These apps help both students and faculty engage with one another or with valuable content that can broaden their horizons.
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"Learn about the cell and all its structures using this 3D application tool. It offers the ability to rotate the cell 360 degrees and zoom in on any cell structure. Visit the cell structure screen and learn more about how each structure functions. You can also watch videos from the video library."
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Invitrogen, iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: This app can be used for interactive display in class or assigned to students to study and use in preparation for exams or labs.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
Animoto allows to create and share extraordinary videos. The online video maker turns your photos, video clips, and music into video in minutes.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free (Limited version); $5/month (Plus version); $39/month (Pro version)
Web Resources: Animoto, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: Consider using Animoto to help create videos for a flipped classroom or video content for your online course.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
"Learn Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and English. Totally fun. Totally free."
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Duolingo, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: Students learning a foreign language can use this app to practice and translate real-world texts.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
Take a virtual journey to any location in the world. Explore 3D buildings, imagery, and terrain. Find cities, places, and local businesses.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
PC: Windows XP, Vista, or 7
Mac: OS X 10.6.0 or higher
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Google, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: This app is ideal for use in geography, physical geography, history, or astronomy courses.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
Find local businesses, view maps, and get driving directions in Google Maps.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Google, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: Use as a virtual atlas, a geographical encyclopedia, or digital mapmaking.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
It's a math game..."Perfect for students new to arithmetic or adults who want to hone up on their mental math. Math QuizUp lets you compete in real time against other players around the world. Each game consists of two players going head to head for a total of ten rounds. The faster you can correctly answer each question, the more points you win! The addictive quiz game tests the speed of your brain and the speed of your fingers as you race to be the first person to correctly answer the question."
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone
Cost: Free
Web Resources: iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: Encourage use of the app, particularly for students struggling with math. Competing in a game environment can improve their abilities and interest.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
Access hundreds of NPR stations and listen to live streams. With this app, you can read, listen, or create a playlist of your favorite NPR stories and share them.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: NPR, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: Have students listen to a relevant podcast to discuss in class, or have students write a reflective journal entry.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
PBS has amazing audio and video archives. It offers thousands of hours of content that is prime for teaching and learning.
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free
Ideas for Educational Use: In a criminal justice course, a video on juries or about the criminal justice system can be used to help teach concepts. The class can follow a specific trial (e.g., Jimmy Moran Trial) to "see" the criminal justice system in action.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
Poll Everywhere is a Web-based program that gathers live responses and feedback from an audience using text messaging, Twitter, or a specified URL in your Web browser.
Platform(s): Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Poll Everywhere
Ideas for Educational Use: Poll students on a controversial issue. Students have the opportunity to submit their response by sending a SMS text message, a "Tweet," or via their Internet abled Web browser.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
This is a smart classroom response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, Web-based
Cost: Free (with registration)
Web Resources: Socrative, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: Engage the class by making thinking visible. Capture data. Save time on grading. You can see how well the class understands your presentation immediately.
Tips and Considerations: Socrative takes 3 minutes for you to setup and 30 seconds for your students to load.
"TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading." TED conferences bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less)." This app gives you access to thousands of those talks.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: TED, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: Use TED Talks to stimulate discussions with students or to complement course materials.
Tips and Considerations: Any use of TED Talks has to follow the terms of Creative Commons licensing. Creative Commons licensing doesn't replace copyright, which remains undivided with TED Conferences LLC.
"Tunein lets you hear what's happening right now on over 70,000 radio stations globally and enjoy two million on-demand programs, like podcasts, concerts and interviews."
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based, Windows
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Tunein, iTunes, Google Play, Windows Phone
Ideas for Educational Use: You can listen to talk shows that tackle various topics; from business to politics to sports.
Tips and Considerations: This app also lets you explore podcasts from across the globe. You can search for stations by location or language.
"Udemy is a website that empowers anyone to teach and learn online. There are thousands of online courses from the best instructors in the world. You can share your knowledge by creating an online course on Udemy."
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Ideas for Educational Use: Udemy hosts thousands of free and paid online courses about everything; from programming to yoga to juggling.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
"Vine is an app owned by Twitter that enables its users to create and post short video clips with a maximum clip length of six seconds and can be shared or embedded on social networking services."
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Windows
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Vine, iTunes, Google Play, Windows Phone
Ideas for Educational Use: Pair with information on a class website or blog. Other ways to use Vine include: announce homework to students; model how students should execute a task; market upcoming events to followers; film solutions to math problems; identify symbols and silent metaphor.
Tips and Considerations: App users must be at least 17 years old.
"An interactive, collaboration and sharing tool that enables users to add images, documents, and videos, and to which other users can add voice, text, audio file, or video comments. You can post your VoiceThread on your website or save it to an MP3 or DVD."
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Web Resources: VoiceThread, iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: It's the perfect tool for creating multimedia presentations in a relatively short time frame. It prompts students to think carefully about what they are going to say before recording themselves. The power of peer feedback and peer review is intuitively available to all participants in a VoiceThread conversation.
Tips and Considerations: VoiceThread does not allow multiple users to have simultaneous access to the same account. It may be necessary for an entire class to use a single class account login. As a result, students could remove or change comments made by others or inadvertently delete an entire VoiceThread. It could present an accessibility problem for some users.