Fourteen of us–special education teachers, school psychologists, speech therapists, and other educators–recently spent six hours brainstorming with the goal of producing a starter iPad app catalog for teachers and students in our district, and beyond. Thanks to my colleagues for helping the district pioneer through new territory!
All Grades:
Super Kids has been my go-to website for reinforcement dittos for years. Now they have a vocabulary app for grades 4-12 for $.99. The goal is to increase vocabulary on all grade levels.
Khan Academy Free - From algebra to basic arithmetic, YouTube videos that explain each topic.
Flashcardlet Free - Flashcardlet allows you to search for and study Quizlet.com flashcards. It also allows you to make personalized flashcards.
RFB&D audio $19.99 membership to Learning Ally Gain instant access to Learning Ally’s (formerly RFB&D) downloadable DAISY formatted books.
Elementary
UnderSea Adventures: Free - the $1.99 full version offers allows you to vary the levels. Learning Addition Visually - Answer questions to reveal a secret picture. Every correct answer is one step closer to seeing the picture.
iTouchandLearnNumbers $1.99 provides a perfect blend of curriculum based learning and animated game fun.
ABC Phonics Free - FLASHCARDS - SEE the spelling, HEAR the audio, and LEARN the word.
What are they thinking? $3.99 Choose to have the student listen to 180 entertaining “thoughts,” or have the student answer each “What are they thinking?” question. This App can track data for all correct and incorrect responses. It also collects data for one student at a time and allows you to view and email those results.
Elementary/Middle School
Shake a Phrase $1.99 A fun interactive app to learn the parts of speech with 1700+ age appropriate vocabulary words. Three modes- Shake It: creates a new random sentence every time you shake - great for discovering new words. Not sure what a word means? Just tap for definitions! Story Starter: shake up the beginning of a story and let your imagination take over. Quiz Me: test your skills with adjectives, verbs and nouns. Tap on the right words to get points.
Earth Science through Photographs $4.99 – geared for 8-11 year olds. The app includes earth science photographs containing three details with audio.
Living Safely $29.99 provides self-directed learning sessions for 27 important safety skills topics.
A Trip in the USA $.99 Using rhymes, this app tells the story of a trip to several US cities where you learn about the geography and history. Cities include New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Orlando, Seattle and Houston. One of the nicest things about this app is that you can personalize it with your child’s face – and gender – so the story becomes about them.
Middle School
Be Confident Who You Are By Electric Eggplant $3.99 Meet Mateo, Michelle and their friends—six teens trying to figure out what middle school’s all about. Follow their adventures and watch as they learn how to get along in middle school.
High School/Middle School
The Constitution Free - the Constitution as it was.
History: Maps of the World Free - A fun and educational collection of high-resolution historical maps.
Library of Congress Free - The Library of Congress is the world's largest library and the largest body of knowledge under a single roof. Whether you're onsite, at home, in a classroom or elsewhere, this app will give you a virtual tour that mirrors the Library of Congress.
Science 360 Free - fantastic visuals! The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Science360 for iPad provides easy access to engaging science and engineering images and video from around the globe.
Musee du Louvre Free - the next best way to see the Louvre without going there.
High School:
SpaceTime for the iPad $9.99 SpaceTime 4.0 is the most powerful mathematics app and graphing calculator ever developed for the iPad. This app has the ability to graph in 2D and 3D with beautiful and colorful graphics.
Monster.com Free - great for teaching students how to look for a job a skill all High School and College students need to know.
Resume Writing Secrets $.99 All High School students need to learn how to write a resume. This app gives you the hidden rules and secrets.
Expense Tablet $.99 A great app to teach students the concept of budgeting.
Fiske Interactive College Guide $19.99 Organize your college tour with built-in map function Locate critical school deadlines (such as application dates) Email admissions departments directly from the app . Browse each college website, explore schools that compete with one another (“overlap schools”).
Television and Broadcasting for High School Students
Clapper Board $19.99 a convenient, all-in-one digital slate, clapper board, shot log, and shot notepad— designed for use in film, TV, documentaries, music videos, and interviews.
Storyboard Composer $19.99 mobile storyboard and pre-visualization composer designed for Directors, Directors of Photography, Producers, Writers, Animators, Art Directors, film students and anyone who wants to be able to visualize their story.
ProPrompter $9.99 features professional settings for fonts, font sizes, background colors, scroll speeds, mirroring, looping, landscape, portrait and automatic orientation modes, adjustable countdown, cue points for fast re-cueing, support for international language fonts, editing, direct script creation, remote control and a complete help menu.
8mm HD $2.99 capture the beauty and magic of old school vintage movies. Dust & scratches, retro colors, flickering, light leaks, frame jitters - all can be instantly added with a single tap or swipe.
Scripts Pro $5.99 When writing in desktop screenplay programs, you forget about the program all together and are focused entirely on writing your story. The same thing is true with Scripts Pro because there is no cluttered interface or complex solutions to writing.
Autism
Social Skills Sampler HD Free - This company the Conover Company has a wide variety of “Life Skill” videos This particular one Is designed to teach and reinforce basic social skills critical for independent living.
EPIC WIN $2.99 It’s a streamlined to-do list, to quickly note down all your everyday tasks, but with a role-playing spin. So rather than just ticking off your chores and reminders, completing each one earns you XP to improve and develop your character.
IDIOM Dictionary $1.99 Can be used in all areas of curriculum but this concept is particularly difficult for children on the Spectrum.
Everyday Skills $39.99 provides self-directed learning sessions for 40 important skills necessary for living independently and accessing the community based on proven content developed by the Attainment Company.
iReward $3.99 When stars have been earned, your child can pick from the default list of suggested rewards, or you can setup your own custom rewards especially tailored for each of your children.
iPrompts XL $49.99 alllows you to create picture schedules, a countdown timer, choice prompts. It comes with an image library which includes hundreds of useful illustrations and digital pictures across many categories.
ABC Data 4.99 Created to assist professionals and students in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), ABC Data is an unobtrusive data collection tool for counting behaviors and recording session duration.
Practicing Pragmatics $5.99 - Student looks at an illustration and either reads the prompt or touches the screen to listen to the prompt. The student then gives a verbal response. After each answer, tap the green (correct) or red (incorrect) button to score the student’s verbal response.
Vicki Windman is a special education teacher at Clarkstown High School South.
