iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

current events

News-O-Matic – Daily News for Kids in English and Spanish

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Screen Shot 2014-10-28 at 6.42.42 PM News-O-Matic is a service that offers daily news stories for elementary school students. Along with the news stories News-O-Matic provides videos, games, and quizzes to help students learn about the world. The latest update to the News-O-Matic iPad app introduced an option to quickly switch between an English and a Spanish version of the app.

News-O-Matic does a good job of offering students a number of options for learning about the topic of a chosen news article. When students choose articles from the News-O-Matic homescreen they are taken directly to that article where they can then read the article as is or choose to have it read aloud to them. A menu to the right of each article contains access to additional features like a summary of key facts, tools for highlighting sections of the article, and slideshows and videos related to the topic of the chosen article.

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News-O-Matic is a subscription service. The app is free to install and use for accessing some articles. A subscription is required in order to unlock all of the app’s features.

Try Getty Images Stream to Spark Students’ Interest in Current Events

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Screen Shot 2014-10-02 at 11.30.16 PM Over the years I frequently used resources like the BBC’s Week In Pictures and Ten by Ten to give students visual prompts about current events. I found that the pictures often sparked more questions from students than just giving them a news article to read. The Getty Images Stream iPad app could be used for the same purpose.

Getty Images Stream features photographs from Getty photographers all over the world. Select a category to flip through a set of related images. You can also enter a search term to find images. Long press on any of the images to bring up some brief information about the image. You can also save images into a collection of your own in the app.

The Wider Image – A Great Way for Students to Visually Explore the News

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Screen Shot 2013-10-07 at 9.11.50 AM The Wider Image is a beautiful free iPad app from Reuters. The app features slideshows of news stories and cultural events around the world. Open the app and browse through the thumbnails until you find a story that grabs your attention. Then click through to view a slideshow with accompanying text about the story.

You can browse for stories in The Wider Image according to location. The map will show you a connection between the story and the location.

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You can save stories and slideshows to your account in the The Wider Image iPad app. Those stories that you save can be shared with others via email, Twitter, and Facebook. Saving and sharing stories could be a good feature for students in a current events class. When I taught a current events course I always had students save articles to bring to classroom discussions. With The Wider Image app your students can do the same by saving and sharing stories with you and their classmates.

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