This is the first app that I installed on my iPad. You can use the camera on your iPad to make video calls or you can make voice calls. I actually used it Wednesday night to skype with my Mom as she opened her birthday gift from us! Great for visiting with family far away! At education.skype.com are many great resources for using Skype in the classroom. Find the app here.
This is the second app I installed. If you are a netflix user (you have to already pay for the service) you can install this app and watch movies on your iPad. Note: This is an app for home - just wanted to clarify that I'm not recommending using this one at school. There is a lot of discussion about whether it is legal to show educational movies from Netflix in class but it is very unclear. I would avoid using it in my classroom. Find the app here.
If you are a Facebook user, this is a great app to access your Facebook account. Find the app here.
Now we are embarking into an app that can be useful in the classroom. Google Earth is an amazing tool for looking at the earth in a very hands-on way. Take a bird's eye view of Evansville or any place in the world. If you have a Google account you can save maps you create on your computer and view them on the app as well. This would be great for mapping out locations you may be studying. Find the app here.
With the Google Search app you can search just as you would with your computer but this app has some extra features. You can tap the microphone button and speak something and Google will search it. If that isn't amazing enough, if you tap the camera button, you can use the camera on the iPad to take a picture of something and Google will search images of that picture. This is a definite must-have app. Find the app here.
Box.net is an app that allows you to take files from your desktop computer and access them on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod. One great thing to note is that right now until December you can sign up for a Box.net account (on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod only) and receive 50 gigabytes (GB) of storage for a lifetime. How much storage is that? 50 GB would probably be more than enough for all of your personal documents at school and at home. If you remember the old floppy disks, 50 GB equals almost 37,000 floppy disks!! Find the app here.
Here are some great national and local news apps:
CNN App
Fox News App
News 25 Weather - Local - Local weather and radar
Courier & Press App - Read the actual paper on your iPad
As we start to see more and more of our texts online for students, we should begin to make ourselves comfortable with consuming and using etexts. It is different reading something on a device than actually holding the book. These apps are great for reading and I would recommend both. Another great aspect is that many older books are free as they move into the public domain.
iBooks
Kindle
Blackboard and Angel are essentially the same company now. If you download this app, you can access your Angel account from school on your iPad. The interface is very user-friendly and will most likely be on every student iPad so it would be good to start working with it.
Find the app here.
Okay, so maybe this isn't the most fun app but there is a lot of great information here as we transition to this new set of standards for teaching. You can access standards for math and language arts for all grade levels. It presents the standards by grade level in a very straight-forward way. Find the app here.