3 iPad apps to assist teaching mathematics

Mathboard

Featured in the recent iPad TV ad "Learn".

This is the best integer practice app or program I have found in 34 years of teaching math. - Tim Seiber, Math Teacher

MathBoard is a stunning app for teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems. The number of customization options available make this a brilliant app for making math fun for elementary school children. -www.androapple.com

MathBoard has charm without losing track of its fundamental purpose (Arithmetic drills). - MacWorld (4 out of 5 mice)

MathBoard is a fantastic math learning tool for your iPad. -- MathBoard is appropriate for all ages from kindergarten (with simple addition and subtraction problems) to elementary school where learning multiplication and division can be a challenge. You can control the range of numbers you want to work with, the amount of questions you want to answer and even assign a time limit per quiz. MathBoard will make learning math fun. 

MathBoard features:
- Random problem generation (up to 250 questions per quiz). 
- Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, Squares, Cubes and Square Roots
- Number ranges are configurable from -9999 to 9999, including the ability to require certain numbers to be in each problem.
- Intelligent "wrong" answer generation makes guessing more difficult. Includes the ability to omit negative answers.
- A quiz can be timed, and timing can be set as a countdown timer or elapsed time.
- A quiz can be saved making it simple to replay a similar quiz or the same quiz at a later date.
- Wrong answers are reviewable with both the incorrect and correct answer visible (and equation displayed). You can even generate a quiz from just the wrong answers.
- Problem Solver for Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division will explain the required steps to solve these types of problems.
- Quick reference math tables for Addition, Subtraction and Multiplication.
- LanSchool EdApp certified.
- Supports VGA/HDMI/AirPlay Output.

Wolfram Alpha Algebra Assistant

Taking algebra? Then you need the Wolfram Algebra Course Assistant. This definitive app for algebra--from the world leader in math software--will help you quickly solve your homework problems, ace your tests, and learn algebra concepts so you're prepared for your next courses. Forget canned examples! The Wolfram Algebra Course Assistant solves your specific algebra problems on the fly, often showing you how to work through the problem step by step.

This app covers the following topics applicable to Algebra I, Algebra II, and College Algebra:

- Evaluate any numeric expression or substitute a value for a variable.
- Simplify fractions, square roots, or any other expression.
- Solve a simple equation or a system of equations for specific variables.
- Plot basic, parametric, or polar plots of the function(s) of your choice.
- Expand any polynomial.
- Factor numeric expressions, polynomials, and symbolic expressions.
- Divide any two expressions. 
- Find the partial fraction decomposition of rational expressions.

The Wolfram Algebra Course Assistant is powered by the Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine and is created by Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica---the world's leading software system for mathematical research and education.

The Wolfram Algebra Course Assistant draws on the computational power of Wolfram|Alpha's supercomputers over 2G, 3G, or WiFi connection.

 Includes tutorials, lessons, quizzes, flashcards, decision trees, calculators, and glossaries for terms, formulas, and symbols. 

◊ “This app is the best statistics tool I’ve ever seen.” 
◊ “This could very well be the future of university textbooks.” 
◊ “It's a great tool to go to for an easy answer.” 
◊ “I can learn anywhere or anytime.” 
◊ “The quizzes help ensure I comprehend the lessons.” 
◊ “It gives real-life examples in each lesson and tables so I can easily reinforce the information I just read. 

The app was designed by educational psychology Ph.D.s, statistics teachers, and software experts. Many of us learned stats the traditional, boring way – through books and lectures. We always wanted more interactive, visual, and engaging ways to learn stats. Statistics has many abstract concepts so we use real-world examples to anchor your understanding. 

 Statisitics 1 for iPad

Includes tutorials, lessons, quizzes, flashcards, decision trees, calculators, and glossaries for terms, formulas, and symbols. 

