iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

free ipad app

Marco Polo Weather – A Fun App About Weather

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Screen Shot 2014-10-03 at 9.09.44 AM Marco Polo Weather is a new iPad app designed to help young students learn about weather. The app features cute little animated characters that children can move and dress. Children can also alter the setting surrounding their characters. Changing the setting includes changing the weather from sunny to cloudy, from warm to cold, from calm to windy, and from raining to snowing. Of course, children can combine those variables to develop almost any type of weather condition. As children change the weather they will hear a narrator explain the weather. For example, when children select rain the narrator explains what rain is.

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Marco Polo Weather doesn’t provide the most scientific or thorough explanations that you’ll find, but they are adequate for the audience that app is intended to educate. The app is free, but it does require an in-app purchase to unlock all of the available weather variables.

Quizlet for iPad – Review Your Notes Online or Offline

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Screen Shot 2014-10-01 at 8.52.59 AM Quizlet is a popular free service for creating and sharing sets of flashcards. Quizlet’s free iPad app makes all of their flashcards available to students wherever they take their iPads.

Through the Quizlet iPad app students can access their own sets of flashcards or search for those created and shared by others. Through the app students can access their flashcards used even when they don’t have an internet connection. Quizlet flashcards can include audio elements in eighteen languages. Audio support is available for Quizlet flashcards. To access the audio option students simply tap the speaker icon to hear the contents of their flashcards read aloud.

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Quizlet’s iPad app offers four review modes. “Cards” mode is your standard flipping of flashcards from question side to answer side. “Study” mode is just the a question with its answer displayed next to it. “Match” mode is a Memory-style game in which students look for matching cards. “Learn” mode is a Jeopardy-style activity in which students are shown a term and they have to type in a question.

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.

Curious Ruler – A Neat iPad App for Measuring Objects

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Screen Shot 2014-09-10 at 12.19.20 PM Curious Ruler is a neat iPad app for measuring objects. The purpose of the app is to provide comparisons between common objects like coins (US, Canadian, and Euros) and the object that a student measures.

To use Curious Ruler students select an object from the menu of comparison objects. The list of comparison objects includes coins, basketballs, and iPads. Students then use the camera on their iPads to snap a picture of an object. For example I took a picture of my mouse and learned that an iPad was 2.5 times its size.

Curious Ruler isn’t the most robust app that you’ll find in the App Store and your students could do similar things with physical objects. That said, the use of Curious Ruler would be for students to check their answers after physically measuring and making comparisons.

NGAkids Art Zone – A Fun App for Exploring and Creating Art

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Screen Shot 2014-09-05 at 10.42.23 AM NGAkids Art Zone is a free iPad app from the National Gallery of Art. The app is designed to help elementary school and middle school students explore art through eight interactive activities.

After students open the app they can scroll through a gallery of paintings and drawings. Double-tapping on a drawing or painting will open an interactive activity in which students can modify the original work. Modification of a selected work takes place through sketching and or adding elements selected from a gallery of modifications. Students can save each work in the app or save it to the camera roll on an iPad.

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Each piece of art in the NGAkids Art Zone app is representative of actual works in the National Gallery of Art. Tapping the information icon on any of the works in the app will reveal background on the artist and the style of drawing or painting.