AMAZING WAYS TO USE FREE APPS FOR iPADS IN THE CLASSROOM
Objectives:
 Learn about several useful
apps that can be used in the
classroom
 Understand how each app
helps students learn
 Adapt what we learn for
immediate use in our own
classrooms
Agenda
1. Do Now
2. Super Seven!- 7 Apps we
Love!
3. Questions
DO NOW:
Please answer the following questions below
How are you using iPads in the classroom now?
What else do you wish you could do with the iPad in your classroom?
Presented by Andrea Clay and Kristen Turner, middle school teachers at Lady
Liberty Academy Charter School. Feel free to contact us at
educationempowersu@gmail.com
AMAZING WAYS TO USE FREE APPS FOR iPADS IN THE CLASSROOM
App Name
From the
website:
How we
use it:
Best
features:
Things we
wish it did
better:
“Edmodo is designed to get students excited about learning in a
familiar environment. On Edmodo, teachers can continue
classroom discussions online, give polls to check for student
understanding, and award badges to individual students based on
performance or behavior.”
www.edmodo.com
We use Edmodo almost everyday in the classroom for a variety of
purposes. Most frequently, we assign students writing tasks or
quizzes to complete during independent work time. We also use
Edmodo to give students a teacher-designed list of links to
websites they should visit when collecting research or building
background knowledge. Edmodo is also a great platform for
posting links to videos. The design fosters online discussions by
allowing students to reply to posts publicly.
*You can create an unlimited number of classes
*Teachers have the ability to reset a student’s password if they
forget it
*Parents can make an account that links to their child’s account
* Everything is archived
*Edmodo stores a revision history for all assignments that students
complete and submit so it’s easy to track growth
 It would be great if students were given a bigger box to use
when typing responses to assignments so they can see all
they have written instead of just one line.
 When students navigate away from a response in progress
then everything disappears. Edmodo would save teachers
and students a lot of anxiety if it had an auto-save function.
Notes:
Presented by Andrea Clay and Kristen Turner, middle school teachers at Lady
Liberty Academy Charter School. Feel free to contact us at
educationempowersu@gmail.com
AMAZING WAYS TO USE FREE APPS FOR iPADS IN THE CLASSROOM
App Name
From the
website:
“ClassDojo is a classroom tool that helps teachers improve
behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It also captures and
generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents
and administrators. Better learning behaviors, smoother lessons
and hassle-free data - and its free!”
www.classdojo.com
How we
use it:
Best
features:
Things we
wish it did
better:
We use Class Dojo to reinforce positive behaviors during academic
discussions and independent work time. This app allows us to
award students points for exhibiting positive behaviors such as
raising a silent hand, using strong vocabulary in their responses, or
asking a follow-up question during academic discussions. It also
allows us to take a point away from a student if she or he is talking
to a neighbor without permission, shouting out, or off-task.
*You can personalize the avatars for each student
* Class Dojo tracks everything
*The random function is useful for picking class volunteers
*You can personalize the positive and negative behaviors for each
class
*You can control the app from your iPad, iPhone, iPod, or laptop. It
all syncs.
 Currently, each behavior is worth the same value (+1 point).
It would be great if we could assign different behaviors
different values based on their importance in our classroom
 There are student reports that can be printed but there are
no certificates of achievement that can be printed directly
from Class Dojo to award students for reaching a certain
number of points.
Notes:
Presented by Andrea Clay and Kristen Turner, middle school teachers at Lady
Liberty Academy Charter School. Feel free to contact us at
educationempowersu@gmail.com
AMAZING WAYS TO USE FREE APPS FOR iPADS IN THE CLASSROOM
App Name
From the
website:
How we
use it:
Best
features:
Things we
wish it did
better:
“Socrative is a smart student response system that empowers
teachers by engaging their classrooms with a series of educational
exercises and games. Our apps are super simple and take
seconds to login. Socrative runs on tablets, smartphones, and
laptops”
www.socrative.com
We use Socrative as a pre-reading activity that is typically
completed at the beginning of class. Students are given a question
that activates their background knowledge about a theme in the
text and are asked to respond to it using Socrative. All responses
are anonymous. Socrative compiles all the responses and allows
us to send them to each student’s iPad in one list. Students read
each other’s responses and vote on the one that they found most
interesting. We have also used Socrative as a quiz tool but we
prefer to use Edmodo for quizzes.
*It does not require student logins
*It allows students to see a wider sample of responses instead of
limiting them to the people at their group.
 It does not save responses to short-answer questions if you
are not using the quiz tool. If you want to save the
responses you have to take a screenshot of the answers.
 There is no option to insert answer choices for a multiplechoice question unless you are using the quiz tool.

Notes:
Presented by Andrea Clay and Kristen Turner, middle school teachers at Lady
Liberty Academy Charter School. Feel free to contact us at
educationempowersu@gmail.com
AMAZING WAYS TO USE FREE APPS FOR iPADS IN THE CLASSROOM
App Name
From the
website:
How we
use it:
Best
features:
Things we
wish it did
better:
“Google Drive lets you do more than just store your files. Share
files with exactly who you want and edit them together, from any
device.
