iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

ipads in education

Using AirServer to Mirror iPads to Laptops

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Screen Shot 2013-08-13 at 6.43.19 PM When I am giving presentations and leading workshops I like to use AirServer to mirror my iPad to my laptop. That allows me to project my iPad’s screen without being tethered to VGA cable. At $14.99 (less with volume pricing) AirServer is a heck of a lot cheaper than Apple TV too. Usually everything works well when I use this system. Today, that wasn’t the case.

Today, during three of presentations that I gave, including the keynote, one or more people accidentally broadcast their iPads to my laptop which in turn meant that their iPad screens were broadcast to the whole audience. The reason that this happened was that I hadn’t set an AirServer password.

The lesson here is if you are going to use AirServer in your classroom or in a presentation as I was today, make sure that you set a password to prevent others from accidentally sharing their screens to your computer.

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AirServer works on Macs and on Windows computers. It costs $14.99 for an individual license that you can use on up to five computers. Schools that purchase twenty or more licenses can buy them for $3.99 a piece.

Create Animations on Your iPad With ABCya Animate

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Screen Shot 2013-08-09 at 9.31.20 PM Last month ABCya released a great web app called ABCya Animate. That app is now available as an iPad app. With ABCya Animate for iPad students build their animations by drawing, typing, and inserting images. Students can change the background of each frame, include new pictures in each frame, and change the text in each frame of their animations. Watch a complete overview of the app in the video below.

ABCya Animate could be a great tool for elementary school and middle school students to use to create animations to use to tell a short story.

ABCya Animate is currently priced at $1.99.

Disclosure: ABCya is a sponsor of one of my other blogs, Free Technology for Teachers. 

Try Infuse Learning for Gathering Feedback from Students

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Screen Shot 2013-07-29 at 9.46.25 PM Infuse Learning is a free student response system that works with any Internet-connected device including iPads and Android tablets. One of the aspects of Infuse Learning that you may find useful from a classroom management standpoint is the option to take attendance through the service. When you register for Infuse Learning you can create individual class codes to distribute to your students. When students sign into the class using the class code their names appear in your administrative panel.

Infuse Learning allows you to distribute questions, prompts, and quizzes out to your students’ devices in private virtual classrooms. In an Infuse Learning room you can give students a wide variety of formats in which to response to a question or prompt. Students can reply to prompts and questions in standard multiple choice, true/false, and short answer formats. Probably the coolest feature of Infuse Learning is the option for students to reply to prompts by creating drawings or diagrams on their iPads, Android tablets, or on their laptops.

Infuse Learning offers a couple of helpful accessibility options including support for multiple languages. You can choose to enable translation for questions, prompts, and answer choices that students see on their devices. Another accessibility feature is audio narration for questions, prompts, and answer choices. To hear the audio students simply click on the audio button when viewing a question. Your questions and prompts can include pictures.

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With Book Creator 2.5 Released With a Fantastic New Sharing Option

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Book Creator is currently my favorite iPad app for creating multimedia books on your iPad. The app costs $4.99 (less with volume purchasing), but it is well worth it. The latest updates to Book Creator allows you to export your books to ePub 3.0 format. The exported file can be opened an read in the Chrome web browser using the free Readium browser extension. This is a great option as it allows a parent who doesn’t have an iPad at home to view his or her child’s work at home.

Another feature added to Book Creator 2.5 is the option to take pictures and videos from within the app. Version 2.5 introduced new page format options including a full screen format.

These new features in Book Creator require iOS 6.

A Small Collection of Studies of iPad Use in Education

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brain-78440_640 This week I got the itch to go beyond anecdotal stories about iPads in the classroom and look for some more substantial research and writing on the topic. Below are some of the reports that I’ve been reading through this week.

The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development for Victoria, Australia iPads for Learning – In Their Hands field trial studied the use of iPads in nine schools. One of the observations to note here is that greater success was reported at primary and special schools than in secondary schools.

The iPad as a Tool for Education is a study based on iPad use at Longfield Academy, Kent, England . There is strong emphasis on interpreting the data generated by surveying students and faculty. It’s interesting to note the differences in how students perceived the impact of iPad use on their achievement and how teachers perceived the impact of students use of iPads on student achievement.

Reading With iPads – The Difference Makes a Difference studied the impact on the reading comprehension, knowledge of content, and analysis skills of boys aged 11 to 13 who read using iPads.

Promoting Student Engagement by Integrating New Technology into Tertiary Education: The Role of the iPad studied the use of iPads by teachers and students in distance learning and in-person learning environments. The report includes some quotes from students who seem to have benefitted from the use of iPads. I would like to see the rest of the survey data that was used in the formation of this report.

The Impact of the iPad and iPhone on Education was published in 2010 and is speculative in nature as the students surveyed had not yet been given iPads. The study was gauging student and instructor interest in iPads and potential uses. I would like to see the follow up report if there is one available.