Below is a running list of the various iOS and Android apps and web-based tools I have used with teachers and students.
GarageBand - Free if you purchased your iOS device(s) after 9/01/13. Otherwise, $4.99/license for up to 19 licenses, $2.49/license on 20+ licenses on VPP - works on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch: for being less that $5, you get a powerful sound editor that allows you to make great Podcasts and audio files to lay over an iMovie project. Also, GarageBand comes with dozens of pre-made sound files to help you add more dimension to your audio recordings.
iBooks - free - works on iPad, iPhone, MacBook (w/ iOS7): this app is waiting for teachers on the other side of the digital divide. Paired with an iBook created by the teacher using iBooks Author on the MacBook, iBooks will take the place of most of the paper-based interactions that you'd have with your students. iBooks allows you to publish your materials for free and then use the cloud to sync all your students iBook book shelves seamlessly. iBooks allows the user to enlarge print, highlight it, bookmark pages, and engage a text more meaningfully than any paperback could allow.
iMovie - Free if you purchased your iOS device(s) after 9/01/13. Otherwise, $4.99/license for up to 19 licences, $2.49/license on 20+ licenses on VPP - works on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch: hate wasting HOURS AND HOURS of class time for boring, monotonous student presentations? Then, iMovie is your answer! Hate lecturing at your students without any graphics or supporting visuals? Then, iMovie is your answer. Want to embed some great intro videos in your iBooks Author project? .....Guess what?! Then, iMovie is your answer! This software is amazing and, personally, I think that Apple could charge a lot more for this very affordable software. I have it on my MacBook Pro, my iPad and my iPhone. Each device as a few different nuances to iMovie, but the end product is always so amazing. iMovie works well with GarageBand and iPhoto. It provides you with a format where you can synthesize different artifacts in a great visual presentation that can be exported to YouTube and elsewhere.
iPhoto - Free if you purchased your iOS device(s) after 9/01/13. Otherwise, $4.99/license for up to 19 licences, $2.49/license on 20+ licenses on VPP - works on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch: iPhoto is a great supportive software that you can use to create meaningful photo streams in the classroom, capture images and share them with your students and, also, import images into iBooks Author, Keynote, Pages, Numbers and other applications. It's funny (strange) to me that Apple would gift iBooks to everyone with so much free content, yet it charges for iPhoto and provides no content for this app. ...Hmm!
Keynote - Free if you purchased your iOS device(s) after 9/01/13. Otherwise, $9.99/license for up to 19 licences, $4.99/license on 20+ licenses on VPP - works on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch: PowerPoint needs to bow down to a far superior software application: KEYNOTE. Everything from transitions to Inspector to embedding video, audio, images, it's all smoother, cleaner and turns out to be a more polished final product than PowerPoint can offer. Keynote presentations are drag/drop-able into iBooks Author projects that you're working on. AND you can open PowerPoint presentations that you have on file in Keynote. Then, it's just a matter of saving the file as ".key" and you can manipulate it just like a Keynote file. Students are able to send the file via email as a PDF or PowerPoint file.
Numbers - Free if you purchased your iOS device(s) after 9/01/13. Otherwise, $9.99/license for up to 19 licences, $4.99/license on 20+ licenses on VPP - works on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch: currently our students are not able to make spreadsheets using their Google Drive accounts on the iPad. Apple provides us a dynamic resource in Numbers as a substitute to a more traditional spreadsheet. Students can make great spreadsheets of data in math and science classes, make spreadsheets to support research in social science classrooms, and then add images and text to the files to build out context. When everything is done, the student is able to send the file via email as a PDF or Excel file.
