iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

drawing

Paper – A Sketching App Now Free for Everyone

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paper Paper is an iPad app for sketching and creating free-hand outlines. I’ve seen a lot of people use it over the last year, but I couldn’t get myself to pay for it when there were other good sketching apps available for free. Last night I received an email from Paper’s marketing department in which they announced that the app is now completely free to use. All of the in-app purchases have been made free too.

Paper can be used to sketch notes, draw pictures, or write outlines in notebooks in the app. I like using apps like Paper because sketching notes allows me to create outlines in any format that I like, quickly connect ideas through arrows and lines, and illustrate ideas when words aren’t enough. Sketchnoting on an iPad enables me to edit and share sketched notes more quickly and easily than ever before.

Learn more about Paper in the video embedded below. If you decide to install Paper, I highly recommend going through the tutorials before using the app. I tried skipping the tutorials and I was confused by some aspects of the app.

Mix by FiftyThree / Create Together from FiftyThree on Vimeo.

Drawp for School – A Good App for Students to Create and Share Drawings

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Screen Shot 2014-09-29 at 9.38.51 AM Last year I reviewed Drawp. Drawp is an excellent app for students to use to create and send digital artwork to family members. Drawp for School offers the same great features as Drawp while incorporating features for classroom use.

Drawp for School allows students  to create drawings, take pictures, and create audio recordings. Students can combine those elements into one final product that they share with their teachers and classmates. Teachers can use the app to create multiple class rosters. From their class rosters teachers can see all of the work that their students have shared with them. Teachers are also able to manage students’ passwords from their class rosters.

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Teachers could have students use Drawp for School to complete assignments in which they are asked to diagram concepts, highlight features on a map, or explain how to solve a mathematics problem.

Kids Can Become Animators With Creative Kids for iPad

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Screen Shot 2014-02-10 at 12.25.46 PM Creative Kids is a free iPad app from Faber-Castell. The app provides students with step-by-step directions for drawing on paper then see those drawings become animations on their iPads. Even kids who don’t fancy themselves as artists can create neat animations by using the tracing directions provided by Creative Kids. Creative Kids supports up to four student profiles. 

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Creative Kids offers a great blend of the analog and digital tools. Students can develop drawing skills on paper then see the drawings come to life through the animation aspect of Creative Kids. Watch the video below for an overview of the free Creative Kids iPad app.

Mayan Mysteries Drawing Contest – Get Your Drawing Featured In an iPad Game

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Screen Shot 2013-11-22 at 6.03.28 PM Dig It Games, the producers of the popular Loot Pursuit mathematics game, is currently holding a drawing contest for students. The contest asks students to design a character to be featured in the next version of the Loot Pursuit Mayan Mysteries iPad app. The winning designer will have his or her character in the game and receive an iPad 2. Each of the three runner-ups will receive an iPod Touch. The deadline is December 15. You can read all of the contest rules here.

Loot Pursuit is a mathematics game designed for middle school students. The free iPad game requires students to know the order of operations to complete many of the math problems in the game. The premise of the game is that students have to correctly answer mathematics problems in order to collect ancient Mayan artifacts.

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Home KG – A Free iPad App for Learning to Write

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Screen Shot 2013-09-27 at 7.23.25 AM Home KG is a free iPad designed to help children learn to write all of the letters of the alphabet, numbers one through nine, and ten basic shapes. Children trace the letters (both uppercase and lowercase), numbers, and shapes. Children can save their work in the app. The app has a couple of sound options that can be turned on or off. The first sound option is simple background music. The second sound option is hearing the name of the letters, numbers, and shapes read to the child using the app.

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Home KG is a nice, free app that could help pre-K and elementary school students learn to write their letters and numbers. The app also helps students learn to recognize the names of basic shapes. Unlike similar free apps that I’ve tried, Home KG gives students the complete alphabet without the need to complete an in-app upgrade purchase.