What it is: Math Girl Number Garden is a much talked about app. It has been nominated for an iEAR award and won a Creative Child Magazine 2010 Award of Excellence. Play for a few minute with this app and you soon learn what all of the buzz is about. Number Garden is a math app designed specifically with girls in mind. The fun graphics will draw girls in and the game atmosphere will keep them interacting with, and enjoying, math. Number Garden is a great place for girls to practice counting, addition, and multiplication in kindergarten through fourth grade.
In the Number Garden students can:
Count flowers and hands/fingers in patterns.
Practice faster recall by recognizing patterns.
Earn stars for correct answers and replay levels to earn more stars by getting faster.
Use stars to “buy” items for the garden to fill the garden with flowers, bunnies, snails, butterflies, dragonflies, a soccer ball, a tire swing, a magic pond, a tree house, and more.
“Sell” items to upgrade to bigger items.
Students can play in, and save their own personal gardens. Up to 4 players gardens can be saved within the app.
How Math Girl Number Garden can enrich learning: Math Girl Number garden is a fun application for helping your female students fall in love with math. The graphics are darling, students will love growing their own garden while learning and practicing their math. The ability to go back and improve scores for each lesson keeps the app engaging enough for ongoing practice. The application allows girls to learn and practice at their own pace, encouraging them to keep trying to earn more items for their gardens to grow. Number Garden is a welcome change from flash cards!
Devices: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.2 or later
What it is: Everyone could use a little more magic and enchantment in their lives and Send Felicity brings students (and teachers/families) just that. Take a look at the video below to watch some of that magic unfold.
Felicity is six and three-quarters years old. She loves imagination, making things, and magic. She comes from a magical place called Thin Air. Felicity invites children everywhere to join her in play. Every day there is a new special surprise waiting for children. Each surprise invites students to engage in creativity, play, imagination, and learning. It is an enchanting-ongoing place that involves technology, imagination, and the real world in new ways. The artists, geeks, and minds behind Felicity are deeply committed to keeping the childhood experience one of magic, imagination, and exploration. They bring these values to life beautifully as an application, website, and social experience. What I love about the Send Felicity experience is the storyline behind Felicity, and the invitation to be part of something that is engaging, meaningful, and magical. The combination of the three makes Send Felicity a unique learning and interactive experience. So, how does Send Felicity work? Children can visit the application or website to learn of a new craft (adventure) to take with Felicity. Felicity takes every day objects like paper plates and makes them magical. Children follow the adventures and create and pretend along with Felicity. Children can take pictures of their finished masterpieces and upload them to the Send Felicity website, sharing the creative experience with others. The application is truly unique and takes what is real and adds a bit of magic (as you saw in the video).
How Send Felicity can enrich learning: Play is an important part of learning. It provides the building blocks for self-regulation and executive functions, promotes creativity, imagination, and divergent thinking. Unfortunately play is often stripped from the classroom. Send Felicity weaves together a wonderful tapestry of play and learning in the form of an application, a website, and a social movement. Felicity uses open-ended play and experimentation that leads to an attitude of fun learning. Felicity helps your students turn ordinary objects into creative works of magic. Use Felicity’s daily dose of magic to spark your students imaginations. Set aside some time for your students to do a little creative play. The benefits that play has on the rest of the learning day will be well worth the time invested. Go beyond the crafts and invite your students to write stories, poems, or secret letters in connection with the imaginative play of the day. Activities for Felicity are open-ended and include art, language arts, literacy, and even math and physics. Send Felicity marries technology and real life in new fun ways. The application is just a piece of the bigger picture. The application takes students physical creation and adds a little magic to it.
Today we are boldly making mistakes.Today, our children will make a small mess.
Today, we’ll set out on an adventure and begin with an “oops” and end up in a place where we can look and wonder. Together, we can do something mistaken and wrong; and audacious and wonderful to surprise everyone.
