Road Testing an iPad in the Classroom this Summer?
Good Buddy and kinda ICT Rock star Mr Tim Rylands asked me to make a quick list of apps for a school test driving an iPad - here’s 10 (actually I squeezed a couple of extra cheeky ones in) from over 500,000+ on da apps store man.
Ok… So you have borrowed a couple of iPads to test drive at your school. Where do you start?
This list straddles (ouch!) both Primary and secondary schools.
1. To explore the touch screen iPad experience Puppet Pals Directors Pass (£1.99) is a great way to start. Pupils can appear as cut outs in the animations and backgrounds /settings could taken from drawings, paintings and even “Street view” from the Maps app.
2. For some interactive problem solving Scribblenauts Remix (69p) is a fun place to start. I have to think quite hard about this!
3. Paper (basic version free) - an ironic name but a beautiful Zen-like experience. A uncluttered toolset for mark-making with digital pen, paintbrush and pencil. It looks just like real pencil marks. We bought the full version within minutes.
4. Explore some Amazing Physics ( Potential Energy/Kinetic Energy and Speed/Acceleration by creating your own roller coaster ride with Cstr Physics (69p)
5. Create a Film trailer about a favorite subject or even life in your school using iMovie (2.99) For a real world example working with Polish and Romanian students in Turkey last week check this out….
6. Phoster (£1.49) - This app is great for creating Posters that combine images and text. We have used it for creating poster for eSafety and funky eBook covers. Whenever you need a text/Image message this app gets the job done very quickly.
7. Create you own eBook and share it. For Primary schools we tend to go for Book Creator for iPad (£2.99)and for more complex projects that include video we reach for Creative Book Builder (£2.49)everytime. For the official CBB video tutorial (made on an iPad by Digital Roadtrip) check this out…
Creative Book Builder for CBB from digital roadtrip on Vimeo.
8. Create the most unique presentations (with automatically drawn animations) using Video Scribe (£2.49)
9. For Musicians Garageband complete with smart instruments has to be the once stop shop for tomorrows music makes and producers. The video below shows how you can even jam and record all the parts to one iPad.
If you want to get clever you can copy and paste audio from other music apps into Garageband our current faves are DM1 and iKaossilator. GB is also very good for recording all speaking and listening activities, creating podcasts and radio progs etc.
10. Share some content from the teachers computer to the iPads using the amazing free Groupzap.com collaboration tool. Drag and drop any content into the Groupzap board and invite the iPad via email and you are good to go!
After all this excitement you can add a few well meaning gestures…
The Scrunch - 4 fingers and thumb to close the existing app and arrive by magic at the home screen.
4 Fingers up - to reveal recently used apps (useful when copying and pasting between apps)
4 Fingers across enables you to move from one app to the next adjacent open app.
Finally 1 finger wait for it….to put the iPad to sleep whilst your dreams fizz and pop with ideas for your next creative iPad experience.
