iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

University

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.

Read Your Own PDFs and EPUBs in Google Play Books for iPad

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Screen Shot 2014-12-04 at 5.42.54 PM For the last 18 months Google has allowed you to upload your own PDFs and EPUB files to your personal Google Books account. Unfortunately, you could only access those uploaded files through a web browser or on the Google Books Android app. That has changed with the latest update to Google Play Books for iPad. The latest update to Google Play Books for iPad enables you to read your uploaded files through the app.

Other updates to the app include the option to categorize and sort books, double-tap to zoom, and a new material design to match that of other Google products like Google Drive.

Uploading PDFs and EPUBs to your Google Play account could be a good way to get things like public domain works found on Project Gutenberg from your desktop to your iPad.

H/T to The Next Web. 

Fetchnotes Adds an Intuitive Reminder Option to Task Management

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Screen Shot 2014-08-08 at 2.10.54 PM Fetchnotes is a simple service for creating and organizing notes for yourself. The Fetchnotes iOS app was updated today to make it easy to add reminders to your notes. Fetchnotes lets you set reminders by general time of day like “tomorrow afternoon” instead of a specific time like 10:34am. Of course, if you want to be that specific you can be.

If you haven’t tried Fetchnotes, I recommend giving it a try. Organizing your notes on Fetchnotes is quite simple. When you write a note, just use a hashtag to label your note. Then whenever you want to search for a note just enter a hashtag. For example, if I was a student taking notes in a history course I might use the hashtag “#revolution” for all notes related to revolutions. Then I could go back and read all of my notes about revolution by just searching for that hashtag.

Fetchnotes lets you create groups of people with whom you share notes. When you want to share a note with someone else in your group just add @ before that person’s name to have the task appear on your list and his or her list.

In addition to being available through the free iPad app, Fetchnotes can be used in your web browser. Fetchnotes also offers a free Android app.

Two iPad Apps to Help You Reduce Paper Consumption in Your Classroom

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clerk-18915_640 I don’t know any teacher that doesn’t want to reduce the number of papers he or she has to collect and organize. These two apps will help you do just that.

Three Ring is a 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 written assignment and upload it to your Three Ring account. In your Three Ring account you can add notes 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.

Hello Sign is a service that allows you to digitally sign documents. Hello Sign can be used on your computer, on your iPhone, and on your iPad. On your iPhone or iPad you can use Hello Sign by selecting a document or by taking a picture of a document. I have demonstrated the app to many people over the last year and everyone has been impressed by how easy it is to use. I just open the app, log into my Hello Sign account, and snap a picture of a document. After the picture was captured I have the option to apply a stored signature or sign the document using my finger on my iPad screen.

Audio Notebook – Record Audio While Typing Notes

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Screen Shot 2014-02-10 at 9.29.04 AM Audio Notebook is a handy iPad app for people who want to combine audio recording with their typed notes. Audio Notebook is very easy to use. To create a new entry in Audio Notebook just open the app and tap the “+” symbol to create a new entry. To add audio to your notebook entry tap the record button. You can pause and restart your recordings as often as you like. To add text to your notebook entry just tap the screen to open your keyboard and write your notes. You can type notes while recording audio at the same time.

Audio Notebook includes color-coded labels that you can apply to your notes. Notes can be sorted by name or date by tapping the “i”  icon in your notebook’s home screen.

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Audio Notebook could be a great iPad app for students to use during lectures. Having the audio recording to fall back on could be helpful when text notes fail to include a key detail. Audio Notebook is also a good iPad app for journalism students to use to record their interviews.

Audio Notebook is currently free (as of February 10, 2014). The regular price is $2.99.