iPad Curriculum

Demibooks Composer

September 23rd, 2011 Comments Off

What it is: This may very well be the single greatest iPad creation tool yet. Demibooks Composer is the first iPad based authoring software. Do you know what that means??? It means that you hold in your hands the ability to create interactive books! Weeeee! Students and teachers can use this powerful authoring app to create interactive book apps (yes, I said apps) that include realistic physics, animation, sound and visual effects. This app lets you create books that take full advantage of the iPad’s capabilities. Finished stories can be shared to a Dropbox account, iTunes or published as an actual book app that can be purchased in the App store. Seriously, how cool is that?

With Composer, students and teachers have powerful tools that let them create interactive tools without knowledge of programming. Students will get a small taste of programming language as they use Composer with “if, then” commands. Composer is intuitive enough to have your students creating their own interactive ebooks in no time. Bam!

Composer lets students:

select from a portrait or landscape book
Import images and audio from a computer or use photos from the iPad
Add text and styles
Create frame based animations
Build pages
Add a navigation system
Add complex behaviors (like turning physics on or off, adjusting bounce, friction and boundaries, gestures, taps, touches, hidden objects, etc.)
Add and edit audio including music, effects and speech
Preview your newly created book in all of it’s interactive glory
Export and save work to iTunes or Dropbox
Share work with others who have the Composer app
Publish your book to the App store with Demibooks PrintShop web service

How Demibooks Composer can enrich learning: This app gives your students the power to create true ebooks. This is not just a book that can be read on the iPad. This is a book that they can make interactive. Students can publish creative writing, explanatory informational text, poetry, math story problems (and solutions), ABC books, phonics practice, story retells, historical narratives, etc. The list could honestly go on and on.

Demibooks Composer lets your students create everything that they imagine. It is a powerful tool that is intuitive enough for young students. As students work in Composer, they will gain a beginning understanding of programming with if-then relationships. Students will have to think as programmers, designers, illustrators, authors, mathematicians, physicists, and animators. Brilliant.

Devices: Compatible with the iPad, requires iOS 3.2 or later

Price: FREE– introductory price (iTunes Link)

eduPad-create custom applications!

November 3rd, 2010 2 Comments

Application builder: eduPad– Your e-learning app on the App Store. No coding required!

What it is: Ever had an idea for an app? eduPad lets you create your very own e-learning app on the App Store without any coding! Create your own great educational content using the provided text and Excel templates. eduPad integrates and publishes your content on the main app stores. Students learn and you make money! Set the price of your app and get 20% of each sale. So, how exactly does eduPad work? First, fill out an Excel file with the pedagogical structure and exercises. Write “what you need to know” memos for each chapter. Draw your app icon (eduPad can do this for you). Then eduPad does the rest, they take the content you provide and create the code to make it an app. You test out the app and when you are happy with the outcome, eduPad publishes the app on the AppStore on your behalf. You have access to an Apple panel where you can monitor all of your daily sales, change the price, and set up promotions. The sky isn’t exactly the limit with eduPad, you can’t create highly dynamic apps…you can create a great place for content review and practice. Check out the eduPad site to view some examples of apps created with eduPad.

**eduPad isn’t currently live. You can sign up to get a notice when eduPad does go live.

How eduPad can enrich learning: eduPad is a great way for you to create customized applications for content review and practice. Sell your completed app in the app store for other students who may benefit from your app and make a little side money to buy more apps with It would be really neat to let your students create their own eduPad applications to publish to the app store. Students can take their learning, and with your help, create the framework and artwork for the application. Use any sales of the application to fund technology, app purchases, or field trips for your classroom. Involve students in their learning, create an app, and build a sense of classroom pride as your students track app sales.

Devices: Will be compatible with iOS devices

Price: Free!

Inkling

September 10th, 2010 1 Comment

Application: Inkling

What it is: Inkling is a new textbook platform for the iPad. It transforms paper based textbooks int engaging, interactive, collaborative learning experiences. My favorite feature of Inkling: the ability to purchase by chapter or whole book. Most of us remember those classes where we purchased a $400 book only to crack it open once for one chapter. Another fabulous feature of Inkling is the shared notes that make it simple to collaborate with other students and teachers in real-time. Interactive media is included in every textbook including movies, 3D objects and guided tours. The tools are easy to access and use, they are well designed to be quick to access but not distracting from the textbook. (As an aside, I’m not sure they can even call these textbooks…they are so much more than text!) Interactive quizzes are built-in that help students to determine their level of understanding as they work. An intuitive search engine predicts the search as it is typed. Right now the titles available are rather limited (7 at the time of this review), with any luck titles will be added quickly making the iPad a must have college bound device. What would be even better is if k-12 texts were made available, that would really be something to get excited about!

How Inkling can enrich learning: Inkling is like a textbook on steroids. It makes reading and learning a joy with built-in multimedia to enhance the learning experience, the ability to highlight and take notes, and the ability to share those notes and annotations with other students and teachers. The collaborative nature of the app is really appealing. Now students and teachers can make learning a collaborative effort by adding discussion questions, annotations, observations, and highlighting key elements of a text.

Devices: iPad Requires iPhone OS 3.2 or later.

Price: Free (iTunes Link)**

LearnBoost Gradebook

October 1st, 2010 2 Comments

Web Application: LearnBoost

What it is: LearnBoost is a free online gradebook and classroom management system that has recently added support for the iPad! LearnBoost is a suite of online tools for the classroom including attendance management, seating charts, class rosters, policy management, and lesson plan capabilities with integration with Google calendar. The LearnBoost gradebook is easy to use allowing automatic weighted grading, support for custom grading scales, and the ability to export to third party applications. Manage your lesson plans from right within LearnBoost, create and manage lesson plans with this excellent visual editor. There is support for multimedia file attachments for lesson plans and even support for aligning elements of a lesson plan with Common Core State Standards.

