iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

biology

DIY Lake Science – Simulations and Activities for Learning About Lakes

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diy lake science DIY Lake Science is a relatively new iPad app from the Lawrence Hall of Science. The free iPad app is designed to help students learn about lake ecosystems. In the app students will find a small simulation of a lake ecosystem. Students can change the depth of the lake, the temperature, and the general climate around the lake to learn how those changes alter the ecosystem. After using the simulation students can learn more about lake ecosystems in the DIY Lake Science video library.

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To meet the expectation of the “DIY” in DIY Lake Science you will find directions for a dozen hands-on activities designed to help students learn more about lake ecosystems. Half of the activities, like “make a lake” and “freezing lakes” can be conducted indoors in a classroom or at home with the help of parents. The other half of the DIY Lake Science activities require going outdoors to learn how to measure the murkiness of water, find aquatic insects, and to see how run-off affects lakes.

Leafsnap – An App for Identifying Plants

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Screen Shot 2014-09-23 at 9.12.16 AM I often encourage teachers to think of ways to use iPads and other mobile devices for outdoor learning activities. LeafSnap is a free iPad app designed by Columbia University, Smithsonian, and the University of Maryland for the purpose of helping people identify plants by taking pictures of them on their iPads.

With LeafSnap installed on your iPad or iPhone you can take a picture of a leaf, upload it to the app, and then the app’s visual recognition technology will help you identify the name of the plant. It doesn’t work for all leaves and you do need to isolate the leaf be before you take a picture of it. In other words, you can’t just snap a picture of a big tree and ask LeafSnap to identify it.

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If taking pictures of leaves is not a practical option for you and your students, LeafSnap still has valuable content for you. LeafSnap offers a large gallery of pictures of leaves. The gallery is organized alphabetically. Tap on any picture in the gallery to see more pictures of the same leaf, descriptions of the tree that it grows on, and where those trees grow.

My Incredible Body Teaches Kids How the Human Body Works

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Screen Shot 2014-07-07 at 7.11.34 PM My Incredible Body is an iPad app (currently free) designed to help students learn how the human body works. The app features eight sections. Those sections are circulation, muscles, senses (vision, smell, hearing, touch), kidneys & urine, skeleton, respiration, digestion, and brain & nerves. Each section of the app contains short animated videos that explain the functions of each system and how it works.

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Students can work through My Incredible Body in any order they choose. The content of the videos that I watched in My Incredible Body are appropriate for middle school students, but would be too basic for high school students.

Creatures of Light Teaches Students About Bioluminescence

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Screen Shot 2014-01-30 at 2.57.43 PM Creatures of Light is a beautiful free iPad app from the American Museum of Natural History. The app contains five chapter about  bioluminescent animals  like jellyfish, fireflies, and glow worms. In each chapter students learn about what causes bioluminescence and how it helps animals survive in their environments. Each chapter includes an interactive map of the world that students on which students can tap to learn about the bioluminescent animals of a particular region.

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After working through the Creatures of Light stories send your students on a quest to see if they can find other bioluminescent animals and place them on a custom Google Map or Google Earth tour.

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Fotopedia Wild Friends – A Beautiful iPad App About Animals

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Screen Shot 2013-11-29 at 7.49.04 PM Fotopedia Wild Friends is a beautiful iPad app that takes students on a photographic tour of Europe and beyond. The app features more than 2,400 images of animals. The images can be viewed on their own or as parts of slideshows. At any time students can tap an image to open a short passage of text about the animal(s) they’re viewing.

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Pair Fotopedia Wild Friends with the World Wildlife Fund’s Together app and your students will get lost exploring nature on their iPads. (Both apps are free).

H/T to Jen Deyenberg for the Fotopedia app.