Please find below a list of recommended apps for your children's iPads. If you have a device other than an iPad please let us know so that we can try and recommend equivalent apps where we can, or suggest alternatives. Please note that in some cases your child may wish to install other apps that are not on this list depending on the nature of their individual or group project. All apps on this list are FREE.
Presentations:
- Flowboard: Allows anyone to easily create beautiful, presentations with images, text, videos, PDFs, links, & photo galleries. Photos and videos can come from the iPad or from an integrated Google safe search.
- Haiku Deck: Create beautiful presentations with Google image search and image and media from the iPad. This is in some way similar to PowerPoint but with a lot of features.
- Google Slides: New on the market. This does not have a lot of features that you would look to create presentations but one thing i like about it is that students can collaborate i.e. work together even if they are in different locations (at home or at school or anywhere they have an internet connection). It is not only limited to the iPad. students can work on the computer via a web browser and then still be able to access and present on the iPad.
Video Editing:
- iMovie: Students can create and share movies straight from the iPad. There are other interesting features such as movie trailers. iMovie is free on recent iPads (i.e if the device was purchased about a year ago) and can be purchased on the older iPads.
- Splice - Video editor Free: If your device is more than a year old (from the date of this post) you may not be able to install iMovie for free. If you are looking for a free alternative to iMovie, splice is a good app to use videos, pictures and videos from your iPad to create movies, cropping clips and adding captions.
Multi-Media Creation:
- Pic Collage: Students can create picture collages to tell a story (digital storytelling) or capture their learning experiences.
- Audioboo: Students can record Pod-casts reflecting on their learning or for an artistic synthesis piece during the PYP Exhibition. Pod-casts can be embedded to the class blogs, exhibition blog or shared on Edmodo creating opportunities for peer feedback and discussions.
- Comics Head Lite: Students can install the lite (free version) of Comics Head and create comic strips to illustrate and show their learning about any topic. This is a good tool for language practise and enrichment.
- Thinglink: Allows students to create interactive images embedding notes, links, images, videos and so on by using hotspots. One can hover their mouse on a hotspot (on the computer) or touch it (on a mobile device) and the different kinds of media will pop out. Students can use this to describe a concept and show their understanding, or communicate ideas.
- 30 Hands: Free. Students can use pictures and their voice to create narrated slideshows.
- Qrafter: A bar-code reader or creator that allows teachers and students to read and create QR Codes (Quick Response codes) to direct people to specific websites or instructions.
- KidBlog: An app that allows students to read and write blog posts on their iPads. Blogging will be one of the communication and collaboration tool.
- Edmodo: A closed social networking site for schools where students can have discussions, ask questions in a safe environment. Teachers can share resources with students, create quizzes and so on. Students will be introduced to Emodo in Year 6 to prepare them for it’s extensive use in secondary school and other e-learning platforms in Higher Education.
Documents: Creation, Editing and Sharing. This is based on the Google Apps platform used at school.
- Google Drive: An online storage place for all student documents, spreadsheets, pictures, videos and so on. Files can be shared with teachers, classmates, parents or kept private. It allows for collaboration on documents so students do not need to be at the same computer to work.
- Google Docs: Google’s word-processor for online documents. Allows students to collaborate on documents. The iPad version does not have full functionality like Microsoft Word but it allows students to do basic editing, formatting and collaboration.
- Google Sheets: Google’s spreadsheets editor allowing students to create and edit spreadsheets online and collaborate with peers. The iPad version will not have full functionality like Microsoft Excel but students will be able to do basic spreadsheet operations.