iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

games

That’s Baloney! – A Fun Trivia App for Kids

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Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 11.01.48 PM That’s Baloney! is an iPad app designed to engage elementary school students in fun games about science, language arts, math, and social studies facts. The app has levels appropriate for students in grades two through six. The concept behind the games is a simple one; a statement is shown to the student and he or she has to decide if it’s “baloney” or if it’s true. The games is over after four incorrect choices or after answering all questions correctly. Students are shown a summary of correct and incorrect answers at the end of each game.

Four players can play That’s Baloney! on the same iPad. Playing a few rounds of That’s Baloney! could be a fun way to get students to try to recall information from previous lessons. It’s also the kind of educational app that parents and children can use together.

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Stick Around – Play and Create iPad Puzzles

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Screen Shot 2014-01-08 at 11.56.45 AM Stick Around is a new iPad app developed by Tony Vincent and Morris Cooke (the developer of the popular Explain Everything app). Stick Around gets its name of the sticker element of the app. The app contains educational puzzles that students solve by dragging stickers into the correct locations on the puzzles. The puzzles are essentially matching activities that can be customized by the teachers. The best aspect of the app is that teachers can create their own puzzles.

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Stick Around contains eight sample puzzles. The sample puzzles can actually be played by students, but they seem to be included more as models of what teachers can create with the app. To create a puzzle in Stick Around start by selecting a puzzle format (columns, timeline, sequencing, size arrangement, Venn diagram). After choosing a format you can import a picture or draw a background for the puzzle. The puzzle is then built on top of your chosen background. Write your question and place them on the puzzle. Your answer key is created by creating stickers that your students will have to drag into place on your puzzle. The process wasn’t as intuitive as I thought it would be so I reverted to watching the built-in instructional screencast in order to understand how the puzzles came together.

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Stick Around could be a great app for creating educational puzzles for your students to use as review exercises. I especially like the potential to create geography puzzles on the app.

Overall, the app has good features for students and teachers. My wish for a future enhancement is an option to give students instant feedback on puzzle completion progress. Currently, it seems that the only feedback that can be given is “puzzle correct” or “puzzle incorrect.” I would like to see students be able to get feedback like, “six of eight parts correct, correct these two parts.”

Stick Around is currently priced at $2.99.

Shutterbugs Wiggle and Stomp – A Virtual Zoo on Your iPad

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Screen Shot 2013-10-24 at 4.46.11 PM Shutterbugs Wiggle and Stomp is a new free iPad app produced by the Smithsonian. The purpose of the game is to help children recognize the movements of animals. In the game children move through a virtual zoo with a zoo keeper. As they go through the virtual zoo the zoo keeper will ask students to take pictures of animals who are demonstrating running, jumping, stomping, and other movements.

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Shutterbugs Wiggle and Stomp could be a fun little game for pre-K and Kindergarten students. The game reads the commands displayed on the screen to help students learn to read the words they’re seeing. At the conclusion of the game students can print coloring pages of animals they took pictures of during the game.

Shiny Party – A Fun iPad App for Learning Shapes

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Screen Shot 2013-07-24 at 9.19.23 PM Shiny Party is an iPad app created to help young students learn to recognize shapes. The app has a story mode and a game mode. In the story mode students help the story’s characters, Alice and Charlie, find presents and balloons for the party. In the story students have to identify the presents by their shapes.

The game mode of Shiny Party students practice identifying shapes through puzzles and matching games. In the game mode, as in the story mode, students identify shapes by coloring them in on their iPads.

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Shiny Party is currently priced at $1.99.

Kids Boats – A Game for Exploring Climates

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Screen Shot 2013-05-13 at 10.10.39 AM Kids Boats is an iPad app through which students discover animals of different climate zones. In Kids Boats students navigate a boat down a river avoiding obstacles and collecting stars. Along the river students will find animals native to the climate zone that the river is in. At the end of each river students will see the animals of that climate zone.

Students can make boats move through Kids Boats in three different ways. The simplest way to navigate the boats is to drag and move the boats. Students can tilt their iPads to make the boats move. The third way to make the boats move is to blow on the iPad (near the microphone) and the boats will move.

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