Great iPad Apps for the Classroom - Part I

Here is Part I of a list of iPad Apps that my colleagues and I recommend for classroom iPads.  These are excellent Apps for creating and sharing.  Give them a try.  They are very easy to use and figure out.  We also suggest these Apps to parents for their kids.  We are not into skill and drill, we prefer making things.  These are a good place to start.  Many of them work on an iPhone or iPod, as well.

App Icon	Description     and  single-copy price/volume price - 20 or more
	Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere.  $2.99/$1.49
	Pages is the most beautiful word processor you’ve ever seen on a mobile device. This powerful word processor helps you create gorgeous reports, resumes, and documents in minutes. Pages has been designed exclusively for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch with support for Multi-Touch gestures and Smart Zoom.  Free on new iPads
	Keynote is the most powerful presentation app ever designed for a mobile device. Built from the ground up for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, it makes creating a world-class presentation — complete with animated charts and transitions — as simple as touching and tapping.  Free on new iPads
	Numbers is the most innovative spreadsheet app ever designed for a mobile device. Created exclusively for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, Numbers includes support for Multi-Touch gestures and Smart Zoom so you can create powerful spreadsheets using just your fingers.  Free on new iPads
	iMovie puts everything you need to tell your story at your fingertips, with a beautifully streamlined interface and Multi-Touch gestures that let you enjoy your videos like never before. Browse your video library, quickly share favorite moments, and create beautiful HD movies and Hollywood-style trailers. And with iCloud, you can enjoy them in iMovie Theater on all your devices.  Free on new iPads
	GarageBand turns your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch into a collection of Touch Instruments and a full-featured recording studio — so you can make music anywhere you go. Use Multi-Touch gestures to play a piano, organ, guitar, and drums. They sound and play like their counterparts, but let you do things you could never do on a real instrument.  Free on new iPads
	iBooks is an amazing way to download and read books. iBooks includes the iBooks Store, where you can download the latest bestselling books or your favorite classics – day or night. Browse your library on a beautiful bookshelf, tap a book to open it, flip through pages with a swipe or a tap, and bookmark or add notes to your favorite passages.  Free on new iPads
	Office² HD, the most intuitive and straightforward office document editor available on the iPad, makes it easy to open, view, create and edit Word (DOC & DOCX), Excel (XLS & XLSX), and PowerPoint (PPT & PPTX) files right from your iPad!  $7.99/$3.99
	Pixie is the award winning authoring tool students can use to share ideas, imagination, and understanding through a combination of text, original artwork, voice narration, and images. Students can use Pixie’s paint tools, text options, clip art, and voice recording to develop storybooks, curriculum projects, videos, and so much more.  $9.99/$4.99
	Storybook Maker is an amazing app for children to express their creativity. With Storybook Maker you can make a book and share it with friends! The app comes equipped with all the tools needed to create incredible and exciting stories!  $.99/$.49
	iMotion HD is an intuitive and powerful time-lapse and stop-motion app for iOS.  Take pictures, edit your movie and export HD 1080p & 720p videos to your device or directly to Youtube.  Free
	GoodNotes lets you take handwritten notes, sketch diagrams, mark-up PDFs and organize them on a beautiful bookshelf. Turn pages with a swipe, highlight or add notes to any page, and share your notes with anyone. GoodNotes will automatically save your notes and has full backup function to prevent data loss.  $5.99/$2.99
	Notability is the best-selling note-taking app on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Notability is so powerful that it will transform how you work: sketch ideas, annotate documents, sign contracts, complete worksheets, keep a journal, jot travel notes, teach a class, make a presentation and much more. With iCloud support, your notes stay up to date on all your devices!  $2.99/$1.49

OETC 2014

Over the last few frigid days, I have been fortunate to attend the Ohio Educational Technology Conference.  I have been attending this conference every year for the past 10 or so years.  This year, I had the opportunity to hear some excellent educators.

Monday's Keynote speaker was Kevin Honeycutt.  His topic, "Inspirational Teachers Change Minds & Lives, " was a great way to kick off the conference.  He was outstanding.  He also spoke later in the day.  I saw him speak about "Teaching Wired Learners."  He shared great insights from being a parent and teacher of kids that are connected.  His website - KevinHoneycutt.org - contains many free resources and access to his presentations.  He is more than willing to share his knowledge and time with people that want to help.  Kevin was outstanding.

