I said I’d do this a long time ago, so here goes my quick 5 minute post on the iPad/iPod touch in the classroom. I’m not near my school iPads or iPods, so this will be a quick top 5.

DropBox
This is the most important app on my students’ iPods, as I can push any file I want to them. Currently, that means Google Forms for my students to fill out on the stories they are reading and the apps they are using, the songs we have been singing in Morning Meeting, and stories from OCR.

iTalk
iTalk is a voice recorder, where I have my students practice their fluency in the books, especially their leveled books. I also have them record themselves on Raz-kids.com, but the recording on that site are for me to listen to and do a running record on. iTalk recordings are for their own personal practice.

PuppetPals HD
Storyboarding practice for my students by creating a video using puppets and backgrounds. To get more puppets it costs more, but the basic one is free. To see it in action, check out this video of my students or read this EdWeek article.

Teacher’s Assistant Lite
While I own the paid version of this, the lite version allows you to keep track of behavior of up to five students. You can insert the behavior, consequence, who you contacted, and it automatically saves what time it occurred. You can then easily email that information to a parent, or as I do, use it to remind the student of the actions they took earlier in the day. Much easier than keeping it all in my head, I’ve got to say.

Evernote
Evernote allows me to keep an electronic portfolio of all my students’ work. This is especially helpful with the whiteboard desks in my classroom, but I can also use it to snap a photo of anything that I hope to hold onto for later use. I find this especially helpful when I’m visiting another teacher’s classroom and I really want to remember a chart or poster they have up in their room.

Let me know what you think and definitely contribute your own!