This project shows children that it is okay to make mistakes, and that, in fact, those mistakes can be turned into something wonderful, new, and meaningful. Students don’t hear often enough that it is okay to make mistakes and that it is indeed an important part of the learning process. Take a look at what these beautiful oops turn into:
The Send Felicity App has not yet been released to the iTunes store, but don’t let that stop you from using Felicity in your classroom right now, the Send Felicity website is full of fun activities, instructions, and even a bit of magic. You can also check Felicity out on Facebook where she shares creations made by children from around the world! Send your students home with a wonderful gift this holiday season and point them toward the Send Felicity website. Students will love the opportunities for play and imaginations, parents will love the ideas to keep their kids learning and playing. Let parents know about Send Felicity along with this article from Geek Mom for a little explanation.
The wonderful people over at Send Felicity are so passionate about creating a world of wonder and imagination for children to play in that they have made the technology that Send Felicity is based on open source. Interested parents, educators, and developers are invited to sign up to play along with them.
Devices: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch iOS 3.1.3 or later
What it is: Tales 2 Go is a fantastic app that brings stories to life and sparks kids imaginations by introducing them to audio stories from leading narrators and storytellers. Tales2Go makes anytime story time! Students have on-demand and unlimited access to over 1,300 books and stories from leading authors and storytellers. The stories are geared for kids 3 years old to 12 years old with book and story selections ranging from fairytales to classics like Curious George Rides a Bike to popular series and characters such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and How to Train Your Dragon. Tales2Go is a free app to download but to access stories you must subscribe to a plan. There is a 30 day free trial. The on-demand stories can be purchased for $2.99/month, $6.99 for 3 months, or $24.99 for an entire year of listening.
Right now Tales2Go is giving FREE subscriptions to Schools and Educational programs!! The award winning Tales2Go service is completely free for educators up until January 15, 2011. Each subscription will remain valid through June 30, 2011. Up to five mobile devices (i.e. iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) can be used on each account, allowing for multiple classroom use. Instantly increase your classroom audio library with this FREE offer from Tales2Go. To take advantage of this limited time offer, a school/teacher needs to:
2. Download Tales2Go from the Apple App Store on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.
3. Launch the app and sign in using a school email address designated in the registration form.
* The initial account status will be “trial” but the account will be updated shortly after.
How Tales2Go can enrich learning: Tales2Go is an incredible app because of the on-demand nature of the audio book library. Students instantly have access to 1,300 stories including popular titles and classics. Your classroom library is about to expand substantially! Use Tales2Go as an audio listening center. Set up classroom iDevices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) as a listening center. Only have one device (or your personal device)? Set it up in a speaker/dock or with headphone splitters and let students listen to stories together. Tales2Go is a great way to build listening comprehension, excite students about reading and literature, act as a read-along for struggling or emerging readers, and as a supplement for instructional activities. As students listen to the audio stories they will be exposed to advanced vocabulary and build listening and comprehension skills necessary for all readers.
Be sure to let parents know about Tales2Go, audio stories are a great way to keep kids occupied and learning in the car, after school, while dinner is being made, or before bed.
You can follow all the latest news about Tales2Go on Twitter: @tales2go
Devices: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later
What it is: IceBerg Kids is an eReader designed especially for kids. Iceberg Kids brings children’s books to the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. The free eReader comes with excerpts from Princess Hyacinth; Mr. Funny; Fred and Ted Like to Fly; Merry Christmas, Curious George; The I Love You Book, The Polar Express, and The Night Before Christmas. Iceberg kids is more than just an eReader, students can record their own audio book, image exploration, a visual table of contents, and auto read to hear the story read aloud or recorded in your own voice.
