50 Apps in 50 Minutes- Elementary
By: Melinda Hadley & Bethany Blake (August 2014)
Productivity Apps
Dragon Dictation
FREE
Hokusai
FREE
Explain Everything
$2.99
Similar apps: ShowMe (FREE), Educreations (FREE), ScreenChomp (FREE)
Cute Cut
FREE
Storehouse
Storehouse is a wonderful new iPad app for creating, sharing, and discovering new stories. Students can use this app to create beautiful stories to share with others. Storehouse allows them to combine photos, videos and text to design their stories. They can easily add photos and videos from their iPad Camera Roll, Dropbox, Flickr, and Instagram.
FREE
Vintagio
$1.99 (iPhone app but will work on iPad)
Miscellaneous Apps
Aurasma
FREE
Link to blog on how to use Augmented Reality/Aurasma in the elementary classroom
Below is a video of how Aurasma has been used in a high school, but is easily adaptable to elementary school.
Morfo
FREE
Duolingo
FREE
Word Lens
FREE (for limited time while they transition to Google partnership)
Assessment Apps
Class Dojo
FREE
Socrative
FREE
Social Studies Apps
Mission US: Think Fast About the Past
Contains two different missions for students to complete. Each mission includes approximately 100+ questions randomly served during the course of the game. The first mission is set in Boston in 1770 to explore colonial history. The second mission in Think Fast About the Past is set in Kentucky in 1850 and helps students learn about slavery and resistance in the pre-Civil War era.
Grades 4-8
FREE
Infinity Ring: Revenge of the Redcoats
FREE
Ansel and Clair: Paul Revere's Ride
Ages 7+
$4.99
U.S. Geography by Discovery Education
Intermediate
$0.99
Science Apps
Bill Nye The Science Guy
Students enter the app by “scanning” their thumbprints. After entering the app students select an object on Bill Nye’s desk. Each object launches a new element of the app. My only complaint about the app is that in the video section it looks like you have to buy the videos (it’s an option) even though you can watch them for free.
FREE
Color Uncovered
When is yellow yellower than yellow? What color is a whisper? How is Monet like a honeybee?
FREE
Sound Uncovered
Explore the surprising side of sound with Sound Uncovered, an interactive collection from the Exploratorium featuring auditory illusions, acoustic phenomena, and other things that go bump, beep, boom, and vroom.
Hear with your eyes, see with your ears, test your hearing, make and modify recordings—this app puts you at the center of the experiment.
FREE
Science 360
FREE
Life Cycles
- Life Cycle of a Frog
- Phases of the Moon
- Life Cycle of a Butterfly
- Plant Life Cycle
- Pollination and Fertilization
- Rock Cycle
- Water Cycle
- Photosynthesis
- Nitrogen Cycle
- Oxygen Cycle
$0.99
STEM Apps
Daisy the Dinosaur
Grades K-5
FREE
Hopscotch
FREE
TinkerBox HD
FREE
Monster Physics Lite
Once your invention is complete, Monster Physics™ Lite will render it with it's built-in physics engine and let you actually operate your creation in real time. You can drive your car, operate your crane, guide your rocket into space or fly your helicopter! The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.
Think outside the box! Monster Physics™ Lite comes with 20 missions for you to solve including simple tutorials as well as mind-bending challenges. Players learn problem-solving and creative-thinking skills while having tons of fun.
FREE (Paid version available $0.99)
Reading/ELA Apps
K-12 Timed Reading and Comprehension App
- More than 250 stories (fiction & non-fiction)
- Track one reader, multiple readers, or even a whole class
• Track stories read and what’s next on the reading list
• Automatic suggestions to increase reading difficulty when students achieve consistently fast wpm scores - Timer automatically calculates wpm for each reading attempt
- Each grade 1 through 4 story includes questions to check reading understanding
•Question pools of 6 to 9 questions per story gauge comprehension on rereading attempts
•Question prompts for grade 1 stories include audio support for developing readers - Grade Stats: Per-student chart shows fluency (time) and comprehension (correct answers) mastery across the grade level
• Story Stats: Per-student chart shows fluency wpm and correct answers for the last 6 reading attempts per story
• Easily delete single reading attempts from charts
Story Builder
Extensive use of audio clips promotes improved auditory processing for special needs children with autism spectrum disorders or sensory processing disorders.
