iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

ipad app

Kodable Gets Kids Thinking About Logic and More

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kodableKodable is an iPad app that introduces children to logic and programming through a simple visual interface. The app present students with a series of mazes through which they have to guide the “Fuzz” character. To guide Fuzz through the mazes students have to drag and drop boxes into place. On the beginning levels students can move one block at a time and see the results quickly. As the levels get more difficult students have to start to think a few moves ahead.

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Kodable gives you the first 30 levels for free. After the initial 30 levels you can upgrade for $1.99.

GoClass – Remotely Deliver Quizzes to Your Students’ iPads

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Screen Shot 2013-04-21 at 8.21.34 PMGoClass is a free iPad application for creating short lessons and delivering them to your students. The lessons can include annotated images, free hand sketches, text, and video. GoClass gives teachers tools for creating class rosters that they can use to keep track of which students are using the lessons when. Teachers also have the option to ask questions and poll their students. After the students’ response have been gathered teachers can project those responses without showing individual student’s names. The image below, from GoClass, illustrates how a teacher might use the app with students.

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GoClass is a nice iPad app for teachers who are working in 1:1 iPad environments. I particularly like the option to project students’ responses in aggregate without revealing individual names. That feature could be useful for prompting discussions about the questions and materials you’ve presented to your students.

Easy Portfolio – Create Student Portfolios on Your iPad

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Screen Shot 2013-04-21 at 7.57.51 PMEasy Portfolio is a nice iPad app for creating portfolios of your work and or your students’ work. In Easy Portfolio you can create multiple portfolios containing pictures, videos, links, notes, documents, and audio recordings. You can import files from your iPad to any of your portfolios. You can also create new media from scratch within each of your portfolios. You can share individual portfolio elements or entire portfolios via email or Dropbox.

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In addition to being a good iPad app for creating portfolios, Easy Portfolio could be a good app for students to use to take notes. They can create portfolios for each of their courses. Then within each portfolio they can type notes and or record audio notes.

Easy Portfolio is currently priced at $1.99 USD.

Sakura Quick Math – A Good Math Practice App for Elementary School Students

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Screen Shot 2013-04-17 at 1.17.08 PMSakura Quick Math is nice mathematics facts practice app for elementary school students. The app contains addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems that students try to answer as quickly as they can. Unlike similar games in Sakura Quick Math don’t use the keyboard to enter answers. Students answer the problems by drawing their solutions on the screen. This means that students need to correctly write their numbers to have them recognized by the app.

Evernote Camera Roll 20130417 122102Sakura Quick Math keeps track of how long it takes students’ to complete each activity. Students can share their times or keep their times to themselves.

SimpleSort Continents – A Geography Game

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Screen Shot 2013-04-17 at 12.32.44 PMSimpleSort: Continents is one of two nice geography apps from Kids and Beyond. SimpleSort: Continents a game in which students review physical and political geography facts then test their knowledge by dragging objects to the continents that they are representative of. For example, if students see an American Buffalo they need to drag it to North America. The concept and the visuals are not unique, but SimpleSort: Continents makes up for that shortcoming by providing clear narration for each part of the app. From the introductory screen through the end of every game students will never be stuck wondering what to do next. Students can tap on any object they see in the app to hear some information about the object. For example, if a student taps on a picture of the Galapagos Islands they’ll hear a short bit of information about them.

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Some students may benefit from using the Map My Globe app. Map My Globe is a very simple puzzle application on which students drag continents and oceans into their proper places. The names of each continent and ocean is read to the students.