Top iPhone Apps for Teachers and Students (and others)

There are hundreds of apps to use for teachers and students. The problem is that many are either of poor quality or, let’s be honest, too pricey or pointless. I have compiled a brief list of excellent apps that work in the classroom and/or as independent tools for teachers, presenters and other professionals. This post builds on another review of mine about iPhone apps that enhance productivity.

1. Air Mouse Pro

There are free apps that will turn your iPhone, iPad or iTouch into a remote but they are not as powerful and simple to use as Air Mouse Pro. Perhaps the most effective feature for me is the ability to just move the phone to move the virtual mouse on the screen – great for Interactive Whiteboards. The features of this app is too long to list but here’s a quick video to demonstrate what you get:

As mentioned above, the best feature is the possibility of controlling the Interactive Whiteboard from the back of the classroom and allow students to add content to the board from iPod Touches. Air Mouse Pro is worth the £1.19 (!) and you won’t regret buying it.

2. Audio Note

This is one of the best apps for note-taking and recording that I have come across recently. By synchronizing notes and audio, AudioNote automatically indexes meetings, lectures, talks or study sessions.

It is simple to use and whilst you record you can quickly add text and annotations (drawings, diagrams and the like) all of which are added next to the time of the recording. Sharing is possible either via WiFi or email – great resource for both teachers, students as well as people who need a dedicated tool to document meetings, talks and so on.

If you want share the recording over a WiFi connection you will be provided with the address where you can download an HTML file with drawings, text file, PDF or an audio file.

3. Cram

This creative tool provides the teacher or student with the opportunity to create Flash-Cards and Multiple-Choice questions which can be saved on the iPhone/iTouch or synced with the  Mac (separate software). The strongest feature of Cram is the possibility of adding images to your activities as well as keeping scores of past tests. There are other free alternatives available to download on the AppStore but this one gives the teacher or student the power to customise tasks to suit your class or exam – simple and fun.

4. iVocabulary

Create your own content for language lessons with this simple tool. You are provided with a wide range of activities (constantly growing but last count: 2500 tests!) for different languages but you can also create your own text-based tests, Flash-Cards or Multiple-Choice with the typical iPhone buttons, sliders and menus. There is also a free software to download and use to create activities for the iPhone, though you’d need to buy the app (£3.49) for them to work. The beauty of this app is the ability for teachers to create straight-forward tasks that are customised for their students and the added bonus of using the free software to do so from your laptop.

5. iStudiez

This handy little app gives students the possibility of organising themselves using a suite of useful features including:

Timetable: colourful built-in planner lets you input and easy manage all types of schedules including classic, alternating (A & B weeks), rotating and block schedule. Different classes or courses can be colour-coded.

Homework and assignments: iStudiez Pro uses Push Notifications which allows students to set general alarm time for classes and separate alarms for each of their assignments and homework.

Today View: provides a summary of upcoming classes and homeworks.

Back-up: a handy little feature which allows students to email themselves a copy of the timetable at the click of a button.

6. Air Sharing Pro

This is one of the most powerful apps I have come across. It uses your WiFi connection to open up a gateway between your iPhone and Mac or PC. Accordingly, as a teacher you can then transfer documents or other files between your work laptop and home computer, amongst other uses. See the video below for more ideas.

“Air Sharing Pro makes using the iPhone as an external drive easy as can be. Any iPhone user who needs to view and move files on the go should download this app.” — AppReview

Check out this video on using Air Sharing Pro (note: not advertising).

I hope you also found these apps useful and exciting to use in the classroom. If you have come across other ones do leave me a comment : ) . Please also see another post of mine on iPhone apps to enhance productivity.