iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

University

Quick Key Turns Your iPhone Into a Scanner

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Screen Shot 2013-11-26 at 3.39.09 PM Quick Key is a new and free iOS app that turns your iPhone into a bubble sheet scanner. My former colleague, Mike Morrell, was raving about it on Facebook a while back so I had to check it out.

Quick Key has two parts to it that when combined make it very easy for you to quickly grade multiple choice and true/false quizzes. Here’s the basics of how it works; create your quiz on the Quick Key website then print and distribute a bubble sheet. After your students have completed the bubble sheet you simply scan the sheets with your iPhone (it works on iPads too, but the resolution is grainy) and the grading is done for you. From the app you can send grades to the classes that you have created on the Quick Key website. If you enter students’ email addresses in your class rosters on Quick Key, you can have grades emailed to students.

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How to Create Screencast Demos of iPad Apps

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screencastomatic Last week after publishing A Short Guide to Sharing Media Through Google Drive for iPad I had a few people ask me how I created the video. I use two tools to create video demonstrations of iPad apps. First, to mirror my iPad’s screen to my MacBook I use either Reflector which costs $12.99 or AirServer which costs $14.99 (I have both installed because sometimes I’ll visit a school where one system is allowed and the other isn’t).  Second, I use Screencast-O-Matic to record what is being displayed on my MacBook’s screen. Screencast-O-Matic is available in a free version and in a pro version. I pay $15 per year for the pro version. The pro version of Screencast-O-Matic gives me unlimited recording time, records in HD, removes the SOM watermark, offers multiple publishing and sharing options, and offers some handy editing options.

The process of recording the screencast video.

1. Install Reflector or AirServer on your Mac or PC.

2. Make sure your iPad and your Mac or PC are on the same wi-fi network.

3. Turn on Reflector / AirServer on your Mac or PC. Double-click or four-finger swipe upwards to open the bottom tray on your iPad, choose mirroring, then select the name of your computer that has Reflector / AirServer  installed on it. (If you’re trying this in a school you may encounter some filtering issues that prevent mirroring your iPad to your computer. Contact your network admin if you cannot get your iPad mirrored to your computer on the network).

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4. Now that you have your iPad mirrored to your computer open Screencast-O-Matic and click record. Before your recording starts you can crop the capture area to include only your iPad’s screen. Screencast-O-Matic will capture everything that you’re doing on your iPad and it will capture your voice.

5. Optional: If you want to highlight the parts of an app that you’re clicking on in your screencast video, move your mouse cursor on your computer screen to place a yellow circle around part that you are going to tap on the app. Move the mouse cursor before tapping on the app. This adds an extra step, but having the yellow circle makes it easier for viewers to follow your instructions. See my video here for an example of this.

Update: I have had a lot of people ask why I don’t just use the recording tool built into AirServer. The short answer is that I found recording glitchy on AirServer and I like the highlighting and editing options offered through Screencast-o-matic’s pro version.  

Quiz Dojo – Create Quizzes from Your PDFs

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quizdojo Quiz Dojo is a neat iPad app that allows you to create quizzes by highlighting sections of PDFs on your iPad. You can import PDFs from Dropbox, email, or other apps on your iPad. Once the PDF is imported you can highlight important words and phrases that you want to quiz yourself on later. The quiz is automatically created as you highlight. When you’re done highlighting a fill-in-the-blank quiz is created for you. The blanks are the words and phrases you highlighted.

As you work through quizzes in Quiz Dojo you have the option of getting immediate feedback or waiting until the end to see how you did on the entire quiz.

Quiz Dojo could be a good app for students to use to review notes that they take in class. Students can save their notes as PDFs, import them into Quiz Dojo, and then review.

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Quiz Dojo is available in two versions. The lite version is free, but it has limitations on the number of PDFs and quiz questions that you can use. The full version costs $2.99

Filling In For Will – An iPad Game About Shakespeare

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shakespeare Shakespeare: Filling In For Will is a fun game filled with famous quotes from Shakespeare. In this iPad app players are shown a quote that has a word or two missing from it. They then have to select the word or words that complete the quote. After filling in the quote players are shown the play, act, scene, and character connected to the quote.

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As someone who never really enjoyed studying Shakespeare I didn’t think that I would enjoy using this app. I was wrong. In fact, I found myself hooked on playing it. The app is currently priced at $2.99 USD. I found a promo code for it on Feed My App which allowed me to download it for free. You can get the code in this Feed My App post.

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A Simple Weighted Pro-Con Chart Tool for Your iPad

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proconT-Charts Pros and Cons is a free iPad app designed to help you organize your thoughts about a question or dilemma. This simple app provides a clean layout in which you can write your pros and cons lists. Each thing that you write on your lists can be given a different weight. For example, if you’re trying to decide if you should study or go to a party you can give extra weight to “will probably do better on the test if I study” in your chart. Within T-Charts Pros and Cons you can create and manage multiple lists. All of your lists can be emailed to friends for their input and feedback.

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Beyond weighing personal decisions T-Charts Pros and Cons could be used by students to keep track of points made in a classroom debate or to help them decide upon a position to take in writing an opinion paper.