iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

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The Most Frequently Used Apps On My iPad

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ipad-254337_640 Over the weekend on FreeTech4Teachers.com I shared a list of my most frequently used desktop apps. That post was fairly popular so I think that a similar post about iPad apps is in order. These are the apps that see the most daily use on my iPad.

Evernote
When I am reading a blog post that I want to save for later, I share it to my Evernote account. I also use Evernote to save Skitch images. Occasionally, I use Evernote to share items from my iPad’s camera roll.

Skitch
Skitch is the tool that I use on my iPad when I want to create an annotated screenshot. I can use Skitch to draw on and label a screenshot to aid my explanation of how an application works. I can also use Skitch to blur or enhance a part of a picture that I’ve taken with my iPad. And if I just want to sketch out diagram and share it, Skitch for iPad lets me do that too.

Penultimate
Even though I can type relatively quickly with my poor technique, I still prefer to handwrite a lot my notes. For that reason, Penultimate is the app that I use to taking notes on my iPad. Penultimate provides a place for you to hand-write notes on your iPad. The app allows you to create multiple notebooks with multiple pages in each. You can change the color and size of the pen strokes that are created when you write in your notebooks. Each page in your notebook can include pictures that you have stored on your iPad or pictures that you take through the Penultimate app. The app provides the option to change the look of the virtual paper on which you write. You can copy and paste content from one page to another and from one notebook to another.

Apps Gone Free
I check this app at 12pm Eastern Time for new apps that are free for a limited time. Some of the apps are only free to download that day while others may remain free for a week or longer.

Google Drive
I don’t do much editing of Google Documents through my iPad because I find it much faster to do that on a Chromebook or laptop, but I do use Drive for reviewing Documents that have been shared with me. I also use Drive for storing videos that I have created on my iPad.

What about RSS subscriptions?
I have Feedly and Flipboard installed on my iPad. I use both to read the latest posts from my favorite blogs. That said, because of the workflow that I have set-up for myself, I don’t do a lot of reading on my iPad. Most of my reading of RSS subscriptions happens on my laptop where I can have my feeds in one browser tab and I can write my notes about what I’m reading in another tab. When I’m not reading at my desk, I tend to browse feeds on my phone which is an Android phone that has Feedly installed on it.

iOS 8 Tips and Tricks for Teachers and Students

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clock-419681_640Have you recently updated your iPad to iOS 8? Have your students’ iPads been updated to iOS 8? If so, Tony Vincent has a great overview of some of the “hidden” features of the iOS 8 that teachers and students will find to be helpful to them. Tony’s video is embedded below. You can read the transcript of the video here.

5 Ways Teachers Can Use their iPads Professionally

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chaos-391652_640This is a guest post from Jennifer Carey (@TeacherJenCarey) and EdTechTeacher, an advertiser on this site.

iPads are powerful tools for teachers in the classroom. In addition to being robust, mobile creation devices for students, they help you to stay organized, be on top of your classes, create content and lessons, focus on continued learning, and build your PLN. Here are five ways to turn your iPad into a robust, education machine!

Organize Yourself

You can easily sync your Outlook or Google Calendar to your iPad by going to iPad Settings → Mail, Contacts, & Calendar → Add Account. This allows you to add multiple work, personal, and/or shared calendars to the calendar on your iPad, giving you mobile access to all of your appointments (personal and professional) on a single calendar. You will also be able to make changes on the go, and with cloud based platforms, you won’t have to remember to sync your device to your computer as all changes are updated automatically.

By using the Reminder app, you can schedule notifications weeks, months, even years in advance! One of my favorite features of Reminder is that in addition to alarms based on date/time, you can set a reminder notification based on location (don’t forget to buy milk at the grocery store or to take your gym shoes as you leave your house in the morning). If you want to conquer more robust tasks, look at investing in one of the popular To-Do List apps such as Wunderlist, Things, or Trello.

Organize your Class

Even if your school does not have a formal LMS, there are numerous free tools that allow you to organize a class calendar, have students check and submit homework assignments, share content and materials, keep attendance, track students, and even send robust reports to advisors, administrators, and/or parents. Some of the most popular and comprehensive LMS’s available include Schoology, Teacherkit, and Edmodo. While Google Classroom does not yet have a formal app, you can still access it using your iPad’s browser (while Safari is the default, I find that it works best using the Chrome iOS browser).

Create Class Content

iPads are not just mobile, creation devices for students; they are a powerful tool in the hands of a teacher. You can easily build both traditional and creative lessons for your classes. Keynote, Google Slides, PowerPoint (creation abilities require a subscription to Office 365), and/or Prezi allow you to create class presentations rich with text, images, charts, graphs, and video!

Additionally, you can easily make flipped content using tools such as iMovie, Notability, Explain Everything, or Educreations. These apps allow you to share content to cloud services such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Google Drive. From there, you can post to your course website or LMS (using one of the tools listed above) or share via Google Drive.

Manage your Professional Development

Great educators are lifelong learners. It’s easy to keep up with your own learning and professional development goals using iPad. With eReader Apps such as Kindle, iBooks, Nook, or Overdrive, you can access a myriad of electronic texts on your mobile device. Even better, you are not limited to a single platform or provider. Your local library may even offer eBooks on loan! In addition to texts, be sure to check out the variety of content offered via Podcasts and iTunes U. You can readily access content related to educational theory and topics, or your own areas of interest (History, Math, Politics, etc). Also, be sure to check out the variety of resources published via iPad apps such as Ted or PBS.

Manage your PLN

Keeping up with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) can feel daunting. However, iPad allows you to access your PLN using a variety of tools. With stand alone apps like Twitter, Diigo, Facebook, Feedly, or Pocket, you can easily share and consume resources on the fly. However, I also like to use an app called Flipboard that enables me to see my Social Media, Blog posts, and News Resources in a magazine-like interface. You can learn more about navigating your PLN in this article on Edutopia.

iPads are powerful tools in the educational environment, not just for students, but also for teachers. Harnessing the power of iPad can help you to stay more organized, meet your classroom goals, and manage your own professional development on a single, portable device.

To learn more about these ideas, and more, check out the November 12-14 EdTechTeacher iPad Summit in Boston where I will be a Featured Speaker.

Quickly Turn Physical Sticky Notes Into Digital Notes

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postit Post-it Plus is a new iPad app from the makers of the original Post-it Notes. With this free app installed on your iPad you can snap a picture of a collection of physical sticky notes and have them quickly digitized. Once your notes are digitized you can re-arrange them, share them with collaborators, or send them to another application like Dropbox. If you have multiple sets of notes you can combine the best notes into one board through the Post-it Plus iPad app. Watch the video below for a short overview of the app.

Post-it Plus does require you to have updated to iOS 8. If you and your students have done that, then Post-it Plus could be a good app for digitizing the output of a brainstorming session that started with physical notes.

Quickly Organize Leveled Reading Lists With Book Wizard Mobile

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Screen Shot 2014-09-15 at 12.26.54 PM Book Wizard is a Scholastic service that allows you to create and organize book lists according to reading levels and students’ interests. Book Wizard Mobile is a free iPad and iPhone app that you can use to scan a book’s barcode to quickly discover its lexile measurement, grade level equivalent, and guided reading level. Within the app you can create book lists and edit the existing book lists that you have created in your Scholastic.com teacher profile.

Screen Shot 2014-09-15 at 12.24.53 PM

Lists that you create on Book Wizard Mobile can be shared with others through a variety of channels including email, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Book Wizard Mobile is also available as an Android app.