◊ “This app is the best statistics tool I’ve ever seen.” 
◊ “This could very well be the future of university textbooks.” 
◊ “It's a great tool to go to for an easy answer.” 
◊ “I can learn anywhere or anytime.” 
◊ “The quizzes help ensure I comprehend the lessons.” 
◊ “It gives real-life examples in each lesson and tables so I can easily reinforce the information I just read. 

The app was designed by educational psychology Ph.D.s, statistics teachers, and software experts. Many of us learned stats the traditional, boring way – through books and lectures. We always wanted more interactive, visual, and engaging ways to learn stats. Statistics has many abstract concepts so we use real-world examples to anchor your understanding. 

Math Game Time

Math Game Time is a great hub for flash-based games and videos revolving around math. There are a ton of appealing interactive games targeted at students from Pre-K to Middle School. The video section of the site has curated a bunch of quality YouTube videos. For those that have an iPad, paid app versions of some of the games are available.

5 iPad Apps Every Teacher Should Have

Just to wrap up our week of apps for teachers here are some favourites that will make your iPad a little more productive in the classroom.  Enjoy

iWork Until Microsoft release office for the iPad iWork offers the MS Works equivalent of a productivity suite for the iPad. Pages, Numbers and Keynote make for a fairly impressive productivity suite for $30, or $10 each.

Teaching & Classroom Resources @ www.theteachinglab.com

The Elements: A Visual Exploration: Sounds a bit pricey for a periodic table, but the vividly animated illustrations of every substance our world is made of more than make up for it. $14

Bento: Organize your Life

Mobile Air Mouse: Do you use an Interactive whiteboard and have wireless keyboards and mice floating around the place that either don’t work or you have to actually sit in front of a computer to type something on your IWB.  Download and install Mobile Air Mouse and you can use your  iPad to do everything on your IWB.   Now I sit with my students and run a lesson.  Media controls, Keyboard and Mouse.  My all time most used app at school on my iPhone.  Works through a wireless network and is pretty painless to set up.  Check out the video below.

DropBox:  I own a laptop, 2 desktop PC’s at home, have files on the network at school and now have some stuff on my iPhone and an iPad.   I was going crazy trying to keep track of it all.   Drop box allows you to sync everything without any hassle at all to every PC you use both locally and in the cloud and now best of all you can access all of your files through your iPhone.  Also you can create public folders for your students to access files from the web too.  It’s free - Absolute Gold

Pi83 Graphing Calculator A simple calculator isn't enough for most math students once they hit high school, so having a graphing calculator handy is always welcome. And since Pi83 Graphing Calculator, which mimics Texas Instruments' Ti-83 graphing calculator, costs just 99 cents.  Never be outsmarted by your students again.

WorldBook – This Day in History. This interactive calendar is powered by World Book Encyclopedia and features historical information for each day of the year.  Struggling for a lesson idea today or just need to fill in 10 minutes with some great facts from history.

Cram Cram is designed specifically to help students study for a big test. The app allows them to create multiple-choice quizzes and study guides with a flash-card-like system. The app even randomizes the answers to ensure students aren't memorizing a particular option.  Best of all for teachers it has a massive bank of online tests you can access and administer.  Don’t sit up all night planning or correcting a test again.

History: Maps of the World One of the most important tools any student can use is a historical map of the world to help them in both geography and history classes. That's where History: Maps of the World comes in.

After downloading the free app, users can view maps of all the continents at different points throughout history. The app features up-to-date maps showing current boundaries. But where it provides the most value is in its historical maps, which display boundaries and important places from periods throughout history. It's a great way to help students increase their effectiveness in geography and history class and a great discussion point in geography lessons.

Flash-Me - This educational iPhone App lets you use Cramberry (the amazing online flashcard maker) on your iPad. With Flash-Me, you can create, edit and study your flash cards on your iPhone.  These can be later shared with students in class.

Mathematical Formulas Mathematical Formulas is a must-see app for any math student. It not only helps users gain access to hard-to-remember formulas quickly, but it might also prove to be a handy studying tool.

