iPad Literacy-Apps Reviewed

Preparation: Dictionary
The dictionary.com app is the app I am most familiar with using, so I chose to review it in further depth. This app gives many options, among them are; search for a word definition, use the thesaurus, or translate a word. It is interesting to see the word of the day or take the word of the day quiz on the homepage of the app. I think the translation tool would be useful for a teacher to use when teaching ESOL. I like this app and think it is easy to use, and I will use it often, so I placed it in my bookmarks for future easy access.

Presentation: Educreations Interactive Whiteboard
I chose to review the whiteboard app since whiteboards are currently used in my children's classrooms. There are many types of whiteboard apps. I chose to review the Educreations Interactive Whiteboard. This is a great application for creating video lessons for teaching concepts. Lessons can be saved and given a title and description. The lesson can then be shared privately with only your students, or publicly. A great tool is the other featured featured lesson plans which are available for teachers to use. Also, students can use this app to work on learning concepts and working with others to reinforce learning. There's a great Undo function, which is easy to use for teaching. Pictures can also be inserted into your document, making the video lesson more interesting visually.

Print: Book Creator
I chose to take a look at the book creator app. The book creator app starts off with designing your book cover. The color and title is created, along with the author's name. It seems easy to use this application. Pictures can be inserted onto the pages. I think this app would be so much fun to use to create a collaborative class book where each child would contribute a page in the book. This would make a cute keepsake to share with students and their parents.

Stories: Puppet Pals
I chose to review the Puppet Pals app because it relates to my elementary education specialty. I watched a brief tutorial on Puppet Pals. The main screen is animated and fun. You can choose actors and a backdrop on your stage to get started. There is a stage to use for moving your characters around. This looks like a really fun tool to use in the classroom to make a fun movie as a part of a lesson. I do think it would take some practice to learn. I think it would captivate kids because it is so colorful and fun to watch. I particularly like the farm animals. The downside to the app is the app isn't free, it requires a purchase to have access to all of the cute animated characters.