Pages - Free if you purchased your iOS device(s) after 9/01/13. Otherwise, $9.99/license for up to 19 licenses, $4.99/license on 20+ licenses on VPP - works on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch: Pages blends the best elements of Microsoft Word and Publisher into one word processing app. I love using pages. In particular, I make posters with Pages, then blow them up into a larger (36x48) format w/o any pixelation or distortion. Also, as I'm laying out an iBooks Author project, I'll type elements out in Pages and then I can easily drag/drop those Pages files into the iBooks Author file to fill in my book pages. And everything that I make on Pages can be exported at a PDF or a Word file. This app is one more tool to use for great word processing on the iPad.
AT&T (QR) Code Scanner - free - works on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch: You can take the URL for any website or web-based tool, make a QR code of it and have students scan it. In one second they're where you want them to be. To make a QR code follow these steps: (1) download a free copy of the app, (2) copy the URL, (3) go to QRstuff.com (4) select the 'data type' on the left, (5) paste the URL into 'Content', (5) hit the Enter key on your keyboard. The site auto-generates your code. You can download a pdf of the code to print off and post wherever you need.
Educreations - free - works on iPad: create stills, screenshots, screen-casts, and micro lesson recordings for your students. Have your students create any one of these things as an assignment to demonstrate understanding. Anyone can make an account on Educreations. If you (the teacher) make the account you can have your students find your 'class' and dump work into a common folder. This app pairs well with DropBox (see below). You (the teacher) can make one account and use DropBox.
Evernote - free/paid - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone/Android): take notes, voice memos, screenshots, photos and share all your content with stakeholders and collaborators. You can export content via a URL or share notebooks with individuals and groups by sending out e-mail invitations. A free account allows you up to 60mb/mo of sharing. A paid account ($5/mo or $45/yr) offers you unlimited uploading/ sharing/exporting. I have a free account and use it daily and I've never exceeded my 60mb/mo allowance.
Google Chrome - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): Apple products come with Safari installed and Safari is becoming a more dynamic browser with each upgrade it undergoes. In my opinion, Google Chrome is the business. On top of the great collaborative power that comes with Google Drive (see below), Chrome allows you to personalize your browsing experience, install apps and extensions and make it your own.
Google Drive - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): installing 'Drive' onto your iPads is a great compliment to Google Chrome for iPad (see above). Drive allows users to create/share Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms and Drawings. Items made in Drive can be exported as their equivalent Microsoft files. On the iPad your students are now able to create Slides along with Docs and Sheets. You can also upload photos and videos on the iPad. For the full Drive experience you need a laptop or desktop.
Google Earth - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): I remember when Google Earth dropped. I saw it online in the spring of 2006. I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. ...And it's only gotten better! On the iPad you're able to look at locations in 3D and include layers (e.g. Places, Businesses, Panoramio Photos, Wikipedia, Boarders & Labels, Roads, and Oceans. This app has powerful application in any course. First assignment should be to have students find their house/explore the neighborhood. If you don't build in 15 minutes for them to do this at the beginning, you'll never get it out of their system.
Notability - $1.99/license for up to 19 licences, $.99/license on 20+ licenses on VPP - works on iPad, iPhone: this is another superb app for any teacher who supports students with PDF files and who wants students to engage the PDF files through individual work and reflection, group collaboration or whole group analysis. You're able to import an original (shared through Google Drive), save an original version in GoodReader, and annotate the proxy copy to your heart's content. Students are able to export their annotated copies to the teacher for grading.
Prezi - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone/Android): create dynamic multi-dimentional presentations online and open them anywhere you have an internet connection. You're able to easily export, embed and share your Prezi. Prezi supports PowerPoint uploads so you can redefine your slide sequence whenever you need to. This is a great work-around if you don't have Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote on your cpu.
Twitter - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone/Android): the true original micro-conversation tool, 140 characters that transcend geography, class and creed. More and more teachers are harnessing Twitter's potential. Twitter allows for comments, Vine.co videos (see below), images to be posted and shared with a unique hash tag ( # ). The hash tag indexes each tweet so you can search for your students' posts and they can search for yours with the support of the hast tag. With only 140 characters every character u fold into your tweet must be scrutinized for potency. If you are wary about using Twitter, I recommend you try TweetChat or TodaysMeet (see below).