Like me if you are not Rainman and your students hit you with something from left field in maths this is a great tool to get you out of what can be an embarrassing spot.

Anyhow I know some these are iPhone apps but I am sure that by next week there will be another thousand useful and useless apps that will take their place.  Enjoy your playtime over Easter with your iPad and let me know what you have found useful.

3 Great Android Apps for Teachers

Earlier in the week we looked at three apps for the iPad for busy teachers so we thought it only fair that the largest mobile platform get their dues to.  So here are three Android apps that will make your teaching job a little easier and more efficient.

DataViz  - Documents to Go

Now you can get your work done no matter where you are by using Documents To Go to view, edit and create  Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files as well as view Adobe PDF files on your Android-powered device. And since it is full featured yet easy to use, Documents To Go is one mobile office suite that makes good sense for teachers.  Take a look at it here.

Dropbox for Android

This one is an absolute no-brainer for anyone that uses a computer or mobile device of any type.  Synchronise and access any of your files and documents anywhere anytime.  Never use a USB Key again.  Oh yeah and it's free too.  Access Dropbox Here

Evernote for Android

Evernote has really changed it's mobile use dramatically over the last few years to switch to a true mobile app.  Evernote is a great tool for taking notes, photos, etc. in meetings conferences and now the option is available to share them with teachers and students with ease. Access Evernote here.

50 Essential iPad Apps

We often get people sending us recommendations for great iPad / iPhone apps that teachers can use.  But today I came across this great list from IGN.  There is a great mix of productive and fun apps that you might want to take a look at.  The complete list can be found here.

New Garageband Killer uJam is the best web app of 2011

Ujam is without a doubt the best free app I have seen pop on the web in the last 12 - 18 months and it is a really fresh and unique piece of software that is going to blow your students minds.  Essentially uJam let's anyone create a professional piece of music in minutes by simply singing.  No instruments required. ( You must see the video below to believe it.)

Next, the user can edit the style of their music. There are many to choose from and each allows the user to produce something that sounds exactly the way they want it to. After polishing their personal music creation, the user can share it with others. It can be sent privately to a select group of friends or family members or shared with a larger group of fans.

It has some big names behind it including Han's Zimmer and Pharrell and is currently totally free but I get the feeling that may not last.  You really need to take a look at the videos below to get an idea of how this amazing app works but I can definitely see this up there with facebook and myspace as internet phenomoenons for teenagers and aspiring stars by the end of the year.

Just about everything Ujam can do is unique. The application guides musicians of all levels to building their own music. Style settings allow users to produce a piece they can be proud of and would want to listen to.

Check it out here.

I'd love to hear your songs and thoughts on uJam

10 essential iPad apps for high school students

 Thanks to Scott McGlynn at teach2thefuture.net for this one.

The free Dictionary.com app delivers trusted reference content from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, including nearly 1,000,000 words and definitions and 90,000 synonyms and antonyms. No Internet connection is needed. The app also features audio pronunciations, similarly spelled words and Dictionary.com’s popular Word of the Day that is enjoyed by millions of people. 

Accessing Wikipedia has never been faster and easier than with Wikipanion, designed for easy, search, navigation and display of Wikipedia entries. Streamline your browsing with history grouped by visit date, and bookmarking that not only bookmarks individual entries, but individual sections within an entry.

