Educational Apps for Students

READING/LANGUAGE ARTS:

News-O-Matic (This is a great free app that is in a newspaper for kids format with games included.)

National Geographic (This is the free app from the magazine with great non-fiction reading.)

EPIC Books (This free EPIC app has lots of popular books and many will read aloud to students.)

Little Story Maker (This free app will help students create and illustrate a story.)

Story Creator (This free app helps students write and illustrate a story.)

Book Maker (Pick the free app to get an app to help students create and publish ebooks, pdfs and comics.  They say they are “THE No.1 Book app for the iPad in 80 countries.”)

Chicktionary Lite (This free app has students unscrambling a roost full of letters and creating as many words as possible. Each hen bears a letter. Touch the hens and spell out a word, then watch as the word appears below them. Press Enter to submit the word.)

Magnetic Board (This is a free app to use with spelling and it will voice the sounds that are put together.)

MATH:

Pocket Tangrams (This free app has quick games good for spatial awareness and problem solving.)

Minds of Modern Mathematics (This free app takes you on an interactive journey that spans nearly 1,000 years. It tells the story of mathematics and how it has impacted almost every aspect of human progress, from science to music, art, architecture, and culture. Note: may not have many female role models.)

SCIENCE:

TinkerBox HD (This is a free app for engineering.)

NASA  (The free Official NASA app includes a collection of stunning images, videos, mission information, news, NASA TV, mission status and more.)

Planets  (This is a free 3D guide to the solar system for aspiring astronomers, including Sky 2D: locate planets with flat view of sky, Sky 3D: planetarium style view of the sky, Visibility: find out when planet will be visible, and Globe: rotating 3D globe of planets and moon.)

SimplePhysics  (This free app can be used to design complex structures for everything from tree houses to ferris wheels and then simulate your design with a sophisticated physics engine.)  $1.99

Smithsonian Channel App   (This is a free app for the Smithsonian Channel’s original series, documentaries and fun facts, full episodes and hundreds of video clips.)
 

ART & CREATION:

Doodle Buddy (This free app allows you to finger paint with your favorite colors and drop in playful stamps.)

Chatter Pix (This free app allows students to make a photo “talk.”)

Aurasma (This is a free app.  Aurasma's image recognition technology uses a smartphone's or tablet's camera to recognize real world images and then overlay media on top of them in the form of animations, videos, 3D models and web pages. Think about it like a QR code but an image instead of a black and white pixelated square.)

Sock Puppets (Use this free app to make puppets “talk.”)

iMovie (This free app allows students to create a video using photos and/or short video clips.)

Educreations (This free app can capture your ideas:  record your voice and iPad® screen to create dynamic videos that others can access any time, as needed.)

DoInkGreenScreen (Spend $4.99 for students to use a light green or blue background and video students in commercials, etc.)

Pixelogic Daily (This free app has puzzle games using hints and logic to reveal a hidden picture made of colored tiles. Numeric hints are used to uncover a pixelated surprise.)

PROBLEM SOLVING

Code Academy: Hour of Code  (A free app where students learn to use JavaScript to create an animation, in an hour or can do the 20 hour course using a log in.) 

Hopscotch  (This free app teaches kids to code using simple, intuitive building blocks. Create games, animations and other programs in this colorful, interactive environment. Program characters to move, draw and collide with each other, and use shaking, tilting, or even shouting at the iPad to control them. Inspired by MIT’s Scratch.)

LightBot,  LightBot Jr 4+,  LightBot - One Hour Coding   (Free programs to get kids hooked on coding in minutes! Lightbot is a programming puzzle game; a game whose game mechanics require using programming logic to solve levels. Guide a robot to light up tiles and solve levels using commands, Lightbot cultivates a real understanding of procedures, loops, and conditionals for players.)

SET  (Free visual perception game. Match or don't match three shapes, colors, shading and number of items on each card. For multi-touch, multi-player action.)

Flow or Flow Bridges (Free game where students try to connect colors without using a square twice.)

Aquaduct 101 (This free app is a world of jumbled waterways and mixed-up pipelines. It's up to you to rearrange the tracks and restore the flow:  locked gates, shifty conveyor belts, puzzling warp portals, and more stand between you and order.  The free version has 48 puzzles instead of the $2.99 version with over 200 paths.)

Rush Hour Free (The free app to get a car out of the lot using logical thinking.)

Unblock It Free (This free app has blocks that the player has move to get through rush hour traffic.)

Solitaire Chess Free (Pick this free app to learn how to play chess.)

Sudoku  (A free app that has levels from easy…hard.)

Little Alchemy (A Free app that differentiates by content and process; focus on logging combinations.)

Jigsaw Bug (Use this free app for students who love jigsaw puzzles.)