It has these features embedded:
-Record feature allows students to record narrative in their own voice
-3 levels of play
-Simple and intuitive interface to record narrative
-Recorded answers are stitched together to create complete narrative
-Stories can be archived for later play
-Each student gets their own archive page
-Stories can be emailed
-50 distinct story lines to create narrative from
-Import photos from camera or library
-500 audio clips of questions to guide narrative
-Optional question text and answer introduction reinforcement
Strip Designer
More than a 100 page templates with 1 to 9 photo cells
• Multipage books
• Create your own layouts with up-to 12 photo cells
• Many different balloon types
• Text with per letter colors and fonts
• Warped and perspective text (even 3D)
• Change ballon size, rotation, color, and transparency
• Use any iOS font or install additional fonts
• Color gradients
• More than 150 stickers to insert for additional impact
• Dropbox and WebDAV photo, fonts, and document download/upload support
• Publish on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter
• Download photos directly from Facebook
• Export to PDF to create real comic books
• Control scale, position and rotation of photos
• Integrated drawing tools to create your own drawings, paint on photos, or make your own stickers
• Many different cell styles
• Various photo filters
• Freely pan and zoom while you work
• Insert maps
• PDF import (for both cells and custom stickers)
• Advanced cell-layout management
• iCloud sync
• Page effects to give your pages old look
You can use existing photos for characters, select a character embedded in the program, or create your own!
- Use a photo as a backdrop for your storytelling
- zoom and rotate your characters using two fingers
- flip them around with a double tap
- a wide variety of creative characters to download (including famous talk show hosts and politicians)
- limitless possibilities of story creations
My Story combines drawing, stickers, photos, voice, and text to promote literacy and creativity in ebook format. Then share the book on the web, social networks, email, or directly to iBooks
- 27 background scenes: skyscrapers, space ship, the moon, wild west and more
- 170+ animated stickers with sound effects
- 29 crayons and 29 colored pencils
- Drag and drop multiple scenes to create a comic strip
- Narrate the comic book story using the self-record feature
- Tap the stickers to make their mouths move
- Move the stickers to create your own movie
SHARE:
- Save your comic books to your Photos to share with family and friends!
Graphio ($8.99)
Draw, sketch and drag objects on the canvas.
Make connections and add text and images. Everything you need for visualizing your idea.
Some diagrams require more advanced objects. Grafio provides hundreds of shapes you could easily drag in from the library. You could also Insert images from your camera roll as shapes and connect them to your other shapes.
Recording audio notes to your shapes could be a way for you to collect your thoughts or you can use this feature for something more creative, like taking an interview or recording your riffs for example.
Story Wheel (Free)
Story Wheel is an educational game that improves your child’s cognitive abilities. Story Wheel helps develop an understanding of story composition, strengthens imagination, and improves oral language skills. It is a perfect complement to your child’s language arts school curriculum.
1-4 players can create a story. Start by spinning the wheel to get a picture. Next, record your voice as you develop a story with that picture. Each player will build upon the story with a new picture. When done, you can listen to your story and share your creations online, or email them to family and friends.
Reading Comprehension Fable Edition (Free)
After each story, there is a comprehension quiz for readers to engage in. After the reader has read all 10 stories, he or she can compete alone or challenge up to three other readers to a game of story recall. Playing alone, the reader can compete for the highest score in the world on Game Center! As they read each story and take the quiz, readers can unlock achievements using their Game Center account.
Readers can have words defined or even read to them as needed. This application is packed full of support to assist parents and teachers. To keep track of the readers progress, scores can be e-mailed after individual quizzes and progress can be viewed on Game Center. These stories are written on a 2nd to 4th grade level. Additional story collections can be purchased inside the app.
iDiary ($1.99)
iDiary for kids has a daily journal at its heart where kids can express themselves periodically writing, drawing, pasting photos. They can easily navigate to their old entries and explore their past musings through an intuitive calendar navigation system.
iDiary not only allows for typing in entries, but also for drawing or writing on the screen with your finger or a stylus.
Users can:
-- easily add photographs
-- decorate with fun stickers
-- share/save their entries
If children get stuck, there are writing voice prompts for inspiration.
