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Do you use your iPad for school?


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What sorts of things to you use your iPad for for your homeschool?  I know the possibilities will probably floor me.  I have not even allowed myself to consider the options (an iPad was out of my price range) until DH got me one for Christmas. :001_wub:

 

Thus far we've used the LoE app to do our phonogram review (we previously did it on a very old iPod) and I have one, yes one, e-book that's for "school".  My children are young, and we're not a "techy" family, so I think we'll probably use it minimally.  So far I use it the most to hide somewhere in my house and read this forum!! :lol:

 

ps. FREE resources are best. ;)

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Yes. 

 

Is your passel of kidlets doing any foreign language?  We just discovered Poptok - which is like Candy Crush but teaches foreign language vocabulary!  DS loves it.

 

Also:

 

Science 360

BrainPop

PyMOL ("Mom, technology is soooo cool!")

 

There are others but I'd need to pull the iPad out of his hands to look.  LOL

 

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I use a ton of eBooks. I like my schedules printed on paper, where I can write on them, but then I love, love love, having my large library stored all in one small place. Picking up my iPhone and my iPad makes me feel safe. There is just so much there!

 

I have a thin Moleskine journal, with some extra printouts folded up and stored inside, my iPhone and ipad, and can do almost all my teaching from less than 2 pounds.

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I really don't use apps. I just don't. I use the calendar and alarms and all that stuff on my phone, and because the iPad and iPhone sync so well, I do a lot of the typing on the iPad and it syncs over to the phone. I use that stuff a LOT to compensate for my memeory loss, but not for my tutoring.

 

My iPad increases the functionality of my phone, in very important ways.

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We used it for DragonBox apps.

 

Now, it's mostly for AOPS videos and Alcumus and DD's Spanish class when auditory work is assigned. Sometimes DD uses it for her Skype lesson if the laptop is not available.

 

I use it all the time for myself and for homeschooling; if there are e-versions of teacher manuals, I don't print them out but read them under an app called PDFExpert.

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Just some of the free things we use our ipad for:

 

Free BrainPop app - there is one free episode a day.

Free Quizlet app for flashcards

Free DuoLingo app for foreign languages

Free Coursera app for accessing their courses

Viewing Free ck-12 textbooks, and being able to click on the links in the text

Reading any book in our Kindle accounts (Kindle app is free)

App for doing music theory/aural skills practice

Viewing Youtube videos, which we can then watch on our tv because I have them linked

App for viewing NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day and Exoplanet update

Accessing on-line course contents wherever we are

 

 

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I haven't figured out if iBooks can be browsed, but I have found some unusual curriculum titles there that are not available at Amazon. The publisher was the one that alerted me to their iBooks version.

 

And there are some interesting free videos at iTunesU

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I see you have to pay to unlock a language.  What is included in the free app?

 

We have the free app, and when you select a language it asks you if you want that language to be your one free language, or something like that.  DS is learning German, so that's what we picked. 

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DS is in love with Siri.  And he recently discovered if he starts singing the Asap Science Periodic Table of the Elements to her, she brings it up on YouTube.  He was stoked he doesn't have to type it in to the search engine anymore (or have me do it, which was more often).

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I use a ton of eBooks. I like my schedules printed on paper, where I can write on them, but then I love, love love, having my large library stored all in one small place. Picking up my iPhone and my iPad makes me feel safe. There is just so much there!

 

I have a thin Moleskine journal, with some extra printouts folded up and stored inside, my iPhone and ipad, and can do almost all my teaching from less than 2 pounds.

I have seen you mention how you stay organized. I love the simplicity - I'm intrigued. Wish I could let myself try something simple. I go crazy making things more difficult than they need be.

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I do not. I feel it is distracting and takes away from learning. Tablets are toys.

 

My son does have a kindle dx for reading books. I buy kindle books he is interested in when they are free. He needs large print so the kindle is a huge boon for that and means I do not have to try and track down large print editions. The kindle ap on a tablet was distracting.

 

He uses a laptop for typing.

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Yes. Someone once told me I like an ad for educational uses of the iPad.  :tongue_smilie:

 

We go through phases of using it for math apps of various stripes - we've done ones for drill like Multiflow and ones like Dragonbox for enrichment. I'll allot time in between or when I can't do anything else for those and it's useful.

