iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

free apps

How to Use the Flipgrid iPad app

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Flipgrid is a great service for gathering video responses from your students. One of the best things about Flipgrid is that students can use it on any computer, phone, or tablet including iPads. And the iPad app is completely free to install and use.

Flipgrid does require that teachers use the Flipgrid website to post topics and prompts for students to reply to. Students can use any device including iPads to respond to those prompts. In the following video I demonstrate how students can use the free Flipgrid iPad app.

Over on my Practical Ed Tech site I recently published a comprehensive guide to using Flipgrid. If you have never used Flipgrid or you’re looking to help get colleagues started on Flipgrid, share the guide with them.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive external microphone to use with an iPad, take a look at these that you can get in a three-pack for $7.

Teach Your Monster Read for iOS – Free Through the Weekend

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Teach Your Monster to Read is a great game environment in which students can develop the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters, sounds, and words. For the rest of this week and through the weekend (March 21-26, 2017), the app is completely free.

The Teach Your Monster to Read environment contains eight levels (or islands as they’re called in the game) each containing four activities. Students play the game as a friendly monster avatar. On each island students can earn prizes for their monsters and customize the look of their monsters.

My Favorite Video Creation iPad Apps for Elementary School

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When it comes to creating videos in elementary school there are some qualities needed in an iPad app that aren’t needed in apps for older students. For example, it’s helpful to not require that students register to use the app. It’s also nice if the app has a child-friendly interface. The following three apps have those qualities and more.

Learn more about making video on tablets and phones at the Practical Ed Tech BYOD Camp.

ChatterPix Kids is a free iPad app that students can use to turn pictures into talking pictures. To create a talking picture just snap a picture with your iPad or import a picture from your iPad’s camera roll. After taking the picture just draw in a face and tap the record button to make your picture talk. Your recording can be up to thirty seconds in length. Before publishing your talking picture you can add fun stickers, text, and frames to your picture. Finished Chatter Pix projects are saved to your camera roll and from there you can export it to a number of services including YouTube. ChatterPix Kids doesn’t require students to create an account in order to use the service. Using the app can be a great way to get students to bring simple stories to life. Check out the video below that was made, in part, by using ChatterPix.

Tellagami is a free iPad that elementary school students enjoy using to create narrated animations. Tellagami allows your students to create customized animated scenes in a matter of minutes. To create a narrated, animated scene students simply open Tellagami and tap “create.” After opening the create menu students will see a default character and background scene. The characters can be altered by selecting from a big menu of customization options. The background scenes can be changed by selecting from a menu or by inserting a picture from the iPad’s camera roll. To add their voices to their animations students simply tap “record” and start talking. Completed animations are stored on the camera rolls of your students’ iPads. Tellagami does not require students to create accounts or have an email address.

Shadow Puppet Edu is a free iPad app that students can use to create audio slideshow videos. The app offers an integrated search tool that students can use to find pictures from the Library of Congress, to search for images from NASA, and to find Creative Commons licensed images from Flickr. Students can also import pictures from the camera roll on their iPads. After selecting a set of images students can arrange them into any sequence by simply dragging and dropping them into order. Then to create a story students press the record button and talk while flipping through the images. Shadow Puppet Edu allows students to add text and stickers to each image too. When they’re happy with their work students can share their Shadow Puppet Edu projects through a variety of methods including YouTube and email. Shadow Puppet Edu projects are automatically saved to the camera roll on a student’s iPad. Students do not have to register for an account or have an email address to use Shadow Puppet Edu.

Draw and Tell – Create Animated Stories

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Draw and Tell is a free iPad app that elementary school students can use to create simple animated stories. At its most basic level Draw and Tell provides blank canvases on which students can draw pictures and or write notes. The app provides students with a variety of canvases including a blank screen, lined screens, graph paper, and colorful background borders. Students can draw on these canvases by using virtual pencils, pens, crayons, and paints. Students can also apply digital stickers and stencils to their creations in Draw and Tell. If making drawings is all your students need to do, then they can save their drawings in the app and on their iPads’ camera rolls.

Draw and Tell is more than just a drawing tool. The app includes options for students to record themselves talking about the things they are drawing. Those recordings are saved with their drawings as simple video files. All of the files are saved in the app. Students can combine their video files to make longer animations. Or, as Tom Daccord pointed out in this post, students can use the video files in other apps like iMovie.

Inspire Creative Writing With the Scribeasy App

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scribeasy icon One of the challenges of teaching creative writing can be just getting students to start a story. That’s when apps like Scribeasy can be quite helpful as they provide students with visual prompts that can inspire the start of a story.

Scribeasy is a free iPad app that offers a fun environment in which students can write short stories. Students create stories on Scribeasy by first selecting a background image then dragging and dropping additional pictures onto their chosen background images. When students select objects to add to their backgrounds, a narrator reads the name of the object aloud. Students can move and resize all images to create a visual story in Scribeasy.

scribeasy writing

Once the visuals are in place on Scribeasy students then write a story about the scenes they’ve created. The next step is where Scribeasy shines. Scribeasy gives students a list of suggested words to use in their stories. The writing process is a timed activity. Students can choose to write for a short, medium, or large amount of time (they can extend the time if needed). Completed stories are saved in the app. Students can also save their stories to the camera roll on their iPads.

Part of this post originally appeared on my other blog, FreeTech4Teachers.com