I never wanted an iPhone. I had a perfectly good cell phone. No bells and whistles but it rang and I could answer it. I wasn’t the kind of cell phone user who had my phone 24/7. However my boss sent me an iPhone in 2007. It was cool and everyone ‘oohed and ahhed’ over it. I liked it…but I wasn’t at the ‘can’t live without it’ phase.
Then I got an iPhone 4 and BOOM! Everything was different. I loved it. I used it every day. I watched Netflix in bed, I read books on it, I googled from all over Alabama.
When the iPad came out I thought, ‘Cool but basically a larger iPhone’ and I knew I could never afford one anyway. Then I started hearing all these cool things they could do, how helpful they were for homeschooling Mama’s like me! At the first of December when my boss asked me what I wanted for Christmas I told him there was nothing I really wanted. [He gives the BEST gifts EVER] He kept on and on and I finally told him I would like a gift certificate to Apple. He asked what for and I told him Kei and I would like to save up for an iPad. Never did I expect him to BUY THE DANG THING FOR US!
Guess what he got us for Christmas? Not the lowest priced iPad that I would have picked out but a super duper iPad 2 with 3G!!!
The point of this rambling post is to let you know
WE
LOVE
THE
iPAD!!!!
We use it every day. EVERY STINKING DAY. Not for games…although there are some great ones out there, but for LEARNING!
I am considering doing an iPad weekly linkup. There are just so many good apps out there. Let’s start with these. These are apps we ACTUALLY use. We have tons of Apps that look good but we haven’t actually gotten around to using them.
Without further ado here are some of our favorite apps. [Keep in mind I have had my iPad less than a month] A lot of these are also available on the iPhone.
HISTORY:
Old favs: Brain Pop, Stack the States, Stack the Countries
This Day in History: FREE Nuff said…. We check this every day.
Geo Walk HD $2.99 Around 500 objects with up-to-date descriptions are available for your edutainment. Learn about interesting historical places, great people, unusual animals and plants all around the world.
NYPL Biblion FREE
“Enter the World of Tomorrow and experience the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair through the collections of The New York Public Library! Biblion: The Boundless Library is designed to take you — all but literally — into the Library’s legendary stacks, opening up hidden parts of the collections and the myriad story lines they hold and preserve. In this free app you will hold documents, images, films, audio, and essays directly from the collections right in your hands.”
SCIENCE:
STAR WALK $4.99 This is another awesome app. Well worth the price. Star Walk enables you to point your iPad at the sky and see what stars, constellations, and satellites you are looking at in real-time. But it does so much more than that. Check out this video.
NASA FREE
“This is the NASA Visualization Explorer, the coolest way to get stories about advanced space-based research delivered right to your iPad. A direct connection to NASA’s extraordinary fleet of research spacecraft, this app presents cutting edge research stories in an engaging and exciting format. See the Earth as you’ve never seen it before; travel to places otherwise unavailable to even the most intrepid explorers! Download it now, tap into the power of NASA’s cutting-edge research today and check for new stories every week!”
Video Science FREE
A growing library of over 80 hands-on Science lessons that are great for home and the classroom. These short videos demonstrate inexpensive and easy to recreate experiments that are designed to inspire and excite kids of all ages.
Color Uncovered FREE
How is Monet like a honeybee? What color is a whisper? Why is it so hard to find your car in a lamp-lit parking lot?
Color Uncovered features a wide spectrum of cool color-related topics to explore. Learn why friends shouldn’t let men buy bananas. Try your own color experiments on the iPad using simple items you have at home: a CD case, a drop of water, and a piece of paper. Discover how the iPad and other devices create color. Find out what causes afterimages—and more
MATH:
ANYTHING by Khan Academy! FREE
CRITICAL THINKING:
Learn Chess FREE
Kunumdrum $.99 There is a lite version to try it out first.
