As any number of blog posts will tell you, iPads are great educational devices. They are also great fun to play with, but for now the majority of teachers across the UK haven’t been able to test-run iPads and associated apps in languages classrooms. The expertise on what you actually do with them, week-in, week-out in classes is limited. What absolutely can’t happen is that we all stop work, get the iPads out and play for a lesson or two before getting back to the serious stuff. I want the serious stuff to happen on the iPads too, but perhaps by stealth!
Big thanks have to go to the #mfltwitterati who have already shared lots of information about applications for iPads. Joe Dale in particular has set up a superb posterous blog to collect and sort new apps that may be helpful for Language study.
Accepting then that there will be a fair trial-and-error flavour to this, I decided to use a learning-led approach in finding my suite of applications to launch with my iPads, and have categorised them below. Apps have to come out of my Departmental budget so I am only paying for apps I know will deliver. If I can find a high-performing free alternative, all the better!
Skills: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening
Easy to find were applications to practice reading and listening. Add to that a variety of tools for hand writing and word processing, presentations, audio recording and video work and it becomes instantly easy to take quick activities out of the textbook and work on the iPad instead of in an exercise book. I need easy solutions for my team that can make ‘normal’ lessons with a listening and a speaking activity digital as well as all the whizz-bang stuff.
The apps:
- Apple Pages and Keynote £
- Voice reader text to speech – £
- Writepad German edition £
- Writepad Spanish edition £
- Writepad French edition £
- Audioboo – free
Creativity and engagement
To move students and teachers beyond simply digitalising the work they might have done previously, I wanted to add another layer to our application offering.
Apps which encourage drafting, honing, screencasting, editing and collaboration all featured in my wishlist and I found a few which I hope will help move these very 21st century skills on.
The apps:
- Garageband £
- Comicstrip – £
- Storykit – free
- Storybird - free
- Our Story – free
- Toontastic -free
- Comic life £
- Fotopedia Heritgage – free
- Zapd – free
- iVocaudio £
Reference
This is a growing category and one which deserves a blog post of its own. There is an explosion of fairly mediocre reference apps for Language-learning on iTunes and trawling through it to find the gems is a long job. Whilst I keep looking I have chosen to put a wordreference.com link front and centre. I haven’t yet found a more accessible free language reference tool which works as well.
The apps:
- Wordreference.com – free
- Lonely Planet guides
Authentic materials
I am really looking forward to using some authentic news materials from the large number of resources providing ‘real’ content I have chosen. Enabling students to browse, follow their own interest and curiosity and engage with authentic material without the teacher acting as middle-man will be very interesting. I am especially keen to make space for this lower down the school where the learning experience can be short of real-world material.
The apps:
- 20minutes.fr – free
- 20minutos.es – free
- 20minuten online.ch – free
- 20 minuten kino – free
- Tele 7 Programme TV – free
- Turbo.fr – free
- RTVE Noticias Deportes – free
- RNE Radio Nacional de Espana – free
- RTVE Clan -free
- El pais – free
- Mundo deportivo – free
- Libros clasicos – free
- Elmundo.es for ipad – free
- ARD Tagesschau – free
- ZDF Mediathek – free
- ZEIT online for ipad plus – free
- Die Welt for ipad
- Der Spiegel – free
- Lemonde.fr – free
- Libération – free
- Radio France
- France Inter- free
- FIP – free
- France Info – free
- France culture – free
- TF1 vision – free
- ARTE radio – free
Youth interest
This is a category I hope to expand. Increasingly, magazine titles are creating applications for their youth content and it is a great way to engage young people linguistically via topics they enjoy.
The apps:
- Zite – free
- Brigitte.de -free
- M6 par M6 web – free
- Petra – free
- Energy.de radio – free
Productivity
I have included apps like Evernote, Dropbox and Goodreader because I can no longer imagine my iPad life without them. It will be interesting to see whether we can manage their use effectively on a shared basis!
The apps:
Evernote – free
- Dropbox – free
- Goodreader £
- Dragon dictation-free
Learning to learn
This category is another area where I expect iPad use to make a big difference. Memorisation skills, seeing and applying patterns, revision note-taking and mind mapping are all so important. Getting apps like this in front of students will, I hope, build confidence and ownership.
The apps:
- Songify – free
- Bamboo – free
- Vocab Battle – free
- Free flashcards study helper
- Soundnote - free
Utilities
The Safari browser will be hugely important as I fully expect a lot of our work to be web-based, including through our Google learning platform. However, I also wanted something that can view Flash elements like Cloudbrowser or Puffin to add to the mix. We’ll look at the Diigo Chrome offering as a possibility too.
The next batch…
I expect to review and update the list after a month or so, and will be keeping an eye out for new developments. In your view, are there other must-have applications I have missed? What are the best reference materials out there? Already in my plans are a QR-code reader and Skype.
