iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

geography

21 Good iPad Apps for Teachers of 3rd-5th Grade Students to Try This Summer

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21The summer is a great time to explore new-to-you iPad apps that you might want to add to the iPads that you have in your classroom. Each day this week I’m going to share a selection of apps appropriate for four ranges of pre-K-12 grades. Yesterday, I shared 21 apps for Pre-K through 2nd grade. Today, I have apps 3rd through 5th grade students. Apps for grades six through eight will be shared tomorrow. Apps for 9th through 12th grade will be shared on Thursday.

If you would like a copy of this slidedeck, open the slide editor (gear icon) then select “make a copy” from the file menu.

Test Your Geography Knowledge on the GeoBee Challenge App

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Screen Shot 2014-03-03 at 8.25.10 AM The GeoBee Challenge iPad app from National Geographic is an excellent app that students can use to test and develop their knowledge of world geography. The contains more than 1300 questions about physical and political geography. Each round of the game presents the questions in a different manner. In some rounds students see a picture of a landmark and have to tap the country containing that landmark. In other rounds students read a question and tap the answer on the map. And there are rounds that simply present the name of a location that students have to locate on the map.

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The GeoBee Challenge app is designed for elementary school and middle school students. Registration is not required in order to use the app and multiple students can use the same installation of the app. GeoBee Challenge is currently (March 3, 2014) available for free, but its regular price is $1.99.

Kids Discover Washington, D.C. on iPads in 3D

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Screen Shot 2014-02-04 at 2.21.01 PM KIDS DISCOVER currently offers seventeen iPad apps for students. The apps are multimedia books about a variety of topics in science and social studies. Kids Discover Washington, DC is the latest app from Kids Discover that I’ve tried.

The content of Kids Discover Washington, DC is better than what you’ll find in elementary school or middle school social studies textbooks. In the app students can read text, listen to audio, and manipulate 3-D objects. The app also includes videos, cartoons, and plenty of other imagery. Students can tap the images to learn more about the people and places pictured. After working through all of the chapters of the app students can test their knowledge with review quizzes and puzzles.

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Kids Discover Washington, DC is currently priced at $3.99 USD.

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.

Stack the States & Stack the Countries – Fun Geography Apps for iPads

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Screen Shot 2013-12-23 at 7.14.32 PM Stack the States and Stack the Countries are iPad apps that students will have fun playing to quiz their knowledge of geography. The games use a Tetris-like format that requires players to correctly answer a geography question in order to earn a game piece that they then place into a row. The object is to stack up pieces to reach a target height. When the target height is reached players move on to the next level.

In Stack the States students are quizzed on capitals, state shapes, abbreviations, bordering states, location on the map, nicknames, and flags. In Stack the Countries students are quizzed on capitals, landmarks, major cities, continents, border countries, languages, flags, and country shapes.

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Stack the States currently costs $0.99. Stack the Countries currently costs $1.99