How Iceberg Kids can enrich learning: Iceberg kids is a great eReader for beginning and emergent readers. The titles available are popular with kids and range from Sesame Street, Curious George, Mr. Men, Veggie Tales, Todd Parr, Candlewick, and kindermusik. The additional titles can be purchased directly from iTunes. My favorite feature of the Iceberg app is the ability to record. In a classroom setting, students can record themselves reading and listen back for voice, fluency, pronunciation, and annunciation. Fluency is hard to teach without the ability to voice record. We can ask students to read a passage again and again telling them to listen to us pronounce words. The student may be convinced that they are repeating the word exactly and yet we tell them it still isn’t right. The ability to record themselves reading means that students can listen to themselves and compare it to the teacher. When they can hear their fluency or pronunciation, suddenly they understand what changes need to be made. The record feature would also make reading records infinitely easier to complete. Teachers could listen to the recorded reading again and again and thoroughly compile a reading record.
Devices: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
Application builder: eduPad– Your e-learning app on the App Store. No coding required!
What it is: Ever had an idea for an app? eduPad lets you create your very own e-learning app on the App Store without any coding! Create your own great educational content using the provided text and Excel templates. eduPad integrates and publishes your content on the main app stores. Students learn and you make money! Set the price of your app and get 20% of each sale. So, how exactly does eduPad work? First, fill out an Excel file with the pedagogical structure and exercises. Write “what you need to know” memos for each chapter. Draw your app icon (eduPad can do this for you). Then eduPad does the rest, they take the content you provide and create the code to make it an app. You test out the app and when you are happy with the outcome, eduPad publishes the app on the AppStore on your behalf. You have access to an Apple panel where you can monitor all of your daily sales, change the price, and set up promotions. The sky isn’t exactly the limit with eduPad, you can’t create highly dynamic apps…you can create a great place for content review and practice. Check out the eduPad site to view some examples of apps created with eduPad.
**eduPad isn’t currently live. You can sign up to get a notice when eduPad does go live.
How eduPad can enrich learning: eduPad is a great way for you to create customized applications for content review and practice. Sell your completed app in the app store for other students who may benefit from your app and make a little side money to buy more apps with It would be really neat to let your students create their own eduPad applications to publish to the app store. Students can take their learning, and with your help, create the framework and artwork for the application. Use any sales of the application to fund technology, app purchases, or field trips for your classroom. Involve students in their learning, create an app, and build a sense of classroom pride as your students track app sales.
What it is: The popular educational website ABCya.com has released an app version of their popular Math BINGO game. This game lets students practice their math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) in a fun way for faster fact recall. Each skill has multiple skill levels so students are continually challenged in their play. Students can try to beat their own score…low score wins (a combination of time it took to play the game and mistakes made). As students earn a high score, they can collect and play with BINGO Bugs. (When you tilt the iOS device, the Bingo Bugs move around, tap on them to make them giggle and spring.)
How Math BINGO can enrich learning: Math BINGO is a fun way for your students to practice math facts for faster fact recall. I like that this game has students trying to beat their individual bests. They are competing against their own best times and working to improve their own scores. Students will begin to play the game with strategy as they realize that they don’t just want to choose the correct answer, but choose the correct answer in a place that will get them the fastest BINGO.
Devices: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
What it is: Solar Walk is an incredible 3D astronomy application packed full of beautiful graphics and animations of the solar system. The graphics are very realistic, even allowing students to see clouds and the relief of mountains, lakes, and oceans of the Earth. This 3D solar system lets students zoom in, out, and investigate planets and the solar system from different angles. There is a built-in time machine feature that lets students travel through time to see where the planets were positioned in the past and determine where they will be in the future. Students can take a virtual journey to a planet by taking a “rocket” (icon) to fly to the planet. Students can learn more about each planet by tapping the “i” button. Students will find general information, the mass of the planet, the radius, distance to the sun, and the internal structure complete with the picture and science missions. Students can choose individual planets and explore each of the planets moons.
How Solar Walk can enrich learning: Solar Walk gives your students a realistic look at the Solar System. The time machine feature is excellent and will help students visualize the changes in the Solar System over time. Let your students take a virtual field trip to the planet of their choice to explore and report back to the class about. Students can become astronauts and take a virtual “rocket” ride, flying to the planet of choice, getting an in-depth look at the planet, and exploring each of the planets moons.
