The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers
Puzzle Kidz is a nice iPad app for creating jigsaw puzzles for kids. The app allows you to take pictures with your iPad and turn them into puzzles. You can also use stock images from Puzzle Kidz. The app offers three levels of puzzle difficulty to that you can create a puzzle whose difficulty isn’t too hard or too easy for your child.
Puzzle Kidz costs $0.99. It does not offer an in-app purchases or advertisements.
Monster Moogle is an iPad app that features an interactive story designed to teach students that “monsters” are fiction. The story is narrated by a friendly dog named Butch. In the story Butch tells kids about what people think monsters are. Throughout the story students can interact with the drawings on the page.
Monster Moogle is kind of quirky and it might not be for everyone, but I kind of like the message that monsters are fiction. In the future version of the app students will be able to create their own monsters through a collage process. That feature hasn’t been released yet. When that feature is released I will be more inclined to pay the $1.99 price for the app.
ABC Minsters is an iPad app offering short lessons on recognizing letters of the alphabet, handwriting, and spelling. The app has four basic steps that students repeat to learn each letter of the alphabet.
When students open ABC Minsters they can choose any letter of the alphabet to get started. The chosen letter will appear on the screen in uppercase and lowercase with simple directions for how to write the letter. Students simply trace the letters with their fingers. After correctly tracing the letters students will see a screen filled with objects whose names begin with the letter they just traced. Students tap the objects to hear their names read aloud. One object will be selected for a spelling exercise in which students drag letters into place to try to spell the name of featured object. The final before moving onto a new letter is to put the letter of choice back into its proper place in the sequence of the alphabet.
ABC Minsters could be a good little app for students in pre-K through grade 1. Readers outside of the U.S. should note that the app pronounces Z in the American style of “zee” rather than “zed.”
ABC Minsters is currently priced at $0.99
Word Wizard is an iPad app that elementary school students can use to learn the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, sound-out words, and spell new words. The app has two primary modes to it. In the “Movable Alphabet” mode students can drag and drop letters on a board to try to create words. In Movable Alphabet mode each time a student touches a letter the narrator makes the sound of that letter. If a student combines letters, the narrator will make the sound of that letter combination. That pattern continues until a word has been created.
In Word Wizard’s Spelling Quiz mode students select a word list from the gallery of lists. After selecting a list students have to spell the words that the narrator reads to them. To help students spell each word each letter is pronounced while the student drags it onto the letter board.
Word Wizard offers four narrator voices to choose from. I found the “Tracy” voice with the US accent easiest to understand. There is also a “Rachel” voice with a UK accent, a “Tyler” voice with an Australian accent, and another US voice called “Heather.”
Word Wizard is currently priced at $2.99.
From the developer of the popular story starter app Write About This comes a new iPad app called Tell About This (free and paid versions available). Tell About This is a fantastic new iPad app through which students can quickly create short digital stories. The concept behind the app is simple and well-executed. When students open Tell About This they can pick from an assortment of pictures that contain a story starter. Students listen and or read the story prompt and reply by tapping the record button to record a short story about the picture that they see. The stories that students record can be saved to their iPads or emailed to their teachers.
In addition to using the existing story prompts, Tell About This allows teachers and students to create and share their own story prompts. To create a story prompt just take a picture or import a picture from your camera roll, add some text, and record the prompt.
Tell About This is available in a free version and a paid version ($2.99). The free version of the app limits students to one story and a small collection of story prompts. The paid version of the app allows you access more story prompts, offers unlimited student profiles on the app (no email required), and unlimited story creations.