How Inkling can enrich learning: Use LearnBoost for all of your classroom management needs. LearnBoost on the iPad keeps you where you should be, with your students. Add notes to your gradebook and lesson plans as you interact with students, keeping everything organized and at your finger tips. Take a look at the LearnBoost tour below:

LearnBoost Free Online Gradebook Tour from LearnBoost on Vimeo.

Devices: iPad in Safari

Price: Free

Quixey: App Search Engine

November 7th, 2011 6 Comments

What it is: Have you ever attempted an app search? It is a miserable experience, unless you already know what you are looking for, you are out of luck! Quixey changes all of that by powering app searches across multiple platforms (Android, Bada, BlackBerry, Chrome extensions, Chrome web apps, Facebook, Firefox add-ons, IE add-ons, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Symbian, Web, WebOS, Windows, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone). Quixey works with manufacturers, carriers, search engines and platforms to create a custom app search solution. Quixey uses what they call “functional search” just for apps. When you useQuixey, you don’t have to know the app’s exact name or “official” description to find the app. Quixeyscans blogs, review sites, forums and social media to learn what each app can do and how people are using it. The Functional app search isn’t dependent on keywords. When you search an app, you can type in the kind of app you are looking for. Easily narrow your search by device. Next to the device, you can see how many apps are related to your search making it simple to see how much digging you will need to do. Next to each app that comes up in your search, there are snippets: short pieces of information that help you decide if the app will do what you need it to. Need to narrow it down even more? No problem,Quixey let’s you organize by paid or free apps, or filter by a custom advanced view. Very handy!

How to integrate Quixey into the classroom: If you or your students use ANY of the above platforms,Quixey is a must! Hunt down the exact app you need quickly and easily. Have a mixed platform classroom? Quixey makes it simple to see where app crossover is possible for the classroom. This is one handy search engine!

Be sure to bookmark Quixey on classroom computers for easy access to an anytime search. When you find an app you are interested in, click for more information, screen shots of the app and a link to the app store. You can even tweet the app out or share it on Facebook!

Tapose: Collaborative Content Creation with Multitasking Built in!

April 25th, 2012 1 Comment

Tapose

What it is: Tapose is a fantastic (currently the BEST I’ve seen) journaling app for the iPad. Tapose goes above and beyond the other journal apps that I’ve seen with a few key features:

It offers customization- When a student creates a new journal, they can choose a custom cover for the journal and one of six paper types (graph, legal, lined, blank, textured, colored).
The interface is beautiful. Really, this app is very well designed. All of the tools are hidden until you want to use them so there is no clutter taking over the screen as you work. When using the drawing function, students can turn on wrist protection so that they can write or draw in a way that is most comfortable without throwing off the touch screen input.
Students can draw, highlight, type, add sticky notes, video, or images to the journal.
My favorite feature: multitasking within the journal!! Students can view the journal they are working on in one half of the screen while surfing the web, searching a map, looking up a contact, using a calculator, or viewing work from another journal at the same time! It is quite simply, awesome!
Journals are searchable, can be viewed by an index of the pages, can be shared with others through email, printing, Dropbox, or Evernote, and can be collaborated on.
The wrist guard can be tailored to how a student writes with three options for both left and right handed students.
One of the COOLEST features is the ability to copy things to a clipboard to paste it into the journal. Students can cut out a specific picture from a website or map and paste it directly into their journal.

Tapose is the most brilliant blend of everything you want from a paper journal combined with the best of what you can do when a journal is technology enhanced.

How Tapose can enrich learning: Tapose is a wonderful place for students to do and store work. (Teachers too!) It gives them a place to draw, write, take notes, do research, do math problems, or keep a science or art sketch book. Students can keep separate notebooks for each subject, assignment, block, or inquiry unit. The app keeps all of students work neatly in one place and gives them a way to share it with you and the world. For young students, Tapose makes a great place to “publish” books. Students can combine handwriting with type and drawings for an outstanding digital keepsake.

I like that students can include video and photos that they have taken in the journal. At Anastasis Academy, our students often create field journals. They take pictures to document the process or learning and can go back and annotate their images, add reflections, and combine it with research they find online. The app makes it easy to do all of this from within the journal so they aren’t jumping between apps. If a student has taken (or created) a video, it can be embedded directly in the notebook with the rest of their learning. So brilliant!

This app is a great one for math journals. Having the ability to do a side-by-side screen share with the Internet means that students can watch a Kahn video, solve problems stored online, etc. and have a place to make notes, work out problems and even graph. If they need to, they can pull up the calculator to check their work or to help them work complex problems. Students can turn in all of their work easily or print out final copies.

Tapose is also a nice place for teachers to plan out and share lessons. You can surf the web while jotting down ideas for your classroom and easily share with other teachers through Dropbox, Evernote or email.

Tapose could be a great place for students to construct an eportfolio because of the ability to easily combine different mediums. Parents, teachers and others who view the eportfolio can easily search, using the search feature, to find exactly what they are looking for.

Devices: Compatible with iPad, requires iOS 5 or higher

Price: $2.99 ( a steal!)

iPad Curriculum

make learning mobile

Demibooks Composer

eduPad-create custom applications!

Inkling

LearnBoost Gradebook

Quixey: App Search Engine

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