iPad Apps for School

The Best iOS Apps for Students and Teachers

storytelling

Storytelling Fun With Foldify for iPad

by

foldify Foldify is an iPad app that students can use to design all kinds of 3D figures on their iPads. After designing their figures students can print their designs with directions for folding their designs into 3D paper objects. Foldify provides basic templates for objects like cars, houses, and people. Students complete the templates by coloring them in, adding their own pictures to the templates, and adding fun digital stamps to the templates.

I first learned about Foldify from a student who used it to create a bunch of characters and buildings that he then used in a video that he made. In his video he and other students provided the voices for each character.

Foldify is not a free app. It currently costs $3.99. Contrary to what one of the reviewers of the app posted on the review page, you can email a PDF of a design and print it from any printer.

mzl.nnjwdgjp.480x480-75

Story Wheel – Story Starters on Your iPad

by

Screen Shot 2013-04-25 at 11.47.30 PMStory Wheel is an app for the iPad and iPhone that is designed to promote audio storytelling. Spin the Story Wheel on your device and when it lands on an image, dictate a short story based on that image. When you are finished recording, you can play your story back with animations generated by Story Wheel. You can try the basic Story Wheel app for free. To get the most out of the app you will probably want to get the full version of the app for $2.99.  The video below offers a short overview of Story Wheel in action.

With Book Creator 2.5 Released With a Fantastic New Sharing Option

by

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.

Create Fun Flipbooks With Animator for iPad

by

Screen Shot 2013-02-01 at 7.13.54 PMAnimator for iPad is a nice app for creating flipbooks on your iPad. Animator provides a blank canvas on which you can draw and paint anything you like. When you tap “next” to create the next page in your flipbook you still see a faded version of your previous page. That view of the previous page is helpful for sequencing your drawings to create a story built in the same way that old cartoons were created one scene at a time. After you have created all of your pages you can preview your flipbook, adjust the speed at which each page is flipped, and add a soundtrack to your flipbook. Soundtracks have to be created outside of Animator and imported into your flipbook. I simply imported a music track that I had on my iPad when I tested Animator.

Photo-2_1_13,-7.17.04-PM-3

Animator could be a great app for students to use to create and illustrate short stories on their iPads. If you want students to add some narration or music to their Animator flipbooks, have them use SoundCloud to make recordings to use in Animator. Finished Animator projects can be saved directly on an iPad or shared via email.