What is App a Day?

With i-touches, i-pads and i-phones becoming more popular, the apps are increasing in numbers too. With so many apps out there, how do you know what is good and what isn't. That is what I am hoping to help you with in this blog. If you have a suggestion of an app to share...please send me an email to jdief99@gmail.com.

After taking a year off with a new job...I have many apps to discuss. Follow me for at least 3 new apps at week.

Updated: 1/25/2013

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Penultimate

Do you have problems organizing notes, thoughts, plans, etc. Then this $0.99 app may be for you. I design sets for the musical at the school I work at and would sketch on any scrap of paper I could find. When I needed my sketches, I could never find them. With this app, I created a notebook for my sketches and keep them all in one place. It lets you create many different notebooks so you can have one for home, notes, business info, school, etc. I have ordered a stilus to use specifically with this app since I use it so often. Well worth the $0.99!!

I have an app share day scheduled this week so hopefully I will have many more apps to share!!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Sim City


For all you fans of the old computer game Sims City, here it is for the itouch and ipad. My son and my nephew love to play this game and get lost in it for hours. It is currently $2.99.

Description

BUILT FROM THE GROUND UP TO BE THE BEST SIMCITY™ EXPERIENCE FOR iPHONE® & iPOD TOUCH®! Made to maximize the Retina Display, see your dream city come to life with simplified controls, optimized performance, inspiring visuals, exciting new scenarios, and starter cities. Designed for dedicated and casual players alike, let your inner urban planner run wild!

NOW DESIGNED TO MAKE THE MOST OF THE RETINA DISPLAY
See the texture of the ground and the ripples on the water. Observe your urban landscape in stunning detail. SimCityTM Deluxe includes enhanced graphic features specifically made to maximize the high-end visual quality of the Retina Display.

FACE CHALLENGING NEW SCENARIOS IN DIFFERENT SETTINGS
Get started in cities inspired by world famous locations and remake them to your liking with new, highly detailed buildings – including 41 renowned landmarks. Test your ability as a mayor in up to 7 multifaceted scenarios, from staging a glorious “World Games” to coping with a scorching heat wave.

MEET DEVASTATING DISASTERS
Guide your city through seasonal catastrophes like blizzards, electrical storms…and locust plagues! Or how about fending off a random meteor strike? Even encounter multiple disasters at once!

MODIFY TERRAIN WITH TOUCH CONTROL & INSTANTLY SEE HOW YOUR CITY IS SHAPING UP
Finger-paint water, land, and trees. Seamlessly rotate, scroll, and zoom – and never lose the view of your city! The optimized interface also includes improved menus and an automated power-lines option for easier play.

BUILD THE CITY OF YOUR DREAMS! NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY!
If you’re new to the SimCity experience, the expanded tutorial and friendly in-game advisors will help you realize your vision. For added inspiration, you can even play your favorite block-rockin’ tunes as you make your SimCity come to life!

Link to second picture

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Top 10 Free Apple iPod Touch Apps for English and Language Arts

I got this from a co-worker and thought I would share. I have talked about a few of these but thought I would include the entire article anyway.

1.Dictionary.com is a very popular and versatile app that should easily find a place on any iPod Touch in the classroom. This handy app features a dictionary, thesaurus and word of the day feature. It offers example sentences, audio pronunciations, and word origins. Best of all, you do not even need to be connected to the Internet to use the dictionary and thesaurus features. It truly is one of the best apps for education.

2. Miss Spell, is another app from Dictionary.com. This one will test the spelling ability of your students by offering up a variety of words that the students need to decide whether they are spelled correctly or not. Speed and accuracy score the best points as you decipher the 20 words on offer for each level. American English is the standard spelling format, and there are over 10,000 words tested.

3. Amazon's Kindle app will turn your iPod Touch into an e-reader for your classroom. To accompany this free app, you will be able to find several free e-books to download from Amazon.com. Flip through the pages by swiping the screen, re-size text, add bookmarks, and always be sure that you can start from the page you last looked at, even if you close the app. The Kindle app is a worthwhile addition for any Language Arts class.

*4. Story Kit is the International Children's Digital Library App. It allows you to create your own stories, complete with pictures. Add text boxes, images and sound clips. Record sounds for your stories, and add, reorder or delete your pages. Add pictures by drawing on the screen, taking a picture of something, or drawing something on paper and taking a picture of it! There are lots of great creative options here to allow your students to create stories right on their iPod Touch.

5. Exam Vocabulary Builder (Free Edition) is a great way to keep vocabulary skills fresh in the minds of your students. This is the free version of a full price app, but still has a hundred words that students can practice to improve vocabulary. Each word has synonyms and two example sentences that can be read aloud. Words are grouped as nouns, verbs and adjectives, and there is a quiz mode that has easy and challenging levels. You can search for words, or swipe through some flashcards. This app has some limitations due to the number of tested words, but for a free app, it is still useful for the classroom.

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/62720.aspx#ixzz19ztDoWyt

6. Grammar Up (Free Edition) has over 50 multiple choice questions, over 10 categories, to provide a quick test of your student's grammar abilities. Adjectives, adverbs, verb tenses, prepositions, and conjunctions are just some of the categories covered with this handy app. Choose a timer mode, shake the Touch to skip a question, and enjoy the progress bars that show you how well you are doing with each category.

7. Paper Hangman (Lite) is the first of three word games on this list. Guess letters to complete the words or phrases on this timeless, classic word game. Shake the Touch to start a new puzzle and keep track of the highest scores in your class with the high score table. There are over 2500 words on a variety of topics for you try to guess, plus the option to disable sound effects, (always a plus for the classroom!).

8. Madlibs is another game that makes the leap from your childhood to the iPod Touch. Choose nouns, verbs and adjectives to complete the craziest stories that you will have heard in a long time! Only four stories are available in this free version, but that could still be enough to pass some time with your fast finishers, or those students with some extra time to fill.

9. Chicktionary (Lite) is one of the best free apps for education users. It was a popular online word game that effortlessly made the leap to the Touch. Each chicken has a letter on it and you use these letters to make a combination of 3, 4, 5 or more letter words. The more words you can make the better your score. Don't like the order your letters are in? Shake the iPod Touch to shuffle the chickens/letters. The Lite version has 12 levels to try, so enough to keep the students happy for a good length of time.

10. iTalk Recorder is a voice recording app. Use this to record readers theater groups, or to record and playback readers to help them improve their fluency. Why not record a lecture for a student who is absent? The iTalk Recorder is a versatile tool that could have many uses in the classroom. If you are a fan of Vocaroo, and other online recording apps, then this could be just what you need for you iPod Touch.


Read more:
http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/62720.aspx?p=2#ixzz19ztQNUwY