 

There have been a number of other apps like that as well for science and history that we have used at various points.

 

When my kids were younger, we found Toontastic really super useful. You don't want to do a narration, fine. Do a Toontastic.

 

We read and write on pdfs with Notability and that includes sometimes doing work on the iPad directly.

 

Ebooks, of course.

 

I especially like using Pages and Notability to let the kids lay out their own reports and things like that. And Haiku Deck is a nice easy slide show maker, though there are others. Both the kids and I use a lot of apps like that for layout and creative stuff tied to school.

 

The kids make movies, edit photos, create digital art, etc... It's not "school" per se all the time, though it's really tied to it for us. It's a really great creativity tool.

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We use it all the time. I have schoolwork planned on the homeschool helper app, my daughter researches information for reports and essays, we watch educational videos, she uses duolingo, we check information as we read, it even gets used as a calculator and timer and dictionary and thesaurus. Also, I check emails and fool around online while she's working sometimes, so it's nice for that. Really, it's been the most useful gift I've ever had.

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I have seen you mention how you stay organized. I love the simplicity - I'm intrigued. Wish I could let myself try something simple. I go crazy making things more difficult than they need be.

 

I like to START making things difficult, but my lifestyle is too difficult to maintain anything that isn't simple for very long.

 

When did I buy the iPhone? It must have been October as that is when my contract ended. Sprint offered me an iPhone with no money down, and a lower monthly payment. And, yes, I do own the phone, not lease it. I'm still a bit confused, but very thankful. According to the people around me, the switch to the iphone and the free updating of the software so that my phone, iPad, and computer all sync, improved my reliability, despite everyone noticing a marked increase in my memory loss and confusion over the holidays. I switched over to my new tech JUST in time.

 

The Apple stuff, my Moleskine, and some scraps of paper is working. When I try to do more, I do less. I'm not sure if that makes sense. It's like I get top heavy and topple over.

 

I find eBooks work better with a more literature approach, rather than a textbook approach. When I do use texts, though, I tend to have the answer key on one, the student text on another, and sometimes when planning, even an index or table of contents on a third. My old computer works JUST good enough to fill the gaps of the iPhone and iPad, and add that 3rd screen. Just like you sometimes spread out 3 books to look at all at once, sometimes you need multiple screens open.

 

I think it's been maybe a year, since I switched over to a more literature based teaching style, and I don't think that will be changing any time soon. Not only is literature more manageable than texts, when using digital, but the results of my own past early education, and things that are happening, now, are just cementing my convictions.

 

I've jumped around in what curriculum spine schedules the literature, but I have stuck hard and fast to more literature and less time on skills and non-fiction. Yes! That stuff is important, especially the skills of getting them READING, but even the writing and math, has taken a back seat to lots and lots and lots of literature.

 

I really really really love my new iPhone and my iPad. I do still seem to have that iPad glitch going on where my iPad doesn't read all my past purchases. And I have extra trouble with in-app purchases. I'm not the only that has this problem, but it seems rare on this board at least. It seems like you either have it or you don't. It makes me extra hesitant to buy apps. I think it might have to do with ACCOUNT settings rather than the iPad software, because the people with the problem don't see improvements with updates to the software, and some not even with a new device.

 

That glitch led to me trying a Kindle Fire for a month and that was just a disaster for ME. I love Amazon customer service, but the HARDWARE just wasn't the same. My stuff takes a beating being thrown into a backpack and humped–sometimes 10 miles a day–around the city. I need snap-on keyboards, and EVERY ounce counts after a couple miles.

 

We all have different needs. The iPad/iPhone has successfully met mine. It rang and got me to an appointment on time, despite the fact that I was so confused I didn't know my name. Yes, I use more than one name, and that can get confusing for anyone, but still, I went totally blank and a friend had to answer for me. But I got there, and that's the important thing. :lol:

 

It's gotta be simple, when sometimes you don't know your name or what year it is.  :biggrinjester:

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I generally have gotten most of my apps free by following smartappsforkids.com.

 

Best free apps that we use that I haven't seen listed:

 

Mt. Multiple

Addimals

Slate math

Kickbox

BigSeed

Thinking Blocks math series

Map the World

Scratch Jr.

