These apps are content-based. They either bring you directly to specific content (e.g., videos, podcasts, text) or make file-types that are not native to mobile devices accessible.
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Adobe® Reader® allows you to view and interact with PDF documents across platforms and devices.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Windows Phone
PC: Windows XP, 7, or 8
Mac: OSX 10.6 or higher
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Adobe, iTunes, Google Play, Windows Phone
Ideas for Educational Use: If you plan on using a lot of PDFs or just want your content easily accessible on all platforms, this app will help you and your students share documents.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
This app allows you to turn your iPad into a wireless whiteboard. You can also make notes on PDF documents and images live.
Platform(s): iPad
Cost: Free (Limited version); $9.99 (Full version)
Ideas for Educational Use: This app allows you to better illustrate your ideas and material to the entire class, rather than to just a handful of people who can see the iPad.
Tips and Considerations: There is a limited free version available. Air Sketch is designed to work with a computer connected to the same local network as your iPad.
"Atomic Learning offers training and professional learning to help students, educators and school leaders bring technology and curriculum together. With training at your fingertips, you can learn at your convenience – even when you're not online."
Platform(s): iPad, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Atomic Learning, iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: Faculty and/or students can use video tutorials to gain skills on software applications, Web 2.0 resources, computer literacy, and more. College staff can use video tutorials for professional development opportunities.
Tips and Considerations: The first time you log into the App, you must use your full NSCC email address and password.
Bluefire Reader is the best way to read Adobe® Content Server protected eBooks on your phone or tablet.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Bluefire, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: If you are having students read ebooks in Adobe PDF format, this is an excellent app to have for accessing that content.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
"Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. In fact, it’s up to five (5) times faster than typing on the keyboard."
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Ideas for Educational Use: Use your voice instead of typing to create course-related documents or email messages.
Tips and Considerations: This app requires to be connected to a network (WiFi or 3G).
Ebrary is an online digital library of scholarly academic electronic books.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Web Resources: NSCC's library instructions, iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: This app is great for any subject. It allows students access to the library's academic digital books.
Tips and Considerations: This app allows you to browse, view, search, download, and annotate documents (with some printing capabilities).
Flipboard is your personal magazine. It is the most popular way to catch up on the news that you care about, discover amazing things from around the world, or stay connected to the people close to you.
Platform(s): Android, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Flipboard, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: This is an ideal app for use in a political science or current events type of course.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
Fotopedia Heritage brings together 20,000 photos, illustrating 890 World Heritage Sites and 3000 points of interest as contributed by thousands of photographers and hundreds of curators.
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Description, Video Overview, iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: Use photos to reinforce concepts in history or culture-related courses. It may be a good resource for art appreciation or digital design courses.
Tips and Considerations: Consider looking at other Fotopedia apps, such as: Japan, National Parks, Paris, Reporter, Wild Friends, and Women of the World.
"Google Currents delivers beautiful magazine-like news editions to your tablet and smartphone for high speed and offline reading."
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone
Cost: Free
Ideas for Educational Use: Ideal for use in a current events or political science course.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
Contains the daily content of the newspaper.
Platform(s): Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Web-based
Cost: Free; $10-$12/month
Web Resources: The Guardian, iTunes, Google Play, BlackBerry, Kindle
Ideas for Educational Use: Use in current events or political science courses.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
"Khan Academy allows you to learn almost anything for free. The app is the best way to view Khan Academy's library of over 4,200 videos. Khan Academy covers a large number of topics, including biology, chemistry, physics, finance, and history."
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Khan Academy, iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: Use Khan Academy to help you flip your classroom or assign sections of Khan Academy in conjunction with your own material. Also, assign Khan Academy material as a refresher for students who may need extra help.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
The Kindle app puts over a million books at your fingertips.
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
, Windows
PC: Windows XP, Vista, 7, or 8
Mac: OS X 10.6 or higher
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Windows Phone
Ideas for Educational Use: Assign one of the free/public domain books on Amazon Kindle to your students. The app allows for annotating and highlighting, as well as a search feature so students can effectively interact with the text.
Tips and Considerations: The app also allows for document uploads that can be read within Kindle. Students could access their syllabus and other documents the instructor shares with them.
Mendeley is your personal research library. Carry thousands of PDFs in your pocket. Read and annotate them on the go, search your entire library, and easily sync everything on your different devices.
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Mendeley, iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: A great tool for students to gather their resources for any type of research paper. It could also be used for the instructor to share out a list of material that students could use for learning and research.
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
Through Overdrive, you can access ebooks and audiobooks from lending libraries that you can download to your computer or a portable device.
Platform(s): Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Kindle, Nook
PC: Windows XP or higher
Mac: OS X 10.4 or higher
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Overdrive, iTunes, Google Play, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Kindle, Nook
Ideas for Educational Use: For many different courses, students can borrow various ebooks and audiobooks relevant to the course content or that are assigned.
Tips and Considerations: NSCC users have access to the NOBLE lending library database. To access ebooks you must set-up an Adobe Digital Editions account. Refer to the NOBLE Help resources for information and how-to tutorials. Since ebooks and audioboks are checked-out on loan, they have expiration dates.
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
"With the Poetry Foundation's universal iOS app, you can now take thousands of poems by classic and contemporary poets with you wherever you go. From William Shakespeare to César Vallejo to Heather McHugh, the Poetry Foundation's app turns your phone, iPod Touch, or iPad into a mobile poetry library."
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Poetry Foundation, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: Students in an English class can be assigned to read and analyze poems from the database.
Tips and Considerations: N/A
With the Quickoffice app, you can access and edit Microsoft Office documents (PowerPoints, Spreadsheets, and Word files) with your mobile device.
Platform(s): iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Web Resources: iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: Faculty and students can access course-related documents and edit them on the go.
Tips and Considerations: Quickoffice is a Google product. It requires a Google account to access. NSCC users can use their college credentials to login. Documents are stored in Google Drive.
"Side by Side is a multiple-window reader/browser with offline reading and note taking capabilities. It turns the iPad into multiple resizable reading devices working in parallel."
Platform(s): iPad
Cost: Free
Web Resources: iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: A learner may wish to see more than one source of information while taking notes.
Tips and Considerations: Side by Side has its own browser for opening websites. PDFs and text files can be opened into Side by Side from Dropbox or from email attachments. Notes written in Side by Side can be emailed, saved into Dropbox or opened into other apps on the iPad. This software does not allow you to run apps or books (Kindle, for example) side-by-side. It only allows for Web-based material.
Snapchat is a way to share moments with friends. "Snap a picture or a video, add a caption, and send it to a friend. They'll receive it, and then the snap disappears. You control how long your friends can view your message -- simply set the timer up to ten seconds and send."
Platform(s): Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Snapchat, iTunes, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: A great way to send a photo of an example you want students to see.
Tips and Considerations: Screenshots can be captured if it is done quick. The sender will be notified if it is detected that you have taken a screenshot.
"Storify lets you create social stories by browsing social media streams and dragging-and-dropping photos, videos and updates into a story, along with adding your own text. Now, you can use your fingers to combine social media from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to tell a story from the iPad."
Platform(s): iPad, Web-based
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Storify, iTunes
Ideas for Educational Use: Drag and drop status updates, photos or videos to bring together the social media elements that will best illustrate a story. Your story is always editable, so you can pull in the latest from the social Web.
Tips and Considerations: Storify stories can be embedded anywhere on the Web by simply pasting and embedding the code. It works similar to embedding video.
"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.
"Tiny Classroom Flash Cards is a feature rich flash card application for foreign language study with an intuitive and unique learning environment. Access flash card learning lists for 30 separate languages. Make or import your own sets of flash cards."
Platform(s): Android
Cost: Free
Web Resources: Tiny Classroom, Google Play
Ideas for Educational Use: Flashcards are a popular way to study new material, especially when trying to learn vocabulary words, acronyms, or special technical topics.
Tips and Considerations: You can download content from various locations. From the Web, you can locate sites that have content already available. You can also pull flashcards from another app, as long as they are in CSV format. You can also create your own in TXT format.
"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.
"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.