Top Ten Apps for Education

 1. Tellagami - Free

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Tellagami, a free iOS app that lets you create short (30 seconds) animated movies called "Gamis," and thanks to a fellow teacher, is now one of my new favorite animation apps! It's a fun tool to use with students. Challenge them to recreate a moment....make that half a moment in history. 
Some quick ideas you might try: 
  • Have your character tell a story.
  • Pick a person in history and have them introduce themselves
  • Use an animal as a background and have the student (avatar) describe some of its physical adaptations. 
  • Recite a famous poem or speech
  • Read a poem they wrote
  • Have students recap a part of their field trip in groups, then load all of the short clips into one movie using animoto or movie maker.

2. Scribble Press - See Sample and Lesson Plan Here

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Scribble Press is a platform for creating and sharing stories.  With a FREE iPad App you can be creative with us in person or at home!
You’ll find blogs about how to inspire your children’s creativity and get them excited about writing and reading. We’ll also cover tips for educators and parents and news about what’s coming at Scribble Press.

3. PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson

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 This free app is great for students! Use any picture that you've created from other apps to produce projects that explain events, important places or people. Have your students using the app, "Cut me In" with a place that they have studied, whether it's an historical place, like the first moon landing, or a famous landmark, like the Great Pyramid of Giza. Save that image to import into PhotoCard. As a final task, have them write a paragraph on its significance (as if they were visiting). Use this as an evaluation for that unit.

4. Snapguide - How-tos, Recipes, Fashion, Crafts, iPhone Tips and Lifehacks ~ FREE

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Snapguide is a beautiful, easy way to create and share how-to guides. Discover new recipes, DIY projects, fashion ideas, make-up tricks, tech tips and lifehacks. Create your own guides and share what you love doing!

5. Pho.to.Lab - fun photo editor

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Pho.to Lab boasts one of the vastest collections of stylish and funny photo effects: more than 570 effects to date! Fantastic face photo montages, photo frames, animated effects and photo filters are here for you to enjoy.Make your image look creative in seconds and set it as a contact icon, a wallpaper, send a signed virtual postcard. It's fun to use the products of this fun app with student projects. A favorite!!

6. Morfo 3D Face Booth - Free

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Use Morfo 3D Face Booth with a photo of a historical figure, celebrity or pet  and quickly create a talking, dancing, life-like 3D character! Once captured, make your character say anything you want. It's a great way for students to create a biography in the first person. See the sample below.

7. Cookie Doodle - .99

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Cookie Doodle by Shoe the Goose is a universal app where children make a recipe, bake and then decorate a virtual cookie with no mess!  The app features 24 cookie recipes, over 200 cookie cutters, photo cookie dough, and 85 different toppings.  You can practice recipes with tasks like naming the various objects in the recipe, sifting, rolling, mixing and using cookie cutters to shape the cookies. The recipes can be used in real life to make cookies and help your child practice naming items, measuring, sequencing and fine motor skills. It's not only a lot of fun but it's educational! 
How to integrate this into your lessons? This is a perfect app to use when you are teaching fractions.  Take a recipe and have the students half the recipe and then have them create the new recipe using the Snapquide App.  I've also had my younger students use the alphabet cookie cutter to create their spelling words. You can save each cookie image to your photo gallery, 

8. Pic Collage - Free

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PicCollage lets you instantly arrange your photos into frames - or get creative with freeform collages, cutouts, filters, borders, stickers, and text. Your friends will be amazed with what you can create. It's like photoshop with your fingers! I had my fourth grade students create a collage of the 5 Regions of Virginia. 

9. iTalk - Free

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iTalk Recorder is a full-featured recording app with a streamlined and intuitive user interface. Press the big red button to record; press it again to stop. You can append to existing recordings, choose from three levels of recording quality (11.025, 22.05, or 44.10 kHz sample rates), and manage your recordings, all with just a fingertip. We use this app for adding sound to our projects created on the computer as well. You can email the voice clip to your inbox or upload it to iTunes. 

10. Cut Me In - Free, but you can upgrade full package for $2.99

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Cut Me In is still the best "photoshop like" app that allows you to make hilarious pics in unbelievable places. Its so EASY TO USE, with its Photo Chop Background Adjuster to Superimpose yr images and with its WIDE range of backgrounds and AMAZING features, you can go to so many places and occasions in a snap.
Here is a picture of my baguette, Bilbo Baggett, (who travels with me). This is Bo with Anderson Cooper using 'Cut Me In". I love this app!