Graphing Calculator turns your phone or iPod into an intuitive high-resolution function plotter and scientific calculator. Features include the following:

- Includes a powerful, yet easy to use scientific calculator.
- Quickly plot and trace multiple equations on the same graph.
- Custom keyboard to speed up entering in equations.
- Pinch to zoom and drag/slide for scrolling the graph in real time.
- The graph view supports portrait and landscape modes.
- Take screen shots, and e-mail graphs to yourself.
- Evaluate your graphs at any x value using the calculator screen.
- Find the exact (x,y) coordinates for roots, intersections, minimums and maximums using the trace mode.
- Supports graphing polar and parametric equations.
- Currently supports the following functions: log, log2, log10, ln, exp, sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan, sinh, cosh, tanh, asinh, acosh, atanh, csc, sec, cot, gamma, lgamma, nCr, nPr, min, max, degrees to radians, radians to degrees, absolute value, square root, ceiling, floor, and mod.

myHomework is a simple and easy to use iPhone application that allows you to keep track of your homework, classes, projects and tests while interacting with a really cool design. myHomework’s design tends to resemble our day to day notebook, the sections are separated by colorful “sticky pads” that marks the page.

You can quickly enter your class schedule and use it to differ between homework assignments. myHomework will also notify you when you have late and upcoming assignments by numbering them on your application icon. Late assignments will be marked in red, next day upcoming assignments will be marked in orange, and all other upcoming assignments will be marked in blue. So you can easily identify which homework you definitely need to look into.

Like reading? Fire up Books and download a few of our 23,469 classics, free of charge!

We take 23,469 classic books, package them up, and make them all available to download and read with our fully featured ereader.

Books unlocks a menu of public domain content, allowing you to acquire some of the great books of human history. Letters of leaders, the collected works of geniuses, the finest Victorian novels, the plays of Shakespeare, the philosophy of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie.

Explore the properties of the elements, the standard amino acids, and the nucleobases with The Chemical Touch. A touch sensitive periodic table and chemical information companion, it provides a wealth of information right at your fingertips. Recolor the periodic table by selecting properties other than Atomic Mass to visually investigate periodic trends. Having exhausted the built-in information, the internet button opens the Wikipedia page for the selected element, amino acid, or nucleobase.

 Mathematical Formulas is the perfect app for you who likes mathematics and easily forgets formulas which you need in certain situation. Without a good app, it's tough to remember all these complicated and easy forgettable formulas. You don't even want to write down all you formulas on ten or even 20 different post-it papers and loosing them all the time. But hey, why don't have them in ONE place and easily access them whenever you want to?

This app is especially made for this kind of a situations. Mathematical Formulas contains all the basic functions you'll need. You won't no more worry about forgetting the basic formulas such as the quadratic formula and etc.

History:Maps of World is a fun and educational collection of high-resolution historical maps.
Check it out to keep up with your history, learn something about history.

Features
- Wide variety of historical displays
- Support for Category/Era view
- Keyword Search
- Displays the source about each map
- Zoom in/out (zoom-in/out with pinch, zoom-in with double tab, and zoom-out with two-fingers tap)
- Free screen rotation
- Not require a network connection

The complete CIA World Factbook at your fingertips, including extensive information on more than 250 countries and locations throughout the world. Whether you're an avid traveler, a busy student, or someone who just likes to stay informed, this is the app for you!

 

Not only does it translate English sentences into foreign languages – it
READS THEM BACK TO YOU IN THAT LANGUAGE!

iTranslate is a great way to:
- Study vocabulary the fun way.
- Have a list of important phrases on hand while you are on vacation.
- Communicate immediately with someone who normally couldn’t understand you.

Features Include:
- Up to 500 characters per translation.
- Unlimited number of phrases.
- Real dynamic text-to-speech translation, these are not prerecorded

4 iPad and iPhone apps to improve junior literacy and numeracy skills

With over 100,000 apps on the apple market it is important to revisit the latest educational apps available today I have found 4 great apps that will help your little ones improve their reading writing skills without breaking the bank.

Kidcalc - Price $1.99 buy it here

KidCalc teaches number recognition, counting and math to pre-schoolers, kindergarteners and elementary school aged children using flash cards and puzzle games, with engaging artwork, animation and voice-overs.
KidCalc includes animated addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division lessons. KidCalc is easily configurable to adjust how challenging the counting and math puzzles are, with settings for toddlers learning numbers, for preschoolers learning to add and subtract, and for elementary school aged kids learning to count as high as 1000 and to multiply and divide.

