Homework Apps

After a recent webinar by Kira Smith KiraDemo@Kdace.com I learned about some of the Best Homework Apps. I looked at each of these apps tried them out and selected the ones that I thought were the best from her webinar and my experience.

Study Skills

iTooch (free; additional features $4.99) – large exercise database, meets common core standards, fast child-friendly interface, calculator and blackboard features, grade-specific content, syncs when web connection is available, badges, 3-5^th grade Elementary School app and 6-8^th grade Middle School app.

Quizlet (free; additional features $4.99) – create your own flashcards, 18 different languages, learn mode tracks correct and incorrect responses to emphasize areas you need help, spelling tests, math quizzes, typing program, voice recording for notes, the interface and content is definitely more middle school appropriate.

SAT Up and ACT Up (free; $4.99-9.99 premium features) – diagnostic questions help determine what you need help with and what you’re strong on, supports 12 languages, subject specific workouts, customized quizzes, games that help build skills, gives users a lot of feedback.

SimpleMind (free; PRO $4.99) – helps organize thoughts; create mind maps, flow charts, bracket charts, diagrams; add notes; works and syncs with desktop / other devices, the PRO version allows collaboration, sync to Dropbox, e-mail, icons, and much more.

MindNode ($9.99-19.99) – similar to SimpleMInd it has a slicker display / interface, more uploading options and display options, some user reviews express frustration with desktop version.

Assignment Trackers

myHomework (free; $4.99 additional features) – track assignments, schedule, projects, tests, and notifications; join io teacher classes, sync between devices, reminders, premium allows for file attachments, upload assignments, teachers can push out no ads, rewards

iStudiez (Lite Free, PRO $2.99) – calendar, collaboration, upload to iCloud, great layout, easy to use, track projects, assignments, and grades;

iHomework ($1.99) – extremely similar to iStudez with better upload / sync capabilities, integrates with Questia, has a reminder function, you can sort assignments different ways.

inClass (free) – video, audio, photo notes; schedules, assignments, repeating assignments, collaborate, share on Facebook.

Note Taking

EverNote (free, $5 month premium features) – the king of note taking apps it allows you use photos, video, audio; integrate different notes into portfolios; makes text in photos searchable; share via: Facebook and LinkedIn; the premium fee gives you PIN lock, offline mode, integrate with companion apps;

GoodNotes 4 ($5.99) – you can draw / sketch notes; use a stylus, finger, or keyboard; syncs automatically to cloud services; you can choose: graph, ruled, or plain paper (background); write on or highlight PDFs; iPad only

Learning to Read

Learn with Homer (free) – listening and drawing activities, Pre-K – Elementary, reading comprehension questions, customizable, great feedback, 30 free lessons, and it is so cute

Endless Alphabet ($6.99) – letter sounds, vocabulary, phonics, entertaining monster characters, very slick design, downside is large file size and doesn’t progressively get harder

Spelling & Vocabulary

Spelling City (free, $29.99 year) – lots of words by grade, schools use it, extremely popular, the subscription saves your progress, keeps a record, syncs your account across devices

The Opposites (.99) – brother and sister characters are opposites, cute engaging graphics, fun game, kid-friendly design

Winning Words (free) – memory match style game, four different game boards, changeable difficulty, up to 4 players, for 4 years and older, create compound words.

Geography

Tiny Countries (3.99) – children capture evil characters by answering geography questions that help children learn about 75 countries their capitals and major cities; 15 missions allow children to review information about countries before they begin.

BrainPOP (free, $4.99-6.99 a month) – third grade and up videos with quizzes about 7 subject areas; free gives you one free video and quiz a day; Explorer $4.99 give 4 additional videos with quizzes a day, and $6.99 gives unlimited access; the content is highly acclaimed by multiple parent and educator groups; the website gives you a lot of free games and videos.

News-O-Matic (free 10 issues then .99 weekly or $1.99 monthly or $19.99 yearly) – articles about sports, animals, news, etc. that have been written by written by professional children’s writers and reviewed by a child psychologist before publication to ensure emotionally safe content; quizzes, puzzles, and games accompany each issue.