Hopscotch

PBS kids video

Cozi Family Organizer (for me)

Memrise

 

 

Things that I have paid for (most on sale) that I think we were worth it:

 

iBiome Wetland

Arbordale books (spanish/English narrations) covers science, math, with free pdf files containing lots of worksheets and activities (two times this past year they had a 99 cent sale...follow smartappsforkids)

Crapoks: GeoAtlas

Stack the States/world

Tower Math

Lumio Math series

Todo Math

Todo telling time

Explore the USA with Roxy

ABcya.com apps

Writing Wizard

Homeschool helper

My Robot Friend

JoyTunes piano apps

Teach Me math facts

Montessori add and subtract large numbers

DragonBox series

Winky Think logic puzzles

LogicCity Jr

Motion Math Pizza

Animal Typing (keyboarding skills: Bluetooth keyboard helpful)

Kids Vocab minds snacks

HomeRoutines (my cleaning app that I love)

 

LabelED (I can't remember if I paid for this. Maybe 99 cents. But I can take a map or picture and turn it into a labeling exercise and it keeps record of the scoring.)

 

That's all I can think of right now. The iPad is great for giving me time to work one on one with a kid while another is busy working on math, science, logic, etc. on an app.

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Yes. Someone once told me I like an ad for educational uses of the iPad. :tongue_smilie:

 

We go through phases of using it for math apps of various stripes - we've done ones for drill like Multiflow and ones like Dragonbox for enrichment. I'll allot time in between or when I can't do anything else for those and it's useful.

 

There have been a number of other apps like that as well for science and history that we have used at various points.

 

When my kids were younger, we found Toontastic really super useful. You don't want to do a narration, fine. Do a Toontastic.

 

We read and write on pdfs with Notability and that includes sometimes doing work on the iPad directly.

 

Ebooks, of course.

 

I especially like using Pages and Notability to let the kids lay out their own reports and things like that. And Haiku Deck is a nice easy slide show maker, though there are others. Both the kids and I use a lot of apps like that for layout and creative stuff tied to school.

 

The kids make movies, edit photos, create digital art, etc... It's not "school" per se all the time, though it's really tied to it for us. It's a really great creativity tool.

I so wish I lived near you, I have notability for writing on PDF's and for the life of me I can't figure it out.

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I so wish I lived near you, I have notability for writing on PDF's and for the life of me I can't figure it out.

 

Sit down with it and play with it for a little while. It's worth it, really. Such a great app. The easiest way, IMO, to load a pdf onto it is through email or by downloading one from a webpage. So if you open a pdf on Safari or through your email, if you tap on the page, a little thing will come up in the right corner that says Open In... You tap that and then choose Notability. It may not be one of the initial options, but if you tap for more options it will come up. The pdf will open in Notability and it will give you an option to add to another file or start a new one (and to just open part of it). Once it's open, you can write on top of it.

 

It takes a day or two of practice to make your writing on an iPad begin to look decent. The number one thing is that a stylus is really necessary. On Notability, there are two ways to zoom in - you can have a little box at the bottom that blows up part of the page and lets you write on that part or you can just pinch zoom in and out. I usually use the latter option. Writing really big while zoomed in helps your writing come out looking really nice.

 

Those are my down and dirty tips.

 

Last year at the Va Homeschoolers Conference, I was taking notes on SWB's lecture on Notability and two people came up to me afterwards and were like, please tell us about this app. But it really did take me some time of playing around with it to come to appreciate it and use all its features.

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We do a few free apps.

 

We mostly use the ipad to listen to audible books, watch teaching company. and use it extensively for some dyslexia apps (Barton tiles and learning ally).

 

Yes, the new app and growing availability of streaming Teaching Company lectures is handy! I have the naked eye astronomy course.

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I got a very cheap copy of "A Child's History of the World" on the Nook platform...so I downloaded the Nook app for iPad.  

 

We did Eggy Words/Eggy alphabet for young ages.

 

Splash Math is very popular.

 

Aliens vs. Presidents, Stack the States, and Stack the Countries are all fun.

 

Oh...and a Kindle app for reading books from the library too. :)

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I have some edutainment apps, but I don't really count those as being for "school." They're really just entertainment.

 

I do use the iPad often for school, though. Portable internet/music player is handy -- I can bring it into the kitchen so we can watch or listen to something while eating lunch, or I can set up storylineonline for my little guys to listen to people reading them stories, and they can go in another room with it. (I also use it as my portable cookbook, but that's not necessarily school-related.)