KidCalc is jam packed with features and now teaches the following skills:
• Writing numbers
• Number recognition by sight and sound
• Quantity recognition with icons
• Counting forwards and backwards, with voice-overs, by increments of 1, 2, 3, on up to increments of 100
• Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with operands up to 1000
• Reading numbers spelled out, up to one thousand

Grover's Number Special  $1.99 - Buy it here

Hello Everybodeeeeeee! It is I, Grover, your cute and lovable waiter, and I need your help. Charlie the cook did not come in to the restaurant today, and the Customer wants his lunch right away! Join me in the kitchen to catch—and count—ingredients to make delicious and nutritious meals. 

Cooking with me is easy! All you have to do is tip your cute little iPhone or iPod touch back and forth, and my adorable little hand will move the tray. I will tell you how many things to catch, and we will count them together. It will be so much fun! Oh, pleeease play my little game—The Customer is getting very hungry!

"Elmo loves this game! Elmo can play all by himself. And Elmo’s friend Grover is so silly!" -Elmo

"This game look so good, me try to eat phone!" -Cookie Monster

"I thought this was the worst game ever, until Grover made a HUGE mess. Heh-heh!"
-Oscar the Grouch


Features:

•Part of the Count with Sesame Series!
•Original Sesame Street video!
•Easy to play
•Just tilt your iPhone or iPod touch to catch the ingredients!


Curriculum and Skills:

This educational application combines learning and fun! As your child plays with Grover, he can also build important school readiness skills, including counting, number recognition, and object identification.

•Visual discrimination
•Counting
•Number recognition

abc PocketPhonics: letter sounds & writing + first words Price $1.99 Buy it here

abc PocketPhonics was designed and reviewed by teachers who use phonics (letter sounds) to teach children to read. It is primarily aimed at preschool kids and those aged up to 7. To understand the best educational practice underpinning abc PocketPhonics, order the free guide to teaching kids to read from the app.

Phonics was recommended by the Australian Federal Government's Teaching Reading report in 2005.

LETTER SOUNDS
Simply put, phonics (letter sounds) is about helping children learn to read by understanding the sounds that letters make. 

abc PocketPhonics teaches the letter sounds for all the letters in the alphabet. It also teaches over 30 letters sounds that come from combining letters together (like “sh” and “ch”), because they are key to reading so many frequently-used words. Most apps only teach A to Z.

LETTER WRITING 
PocketPhonics visually demonstrates how to write each letter. Children enjoy practising their writing by tracing the letter with their finger (similar to a Montessori classroom where children learn first to trace letters with their fingers). PocketPhonics also works with iPhone-compatible styluses.

abc PocketPhonics will also (optionally) check the accuracy of your child's writing. 

170 FIRST WORDS
Using a unique, "letter sounds make words" spelling game, children learn how to sound out and spell over 170 frequently-used words.

iWritewords Handwriting Game Price $3.99 buy it here

iWriteWords teaches your child handwriting while playing a fun and entertaining game. Help Mr. Crab collect the numbers in sequence by dragging him with your finger - and drawing the letter at the same time. Once all the letters in the word are drawn properly, a cute drawing appears. Tilt your iPhone or iPod Touch and watch the letters slide into the rotating hole and advance to the next level.

Features:
• Learn handwriting the fun way
• 70 words/levels of uppercase letters
• 70 words/levels of lowercase letters
• 20 levels of numbers
• 26 levels (A to Z) of individual letter tracing for uppercase letters
• 26 levels (a to z) of individual letter tracing for lowercase letters
• Playback the accomplished words featuring your child's own handwriting
• Realistic physics and gravity for falling letters
• Play the ABC song by tapping or shaking your iPhone or iPod Touch like drumming
• Each letter and word is spoken as it was completed

I am sure that you know of plenty others so please post your suggestions below.