I’ll start by admitting that I love my iPhone. It is brilliant for what I want to do at school ,both in a teaching and in a managing work sense. Here are some of what I would consider my best Apps for Education. I would add that they are teacher-led rather than child-led.
Calendar – This may sound an obvious one, but I have linked my school Gmail Apps account to my phone, which means that my school calendar seamlessly merges with my phone – reminders, agendas, the whole lot. I love it.
Notesy – A brilliant little notepad, which also syncs with Dropbox (see below). I have tried To Do programs in the past, and for me, a big old list works best. Worth every penny.
Dropbox – Something I could never live without. Dropbox is a fab little app on my phone, and my computer, which means that anything (image, doc, music file) on one device is automatically on everything else that Dropbox is installed on. If you have ever emailled yourself a document, or are poor at backing up, or carry your life in a USB pendrive, you need to get Dropbox, then nip back and thank me!
Clock – Great for the timer. If I could find a better stopwatch or timer, I’d use it. I can’t.
Bloom – This is an ethereal music generator. When I need the class to have ‘relaxed concentration,’ I put this on and leave it to play and generate music. Love it, and it also helps in getting me to sleep sometimes!
Dragon Dictation – Speech to type. Download this and try using it for those typing tasks you tend to put off. Works a charm, very little correcting needed and perfect for meeting minutes (I’ve found!).
Mobile Mouse – Laptop plugged into the data projector? You at the back of the class? Wifi enabled? Let Mobile mouse take control of your desktop. Great for making you a learning tool rather than a teacher at the front. Trello – A task organiser. I’m trialling the Beta at the moment, but it just isn’t as flexible as the website version, so I probably won’t use it much in the future. Worth a look though, especially for teams.
AirProjFree – This is a free little app which allows you to ‘throw’ any image in your picture library onto a browser, so very useful for the classroom, especially for those with projectors.
(Post inspired by Danny Nicholson‘s Ed Tech Carnival request)
