With the new school year around the corner – here are some of my best picks for students starting with their own iOS devices in September.
CLASSES (£0.69)
One of the first things you will do on your first day back at school is transfer your timetable to your planner. Why not use this brilliant app to keep track of not only your timetable, but your exams, homework, deadlines, etc.
Info: http://www.dustlab.com/classes.htm
App: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/classes-timetable/id335495816?mt=8
DROPBOX
Want an easy way to get files to and from school and home or just somewhere good to keep your work safely in the cloud (and for free?), then Dropbox is for you. Grab it here: http://db.tt/OufAWFp
EVERNOTE
This app works on almost every platform, syncing across them all. Create a notebook for each subject, share that notebook with your teacher, with your classmates, use other Evernote apps too such as ‘Skitch’ to annotate photos, collated images and more which all feed through to your Evernote notebooks. You can add a web clipper too to your Safari which means from your Safari browser, when you find a site you like; you can take a chunk of text or an entire page, and add it straight to your Evernote notes. It’s great. It’s really powerful (it can even recognise text from photos which is then searchable!) and it’s free.
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/evernote/id281796108?mt=8
CALCBOT (£1.49)
This is simply THE best calculator for iPad. Calcbot has a brilliant live as you type expression view shown in landscape mode on the iPad. Access advanced functions on the calculator by swiping across the numbers to reveal those features. Brilliant.
More info here: http://tapbots.com/software/calcbot/ipad/
Watch a demo video of Calcbot here: http://tapbots.net/videos/calcbot/demo/calcbot_iphone.m4v
EXPLAIN EVERYTHING (£1.99)
This app is a must have for any student (or teacher for that matter). This app enables you to rack up slide after slide, like you would in Keynote or PowerPoint; the great thing here is though, you can then annotate it in a live recording, with you speaking over the top of it – you can add elements to highlight key points, you can draw straight on, add arrows, circle objects and more. When you have finished, then all you have to do is share your finished work as a video file with export options to YouTube, Camera Roll, Vimeo, DropBox and many more. Not only that, if you have existing content you can import those and then talk over and ‘explain’ those things too, such as PowerPoint, PDF, Excel, Pages, Numbers, Keynote and much more. It is superb!
App here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/explain-everything/id431493086?mt=8
Info here: http://www.explaineverything.com/
EDMODO
It is very likely that if you are going to be in a school embracing handheld devices, be it iPad, Android or BYOD that your teachers are going to want to use Edmodo.
Edmodo is a social learning network for students and teachers. It works in a very similar way to Facebook but allows teachers to set and assess different types of work and it also allows students to submit their work too. If you haven’t come across it yet, it really is worth looking in to. It is free too and any forward thinking school is looking to it as a brilliant solution to tie together learning in an environment that students and staff are used to given its similarities to Facebook.
More info here: http://www.edmodo.com/
Management info here: http://blog.edmodo.com/
App here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/edmodo/id378352300?mt=8
BOOK CREATOR (£2.99)
This app is a fab alternative (and a bit cheaper too) to Pages. It has some fantastic features too. Not only can you export your finished document in PDF format (perfect for submitting work to your teacher) but you can also use it to create your own iBooks which you can then utilise in iBooks.
Definitely recommended, but… if you have Pages already, it is of limited use, unless of course you are looking to create your own books.
Info here: http://www.redjumper.net/bookcreator/
App here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/book-creator-for-ipad/id442378070?mt=8