 

DuoLingo and Mango language apps

 

Geography and math drill games for extra practice when needed

 

The Today's Document app from the National Archives is interesting.

 

I keep PDFs on it and view/write on them with Notability. So I could use it as a whiteboard, have Mr. Q science on it to review the vocab with my kids, have a math test on it. . . It was really helpful when I was taking kids to speech therapy once a week and needed to bring DD's schoolwork along. (Lego directions and knitting patterns go out nicely too.) I download preschool activity packs for my little guys and then I can preview them while sitting in bed and decide which pages I want to print.

 

We use the timer feature all the time. I set it for 45 minutes while I work with one child, and then when it goes off, I set it for a 15 minute break, and then I set it for another 45 minutes, and so on. It's right at my fingertips.

 

Ebooks with the Kindle app or iBooks. DD has Fallacy Detective on her basic e-ink Kindle, and I have it on my iPad, and we can easily read and discuss it together without having to buy two books or scrunch together. We have some of the WWS books on it too, although tbh, we prefer paper copies for the student versions of those because some of the formatting gets wonky on the PDFs. But teacher manuals are handy to have in pdf or Kindle. Kindle app means we can get books from the Free Library of Philadelphia.

 

And the biggest thing I use it for, related to schoolwork: OneNote. I used the HomeschoolHelper app last year and liked it, but this year, OneNote has really been the best thing ever. I love love love that I'm not tied to my desktop to check my notes, lists, and plans.

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So, how do I move the pdf's from notability when I'm done writing on them? Or do I move them?

That depends on how much space you have available on your iPad. I just keep some PDFs on Notability all the time. Others, I might print after a while, and then I'll remove them; I can print via AirPrint (although I can't select just a few pages to print, not easily, anyway) or by moving them back to my desktop machine. If I'm completely done with a PDF or other Notability file, I can just delete them from there and thus off my iPad so they don't take up space unnecessarily. Or, if I think I might need that file in the future, I send it to Dropbox, so that it's stored on a cloud and not taking up space on my iPad. I have the Dropbox app on both my iPad and my desktop, or I can use Dropbox.com. From Dropbox, I can print them if need be, or I can use that to move them to my desktop machine, where I can print (can't remember, but I might have more options for printing from the desktop) or just store. (My desktop has a huge secondary hard drive for storage, but I only have 16GB on my iPad, so I definitely prioritize. Things I really need often stay on the iPad, things I need occasionally or which are expensive to replace in case of crash go to Dropbox, and things I just want to archive [past school years' stuff] go to my desktop. Actually, the really important curricula materials that are expensive to replace are on all three all the time.)

 

HTH!

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Yes! It can be great, especially on rough days or to give a young child a way to do some school while busy with an older sib. I would also offer ds a "break" from his preschool work, if one was needed, to play with the educational apps ;). (He's onto me now though, lol. He now wants Angrybirds and iPad movies if I let him have the iPad).

 

It's not free, but for littles under 5, especially if they are fine-motor reluctant such as mine was, I just love the app Letterschool. Teaches letters and allows practice in forming them properly with a finger on the screen.

 

Are you wanting apps more for your kids in the pre-k ages, or grade school, or both?

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I am planning to buy this series of itextbooks. http://mobile-educationstore.com/itextbooks I love the adjustable reading levels, the interactive diagrams, videos, the highlighting feature, the questions and customizable tests. I think $15 is a great price considering I can use them with all my kids. I am excited about their future plans of other science books and government books. I am impressed with what I have seen from the videos on the series.

 

This is kind of series that I am looking for in the educational world. I know that some have reservations over a heavy use of the iPad, but I have just found so many tools to illustrate a concept or stream line teaching. With three young kids back to back, I need all the help I can get. They are just too young for independent work. I need an assistant!

 

I also picked up Reading Island series for free awhile back. I will say that it is an excellent series. It fine tunes any reading gaps but what I like most is that it teaches spelling phonetically. I don't think its a stand alone spelling series nor is it meant to be, but it does well pointing out spelling patterns. Putting words in alphabetical order, teaching sight words, spelling games and teaching correct sentence structure are a few more of the many games. My kids are all good readers but they are all learning somethings out of the series. A short video introduces each lesson, and they are well done.