Stack the States (.99) - learn state capitals, shapes, geographic locations, flags and more; tracks progress with your own map of the United States filled in with the states you have learned.

Science

Kid Weather ($1.99) – math and science skills, plot weather information, graph data, track multiple locations

Human Body ($2.99) – nervous, muscle, skeletal, system; uses microphone, camera, and light to demonstrate; beautiful artwork, urogenital system is an extra in-app purchase that can be made;

Plants ($2.99) – three biomes but they are adding more; see how different animals and insects interact with their environment; have the seasons change or introduce a fire to see how that affects things.

NASA (free) videos, photos, internet radio, mission details, history of the space program, this app is on my list of best apps for adults also – it’s that good.

Solve the Outbreak (free) – middle school and older audience this app has been created by the CDC to teach about how epidemics spread and how public health responds to those crises; lots of STEM education in a game format.

Math

Pet Bingo ($1.99) – for ages 4-10, it helps learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions; not timed, supports common core, tracks progress, and gives you a report card; you get pets for completing different levels and you feed them by answering questions correctly.

Sushi Monster (free) – for ages 9-11, you put in the correct number that fits each equation; a correct answer feeds the monster sushi; it is timed and has distractions; 12 levels of increasing difficulty with 14 questions each level.

Dragon Box Algebra ($5.99) - innovative educational app that through gameplay teaches kids concepts relating to solving algebraic equations. The app includes links to the developer's website as well as the app store, but does not require a user account or other online access

Language

Duolingo (free) - makes learning languages a games; has five languages

MemRise (free) – Learn languages, geography, history, science, and pop culture through crowd-sourced courses

English Monstruo (free) – through extensive analysis Cambridge has developed an app that teaches English to native Spanish speakers and emphasizes the phrases, grammar, and vocabulary that they most often encounter problems

Mango Language (free but need library card number) – teaches in a way very similar to Rosetta Stone, it has 26 languages and teaches you a lot about the language you want to learn. The library pays for it and it has ESL courses.

Resources

There are a lot great sources to find reviews of apps for children and education.

These are some of the best: (magazines) Horn Book, Kirkus, PC Magazine, School Library Journal

(websites) Common Sense Media, Edumic, AASL, Moms with Apps, Little eLit

Best Fitness Apps

Running:

Nike+ - tracks your runs, integrates with different music sources, maps your run, connect with friends, speed workouts, badges, trophies

Map My Run – integrates with website to track all your workouts, maps your run, charts and graphs of run data, connect with other running friends

RunKeeper – track your pace, map your run or cycling, gives calorie count, tracks weight loss, connects to various fitness devices and heart rate monitors, running plans

Zombies, Run! – (1.99-3.99) episodes have you being chased by Zombies, you are acting out a story that  infuses music on your device, points for hitting your goals gets you things to help you survive the zombie apocalypse

Charity Miles – run, walk, or cycle and for every .1 miles a donation is made to a charity that you choose from the menu

Road ID – creates a emergency alert wallpaper for your phone that you can put on your lock screen while you are out on a workout, it sends tracking info to a designated person, and it alerts up to 5 people in case you stop moving for more than 5 minutes. This is a great safety app for when you are out on the streets or even in the woods.

Cycling:

Strava – can be used for running, hiking, and cycling, maps your workout, has speedometer / odometer for cycling, download hiking maps, compete with others, keep track of equipment miles and maintenance, connects to certain fitness devices

CycleNav – unique navigation on handlebars, bluetooth enabled to give you directions; tracks speed, time, calories

General Health / Nutrition

MyFitnessPal - tracks weight, calories, activity, connect with friends, shows nutrition, and charts progress.

Sleep Cycle (.99) – tracks your sleep: how much, how deep, you can track things that affect your sleep, wakes you during light porion of sleep       

SleepBot – tracks your sleep, multiple alarms, multiple charts / graphs, remider to go to sleep, sound recording option, sleep debt log, data analysis, export data

Argus (iOS only) – motion tracking, take photos of your food to count calories, log water in-take

Moves – tracks your movement through out the day, eats up battery life on all phones earlier to iPhone 5S.

