App of the Day: Book Creator

Book Creator app for iPad ($4.99)...the #1 book app in 60 countries. It is an easy platform for creating epub books. Bring books to life by adding text, images, video, music and narration to tell the whole story. Submit books to iBookstore, read in iBooks or email to friends. Teachers and students can edit and annotate each other’s books with the “combine books" feature.


Watch this short video to see how easy it is.


Book Creator for the iPad from Book Creator for iPad on Vimeo.

Applications for Education: 
Book Creator is a great way for to demonstrate student understanding through student created work. Ideas for using Book Creator: individual projects then combine into one final project, create student reviews and combine into final class review, create book reviews, show and tell projects, timeline projects, digital storytelling, and much more. 

Benefits of Using Book Creator:
☆ Choose from portrait, landscape or square book sizes
☆ Import pictures or videos from camera roll, (ex. iMovie movies created)
☆ Record audio within the app
☆ Draw or write with freehand tools
☆ Add text using all the iPad fonts
☆ Send books to Dropbox, other WebDav servers (ex. Google Drive), iTunes to your computer or email
☆ Click here for Book Creator tutorials.
☆ Free version of Book Creator...click here

App of the Day: Highlight by Cohdoo

Highlight by Cohdoo is free today. Regulary $3.99. Highlight is a recording app used to capture your "aha" moments. Pause and resume the same recording adding more highlights. Later review your highlights adding notes or share/open recordings with others via Dropbox, email, Google Drive, Box, iMovie, Evernote.



Application for Education:
Highlight can be a great asset for the classroom. Use for student/teacher conferencing, student/student conferencing, verbal understanding for foreign language classes, interviews, reading fluency/pronunciation, etc. As you record you can tap the screen when you hear a moment that you need to refer back to. Now you don't waste time replaying the entire recording but just the highlighted moments.

Benefits of using Highlight:
☆ Free Today
☆ Take a photo while recording or add after the fact.
☆ Never lose key points.
☆ Saves space and battery of your phone.
☆ Share recordings.
☆ Replay on the big screen using the Highlight Player companion.
☆ Read Highlight Tips you mark during recording. Click here to learn how to add these tips to recordings.

App of the Day: Story Creator

Story Creator is a great app to use for digital storytelling. With Story Creator you can easily create beautiful story books containing photos, videos, text, and audio all in one gorgeous collection. Story Creator truly brings your best stories to life and easily allows you to retell and share your most memorable moments.


Application for Education:
"Digital Storytelling is the practice of using computer-based tools to tell stories. Digital stories usually contain some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips and/or music. Digital stories can vary in length, but most of the stories used in education typically last between two and ten minutes." (University of Houston)


Benefits of using Story Creator:
☆ 100% FREE
☆ Add as many stories as you like
☆ Sharing stories with friends and family is as easy as email
☆ Backup stories online so kids can't accidentally delete your hard work
☆ Download stories on multiple devices - create once, experience anywhere
☆ Can add photos, videos, audio, and text
☆ Can add photos from device, Dropbox, Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook
☆ Supports drawing tool to make stories truly your own
☆ Create a personal book cover for every story
☆ Add your own voice - bring stories to live by adding your own narrative
☆ Add audio highlights - highlights makes it really easy for kids to learn how to read
☆ Leave comments on stories shared by friends

App of the Day: Explain Everything

Explain Everything is an easy-to-use design, screencasting, and interactive whiteboard tool that lets you annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere. Create slides, draw in any color, add shapes, add text, and use a laser pointer. Rotate, move, scale, copy, paste, clone, and lock any object added to the stage. No account is necessary to use Explain Everything.

Application for Education:
With Explain Everything, an explanation can be recorded at the same time and this can be exported as a movie file to be watched by the students. Teachers can keep a record lessons for students to watch at a later time. Outside the classroom Explain Everything is a great tool for "flipping" the classroom. Instructional videos for students to watch before entering the classroom.

Explain Everything Video:

Benefits of using Explain Everything:
☆ Interactive whiteboard
☆ Annotate, animate, narrate on whiteboard, pictures, and/or videos
☆ Import and export almost anything to and from almost anywhere
☆ Create slides, draw in color, add shapes, and add text
☆ Rotate, move, scale, crop, paste, clone and lock any object
☆ No account is necessary

Download the free Explain Everything Manual on iBooks.

iTunes App Store: Education Collections

Did you know that there is a section in the iTunes App Store called Education Collections? The Education Collections section features 27 sub-sections including reading, math, physics, chemistry, music, writing, geography, astronomy and earth science, foreign languages, test prep, and lots more.

Apps for Teachers
Also included in the Education Collection is an Apps for Teachers section. The section has apps for classroom tasks, curricula support, instructional tools, personal organization, and reference applications. Free and paid apps are listed.

Special Education
A great new additional is the Special Education section. The section highlights apps for communication, emotional development, seeing and hearing, language development, literacy and learning, diagnostics and reference, organization, and life skills.

Other resources for educational apps and uses of iPads in the classroom:
☆ Tony Vincent's Learning in Hand Blog
☆ Richard Byrne's iPad Apps for School
☆ iPads in Schools Livebinder
☆ TCEA iPad App Resources
☆ The Mobile Native Blog