iPad apps

My favorite app was the first one I looked at, Your World. It gives a picture of the world, which you can turn even more easily than a globe. On the bottom of the screen are outlines of various countries, which you attempt to place on the world. Initially the map shows only a grey outline of the land masses, but as each piece is filled in it appears as a natural geography map. By typing the W icon after a country has been selected, you can access a wikipedia entry that gives more information about that nation. Images can be emailed, posted to Facebook or Twitter or saved as a photo. Achievements are earned as you complete various levels, such as Africa, the Americas, and U.S. States. This app would be amazing in a social studies classroom! It gives students a real-world perspective of where each nation is located and what it looks like (rather than an arbitrary set of boxes on a map with just one orientation), so students are better able to understand how each nation is located in relation to the others, and are more likely to recognize them on various maps (rather than just the one they've studied). The division into regions would make it much easier to incorporate into lessens about the regions. The email feature would make it easy for a teacher to use completion of a map as an assignment or even a test (especially if one sees testing as not only an assessment tool, but as an additional teaching tool.) Can you imagine, a test that is actually fun to take?!

Lincol...grams (Lincoln Telegrams) is an app that shows actual (letters?) written by President Abraham Lincoln and organized by date. Each entry includes an actual image of the letter, a transcription (the handwriting is difficult), a very brief summary of its content, an explanation of the context of the letter, and a number of inferences about what the words imply about attitudes or other events. This app could be used not only in lessons about the civil war, but as an introduction to or illustration of the concepts of primary documents, historical context, and making inferences. For this to be most effective, it would probably be best for the teacher to choose specific selections for students to work with.

I had trouble using Xperica HD (partly because I don't remember much of the science!), but I loved the idea, and hope I could eventually use it with more practice. It gives visual demonstrations of numerous scientific experiments. This could be used as an initial exercise before doing actual experiments( to help students get it right the first time and avoid wasting time or materials)  or as a replacement for expensive or risky procedures.I especially liked that it included an apparatus list (It's hard to follow instructions if you can't identify the equipment) and it explained the aim of the experiment, as well as giving step-by-step instructions. There was also a Learn icon that gives additional information to put the experiment in a broader scientific (and even historical) context.

I also briefly spent briefer amounts of time with The Weather Chanel, Science@VL, History Tools, America Lite, NewsPro, and Globe, since I was completely unfamiliar with Apps.