LOCPix App

The Library of Congress is a wonderful resource for teachers, especially in the Humanities. If you’re looking for a good, quick resource for historical photos, political cartoons, architecture and engineering drawings, and other useful visuals to compliment your history classes, try out the free LOCPix app.

This app puts the collections of the Library of Congress in your hands and in your classroom. Easily searchable, easy to save, easy to print (you can even send postcards with LOC collection prints!), these prints, photos, illustrations, and records will be a great resource for history teachers and students.

Fotopedia Apps

If you are looking for beautiful photos of the most interesting places around the world, either to integrate into a lesson or just because you are experiencing wanderlust, try some of the free apps offered by Fotopedia. Lately I’ve been wandering the streets of Paris with Fotopedia Paris, which comes with one thousand stunning photos from around the City of Light.

Fotopedia apps also include information posts along with each photo, maps to find the location of each photo, trip planners, and collections of photos that tell stories related to a particular theme.

Check out all of the free apps made by Fotopedia in the app store!

Diigo and other bookmarking apps

Keeping track of resources found online can be challenging for students conducting research. Creating a personal learning space is one way to keep resources organized and to make research less stressful. Websites and their iPad apps like Diigo.com can be used to create libraries full of links to articles, pictures, websites, and notes that will help a student keep track of web sources.

Try Diigo or Scoopi.it on the web or on the iPad to create a space to save information, read, annotate, and share! Teachers can use these great tools to gather information for their students in one place – just curate your library of info in advance and send the URL to your students when they need it!

Are you using any other bookingmarking tools on your iPad or online? Let us know in the comments section!

Art Authority for iPad App

Art Authority is a must-have app for any Fine Art or Art History teacher. With more than 50,000 of the world’s greatest works of art available to view on the iPad’s beautiful screen, this app would be a great addition to teacher or student iPads.

Search for works of art, artists, locations, and major art periods. Pinch to zoom in on each work, click for more information, find similar works, and watch slideshows compiled within the app.

One drawback may be that the app uses Wikipedia when you click links for more information on each work, so you’ll have to be sure to check your facts. Overall, however, this app is so full of major works of art, from prehistoric art to contemporary works, and has so many useful tools, that it’s worth the $4.99 it costs.

Molecules App

The Molecules app by Sunset Lake Software is a fun, easy way to teach students about moleclue structures.

This free app comes loaded with simple molecules and you can download other molecules from the RCSB Protein Data Bank or from PubChem, also free. You can spin and zoom into each molecule, and each molecule comes with detailed information about each molecule.

For more information about the app and its developers, please click here.

Shakespeare in Bits App reviewed by Joe Thompson

Great use of the multimedia capabilities of the iPad to engage students in Shakespeare. Animation of the play being performed by superb players unfolds while the text is available. Will be a big help for students who are relatively new to the Bard or to a particular play. I highly recommend this app.

Warning: while this app is free to download to your device, there are charges for each full play that you download to view with the app.

iTunesU App

iTunesU is a digital library of coursework in a multitude of subjects, designed and created by educators and available for anyone to use for free. (If that sentence blows your mind, I understand.) Courses in iTunesU feature audio, video, web links, books, and other content, all of which can be accessed with a click of a button. These courses are developed and presented by educators from K-12 institutions, universities like Stanford and MIT, and from educational foundations like Common Sense Media and the Open University.

Each course is designed differently – some may be downloadable videos or lectures and nothing else; some are full 60 to 90 minute lessons, including with quizzes, assignments, and multimedia content. Download the lesson to your iTunesU library, take a look, and if you don’t like what you see, just delete it. No money lost, no time wasted, super simple.

This could be a great tool for teachers using the iPad carts in the classroom. Download a lesson onto your iPad and the iPads in the cart ahead of time, and use class time to work through a lesson, video series, or lecture together!

Tick Bait’s Universe – Reviewed by Joe Thompson

Here is a short video showing this app in action:

Basically the app takes you from subatomic particles up to the observable universe in scales of 10. Each slide is 10x magnification compared to the previous one. Note: I recommend looking at this in landscape mode to see the notes the developer provides with the app. Teachers who are using it are recommending 5 minutes or so per slide, my thought is to make sure not to jump too quickly from one slide to the next (or work too quickly through the entire app) or you lose the power of the app to make students think. My first thought is this is a middle school science app but I could see other uses including lower school. A couple of questions occurred to me to throw at students: 1) what instruments are most appropriate for observing the universe in each slide (can range from Hubble Space Telescope to Large Hadron Collider)? 2) Almost every slide and every observation we can make of the universe in 3 dimensions carries with it an appropriate time horizon. What are some of these for the different slides? for example what is the “lifetime” of a cell or sub-cell structures? or how old is the Sun?

Apps that Take You to Outer Space!

There may not be a lot of opportunities to use these apps in school, but for pure wow-factor, Star Walk and Solar Walk are well worth the money ($4.99 and $2.99 respectively). These beautiful apps do just what their names imply: they allow you to “walk” through the stars and the solar system, locating constellations, moons, satellites, and planets. Tap on a constellation or star to learn more about it in Star Walk. In Solar Walk, watch the sun, the planets, their moons, and the asteroid belt spin as you move the timeline forward or backward. Touch a planet for more information about its physical features, the lengths of its day and year, and much more.

                 

For a free app loaded with information, check out NASA App HD. It is not as intuitive as either Star Walk or Solar Walk, but if you take some time to explore its many features, you won’t be disappointed.

Smithsonian and Science 360 for iPad Apps

There are a lot of educational video apps out there just waiting to be put to use in the classroom. Science 360 for iPad and the Smithsonian Channel app are just two that work well and provide great information from trusted sources.

Science 360 for iPad from the National Science Foundation is a good resource for science teachers, providing videos, photos, and background information on a variety of subjects. The interface leaves something to be desired, but if you have the patience to get used to the virtual 360 “room” and manage to find the search feature (it took me few minutes to locate it within the app), you might be rewarded with a video that will help your students gain a greater understanding of a concept or lesson.

The free Smithsonian Channel app is another great resource for full episodes and video clips on a variety of subjects. Search through featured videos, search by topic, and create your own “channel” that will auto-play up to six full videos or video clips in a row. These videos will be sure to engage students in history classes, science classes, art classes, in both the Middle and Upper School.