 

I also use the timer on the iPads heavily. The timer is set so that when it goes off, it goes to a passcode screen. This keeps a kid from getting too much time playing a math related game on the iPad during school hours. Once the timer goes off (usually 8-15 minutes at a time), they know that they need to switch back to their textbooks or find mom and do narrations, etc.

 

Great features in ibooks is the making of flash cards with ease. You can highlight a text and it will become a flash card. I haven't found any texts in iBooks for young children that have me excited, but I think time will bring out more excellent textbooks.

 

I did see that CAP has their Bible covanent books available on the Kno Textbook app, but it says it's only for rent. I prefer to own and keep my book, so that was disappointing.

 

We are a classical school with a deep affection for technology.

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I love my ipad.  It's really revolutionized the way I teach.  I use it with both my son, and for the kids that I tutor or teach, all of whom have disabilities.  A lot of the things I do with the iPad are things that I used to do without the iPad, but I love the fact that whereas before I had to try and guess what I'd need for a tutoring session, so that I could pack it in my bag, I suddenly have a whole set of math manipulatives, and letter tiles, and books, and other tools that fits in my purse.  To give you an example, I went to a tutoring session the other day thinking that we were going to do one thing, but when I got there it turned out that my kid was really stuck on a math concepts involving ratios that he needed to understand for a test the next day, so we ended up scrapping the regular lesson and instead we used Notability to draw out solutions for some problems in Notability, and then we did some related problems on IXL.  I wouldn't have thought to bring a text book on ratios, but I had a whole array of problems at my fingertips.  Then for the next kid, we were reading together from an adapted version of the Odyssey, which led to questions about what things looked like that we looked up on Google images, and then that segued into another question about how people viewed heroes in other cultures, so I pulled up an adapted version of Beowulf on his level and we compared and contrasted the two.  In the old days, there's no way I would have happened to have an adapted version of Beowulf in my bag.  

 

Off the top of my head, these are some of the apps I use with the most frequency

 

Apps for creating things:

 

Notability (You can use this to annotate PDF's, which we do a lot at the HS where I teach, but I also use it as a white board that does lots of cool extra things.  I find that some paper and pencil type tasks are so much easier for the kids to understand with the built in grid paper and ability to easily switch colors, and the ability to move things around and copy them.)

 

Haiku Deck (Makes powerpoint type presentations with photos and a really child friendly interface.  I use it a lot to make language experience type books with the little ones I work with).

 

Imovie (For making little films)

 

Reading and Writing Apps

 

Co:writer (An adapted word processor with word prediction and read aloud.  It also works well with single switch scanning for my kid with the most physical disabilities)

 

Word Wizard (allows you to manipulate sounds in words, a easy replacement for letter tiles) 

 

Start to Finish online Library (a library of classic literature, rewritten on an easier reading level, with quizzes to test comprehension.  I have a few HS students with intellectual disabilities who love this)

 

Audible, nook books, ibooks, etc . . . 

 

Math Apps

 

IXL

 

Aleks

 

Dragonbox

 

Various math manipulative apps

 

 

I also use it a lot for plain research, or for my son for things like doing his Alcumus problems or listening to a TC lecture on Audible, or doing something for one of his online classes, that he'd do on a laptop if we were home, but would like in a smaller format if we're in a waiting room or something.  

 

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Can I move an annotated pdf from notability to ibooks or kindle?

 

Justified--how do you set the timer to go the pass code screen? Clearly I really need to spend a week playing with my iPad!

 

 

Ps. Those mobile education books look really good, now you've got me thinking of buying ne

For notability, yes you can. If you see a box with an arrow pointing up inside the box, this is the button you push to open the file into another app. You will then go to the share button at the bottom and then save it as a pdf. Then it will give you the option to open in iBooks or Kindle.

 

The stop playing button is at the bottom of the list of musical ringtones that you can choose from for when the timer goes off.

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For notability, yes you can. If you see a box with an arrow pointing up inside the box, this is the button you push to open the file into another app. You will then go to the share button at the bottom and then save it as a pdf. Then it will give you the option to open in iBooks or Kindle.

 

The stop playing button is at the bottom of the list of musical ringtones that you can choose from for when the timer goes off.

Thank you so much!! I will be practicing with all of things tomorrow.

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