Monday, April 25, 2011

10 Best iPad Apps Under a Buck


NETA 2011 – “10 Free iPad Apps Every Teacher Should Know” or actually “The Best iPad Apps Under a Buck”  Neal Topp, Bob Goeman, & Kelly Nicklin, UNO

The iPad can be a great tool for teachers and students.  We believe that the following apps are especially valuable to educators. In the comment section of this page, please add your favorite iPad app and how you use it.

Google Earth
You can use your iPad to explore the same global satellite and aerial imagery available in the desktop version of Google Earth, including high-resolution imagery for over half of the world's population and a third of the world's land mass.

Dropbox
Any file you save to Dropbox also instantly saves to your computers, phones, and the Dropbox website.
  • 2GB of Dropbox for free, with subscriptions up to 100GB available.
  • Your files are always available from the secure Dropbox website.
  • Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.

Dragon Dictation
Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition app that allows you to easily speak and instantly for the iPhone™, iPad™ or iPod touch™.

Verbally
Verbally is the first free iPad app to provide a complete assistive speech solution for creative communication. Verbally enables creative communication, self-expression, and, most importantly, conversation with very few keystrokes.

Puppet Pals
Puppet Pals provides a straightforward method to create your own "jib-jab© like" animations. All you have to do is select your actors and backdrops, press record, and drag them around. Everything you drag around is recorded in realtime (including your audio). You can even flip characters with a double tap or resize and rotate them using two fingers. The result is a simple and fun way to quickly create your own animated movies.

Mobile Mouse
Instantly transform your iPhone or iPod touch into motion based mouse, trackpad, and wireless remote for your computer!. This app uses the built in accelerometer to translate your hand motions into mouse movements on your screen. It can also operate as a trackpad, allowing you to control your computer with a single finger.

iCrosss
This amazing app is a unique educational application which will help you learn solid geometry in ease and fun way. It allows you to build a cross-section of each of available polyhedra by your defined plane. The plane can be defined by three points (taps) on polyhedron faces.  Polyhedrons are displayed in 3D representation, which allows you to rotate it in any direction.

NASA Apps
The NASA App for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, combines all of your favorite NASA images, videos, missions and information into one, easy-to-use, application

Graphing Calculator
Symbolic Calculator  & Symbolic Calculator HD $1.99
With full-featured algebra capabilities on par with high end scientific calculators this applications lets you perform all kind of different operations from the simplest multiplications to computing the integrals of the most complicated functions

In My Dreams  $.99
Have fun with reading, matching, and sign language. "In My Dreams" uses animation and repetition to promote literacy. Each page has the same sentence structure and reinforces understanding of nouns, verbs and prepositions. "In My Dreams" is an instructional app designed with illustrations that provide language cues.
KhanAcademy
Students can make use of the extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments from any computer with access to the web. The iPad app organizes the 1000’a of educational videos in a simple to use format.

Molecules
Molecules is an application for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad that allows you to view three-dimensional renderings of molecules and manipulate them using your fingers. You can rotate the molecules by moving your finger across the display, zoom in or out by using two-finger pinch gestures, or pan the molecule by moving two fingers across the screen at once.


We hope this list will help you expand your apps use.  In the comments section below, please add your favorite app and how you use it.  Thank you very much.