upgraded my iPad at what I thought was a great price of $289. It was a great price. However, I wish I had known that Amazon was going to discount them even further to $249! I just checked on Amazon and this deal is still available on the gold colored, current generation iPads. Earlier in the week the deal was available on the silver and gray colored models, but it appears the deal is only available on the gold model now (2pm ET on December 11th).

Should You Upgrade Your iPad?

In my case, I upgraded my iPad because my old one was made in 2014 and doesn’t run the latest virtual reality and augmented reality that seem to be popping-up on a weekly basis. A secondary motivation was to get an iPad that has more storage space. My old one has half the storage of the new one that I just purchased. If either of those things appeal to you, then this is a great time to get the latest iPad at a great price. I’ve never seen new iPads available at this price.

If you don’t have a desire to try the latest AR and VR apps or don’t feel the need for more storage space on your iPad then there is no compelling reason that I can give you to replace a working iPad unless you’re still using the first generation that doesn’t have a camera.

Cool Augmented Reality App to Use on a New iPad!

Wonderscope is a cool AR app that brings children’s stories to life and enables kids to interact with those stories. Watch this video to see Wonderscope in action.

Create Talking Animations With These Free iPad Apps

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Parts of this post originally appeared on my other blog, FreeTech4Teachers.com.

Making animated movies is one of my favorite video creation projects for elementary school students. Students love hearing their voices bringing to life an animated character on the screen. You can have students create animations to tell stories from their own lives or to animate short stories that they have written in your classroom. The following three free iPad apps enable elementary school students to create talking animated movies.

PuppetMaster is a free iPad app that kids can use to create animated movies. The app is designed for elementary school students and therefore doesn’t require students to create accounts in order to use it. All movies made with the PuppetMaster app are saved to the camera roll on a student’s iPad. To create an animated movie with PuppetMaster students simply open the app, select a character, and the select a background scene for their movies. PuppetMaster has pre-made characters and background scenes. Students can also add their own background scenes by taking a picture to use as the background. For example, I made a movie with a robot character attempting to reach under the Christmas tree in my living room (you can view that movie here). Students can record themselves talking or singing in the background of their movies in order to tell their stories.

ChatterPix Kids is a free iPad app that students can use to turn pictures into talking pictures. To create a talking picture just snap a picture with your iPad or import a picture from your iPad’s camera roll. After taking the picture just draw in a face and tap the record button to make your picture talk. Your recording can be up to thirty seconds in length. Before publishing your talking picture you can add fun stickers, text, and frames to your picture. Finished Chatter Pix projects are saved to your camera roll and from there you can export it to a number of services including YouTube. ChatterPix Kids doesn’t require students to create an account in order to use the service. Using the app can be a great way to get students to bring simple stories to life. Check out the video below that was made, in part, by using ChatterPix.

Tellagami is a free iPad that elementary school students enjoy using to create narrated animations. Tellagami allows your students to create customized animated scenes in a matter of minutes. To create a narrated, animated scene students simply open Tellagami and tap “create.” After opening the create menu students will see a default character and background scene. The characters can be altered by selecting from a big menu of customization options. The background scenes can be changed by selecting from a menu or by inserting a picture from the iPad’s camera roll. To add their voices to their animations students simply tap “record” and start talking. Completed animations are stored on the camera rolls of your students’ iPads. Tellagami does not require students to create accounts or have an email address.

Book Creator Now Lets You Publish With One Tap

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Book Creator is a fantastic and popular iPad app for creating multimedia ebooks. In fact, more than 1,000,000 stories are created with the app every month. For years the only way to share the stories that students create was to turn their books into videos, publish them as PDFs, or publish them as ePub documents. All were fine options, but they required some extra steps in order for parents to see the books that their children made in your classroom. Last Friday that changed when Book Creator introduced a new option to publish Book Creator books online.

Book Creator books can now be published for easy online viewing. Publishing online essentially creates a webpage that you can share with your students’ parents so that they can view their students’ work on their tablets, phones, or laptops. It is important to note that students can’t publish their books independently. You, the teacher, have to publish the books on your students’ behalf from your Book Creator teacher account. Dan Kemp, the founder of Book Creator, is taking student privacy seriously and has published a statement about how Book Creator tries to protect students’ privacy.

Eventually, there will be a cost associated with publishing Book Creator books online. For now, you can publish ten books for free. Directions for publishing online can be found here.

Teach Your Monster Read for iOS – Free Through the Weekend

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Teach Your Monster to Read is a great game environment in which students can develop the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters, sounds, and words. For the rest of this week and through the weekend (March 21-26, 2017), the app is completely free.

The Teach Your Monster to Read environment contains eight levels (or islands as they’re called in the game) each containing four activities. Students play the game as a friendly monster avatar. On each island students can earn prizes for their monsters and customize the look of their monsters.