Workout:

Six Pack Abs - (free, 4.99*) videos / HD avatars guide you through 20 exercises, upgrade to get and additional 50 exercises, 6 workout routines, integrates your music for workouts, and connects to MyFitnessPal app to track calories

Johnson & Johnson Official 7-minute Workout (free, 5.99*) – 36 exercises, 13 workouts, custom workout feature, incorporates your music, has audio & visual instruction

MapMyFitness – 600 exercises, for running / cycling you can pick pre-planned interactive routes or design your own, get statistics on workouts, share with an online community, sync with fitness trackers

Gym Pocket Guide – day-by-day weight training schedule lets you select a program: fat loss, muscle building, or bulking up; Nice workout library with exercise descriptions, images, and instructional videos.

Lose It! – calorie counting, exercise log, connects to other apps and devices, beautiful interface

Looking for App reviews or the best App in a particular category try: http://appcrawlr.com/ or http://www.appolicious.com

Best Apps for Business / Entreprenuers

TrackMaven: monitor data on your competition, it goes through multiple sources. Filter the marketing activity you want and more importantly get rid of what you don’t

EchoSign: this Adobe app allows you to electronically sign documents easily and securely. It also records and stores each document's history, so you have automatic audit trails.

Free Wifi Finder: when you are first starting out and you have to get connected, this will help you find a strong Wi-Fi connection ASAP.

Uber: when traveling and you have to get a ride to the big meeting, Uber will get you there, especially useful for those times there is not a taxi in sight.

Skitch: you may know how to take screen shots but this desktop / mobile app will allow you to get directly to the point through different annotations, shapes and sketches.

FedEx Office: send files, documents or photos through the app to your nearest FedEx location to be printed or made into a beautiful presentation. You can even upload files directly from Box, Google Drive and DropBox.

Dropbox – the best cloud storage app, it also allows you to share folders with collaborators, accessible on all devices

Evernote – best organizational app, let’s you save audio notes and quickly scan things, like business cards. It can search text within pictures, and you can sync it up with Evernote on your desktop / other devices.

MobileDay – ever have a conference call scheduled but you need to be traveling, this app scans your calendar and imports all conferencing information (granted you have all that on your calendar: conference phone number and code) then when it's time for the call, you can join with just one click. If you need to arrange a group discussion, just tell the app who to invite and it will send the details for you — even setting up the call via its own conference service.

CloudMagic – for those with a lot of e-mail and multiple accounts. It supports multiple accounts / types (including Microsoft's Exchange) and scans messages, suggesting specific content (i.e. an article someone suggested) be saved to other apps, like Evernote.

Invoice2Go ($10) - quickly format and send an invoice or, for that matter, an estimate. The service calculates all taxes and totals and is integrated with PayPal. It also automatically configures itself for clients in other countries.

Flowdock - communications hub for teams is a combo of Skype, Instant Messenger and email. Help teams stay focused and on track, it offers a history of the conversation for those who are out of the loop for a while. Stay in touch and on track.

Clipboard Manager - ($1.99) Have you ever cut and pasted two or three things, and lost a hugely important thing that you cut first? Allows you to store (and easily retrieve) copied or cut things from your clipboard. You can share via e-mail, Facebook, or open in web browser.

Scanner Pro - ($6.99) This app allows you to take a picture of any document and it will convert it into a digital document. It can save it to your phone, Dropbox, or e-mail it. You can combine multiple pages and move or delete pages. The app auto detects the edge of the document so you only get what you need. For an additional .99 per use you can fax your document (or see next app).

eFax ($16.95) – allows you to send and receive faxes without a machine or dedicated phone line

Best Android Apps (for now)

This list of Apps was compiled during the month of August 2014. The marketplace for apps is always changing and with updates the App I looked at may already be different. I compiled this list by looking at the lists of several magazines and websites, the Apps listed are in no particular order (i.e. they are not ranked). The * means that both people communicating must have the App for it to be effective.

Google Hangouts – Easy to use, gives you free person-to-person calls, 12 people can video chat at once, allows for instant messaging

Viber – You can send text messages or make phone calls using your tablet, phone, or computer, free!

