Published by the same company as The Elements, The Solar System for iPad is a stunning eBook exploration of space, astronomy, and exploration.
Complete with interactive scenes, 3D objects, videos, animations, scientific data, and stunning NASA imagery, the Solar System app takes readers on a grand tour of the solar system and our cosmic backyard.
While it justly deserves its stellar reputation as an amazing iPad app, be warned – it is a near 850MB download!
The Google Earth app lets you hold the world in the palm of your hand – on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It enables you to explore global satellite imagery, tours, and photo overlays on your iOS device.
There is a large education community built around the Google Earth application, and it has many classroom applications. It is so much more than a mapping application – as revealed in the links at the bottom of this post.
The World Factbook is a highly recommended iPod / iPhone / iPad app for social studies and geography teachers (primary and secondary).
It includes extensive information on 250+ countries around the world, including maps, flags, geography, demography, government, and so much more. This app is a fantastic resource for student research, and is available entirely offline – NO WiFi required!
For: Teachers, Students (Upper Primary – Secondary)
Are you sick of boring PowerPoint presentations? Why not try Prezi, the zooming multi-modal presentation tool?
Prezi Viewer for iPad enables users to view and present your prezis anywhere, anytime … You can touch navigate, revise, and download your presentations for offline viewing.
Note: To use Prezi, teachers and students will need to create an account – the EDU Enjoy license is free, providing you sign up with an .edu email address (video).
Wunderlist HD s a free ‘To-Do List” which synchronises your tasks / lists across all your devices – iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and your web browser. It is a great personal organisation tool. Requires a free user account.
For more information about how it works, please visit the official site.
For: Teachers, Students (Upper Primary – Secondary), Administrators
Conferis an assessment and reporting app which enables teachers to organise and track notes and observations of individuals, and small groups of students. It is available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.
At its heart, Confer is a classroom note-taking app – with powerful features to sort and search notes by ‘tag’, ‘strength’, ‘teaching point’, or ‘next step’.
Assessment indicators, and class lists (etc) can be imported into the app (a significant time-saving), and records of student observations can be exported via email / spreadsheet / Word documents. There are plans to include a “photo import” option in future releases, which will benefit early childhood teachers.
Despite its expense and somewhat complicated initial set-up, Confer has enormous potential to become a valuable, time-saving app for K-12 teachers. We would; however, recommend trialing the free Lite Version and exploring the comprehensive user’s guide prior to purchase.
For: Teachers (K-12)
Cost: Lite Version – Free (Download) , Full Version – $15.99AUD (Download)
Requires WiFi?: Not for ordinary use, but required for data export.
A truly stunning iPad app,Star Walk provides an augmented reality view of the night sky above. Point your iPad camera at the sky, and it will match (and identify) the constellations and star formations above. You can search for visible planets, track satellites overhead, and explore what the night sky would look like in the past and present.
This app provides an incredible, immersive stargazing experience – with no Internet connection required! You can even display the star maps on your HD TV via a VGA adapter.
For more information, please read the official User Guide.
For: Teachers, Students (Middle Primary – Secondary)
Cost: $5.49 for iPad version (Download Link). There is a separate version for iPhone.
Requires WiFi?: Not for general use.
Educational Applications
Any science / astronomical study of the night sky.
Having previously reviewed DocumentsToGo Premium ($17.99 AUD), we were pleasantly surprised to find Office HD offering almost identical features and cloud functionality at a much more affordable price ($8.49 AUD).
While neither app performs flawlessly; if you need to access and edit your Microsoft Office and cloud documents (e.g. Google Docs, Dropbox) on your iPad, we highly recommend purchasing Office HD.
Please note: There are persistent rumours that an official Microsoft Office app will be launched in late 2012. We will keep you informed.
The Australian Curriculum: Mobile Edition is an iPhone (iPad compatible) app which brings the new F-10 English, History, Science, and Mathematics Australian curriculum documents to your iOS device.
The highly-awarded Drawing Pad app is a fun early-childhood art app for the iPad, where you can create drawings using realistic crayons, paint brushes, pencils, pens, and more. You can purchase colouring-in books via in-app purchase, and save drawings to the Photo Roll, or send via email, etc.
Sōsh is an iPhone app (works on iTouch & iPad) designed to help teenagers and young adults with special needs, particularly Asperger’s Syndrome, develop their social skills.
