10 Free iPad2 Apps for Teachers

My wife is the best.

For our fifth wedding anniversary, she surprised me with a new iPad2. The first thing I did was search the app store for as many free apps as I could find. With the dual cameras and 3G capabilities, the educational possibilities have greatly expanded since the premiere of the original iPad.

Here is my list of top apps for the classroom.


AppStart

AppStart is basically a static list of promoted apps for the iPad2. It was the first app I stumbled across while looking for new and exciting things to download, so I figured it warranted heading off this list. The layout is beautiful and it contains some good information. My suggestion – download it, glean as much as you can, and then remove it.


Dragon Dictation

This simple app features a single red record button in the middle and allows anyone to record their voice using the built-in microphone. This has a natural fit in the classroom as assistive technology but can also be used so students can practice their oral fluency expression and speaking skills. Dragon dictation is surprisingly accurate and this makes it a useful tool in the classroom.

Photo Mess

This collage app makes it easy to resize, re-orientate, and manipulate images taken from either of the iPad’s two cameras. This is a great way to make expressive collages on the fly – both as a student project or as an assessment tool.


Photoshop Express

This is the free equivalent to the online Photoshop Express and is especially useful in conjuction with other apps (such as Photo Mess). While it is lacking some of the more spectacular features of the full Photoshop software, it is still an excellent tool for cropping and other basic editing on the iPad.


Junaio

This app uses geo-location to tag a specific location with either text, picture, or 3-D model. At first glance this may appear to be too intricate to be used in the classroom (especially one in a middle school such as mine). But this is not the case. I wouldn't expect students to use this app, but not because it is too difficult. Instead, teachers could use this app for outdoor activities and field trips. I teacher could go to the location ahead of time and place markers. Then, on the date of the trip, students could take the iPad2 to add use it to view the markers and get additional virtual information about the physical location that they are seeing. With Junaio, every outing becomes a potential virtual field trip.

Splice

Capturing video is not very useful without a way to edit and polish it. Despite the iPad2’s dual cameras it does not come loaded with any video editing software. Slice is just that. It doesn't have a lot of special features, but it does the basic editing that most people typically need. This is useful in the classroom to create quick student videos, video assessments, or even on the go vodcasts.

Wikipanion

It's surprising how many companies have not yet created official iPad apps (Facebook, for example). Wikipedia is also one of these offenders. Luckily, Wikipanion is an excellent substitute. In fact, it has features that the native iPhone Wikipedia app should probably consider adding in future versions.

Tour Wrist

Here is another app that makes for an excellent digital field trip. This one, however, uses free recorded 3D Panoramic images and the iPad2’s built in accelerometer to turn the iPad into a pair of binoculars (for lack of a better analogy). There are tours for buildings, museums, airship hangers, etc. An additional app is in the works to allow 3rd parties to add to the available tours on Tour Wrist as well. This is something to check back on!

Confer Lite

This app allows a teacher to add a classroom list of students and then track and monitor individual progress by lesson/activity. It is not a gradebook; instead it allows the teacher to qualify (rather than quantify) students’ learning behaviors. It’s an amazing app, but I don’t think it would work in a regular classroom. This app is probably best geared toward small group instruction situations.

Photosynth

Photosynth is actually an iPhone app, but it still works great on the iPad2. This handy apps creates panoramic images almost instantly. Last fall, I wrote this tutorial on how to do something similar using a digital camera. Using this method, it takes about 30 minutes to create a panoramic image. Using Photosynth, it takes about 30 seconds.

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