It also has a photo scrapbook/album and an address book.
Diaries are also password protected for privacy.
Story Buddy 2 ($3.99)
Compile your story and experience the excitement of interacting with its pages like a real book. Listen to your very own audio narration for each page.
You can share your story by ibooks, printing it wirelessly through airprint, send it through email as a PDF, and/or through itunes itself as an Epub.
Phonics Apps
Phonics Genius (Free)
Phonics Tic Tac Toe (Free)
The game helps children recognize common word patterns, and understand how the initial consonant, middle vowels, and ending consonant affect pronunciation. These are all important stepping stones to becoming a proficient reader.
Features:
-Phonics Spelling
-Beginning Sound
-Ending Sound
-Word Family Phonics
-Short Vowel Sound
-Word Pronunciation
-Matching the word with the image
-Touch and Hear
-Progress Report
-Multiple User Account
Phonics Word Family Basic is a Universal App, so it works with both iPhone and iPad.
You can create and add your own stories, along with images and questions. You can sync all the data (stories, images, questions, user accounts, reports, etc.) to your dropbox account, and import all the data to another iPad.
Voted best learning to Read App $3.99 (proven phonics-based approach)
FEATURES:
- Self-paced lessons take kids all the way from pre-reading to reading sentences!
- 11 types of super fun games/activities that teach critical sub-skills!
- Configure profiles for multiple children!
- Fully customizable by age or reading level!
- Speed and tolerance dynamically adapt to motor control ability!
- Sticker rewards that reinforce what was learned!
- No pressure tactics!
- Extremely effective voice instructions and feedback!
- Free form letter and word writing!
- Children can pause and save their progress anytime!
- Beautiful hand-illustrated artwork!
- No third party advertising!
- No external links to social network sites!
Math Apps for Elementary!
ToDo Math (Free)
• Two different modes of play: mission and free choice.
• Multiple means of representation. That’s a fancy way of saying we use clever digital manipulatives to convey math concepts in lots of different ways.
• Custom settings for lefties and kiddos with dyslexia.
Pizza Fractions app (Free)
- entry level simple fractions build confidence with denominators 1-12, excluding sevenths and elevenths
- adjustable level of difficulty allows beginners to start with easier fractions and progress as they learn
- option to advance questions by shaking the device or using a button
- score data and round timing allows you and your child to compete by alternating rounds
- animated cartoon chef and comical sound effects lend appeal to the learning process
Khan Academy (Free)
Jungle Time ($2.99)
It is interactive and engaging and has audio to ask the questions so the students do not have to read it.
It also keeps track of their progress and allows you to adjust the settings like the clock style, sounds, voices, player settings, and more.
Math Champ (Free)
- any student with an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch can compete head to head
- at the same time
- to become to the class Math Champ.
To play Math Champ you need this app (the SERVER or HOST) and 1 or more students who have the client installed on their iPad or iPhone.
Class list management
When you first load Math Champ Host - you’ll need to create a class and add your class list to it. This can be done in the settings area and takes just a few minutes. When play begins, students can connect to your class and choose their own own Avatar to be used in play.
Hundreds of quiz questions
The only other thing you need to do before play kicks off is to select some game content - select the grade and the difficulty level and Math Champ will do the rest...
When each quiz starts the HOST will automatically generate a quiz set randomly from thousands of available questions (based on common curricular standards).
Teachers can also access valuable student metrics in the class list area, and the host will keep a record of results for all players for every quiz they complete. This data can be easily emailed and exported to a CSV file.
Math Duel ($2.99)
FEATURES:
● Split Screen Interface
● Single Player Mode
● Track Accuracy and Speed
● Highly Configurable
● Customized Equations
SETTINGS:
● Number of Digits per Equation
● Addition On/Off
● Subtraction On/Off
● Negative Numbers On/Off
● Multiplication On/Off
● Division On/Off
● Timer Length
Number Line Math (Free)
FEATURES:
• Mark the number line with multiples of any whole number from 1 to 100.
• Add and manipulate forward and backward jumps.
• Hide and reveal numbers on the number line.
• Use the drawing tools to annotate work and show understanding.
• Write equations and expressions with the text tool.