It focuses on five essential abilities for social skills development: Relate, Relax, Reason, Regulate, and Recognize. These “5R’s” serve as a road map for individuals who want to be social, but may have faced obstacles in the past; and also serve as a guide for parents, teachers, and therapists hoping to encourage and assist individuals with their social goals.
You start by answering a questionnaire to determine which tools within the app are going to be most useful. You can download the free Lite Version to explore the app with a free 7 day trial, and the full version costs around $40.
Explain Everything This is the screen casting app that I am using with the TIPS research project schools. It provides a way for students to create and produce their own resources and share their learning.
Many teachers use this app to deliver instructional content to students. You can capture your lesson with diagrams, demonstrations typed or drawn and annotated pictures. This is easily shared with students to view as many times as they need at home or at school.
Integration with Cloud Services = More Choice
* Note: Google Drive integration is coming in imminent release of EE v2.0 in late Jan 2013)
Suitable for primary to secondary classes, Explain Everything is integrated with Evernote, Dropbox, and Google Drive; making it very easy to import materials (e.g. pictures, slides, documents) from your computer or the internet (including your web browser!).
Explain Everything is the only screen-casting app which allows users to choose where they export and share their work. Screencast movies, and EE project files, can be emailed, or saved to the iPad Camera Roll, Evernote, and Dropbox. This allows users to collaboratively edit project files, and choose a service to host their video online (e.g. YouTube).
With advanced editing options, including the abilities to create multiple slides, feature live websites, and use visual aids (eg. arrows, laser pointer), Explain Everything remains the most versatilescreen-casting app in the Apple Store, and comes highly recommended by iPad educators around the world.
Video Export Management Solution
In response to common complaints about the length of time required to render EE project files to movie formats, Explain Everything recently released the Explain Everything Compressor for Mac OS X (10.7 / 10.8 only). This paid app ($14.99) enables users to render EE videos on their computer – saving a considerable amount of time. (Click here for an alternative non-Mac solution – via EdTechTeacher).
Please help us to build these resources for teachers by supporting the research. Click here to complete a short survey and enter the draw to win an iTunes voucher.
Educreations is an incredible FREE interactive whiteboard tool available as an iPad app and online web tool. Once you create a (free) account, it is easy to add images, draw pictures, and write on the whiteboard slides as you explain your ideas.
When you’re happy with your video, you can watch it on the iPad, or upload to the Educreations website. You can share your videos publicly or privately, via email, Facebook, Twitter, or the Educreations Tutorial Gallery (under development). Public screencasts can be embedded into blogs, websites, etc.
Educreations is a more advanced app than ShowMe, and it was specifically designed with educators in mind (see the video tutorial below). Like ShowMe, teachers recommend the use of teacher / class accounts to save and share student videos (tip via blog post by @nate_kremer)
Screen-casting is capturing what is on the screen of your iPad and adding a narration or music sound track. You can capture a drawing showing how the picture develops. This works well in teaching mathematics where the teacher can demonstrate the calculation as if they are working on an interactive whiteboard. The whole process gets recorded and can then be shared and replayed.
Show Me is a simple screen-casting app suitable for early childhood through to early secondary students. It provides a whiteboard, pens, eraser, and support for importing images.This app is extremely user-friendly; simply “Tap to record, and start talking”.
Completed screencasts are uploaded to the ShowMe website, where they can be shared (for free) with a unique weblink, and embedded into class blogs or webpages. The ShowMe website features a community collection of screencasts for all learning areas, which teachers can use in their classes for free.
Requires WiFi?: Yes, to upload finished products. It is not possible to save completed work to the iPad.
Management Tip
To use this app in class, teachers recommend creating a shared class / teacher ShowMe account, and establishing a standard naming convention (using students’ names) to identify student work. (Tip via EdTechTeacher Tip & @nate_kremer)
Educational Applications
Create a repository of video lessons for your class / school wiki / website
Explain mathematical thinking, written work
Present an argument, or explanation of a topic (literacy)
Enable students to demonstrate their learning, comprehension skills, and understanding of topics across a wide range of learning areas.
Wikipanion is a simple, easy to use app for navigating Wikipedia on the iPad (without the need to launch Safari). It provides easy search and bookmarking functions, and offers the option to save images directly to the iPad. It comes with the built-in WikiDictionary for easy reference.