Teaching and Learning iPad Apps

I attended many great sessions at this year’s Library Technology Conference and I’m continually amazed by all of incredible educational iPad apps that are out there. In her session, “The 25 Best Apps for Teaching and Learning (and How to Find More Like Them),” Connie Jones of Concordia College highlighted 25 iPad apps that have been designated as the Best for Teaching and Learning by a group of AASL (American Association of School Librarians) practitioners.  These apps fell into 5 broad categories: Enhanced Books or Ebooks, STEM, Organization and Management Tools, Social Sciences, and Content Creation. Enhanced Books/EBooks

• A Day in the Market (interactive book app for early elementary)
• Audubon Guide to Butterflies (middle to high school)
• Wonders of Life (upper elementary through high school) – contains 3D effects that move you around the world for exploration
• Disney Animated – takes you behind the scenes of Disney movies
• War Horse (middle to high school)—the book is read by the author while showing behind the scenes of the film and history of the era

STEM

• Dragon Box (elementary)—secretly teaches algebra
• Kodable Pro—builds on users skills to teach basic coding skills
• Monster Physics—solve missions and refine inventions by teaching basic physics concepts
• NOVA Elements (middle and high school)—play with and explore elements and the periodic table
• Water Cycle HD (early to upper elementary)—visual games test a student’s knowledge of the rain/water cycle and correlates to state standards

Organization and Management Tools

• Easy Portfolio (elementary through high school)—students’ artifacts can be saved in one spot—save videos, images, audio, and add links to external sites and documents
• Good Reader (elementary through high school)—handles content from a variety of sources- can download, read, manipulate, highlight and add notes, and great for working with PDF files
• InstaGrok—educational search engine, useful in narrowing searches
• Pocket (upper elementary through adult) one of the best free apps that allows you to save items for reading later from any browser and tag them for easy sorting and finding
• Subtext (elementary through high school) free web-based reading program, teachers can select free articles and books to add to it

Social Sciences

• Kids Discover (upper elementary and middle school)—based on the Kids Discover magazine- great Civil War app that includes activities
• Duolingo (upper elementary through high school)—free interactive language learning tool that includes Spanish, German, French, Italian
• History Pin—explore maps, channels, tours, images, stories pinned to maps. Browsable by date or location
• Umano (middle through high school)—free access to the latest news, similar to smart radio
• Discovery Education U.S. Geography—discover U.S. regions, overviews, landforms, bodies of water, etc.

Content Creation

• Notability (upper elementary through high school)—allows for annotating PDFs including writing, drawing, recording voice and more
• PhotoEditor by Aviary—free tool to enhance photos with effects, frames, lighting, color, and allows for sharing
• Timeline (early elementary through high school)—graphically represent time frames and incorporate labels, images, and annotations
• Shadow Puppet (early elementary through high school)—create presentations by uploading photos and videos and voice recording- very intuitive
• Tellagami—create and share quick animated messages called Gamis- customize characters and record or type a message for character to say

As mentioned, some of these apps are free but most do cost. It seems that prices range from $1.99 up to about $9.99. With so many apps out there it can be difficult to know which one to use with your students or children. Thanks to Connie and AASL for sharing this list of amazing teaching and learning iPad apps.