The web-based tools...
FutureTweets - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): sign in with your Twitter user name and password. This site allows you to tweet, embed a hash tag, set a date and time for the tweet to go out and voilà! If you are having a live tweet chat with your students in class, I'm not sure FutureTweets will enhance the experience. However, if you're incorporating homework or Twitter-based work prompts for your students then you can pre-program the tweets while you're doing your unit planning weeks in advance and be done with it.
MacX YouTube Downloader for Mac - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac) WHEW! That's quite a cumbersome name. However, this applications does anything but encumber your efforts to embed great YouTube videos into your Keynote presentation or iMovie files. You'll walk through a few short steps and then you're able to grab any YouTube video and download it to your laptop or desktop. Also you don't have to worry about the audio that comes with the file because in iMovie you can strip the audio from the file and put in your own narration! Also, you can save video files in various formats and use them in non-Mac applications.
Padlet - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone/Android): foster great collaboration and discussion through Padlet in and outside the classroom. You can create walls and change the background (Wallpaper), change editing settings so students can either create their own posts or build out a post that you've started for them (as individuals or groups) (Privacy), customize the URL (Address), along with a few other options.
PollEverywhere - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): At Bogan we are looking into developing a digital toolkit for teachers who have a high saturation of smart phones in their class sections. PollEverywhere is a fantastic online tool that allows for teachers to create polls formatted as multiple choice, either/or, and yes/no. PollEverywhere tallies responses in realtime so you may not want to hook your laptop or PC to an LCD projector right away. But after a minute or two of response time, you can project to the class all the data collected from your student's submissions. We've used this tool during staff PD to solicit feedback on various topics and then redirect our course of action based on the the input of our faculty and staff.
Remind101 - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): So many of your students have cell phones. Let's use them to communicate due dates, homework links, and test and quiz reminders! YOU'LL NEVER SEE YOUR STUDENTS CELL PHONE NUMBERS! They are cloaked by Remind101. You'll spend about 15 minutes creating your account, and generating free unique text numbers for each of your classes. Each class will get a unique number and a sign-up code. Have your students pull out their devices and text the sign-up code to the unique number. Remind101 will push out a text asking your student to type his/her name. Encourage your students to respond appropriately. From this point, you can edit the students' names, delete students, and push out messages up to 140-characters in length. Use in conjunction with Google Calendar to model scheduling and planning for your students.
Storify - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): sign in with your Twitter user name and password. Once you and your students have compiled tweets on Twitter using a unique hash tag, you can mine out all of them by hash tag to create a new narrative, study guide, review guide or other scaffolding mechanism for students who may have missed the conversation due to an absence. Storify allows you to rework or tweak the narrative to make a product that might be more potent for your students.
TodaysMeet - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): the ultimate backchannel. Create spontaneous chat rooms that are private. TodaysMeet is a great tool for iPad teachers, computer teachers. Chat rooms can exists for immediate use and then the contents will remain visible for those people who know the unique URL for 2hr, 8hr, 12hr, 1 day, 1 week, 1 months or even 1 full year. You're able to print off transcripts for yourself or your students for further review and reflection. For more information on TodaysMeet and the act of back-channeling, read my blog post by clicking here.
TweetChat - free - device agnostic (works across PC/Mac/Tablet/iPad/iPhone/Android): sign in with your Twitter user name and password. A proxy for Twitter; TweetChat allows you to search for threads via the hash tag ( # ) that is being used to link tweets. You would (1) create a unique hash tag, (2) have students go to TweetChat and sign in with their Twitter credentials, and (3) post comments including the unique hash tag. You can see comments as their posted through TweetChat's refresh option that allows you to get a fresh screen every 10 seconds (on the iPad) or 5 seconds (on the MacBook or PC). When the conversation is through, you can go to Storify.com (see below) to mine all the tweets via the hash tag then create a narrative and export that narrative as a PDF for you/your students to review at a later date.