After a massive amount of research, reading and using. I finally put together our apps list that would act as a starting point for using the iPads. There are literally hundreds of good apps that could be used in school and it was very hard to narrow them down as the only limit to their use is your imagination. I wanted to provide users in school with a sufficient amount of choice but not to much. The apps listed below will be added to over time and I intend to start an ‘app of the week’ feature during staff meeting time to introduce the possibilities to other staff. What I have listed below is not exhaustive and I have probably missed off some good apps, I am especially looking for more apps for Foundation Phase use so if anyone knows of any, let me know.
Paid for apps are in red, some of these have free ‘light’ versions as well.
The Dock
Camera
Safari
Photos
iBooks
Edmodo – fantastic intro to social media that is safe and great for assignments
Screen 1 – I chose to have apps that can be used in a whole range of ways and apps that are used often
Pages
Garageband
iMovie
iTunes U
Popplet
Moodboard Lite
Show Me
Wordpress
Prezi
SimpleMinds+
Dropbox
Dunno
Screen 2 – here I organised the apps in folders
Art folder – Brushes, Art Rage, Type Drawing, Paint Sparkles
Audio folder – Sound Cloud, Audio Boo
English folder – Epic Citadel, Story Ideas
Geography folder – Google Maps, Google Earth
Maths folder – Math Board, Times Tables, Operation Maths, Mathmateer, Math Bingo
Photography folder – Pic Collage, Image Chef, Fotobabble, Photo Booth, Jigsaw Puzzle, Tour Wrist
Presentation folder – Comic Life, Book Creator, Explain Everything, Puppet Pals HD Directors Pass, Pow Strip Design, I Can Animate
Spelling folder – Spellosaur, Spelling Free
Teacher – Evernote, Incerts Snap, TED, iFiles
Video – Vimeo, Morfo, You Tube, 8mm
Utilities folder – this is for those miscellaneous apps like settings, mail, contacts, messages, game center, reminders, notes, clock, app store
Not in a folder sue to to only one in a subject (so far) – Solar Walk
I decided to put them in folders to save having to scroll trough lots of screens, maybe that’s just my OCD kicking in but I like neat and tidy. Obviously lots of apps could be in multiple folders, used in multiple ways and by putting apps in folders, others may think that that app is limited to that subject but I think it just makes it easier and quicker to find an app.
The hardest folder to name was the presentation one as they have some of the best apps that can be used across the curriculum.
Thanks to the people I follow on Twitter and especially Simon Pridham and Sarah Reece as most of these apps came from recommendations.