iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

High School

PBS Students – Discover Educational Resources on Your iPad

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pbs students 1 Parts of this post originally appeared on my other blog, FreeTech4Teachers.com.

PBS Students is a new iPad app designed to showcase some of the best educational content for students. Through the app students and teachers can search for educational videos, articles, and diagrams. Some of the the video content can be downloaded directly to an iPad. The app was initially launched two weeks ago and it was updated this week. The update fixed an issue with some content shown in the app not being accessible when selected. The other update is the inclusion of a Puzzle Builder tool.

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The Puzzle Builder is an addition to PBS Learning Media’s Storyboard tool which allows you to create a collection of videos, text, and images organized around almost any topic of your choosing. The collections that you or your students create appear in a collage-like format. The storyboards function is nice for students who are over the age of 13 as they can save their collections in the app and online. Unfortunately, students who are under the age of 13 cannot save their storyboards.

Storehouse Adds New Features for Creating Visual Stories

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storehouse Storehouse is a free iPad and iPhone app that I’ve been recommending for over a year now. The app allows users to quickly create beautiful visual stories. This week Storehouse was updated. The updated version of the app provides features that many people have wanted. The updated version of the app now makes all of your stories private by default. Additionally, you can now embed your stories into blog posts rather than just sharing them via social media, email, or SMS.

The basic idea behind Storehouse is to create stories by combining images, text, and video clips on a blank canvas. To create your stories you can import pictures and video from your iPad’s camera roll, from Instgram, from Dropbox, and from Flickr. You can arrange the sequence of the media by dragging and dropping it into place. You can add text above and below each picture or video clip in your story. Completed Storehouse stories can be shared via email, Facebook, and Twitter. Stories published through Storehouse are given their own URLs for online viewing.

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Storehouse is a nice app for students to use to develop visual stories about themselves, about field trips, or about school events like winter carnival day or other celebrations. As your students create their stories encourage them to think about the sequencing their media to support the narratives of their stories.

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.

Sharalike – Quickly Create Audio Slideshows on Your iPad

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sharalike Sharalike is a free iPad app that makes it easy to create audio slideshow videos. To create an audio slideshow video with Sharalike simply open the app, select pictures from your camera roll, drag and drop them into any sequence you like, then choose some music to accompany your images. Sharalike handles all of the work of adding transitions, pan and zoom effects, and lighting. You can choose from seven slideshow themes each uses slightly different transitions and frames around your images. Sharalike offers a small selection of free instrumental music that you can use in your slideshow or you can upload your own music.

To publish your Sharalike production you do need to register for a free account. You can register by using your email address or your Facebook credentials.

I like to use audio slideshow tools like Sharalike to have students create short videos that they use to introduce themselves to their classmates at the beginning of the school year. An audio slideshow allows students to share pictures about things that are important to them while at the same time not putting too much pressure on the to stand up and talk to the whole class in the first week of school.

Sharalike is also available as a web app. You can learn more about the web version here.

Try Classkick for Distributing Assignments & Feedback Through Your iPad

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

Classkick is a free service for creating, distributing, and assessing students’ work through iPads. Through Classkick you can create an online classroom through which you distribute assignments to students. Students join your class by entering your class code into the Classkick app on their iPads.

The assignments that you create in Classkick can be based on screenshots, imported images, drawings, text, or voice recordings. Classkick lets you see what your students are working on within the app. You can give students feedback on their assignments directly through the app. Students can ask you for help while working in the app too.

For classrooms that have iPads for every student, Classkick could be a great tool not only for distributing assignments but also for providing individualized feedback to students while they are working. The option to record your voice to create questions could be a great aid to students who struggle with reading but would otherwise be able to answer a question or explain a process to you.