TextSecure – encrypted text messages makes sure things stay private*

RedPhone – encrypted phone calls mean that you’re not being recorded and the metadata is secure*

Wickr – self destructing text messages that are overwritten in a way that it cannot be retrieved*

Facebook – the giant of social media apps

Tumblr – a multi-media social network that is more blog-centric

Circle of 6 – An emergency alert app that sends out a pre-recorded message and GPS of where you are to up to 6 people

Plume – a very customizable Twitter platform that allows you to block users, certain words or phrases

Avast! Mobile – Remotely wipe your device’s memory, remote-lock, safe web browsing, battery  

                              manager, and anti-virus software

Lookout Security ($3 a month) – anti-virus, anti-theft, and protects against hacking

LastPass (free or $12 a year) – keeps track of all your passwords, creates secure passwords, does a

 security analysis on the passwords you use, secure web browser, secure

notes, secure form filler. Certain features only available on pay version.

Mr. Number Block – block calls and texts from a specific number or even a whole area code

Orbot – connects you with Tor which is a completely anonymous web browsing connection

HotSpot Shield VPN – protects your data when you are connecting via Wi-Fi by using an encrypted

                                       Connection

Noom Weight Loss Coach (free or $9.99 a month) – calorie tracker, weight loss suggestions, pay includes individualized help and online support community

Web MD –quick lookup of symptoms, medical terms, or a nearby pharmacy or hospital

Zombies, Run! ($3.99) – episodes have you being chased by Zombies, you are acting out a story that

               infuses music on your device, points for hitting your goals gets you things to 

               help you survive the zombie apocalypse

Sleepbot – tracks your movements while you sleep and nocturnal noises, wakes you during the lightest 

                    part of your sleep within a preset period

MyFitnessPal – tracks calories, activity, connect with friends, shows nutrition, and charts progress

Yelp – reviews of all kinds of locations and all kinds of basic info about the businesses

PepperPlate – save your recipes, gives you multiple cooking timers, organize meals, create shopping

                          lists, and save data so you can access offline

AllTheCooks Recipes – 150,000 recipes, select favorites, create shopping lists, and make a meal calendar

Untappd – read beer reviews, write your own beer reviews, share pictures, check-in to locations, create wish lists, connect with friends, and earn badges. Consider it social media for beer!

Google Goggles – reads QR codes, barcodes, and even foreign language signs and converts it into data you can use.

FieldTrip – local history, factoids, music hotspots, reviews, and alerts you to nearby deals

Google Maps – walk, bike, or drive maps with directions. Gives you approximate travel time with traffic alerts. Now you can get a car from Uber using the app

Uber – like calling for a taxi but you have choices from cabs, town cars, limos, private vehicles, etc. It will tell you how much it will cost right now and handle the entire transaction in app.

Google Translate – it can translate spoken or typed words and it can also speak for you. You need a data connection but this is considered the best translation software.

Duolingo – makes learning languages a games (only has five languages) which brings me to suggest

                     Mango Language like Rosetta Stone has 26 languages and teaches you a lot about the

                     language you want to learn

ShopAdvisor – tells you price history of an item, least expensive place to buy, you can set-up price alerts

Pinterest – a social media platform that is similar to create a simulated corkboards pinned with pictures.You can create “boards” for whatever you’re interested in: clothes, art, recipes, decorating,

 books, quotes, and much more.

Foursquare – a location based social media app where you can get rewards / discounts / deals for the

                         places you usually go

Comics – you can buy individual (or multiple) digital issues. Guided reading mode for new readers.

Flipboard – shows all of your media and social media feeds as a magazine articles you can flip through

Umano – popular news stories from a variety of news sources read to you by professional voice actors

ESPN ScoreCenter – covers sports from all over the world and connects you to all other ESPN content

Calibre ($2.99) – if you have lots of eBooks this app allows for a lot of shelves, you can search your

books, you can transfer from other devices or computers via Wi-Fi or USB. View tags and metadata from your collection. It does a lot for the eBook enthusiast

OverDrive Media Console – download and read / listen to library eBooks and Audio books

Stitcher - connects you to almost every Podcast out there. You can create playlists and it will make

                 suggestions based on your selections.

viaProtect – tells you where data from your apps is going and whether it is encrypted or not

Nova Launcher (Free) / Nova Launcher Prime ($4) – customize your home screen, icons, gives 

you tons of options and it’s extremely slick. The free version is good – just less options.

