In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Procreate is a powerful tool for the iPad that allows users to make really impressive digital artwork.

Procreate is an intuitive drawing, painting, and illustration application specifically designed for the iPad. It has hundreds of brushes, layering capabilities, multi-touch gestures, Apple Pencil support, and a time-lapse video export feature. Procreate, especially in combination with a stylus, allows you to create digital artwork that looks like it was created on paper or a canvas. This art can then be exported in multiple file types, including PSD (Adobe Photoshop) retaining all layer functionality. 

Visit the Procreate website for extras like FAQs and a downloadable Artist’s Handbook.

Platform: iOS
Cost: $9.99
Grades: High School – Adult

Common Sense Education has this review of the app and it includes feedback from teachers as well as suggestions for incorporating the app into simple classroom projects. Procreate is included in this article from Digital Debris of the top 3 apps for sketch notes and is described by the author as “the most powerful creative app I have ever used on a mobile device.” And the site Educator’s Technology gives some quick examples of the capabilities of Procreate in this article.

Check out this video to see what you can make with Procreate!

In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Science Journal is an easy-to-use app that helps students with their science experiments!

Turn your phone into a light, sound, and motion sensor. Measure these experimental variables with greater accuracy and create detailed data displays. Use photos and text to record observations within the app. Teachers can connect external sensors and search Science Journal’s website for possible experiments.

Platform: iOS, Android
Grades: 5th +
Cost: FREE

Science Buddies has this detailed article that shows all the different sensors available on the app and includes several informative videos. Check out this page of lesson plans for STEM classroom activities that incorporate the app. And check out this review of the app from School Library Journal!

Watch this video to see Science Journal in action:

In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Relationshapes makes it fun and easy for young kids to work on their visual-spatial skills. The brightly-colored app has eight levels of progressively more challenging activities and a multi-touch interface for teachers or parents to join students in activities.

“Open-ended play gives young children opportunities to practice problem-solving and experience visual-spatial reasoning. Geared towards early childhood, RelationShapes allows young users to move and resize shapes on one side of an axis, then create a matching image on the other side. After each level, new shapes and stickers are unlocked to create fun pictures.”

Platform: iOS, Android
Grades: Preschool – Elementary School
Cost: FREE

Teachers With Apps has this very detailed article about Relationshapes that explores several activities and explains the benefits for young students. In this article about spatial learning and STEM, Relationshapes is mentioned as well as several other apps that provide students with a good foundation knowledge that will help them understand STEM concepts in the future.

In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Pixie is a great way to let students incorporate creativity into almost any subject! The app has a number of different tools students can use to demonstrate their knowledge.

“Imagine your students creating their very own digital stories, nonfiction pages, comics or podcasts with little instruction. Pixie is an authoring tool students can use to share ideas, imagination, and understanding through a combination of text, original artwork, voice narration, and images. Students can use Pixie’s paint tools, text options, clip art, and voice recording to develop storybooks, curriculum projects, videos, and so much more.”

Platform: iOS , Android 
Grades: All
Cost: $9.99

This post from Class Tech Tips gives a quick overview of the app and discusses the online version of the app, called Wixie, which could also be a useful classroom tool. This page from Creative Educator has multiple different lessons that use Pixie in the subjects of language arts, math, science, and social studies.

Watch this video to see Pixie in action!

In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Hopscotch lets you enjoy the process of building games while learning the fundamentals of coding!

“Coding” may sound a bit dry and daunting to some newcomers, but those are the last things that come to mind while using Hopscotch. The app lets you have as much fun making games as playing them, and with its colorful, friendly interface and stacks of help and tutorials, kids (and grown-ups!) can build all kinds of apps—while learning the fundamentals of programming.”

Platform: iOS
Grades:Upper Elementary – Middle School
Cost: Free, has in-app purchases

Their website allows you to see and play games created by other users, which is pretty cool. They also have an Educator page which includes free lesson plans.

Fractus Learning has this article about the app that includes some specific ways to incorporate it into your teaching, and also links to further activities for educators to use.  This article from Teacher Cast gives several tips for teaching with the Hopscotch app.

Watch this very quick trailer to see some of the fun games you can play and create with the app: