The National Geographic Word Atlas for 2013 is currently available as a free iPad app. I recommend grabbing it while it’s free. The app features a globe that students can rotate, zoom-in, and zoom-out. When students zoom-in on a country they can open a panel of location details to discover some basic information about that country. The details pane for each country includes information about the country’s population, geographic size, culture, and government.
The app is currently free and worked without a glitch when I tried it. It could be a good reference app for elementary school and possibly middle school students. Some reviews of it are not positive. For that reason I’d grab it as a free app, but I’m not sure I would pay $1.99 for it when it goes back to regular price.