Sushi Monster is an excellent, engaging and interactive app. It is a great way to practice and reinforces math facts and operations. The music is very calming and the graphics are totally engaging. This app promotes a challenge by incorporating a reasoning strategy when choosing combinations of math facts. Be careful of the monsters’ distractions, Bon appetite! . . . by Donna Mazur
Dragon Dictation is an app that provides speech to text recognition. It is relatively accurate and pretty fast. To use Dragon Dictation, you press the record button and begin to speak. You can record up to 60 seconds of speech at a time. If you require more, just press the record button again to continue. When finished, you press the "Done" button and the text will appear on the screen. You can also set Dragon Dictation to detect when you have finished speaking and end your recording automatically. This app also allows you to edit or add to the text using the keyboard. Once you are done recording, you have the option to save or email your note. You can also upload your text to Facebook or Twitter. . . by Donna DeLuca Draw Free is an easy to use free hand drawing application for students of any age. It features a paint brush, colored pencil, crayon, preset stamps and backgrounds. Students can create from a blank page or add a background. It also allows you to take a picture and draw on that. Fifth grade students recently used the iPads during an introductory lesson on Concrete Poetry, using words to form a picture (see pictures below). The application has a small advertisement notice at the top but it does not interfere with the function or cause interruptions. . . by Carol Denby Are you looking for a great app on the states? Well, look no further. The States app provides the following information on each state: outline map, when the state was admitted to the Union, capital city, population and land area. In addition to these fast facts, the application allows students to view the development of our country geographically beginning in the 1790s. They can follow the progression for every year and/or decade up to the year 2000. Another feature of this app is that it provides information about each presidential election. Students can view the candidates, their running mates, and the tally of electoral votes and popular votes each candidate received. When the “electoral map” option is tapped, students can also view the distribution of red states and blue states. I highly recommend this app. I have used it with 5th grade classes as they study the states and regions of the U.S. . . by Louise Prescott |