Google Drive gives you instant access to Google Docs, a suite of
editing tools that makes working together better—even when your
teammates are miles away.”
www.drive.google.com/
We use Google Drive when students have to type an essay or a
longer assignment. Unlike Edmodo, Google Drive allows students
to view the entire document as they are typing. We also use
Google Drive when students have worked together on an
assignment and need to type their individual parts into a single
document. If you have a desktop then Google Drive can also be
used to create forms to collect student feedback. We use Google
Forms to allow students to keep track of their performance on
vocabulary quizzes. Google compiles all the data into lovely charts
and graphs.
*Several students can view the same document from individual
iPads to work on a group project
*Everything auto-saves. If a student accidentally deletes all their
work you can restore a previous version and retrieve it.
*Documents can be shared with the teacher without the student
requiring an e-mail address
*There are more formatting options for when students need to
underline book titles or italicize movie titles.
 Google Drive does not allow you to add pictures on the iPad
version of the app (this function is available on Android
devices).
 Google Drive only allows you to create new documents on
the iPad (not forms, spreadsheets, or presentations).
Notes:
Presented by Andrea Clay and Kristen Turner, middle school teachers at Lady
Liberty Academy Charter School. Feel free to contact us at
educationempowersu@gmail.com
AMAZING WAYS TO USE FREE APPS FOR iPADS IN THE CLASSROOM
App Name
From the
website:
How we
use it:
Best
features:
Things we
wish it did
better:
“At Animoto, we live by two basic philosophies: make it simple, and
make it beautiful. And we're proud to offer you the simplest way to
create the most beautiful videos online, whether for yourself, your
friends, your family, or your business.”
www.animoto.com
We use Animoto to allow students to present information they have
learned from a unit in a creative way. Students collect relevant
pictures and match the mood of the song to the mood of their
content to create a professional looking video. These videos can
be shared via links or embedded into a website. With an Education
account you can also download videos to your computer.
*You can use one class account to create several student accounts
*Pictures can be taken from any source
*It comes with an expansive video and music library to add to
videos
*An Education account gives you “Plus” account features for free.
 There are only 44 characters you can enter into a text slide
which seriously limits students’ ability to include substantive
text.
 It takes an incredibly long time to preview videos on the
iPad (2-3 minutes)
 Videos that are started on the iPad can only be edited on
the iPad initially used to create it.
Notes:
Presented by Andrea Clay and Kristen Turner, middle school teachers at Lady
Liberty Academy Charter School. Feel free to contact us at
educationempowersu@gmail.com
AMAZING WAYS TO USE FREE APPS FOR iPADS IN THE CLASSROOM
App Name
From the
website:
How we
use it:
Best
features:
Things we
wish it did
better:
“Educreations is a recordable interactive whiteboard that captures
your voice and handwriting to produce amazing video lessons that
you can share online. Students and colleagues can replay your
lessons in any web browser, or from within our app on their iPads.
Check out the "Showcase" on our homepage or the "Featured" tab
in our iPad app to view some great lessons that other teachers
have created with Educreations.”
www.educreations.com/
We use Educreations to differentiate instruction for students. It
essentially allows you to clone yourself in the classroom. Instead of
delivering vocabulary instruction whole-class we have put it on
Educreations and allowed students to receive their words from the
video. During writing instruction, we can record steps of the writing
process on Educreations and allow students to move at their own
pace. Typically, when we use Educreations there is a guided notes
sheet that accompanies the video so students are recording
information as they are receiving it.
*Students don’t require an account
*You can create videos on the iPad or on your laptop
*You can add your own pictures
*You can set any background image (several math teachers place
a grid as their background for teaching graphs)
 If you make a mistake while recording there is no way to just
erase the recording and keep what you’ve created on the
whiteboard. You have to start everything anew.
 There is no way to type text onto the whiteboard when using
your laptop. You must use the markers to draw text (there is
a textbox on the iPad).
Notes:
Presented by Andrea Clay and Kristen Turner, middle school teachers at Lady
Liberty Academy Charter School. Feel free to contact us at
educationempowersu@gmail.com
AMAZING WAYS TO USE FREE APPS FOR iPADS IN THE CLASSROOM
App Name
From the
website:
How we
use it:
Best
features:
Things we
wish it did
better:
“Bring the classroom to life with interactive mobile presentations
that teachers create and customize themselves.”
www.nearpod.com/
We don’t use Nearpod as much as we’d like to but we included it
because it is has awesome potential. The few times that we have
used it, we’ve allowed students to use the drawing slide to illustrate
their visualization of a setting. However, there are many other
features available that make this app particularly useful for contentheavy courses.
*Students don’t require an account, they just use a pin # to access
the presentation
*The presentation automatically prompts students for their first and
last names
*You control the pace of the presentation but students still have an
interactive and personalized experience with it.
 Many features are limited to the paid version
 Presentations cannot be viewed or launched from a desktop
without the paid version
 The pin# for a presentation changes each time it is launched
(you cannot add the pin# to notes the night before)
Notes:
Presented by Andrea Clay and Kristen Turner, middle school teachers at Lady
Liberty Academy Charter School. Feel free to contact us at
educationempowersu@gmail.com