“Guide your spark flinging orbs to their colourful goals to unlock stage after stage of brain boggling fun! Make your way through 150 levels of intense strategy using mind warping logic encountering Teleporters, Direction Changers, Blockers, Gates and Switches that alter your path as you try to complete the puzzles in as few moves as possible. And when you’re done there, try out one of the upcoming Map Packs with fresh new mechanics adding to the addictive game play, the possibilities are endless!”
Machinarium 4.99 It was a little expensive but it is a beautifully done game. Tons of critical thinking.
WRITING/JOURNALS:
Educreations FREE Interactive Whiteboard. Also has a playback feature. We use this for LOTS of things. When Kei learns some Latin prefixes or suffixes I make a quick little quiz on this. She likes doing it better on the whiteboard than a paper.
Colorful Day $.99 There is also a FREE version. This is just a cute little journal. You can record about 5 seconds each day. It has several cool little functions that Kei likes. Password protected
RESOURCES:
Google Earth FREE Hold the Earth in the palm of your hand. At Kei’s birthday party the girls played with this for over an hour. They ‘went’ EVERYWHERE.
HSW HD “How Stuff Works” FREE They have Audio and Video podcasts!
ITunesU FREE
The iTunes U app gives you access to complete courses from leading universities and other schools — plus the world’s largest digital catalog of free education content — right on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Whether you’re majoring in molecular biology at a university, taking Spanish in high school, or just interested in European history, you now have a valuable tool to help you learn anytime, anywhere
ART/CREATE:
PuppetPals HD FREE but we did unlock the entire package. $2.99 Kei uses this after a Chapter in SOTW. She makes a little short play on what she has learned. It doesn’t have all the right characters but she makes do and remembers the material MUCH more than if we just read it and do questions.
“Simply pick out your actors and backdrops, drag them on to the stage, and tap record. Your movements and audio will be recorded in real time for playback later.
This app is as fun as your own creativity. Act out a story of Pirates on the high seas, fight as scary monsters, or play the part of a Wild West bandit on the loose. You can even combine any characters however you want!”
Art Authority This was our most expensive app. $7.99 I am sure it is worth it but we haven’t done a lot with this app. It is BEAUTIFULY done. I really like to find art from the era we are studying in History.
“A comprehensive collection of works by over 1,000 of the western world’s major artists, from ancient times to today. In your pocket! Organized by period and artist, Art Authority’s 40,000+ paintings and sculptures are downloaded as needed and displayed chronologically for each artist, with detailed captioning. In-depth information about the periods and artists is also available.
From the earliest creative pieces to the latest modern and contemporary works, Art Authority provides an impressively displayed, carefully selected, well organized view of the western art world that is both broad and deep.”
ETC:
Flipboard AWESOME app. FREE This is something we just sit around and look at and read. I may tell Keilee to go find one story that interests her on Flipboard and then tell me about it.
Discovery HD FREE This has all the things Discovery Channel has but one thing extra that we LOVE. Cinepuzzle; For all ages and interests CinePuzzle is an award-winning video puzzle innovation that is deceptively simple, totally addictive, and visually stunning. A Cinepuzzle is a moving puzzle challenge: tap and drag the scrambled and rotated tiles from a moving video to realign the pieces while the video plays! Featuring exclusive puzzle content from hit Discovery shows! It amazes me how much faster Keilee is at these puzzles than I am. She sees things visually much quicker than I do.
Also grab “Apps Gone Free” App. They have around 5-7 apps free every day! We have gotten some really good ones. Some days I don’t get any, but one “FREE” makes it worth my time.
So that’s all for my first APP post. I hope you can find something that will enrich your learning experience. I can not wait to see where APPS are going. I am sure they will only get more and more astonishing. I wish I was rich and I could buy everyone I know an iPad. I seriously think they are the educational wave of the future…not just iPad’s but tablets in general.
Homeschooling Rocks.
Karen
Disclaimer: No iPads were injured in the making of this post. I was not compensated in any way, however if anyone from ye ole’ Apple is reading this; iTunes cards would be mostly appreciated.
“The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind—computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” ~Daniel H. Pink
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” ~Alvin Toffler
Well except for the center one which shows HOW she learned all these amazing things.
