Since the release of the iPhone App Store, numerous sources have commented on the potential of educational apps. While these apps can’t compete with the general popularity of gaming and leisure apps, there are a number of educational apps that mobile learners will find handy.
Top Free Apps
Open Culture: Our iPhone app gives you free mobile access to our educational media collections. Free audio books, university courses, foreign language lessons, science podcasts and much more. Per Apple rules, you will need to use wifi to download files.
Dictionary.com: Pretty simple, but handy. A good dictionary in your pocket.
FORA.TV: FORA is an excellent resource for smart video, featuring a steady stream of talks by today’s thought leaders. To access their videos, you can download their free app, or point your mobile browser to m.fora.tv.
Kindle: This free app from Amazon lets you download books straight to your iPhone. The Kindle store contains many free classics books, but one of the easiest ways to access these books is to visit our collection of Free eBooks.
Louvre Museum: From the most important museum in Paris. According to Lifehacker, this “amazingly slick free app provides a virtual tour of its galleries and lets users check out the works of everyone from DaVinci to Michelangelo. The app gets you up close and personal with paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and even the French Crown Jewels.”
Moon Globe: The free app puts the moon in your pocket with 3D graphics and touch screen navigation.
NASA: Discover a wealth of free great space travel information on this free app. The NASA App collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources in a convenient mobile package.
Shakespeare: A nice app that puts the complete works of Shakespeare on your iPhone. As you’ll see, the app comes with some handy functionality: you can search the text by keyword and also increase/decrease the fonts. Plus the app automatically remembers the last page you read.
Stanza: Another good app for downloading free e-books on the iPhone. Once you download the app, navigate to the “Online Catalog” section and then focus on the “Project Gutenberg” materials, which contains a long list of free classics.
TED: TEDTalks need no introduction. They’re perhaps the most popular video lectures on the web, featuring talks by “the world’s leading thinkers and doers.” Now you can access these talks on your mobile phone too.
The Iliad and Odyssey by Homer: The ancient tradition and Western civilization go straight back to these two great books. Get them fore free.
USA Presidents: A flash card app that teaches you cool facts about the historical line of American presidents.
Given the iPhone’s capacity for audio and visual learning, it’s no surprise that many of the most popular education apps focus on language learning. Free Spanish Tutor, the most downloaded free app, comes from the 24/7 Tutor series, and it’s described as follows:
24/7 Tutor provides a set of the most common and useful words and phrases, organized by topic and category. An audio recording by a native speaker is available for each element. These are all integrated into a multi-function learning system, with measurement of progress tracked by quiz scores. A priority-filter mechanism is provided that allows you to optimize your efforts by focusing on those items most needing additional practice.
Another highly popular free language app is Japanese Phrases FREE. Like 24/7 Tutor, it also offers a paid version with additional content and features. There are also free applications available for French, Italian, Arabic, German, Korean, and Russian.
The second most popular free education app is Maps of the World, which allows users to browse 20 historical maps. While this won’t be useful to someone who needs directions, it’s a fun diversion for students of history and geography.
myHomework is an interesting student productivity app that allows students to keep track of their homework, classes, projects and tests while interacting with a visually appealing notebook-like design.
Other popular free apps cover the areas of SAT prep (Vocab Quiz SAT lite), spelling (Spel It Rite), and chemistry (The Chemical Touch lite).
Top Paid Apps
Love Art: The National Gallery in London hosts one of the largest collections of European painting. For a small price, you can have load more than 250 paintings onto you iPhone. Includes paintings by Leonardo, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Renoir and Van Gogh. Also includes audio commentary.
The #1 paid application is BrainThaw ($0.99), an addictive math puzzle game that helps learners stay sharp and entertain themselves at the same time.
In the children’s education department, the 2nd most popular paid app is Wheels on the Bus ($0.99), which allows parents to sing and read with their children, listen to the song in five languages, learn to recognize different instruments, and record your child’s singing.
For more advanced students, interesting apps include Graphing Calculator ($0.99), which provides advanced graphing functionality with numerous mathematical functions and the ability to email a graph screenshot to yourself, and Starwalk ($4.99), an annotated star map.
The apps featured in this post are just a small set of the applications available, so if you’re an iPhone user (or potential user) interested in education, we recommend browsing the education category of the iTunes App Store. We’re excited to see what education innovations iPhone developers produce in the future…
This posted was initially developed by John, who writes about online education at UniversitiesAndColleges.org. We have since added some of our own recommendations to the list.