SwiftKey Keyboard – suggests the next word you might use and supports Swyple-like input

Tasker ($2.99) – for more advanced users, it allows you to create custom tasks like an LED light flashing when a text comes in, you can create custom scripts

Netgear Wi-Fi Analytics – tells you signal strength and amount of interference

Snap Pea – allows you to access files from your computer via USB or Wi-Fi. Allows you to send texts from your computer via your phone

ASTRO File Manager – view all the files on your device, upload easily to cloud services, backup your apps, and manage apps

Usemon – monitor your device’s performance and see network traffic, let’s you know might be bogging your device’s speed down

Dropbox – the best in cloud storage apps

Firefox – web browser that has great privacy protection

Opera mini – a minimalist web browser that is fast

Dolphin – considered one of the best mobile web browsers, integrates other apps like LastPass well

Weather Underground – slick design, useful weather info, and helpful widgets. Considered the best

                                             weather app for Android.

Wikipedia – its biggest feature is you can save pages for offline viewing very easily

Mint – considered the best budgeting app out there. It can be a bit daunting to set-up, but once done

             it’s extremely useful

Check – it is an electronic bill pay app for almost any company, what’s nice is you can pay individuals using their phone number or e-mail address

OfficeSuite Pro ($9.99) – Microsoft Office tools and it has a PDF reader

QuickOffice – create and edit Google docs and Microsoft Office docs, it’s limited in what it can do but is

                         considered the best mobile editor for PowerPoint

SugarSync – automatically backs up photos and videos to a cloud account (5 GB free)

eFax ($16.95) – allows you to send and receive faxes without a machine or dedicated phone line

Adobe Reader ($9.99 monthly fee for certain features) – lets you fill out PDF forms, mark up

documents, and make changes. The subscription allows you to convert any document to PDF.

Pushbullet – send notes, links, files, addresses, and lists to your computer or other devices

Google Drive – useful cloud storage

Evernote – a powerful organizational tool that allows you to sort or search pictures, music, and written notes. One of the cool features is that it makes text in pictures searchable.

Any.do – a list maker and manager, you can share lists with others. Also doubles as a task manager

                 encouraging you to review your plans for the day.

EasilyDo – unifies your calendars from other social media and calendar services. It will suggest gifts or messages to send people for different events.

DeaDBeeF Player – it can handle pretty much any audio file type and has a 10 band equalizer

Spotify – free streaming radio station, paying for a subscription you get access to an enormous music

                 library, playlists, discover and browsing features, commercial-free, and an offline mode.

Slacker Radio – you can listen to what it thinks you will like, try-out human curated stations, or select a hyper specific playlist

Songkick Concerts – scans your music collection and lets you know when your favorite artists will be playing near you. Also allows for the purchase of concert tickets in app.

Instagram – photo editing and picture sharing social media network

Pixlr Express – create photo collages and use tons of effects / adjustments on your photos

SnapSeed – photo editor and filter app, allows for more control than Instagram (but very similar)

Vine – 6 second videos, see how creative people can be with so short a time period

YouTube – all kinds of videos, it can be a great tool to learn how to do something or learn, and it can

                    give you hours of entertainment

Flickr – gives you a terabyte of photo storage, you can automatically store all your pictures in one place and it has a nice interface

Flava – keep a private journal you can lock with a PIN. It allows you to record sound, pictures, and video. You can tag or use icons for your entries. Search by icon, keyword, mood, tag, or weather.

SketchBook Mobile Express – use your finger as a pen, pencil, or brush to create a masterpiece. Artists will enjoy the advanced features that will allow them to play with layers.

Adobe Photoshop Express 2.0 – filters, fine adjustments, great interface, and easily connects to other services for sharing or storage