iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

ipad app

Spellyfish – Fun Phonics iPad Apps

by

spellyfish Spellyfish is a pair of iPad apps designed to help students learn phonics. Spellyfish Short A Words focuses on teaching students how to recognize and spell consonant-vowel-consonant words that contain the letter “A” and the short “A” sound. Spellyfish Short I Words teaches students to recognize and spell short consonant-vowel-consonant words containing the letter “I.”

Both of the Spellyfish apps work in the same way. After the initial set-up of the app (some students may need help from an adult for the set-up) students are presented with an interactive tutorial on the sounds they are going to practice recognizing throughout the app. After each tutorial students try out their new skills by spelling a series of short words. As they type each word the Spellyfish cartoon character pronounces the sounds that each letter makes. If a student spells a word correctly the Spellyfish sounds-out the word then pronounces it as a whole.

Evernote Camera Roll 20131205 163640

The Spellyfish apps currently cost $0.99 USD. The apps support multiple user profiles.

Doodlecast Pro Is Free Right Now – Grab It While You Can

by

Screen Shot 2013-11-27 at 5.29.01 PM Thanks to Tony Vincent, I just learned that Doodlecast Pro is currently available for free. Usually, this awesome app costs $3.99.

Doodlecast Pro is an excellent iPad app for creating instructional videos. At its most basic level Doodlecast Pro allows you to draw on a whiteboard and explain what you’re doing at the same time. You can adjust the size and color of the drawing tools. Doodlecast Pro records everything that you draw and say. You can pause and resume recordings at any time. If you have images on your iPad’s camera roll that you would like to include in your Doodlecast Pro video, you can import them into your project. Your Doodlecast Pro creations can have up to 100 pages in them. You can flip between pages during your recording. Doodlecast Pro also allows you to save a work in progress and come back to finish it later. When you are finished with your project you can export your video to YouTube or save it to your iPad’s camera roll.

Watch the video below for an overview of Doodlecast Pro’s features.

Photo-1_8_13-3.06.01-PM-2-e1357910323845

goREACT – Create Virtual Chemical Reactions on Your iPad

by

Screen Shot 2013-10-07 at 12.38.13 PM goREACT is a new iPad app from the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. This free iPad app allows students to virtually create chemical reactions. To create the reactions students simply drag elements from the periodic table to the “reaction area.” The app includes suggested reactions to help students get started. In all there are nearly 300 chemical reactions supported on the app. The app includes pictures and videos related to the reactions that students can virtually create on goREACT.

Screen Shot 2013-10-07 at 11.23.26 AM

goREACT could be a great app to use in a science classroom in which you cannot access (for good reasons in some cases) some of the materials needed to make chemical reactions.

Loot Pursuit – A Free & Fun Math Game for Students’ iPads

by

Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 8.14.23 PM Loot Pursuit is a mathematics game designed for middle school students. The free iPad game requires students to know the order of operations to complete many of the math problems in the game. The premise of the game is that students have to correctly answer mathematics problems in order to collect ancient Mayan artifacts.

Evernote Camera Roll 20131002 201901

One of the things that you should pass on to your students before they play Loot Pursuit is to actually read the directions on how to play the game. I skipped the directions and found myself frustrated before going back to read the directions. Students will also have to exercise some patience in the beginning levels as the problems may not appear as quickly as they want them to appear.

Tell Time – A Free iPad App to Help Children Learn to Tell Time

by

Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 6.06.41 PM Tell Time is a free and simple iPad app designed to help children learn to tell time. The app uses a matching game format. When children opens the app they will see a digital clock and an analog clock displaying various times. The children then have to drag the matching times together. Tapping on one of the clocks will result in the time being read aloud.

You can customize the Tell Time iPad app to display up to eight matching exercises on one screen. You can also customize the app to display any time interval that you choose.

Evernote Camera Roll 20130925 181202