Wednesday's Keynote speaker was Alan November.  His topic, "The End of Technology Planning, " walked through his experiences with using technology with students.  Alan has been to the Ohio conference 3 times now.  He is a leader in educational technology and shares his experiences with his readers.  He shared some outstanding resources and explained why they were so powerful.  His number one power app for iPads and computers was Wolfram Alpha.  It is extremely helpful to math and science students in the way that it solves problems step-by-step.

This is the third time I've heard Alan speak.  If you would like to see more of Alan November, you can check out a summer conference he runs called BLC - Building Learning Communities.  I attended that conference in 2010 and 2011.  It is an outstanding conference.  That conference helped push me into blogging.

Some other good informational sessions -

Teach Like a Hacker - by Ryan Collins - He talked about tips and tricks to help teachers and students be more efficient.  Hacking is not necessarily a bad thing.

App Smackdown - iOS - Here is a list of shared Apps.

Effective Use of Google Forms - by Andreas Johansson.  He shared ways  to use Google Forms to collect data easily.  Here is information from his presentation.  Here is his website.

One of the best parts of being a the conference, was being able to touch base with outstanding technology educators.  Keeping face-to-face contact is nice, since many of us keep contact through Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and other social networks.

Next year, come to Columbus and join in the fun.  The dates are Feb. 10-12, 2015.

Becoming Part of the #NerdLution

Consumed by the pressure put on me by my wife and daughter, I have decided that I will participate in the #NerdLution.  I have decided to commit to 50 days of the following activities -
1 - Drink 3 large glasses of water (I never get enough, and this might get me in the habit)
2 - Exercise for 30 minutes of some type (walking, riding bike, etc.)

The pressure of my nerd friends and the resolution to do something good for me will hopefully power me through the days when I want to stop.

Admit your "nerdiness" and join the #NerdLution.  It starts tomorrow and goes on for 50 consecutive days.

Lenmar Power Pack

This power pack from Lenmar is outstanding for iPhones and iPads.  The one that we have is the Lenmar Wave 7000.  My daughter took it on her trip to Washington, D.C. and had great success keeping her iPhone 5S charged on the bus.  Her friends all wanted one.  It was easy to charge and easy to use.  If you are looking for an external portable charging source, this could be your answer.

Office2 HD is an Awesome App for the iPad

Office2 HD is an awesome iPad app.  It does cost $7.99, but well worth the money.  It is  like buying Pages, Keynote, and Numbers, but you are getting Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, for one price.  You can edit and save current documents, as well as create new documents from scratch.  Documents can be saved locally on the iPad or saved to a server or cloud.

We have found the Webdav connection allows our teachers and students to create, edit, and save right to their server account.  It is also extremely easy and convenient to disconnect from the server, so that others can use an iPad that is shared in a classroom.  Office2 HD also connects to Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, as well as other cloud services.  This app is very versatile.

I would recommend this app for you to try.  With wifi access to files and the ability to create and edit documents and presentations, this is quite useful.  It also allows you to save as .DOC, .DOCX, .PPT, .PPTX, .XLS, and .XLSX.  I have found it to also open and view Pages, Keynote, and Numbers files, though you cannot edit.  Give it a try.

Ohio Innovative Learning Environments Conference 2013

I have the opportunity to talk to teachers at the Ohio Innovative Learning Environments Conference in Hilliard, Ohio.  It is a week-long conference and I get to participate.  How fun and exciting to get to speak about Using social networks to grow your professional learning network.

I will be talking about using Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs, Google Plus, and other social networks.  Learning together makes it so much more fun and engaging.  How can you use your friends to help gather quality information and make learning a group activity?  Check it out.

Desmos Graphing Calculator for iPad

Desmos is a nice online graphing calculator for a browser.  I posted earlier about it, but they have recently introduced a free iPad app for graphing calculator fans.  You can click here to download the free app for your iPad.

On the iPad, you can graph on cartesian, parametric, and polar graphs.  It has nice slider feature for variable graphs.  You can easily zoom in or out on your graphs.  You can graph inequalities, as well.  You can also use it as a scientific calculator - even if you don't need a graph.

This app is very easy to use and intuitive to figure out.  Give it a try.