Use Solar Walk to introduce your students to the Solar System, learn more about the planets in our Solar System, or as the basis for a creative writing activity. Students can travel through space and then write a fictional account of their space travels.
Devices: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later
What it is: Bookster is a free read-along storytelling application that reads to students, records and plays their voices, and teaches vocabulary. Bookster is what kids ebooks should be; complete with high-quality illustrations, narration for kids by kids, a record mode that records as they read out loud, and an easy to use interface. In record mode, students can read the book with the narration they recorded. In read along mode, words are highlighted as they are read. Students learn word recognition and vocabulary. When a student taps on a word, the individual word is read aloud. Right now there is one story in the Bookster app (What If…) but Imagine Learning notes that there will be additional stories coming soon.
How Bookster can enrich learning: Bookster is an app created with kids literacy in mind. Students can read along with the narration, flipping pages at their own pace. After listening to the story read to them, students can read the story and record themselves as they go. They can play back the book in record mode listening to their pronunciation, annunciation, voice, and rhythm. Students receive immediate feedback on their fluency. Often times a teacher can point out that students are not pronouncing or annunciating correctly but students have a hard time understanding just what that means. With the Bookster app, they are able to play back their recording and compare what they recorded with the prerecorded narration, hearing the difference for themselves. Students can re-record as many times as they need to get it right. The What if… story that is included in Bookster is delightful and will have students imagining birds with crocodile teeth, a horse with an elephant trunk, and animals that never stop growing. Use the what if statements in the story as a writing prompt for students own stories. Students can record their stories directly in the Bookster app or write them down in another application or in a journal.
Bookster is a really excellent application as it is, and you can’t beat the price (free!). I look forward to the additional stories that will be released.
Devices: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1 or later
What it is: Story Patch is a digital storytelling tool that kids can use to write stories. Story Patch lets kids create picture books right on the iPad. The application comes with more than 800 beautiful illustrations that will bring stories to life. Kids can customize their own characters, even allowing them to adjust facial expression, body position, skin, hair color, and more. The characters they create fit seamlessly into any story they want to tell. The gestures to create a story are very intuitive, taking advantage of touch and drag, two finger rotate, and pinch to make smaller. Kids can even import pictures from the iPad’s photo library to use as a story backdrop. This means that they can create pictures in another iPad app and use them in their Story Patch story. The finished result can be saved as a PDF and emailed in one touch.
How Story Patch can enrich learning: Story Patch brings student writing to life, allowing them to create their very own ebooks. Because Story Patch creations can be saved as a PDF, they can be added to the iBook library. Students can use Story Patch to tell an original story, to retell a story, or to summarize learning. Students will love creating such professional quality digital stories!
What it is: LearnBoost is a free online gradebook and classroom management system that has recently added support for the iPad! LearnBoost is a suite of online tools for the classroom including attendance management, seating charts, class rosters, policy management, and lesson plan capabilities with integration with Google calendar. The LearnBoost gradebook is easy to use allowing automatic weighted grading, support for custom grading scales, and the ability to export to third party applications. Manage your lesson plans from right within LearnBoost, create and manage lesson plans with this excellent visual editor. There is support for multimedia file attachments for lesson plans and even support for aligning elements of a lesson plan with Common Core State Standards.
How Inkling can enrich learning: Use LearnBoost for all of your classroom management needs. LearnBoost on the iPad keeps you where you should be, with your students. Add notes to your gradebook and lesson plans as you interact with students, keeping everything organized and at your finger tips. Take a look at the LearnBoost tour below:
It would be really neat to let your students create their own eduPad applications to publish to the app store. Students can take their learning, and with your help, create the framework and artwork for the application. Use any sales of the application to fund technology, app purchases, or field trips for your classroom. Involve students in their learning, create an app, and build a sense of classroom pride as your students track app sales.
