iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

free ipad app

The World’s Fair On Your iPad

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Screen Shot 2013-08-19 at 9.03.29 AM The New York Public Library’s Biblion: World’s Fair app puts the wonder of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair on your iPad. Through the app you can view images, videos, and documents all about the World’s Fair. All of the media in the app is arranged into thematic stories. These stories showcase the innovations that were on display in 1940 as well as the predictions for the future. Plenty of historical context is provided through the stories to help readers understand why the innovations on display were significant.

One of the fun things that you could do with this app with your students is to have them look at the stories that feature predictions for the future. Then have you students see which of those predictions were accurate, which weren’t, and which became part of our world today.

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History Maps for Your Students’ iPads

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Screen Shot 2013-08-06 at 10.25.48 PM History: Maps of the World is a free iPad app that puts historical maps on your students’ iPads. The app features close to 200 maps across four categories. The map categories are World War II, Polar Regions and Oceans, The Public Schools Historical Atlas, and general information. Of the four categories the WWII category probably has the broadest appeal. Each of the historical maps includes a short description and a link to website (usually Wikipedia) to learn more about the place featured in the map. Students can also switch from a historical view to a modern map view.

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History: Maps of the World is one of six apps in a series from the same developer. The other variants of the app cover U.S. History, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. None of the apps are terribly impressive, but as free apps they could be good to use as supplements to your other history resources.

Marine Missions Teaches Students About Oceans

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Screen Shot 2013-08-01 at 9.04.32 PM Marine Missions is a new iPad app from National Geographic. The free app features a series of educational missions for elementary school students to complete. As students complete the missions they learn a little bit about ocean life and marine conservation. For successfully completing missions students earn pieces to use to create their own marine creatures.

Students have the choice of using their fingers to tap and move things in the Marine Missions challenges or tilting their iPads to make things move. I tried it both ways and found the app to be much more responsive when I was in tilt mode than when I tried tapping and moving objects.

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Create and Watch Smithsonian Channels on Your iPad

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Screen Shot 2013-07-31 at 5.35.55 PMSmithsonian Channel for iPad is a fantastic free app for anyone that enjoys watching educational videos without having to go to YouTube. With the Smithsonian Channel iPad app installed you can browse and search for full-length educational videos as well as shorter clips produced by Smithsonian.

The free app allows you to create your own thematic channels or collections of educational videos. Going through the process of creating a channel on the Smithsonian Channel iPad app is a great way to discover interesting video. The channel creation interface uses a webbed format. When you drag a topic into your channel, the app creates a visual web of videos related to your chosen topic.

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Unfortunately, Smithsonian Channel for iPad is only available in the United States at the moment.

Tellagami – Create Narrated Animations on Your iPad

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tellagamiTellagami is a free iPad that elementary school students will enjoy using to create narrated animations. If you have ever used Voki or GoAnimate, Tellagami will feel familiar to you. 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.

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Consider having your students use Tellagami to create narrated animations of their favorite scenes from books that they’ve read. Or have them use Tellagami to animate parts of stories that they have created from scratch.

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