Monday, August 5, 2013

10 Apps to Start the New School Year with Your iPads

Here are 10 iPad apps to use with your students to start off the new school year.  Below is an explanation of how each app can be used with your students.  Click on the link below picture to view my Flowboard with more in-depth explanations of each app.

Evernote is an app perfect for all teachers and high school students. Users can create a new notebook for every class, tag notes to make it easy to find topics for review later, and take extensive notes during class.  Evernote allows the users to type notes, take a picture of visuals, and record voice notes to listen to at a later time.  

The Google Drive App allows you access to view all of your files stored on Google Drive. It also allows you to edit or create new documents or spreadsheets. Google Drive allows the user to easily share documents with others and collaborate together in real-time on the same document.

Blogger is a great app for teachers and students to write for an audience. Having an audience will provide students with a purpose and give them more stock in their writing.  Students can post about science experiments, describe in words how to do math equations, write journal entries for a famous person from history, or practice their creative writing skills. Teachers can use Blogger to post notes, videos, pictures, and more to keep parents and students up to date.

Story Creator is an app that can be used with Kindergartners all the way through Seniors.  Students can type stories, add photos or videos, draw or annotate over pictures, and record their voice.  Students can use it for story writing, vocab books, science journals, and many more classroom purposes.

The Nearpod app is a great way to make sure students are in sync with the teacher at all times.  The teacher uploads a PDF file with the separate slides (can be PowerPoint or Active Inspire projects exported as PDF) and then can add interactive slides built into the app.  The teacher decides when the slide for the class is changed. Students cannot go forward or backward while using Nearpod.

The GRID app allows students and teachers to collaborate on one project at the same time.  You can add text, photos, and places on a map.  There are many ways for students to use GRID to work together and brainstorm, practice vocabulary, a different study guide, or practice sequencing.

Tellagami is an avatar creation app.  Students can create the avatar to look how they like and can put any photo in behind the avatar for a background.  The avatar can speak text that is typed in with a variety of computerized voices.  The student can also record their own voice for the avatar to use.  This app is great for many ways in the classroom.  Especially for students who fear public speaking. The video can be saved to the iPad and used in other apps that allow video insertion.

Flowboard is a slideshow creator, much like PowerPoint.  It is all created on the iPad and can insert photo, video, and search Facebook, Google Drive, Dropbox, YouTube, and more to find the files.  Students and teachers can share Flowboards with each other.

AppsFire is a great app to get paid apps for free.  Some app developers have sales and put their apps free for a limited time. AppsFire organizes all of those apps by category and makes it simple for you to find the apps you need.  You can organize your list by what categories interest you. You can also search for particular apps and put an alert on it so you know when it is free or has its price reduced.

Zite is an information gatherer.  You tell Zite what your interests are, and the app goes out and finds you articles to match.  You choose what category you want to view and hit the thumbs up or down to tell Zite to find more articles like that or none of that kind.  You can send articles directly to your Evernote and add tags to keep your articles sorted and organized.  You can also share to Facebook and Twitter.

No comments:

Post a Comment