Education apps don’t have to be purposely “education-based”. Take, for instance, EverNote. This app surely would be an awesome quick note tool for any student (or teacher). Has a desktop and online version as well which makes for nice integration.
As educators we need to use any tool that works in nicely with our workflow.
That’s a valid point Jason. EverNote is certainly a great app. I mainly focused on the Education category for the sake of narrowing down the possible choices. It was tough enough picking only a few to mention there, can’t imagine how tough it would be with the whole App Store to consider. Also, apps like EverNote seem to get plenty of coverage elsewhere.
I’ve found quite a few other good educational apps browsing through
http://www.igoapps.com/search/do_search/10/3/2/1/10
Hello,
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=320174758&mt=8
I am the mom of a 4 years old little girl and I have an iphone ! I found out that in the appstore there were not enough good educational games for kids to developp their abilities and intelligence . So I decided to develop an application which will help and also give some fun for kids to play, to learn and write their alphabet and words.
This app “Write my name” is dedicated to all the parents who love to teach their child how to write their name or any words.
“Write my name” can help teach your kids to spell !
“Write my name” is an educational game which helps your children recognize the letters of their name and how to place them in order.
This game is very simple, you will like this easy app :
- You or your child enter your child’s name (or another word).
- Letters appear on the screen randomly.
- The kids have to place them in the correct order.
You can also play with any words.
This game will also help your kid to recognize words, boost his visual memory and constitute a pre-learning to reading skill.
Summer is here ! Make sure the kids get ready for the next school year :
“Write your name” helps toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergardens learn some basic words :
- Preschoolers, and kindergartners will learn to write and play with their first-name.
- Toddlers will learn and play with more difficult words, depending of their vocabulary.
This application is also a good way to help your kid to become familiar with your iphone and it is a good family game.
This is a great game for kids who get bored in the car, in the airplane, at the restaurant, or anywhere.
Kids between the ages 2 to 6 love to play with letters, words and their spellings.
Fun and educational ! Learn while having fun, it’s easy!
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=320174758&mt=8
Thanxs,
Julie
Hey everyone,
The iPhone and iPod touch have so much potential in the educational realm!!!
I’ve recently created a number of math-based educational apps that you might find interesting. Here’s a link to my website in case you’re interested:
http://web.me.com/douglaspneill/www.douglaspneillapps.com/Welcome.html
You should check out Stacks. It was just recently added to the iTunes App Store and is an awesome educational yet fun app.
Essentially it is professionally created flash cards that cover everything including math facts, geography, vocabulary words, trivia, quotes, and even some fun ones too!
Check it out: http://www.dustinkirk.com/stacks
-d-
Audio books on the iPhone are excellent entertainment! The Toy Lounge – http://TheToyLounge.com/ebooks – makes ebook and audio book apps for the iPhone. Now authors can bypass publisher headaches and publish their work directly to the iPhone and get paid.
We have developed a handful of applications for kids and mainly focusing on education category.
Math Magic: Kids can learn as well as have fun with math. They can practice addition, subtraction, multiplication and divisions. Random problems will be shown to the kids and they need to choose the correct answer
Word Magic: Kids need to choose the missing letters for the picture shown. Best suited for kids from UKG till 2nd standard.
Math Series: Kids need to identify the missing numbers. The numbers could either be in descending or in ascending orders
Match Magic: This application is best suited for younger kids < 6 years. They need to match the pictures/colors/count the numbers by identifying and matching them
Count Magic: This application is also suited for kids < 6 years. This app helps to kids to learn counting. They need to catch the number shown. As they keep counting, audio voice will help the kids in counting.
Think BIG: This app is kids in 5 to 10 age group. A group of numbers are shown. They need to pick up the largest or smallest number.
All of our games have rewards and stickers and scores built to motivate and encourage the kids.
Please check them out at http://www.anusen.com and videos @ http://www.youtube.com/kidsiphoneapps
Here are couple of blogs on our apps
http://tinyurl.com/c5kbmx
http://tinyurl.com/dmzyqq
We just posted a top 10 list of our favorite learning or educational apps. Check it out.
http://bit.ly/2PX8OI
I wrote an iPhone game to help teach addition that is similar to a solitaire bingo. You can see a sample sequence at http://bungouroca.com/Bungo_Uroca/Tutorial.html or download on the App Store at http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=333201634&mt=8
小填填 Xiao Tian Tian could be counted as one educational app.
It’s ranking No.2 under education section.
Try it out.!
iStoryNarrator is a story telling app for Kids
check iStoryNarrator in appstore .
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/istorynarrator/id341762926?mt=8
There’s a great math game I played ever since I was young called 24. The goal of the game is to compute 24 using each of the 4 given numbers and basic arithmetic. I recently created it for the iPhone. My friends all seem to enjoy it. And I think it would be great for kids.
You can check it out at http://www.twentyfourgame.com
iTunes link: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=342866191
A very cute app that my kids love to play is ABC Tutor.
The cartoon character Connor has such a cute voice.
Ideal for pre-school children learning their ABC’s.
If you are looking for a fun math app for your kids you might want to check out Match-Up Math.
In iTunes: http://itunes.com/apps/match-upmath
Using a fun tile-matching game (similar to Mahjong solitaire), Match-up Math is a great way to help kids hone their math skills. Colorful backgrounds and challenging puzzles make it entertaining and easy to learn about Fractions & Decimals, Multiplication & Division, Addition & Subtraction. Kids can choose to concentrate on any of the areas of math provided, or work on all of them.
Learn more at the My Turn Mobile website:
http://www.myturnmobile.com
Maria’s Spanish Class is easily the best app for learning that I have found. Here is the app store link:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/marias-spanish-class/id345599590?mt=8
or go to http://www.pigobo.com
For less than the cost of a Happy Meal…..This teacher developed, reading readiness program is geared to children ages 2-6. ABC Shakedown Plus is broken down into three games: Classic, See It, Say It and Hear It, Hit It.
Classic introduces each letter of the alphabet using a slideshow format with easy prompts to shake your way from A to Z.
See It, Say It and Hear It, Hit It will help your child master the letters of the alphabet through multi sensory, interactive game play that incorporates delightful animation. Each game builds upon the next, reinforcing skills that will put your child on the road to reading.
What sets this program apart from the others is that all the sounds are properly enunciated and articulated with the guidance of a speech and language pathologist. Imagine your child getting their first experience in reading readiness right from your iPhone!
(Also perfect for the reluctant, struggling, and challenged reader and proven successful with special needs children as well as ESL learners.)
Thanks,
Jayne Clare
App Developer
Sorry, My last submission was not about our free app. This is the write up for our free game.
ABC Shakedown: A Reading Readiness Program for ages 2 – 6
For less than the cost of a Happy Meal……
You can get an educational app that is entertaining and truly educational! ABC Shakedown is the first in a new series of educational apps brought to you by i-Itch Inc. This introduction game teaches the sound-symbol correspondence of each letter of the alphabet in a 21st century way. A daily visit will have your child on the road to reading in no time.
Letters are viewed in large format with user-friendly prompts to shake your way from A to Z. Your child will be getting their first experience in reading readiness right from your iPhone!
What really sets this app apart from the others, is that it was created by two teachers and all the sounds are enunciated, articulated and properly spoken with guidance from a speech pathologist. Also perfect for the reluctant, challenged, or struggling reader, and proven successful with the special needs population and ESL learners.
Make sure to check out the Dr. Seuss iPhone apps developed by Oceanhouse Media. “The Cat in the Hat”, “Dr. Seuss’s ABC” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” are all available as eBooks!
Ted Geisel wrote his Dr. Seuss books to help educate elementary students. Check out his iPhone apps at: http://www.oceanhousemedia.com/drseuss
Acoco Interactive http://www.acoco.com has been releasing free and $.99 apps for a few months now: Math Kingdom (simple math with role play story and handwriting recognition), Penny Me (coin counting games), Play ‘n’ Say Vehicle (flash cards with speech recognition). Check it out!
Hi,
I thought it would be a good idea to have an application to help students keep track of their homework and marks / grades. So I created an application to that effect. It is called Agenda+. I am hoping it will be helpful to some people. The marking is configurable to support most of the systems used around the world.
Cheers, Philippe
To add more to the conversation, I’ve interviewed two interesting developers who have created very unique educational iPhone applications. For Zeebu Mobile, they have created a “learning the alphabet” application for toddlers (http://untether.tv/ellb/?p=4) and PocketPhonics applies synthetic phonics and an iPhone to help teach children how to write (http://untether.tv/ellb/?p=422). Both great little app.
Yet another great app that helps users learn math facts using math flash cards:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flashtopass-free-math-flash/id330482882?mt=8