Top free iPhone educational applications
Mar 26
posted by Mark Christie in
iPhone, Educational Sites, Languages Other Than English, Geography, Languages
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This article is taken from http://www.openculture.com which contains fantastic open source resources for you, me and our kids. By way of example, it was World Water Day the other day which I only knew because there was an offer by government to subsidise the purchase of rainwater tanks. Now, if you go to http://www.openculture.com/2010/03/our_thirsty_world_a_free_national_geographic_download.html there is a free resource available until April 2 on the subject.
At a conference last year, over one third of the participants had an iPhone. Half my nieces and nephews have an iPhone. Half the people in the lift at work who want to avoid i-contact, look at their iPhone... so here is the borrowed article...
Since the release of the iPhone App Store, numerous sources have commented on the potential of educational apps. While these apps can’t compete with the general popularity of gaming and leisure apps, there are a number of educational apps that mobile learners will find handy.
Continue on to view the top free iPhone apps for education.
Top Free Apps
Open Culture: Our iPhone app gives you free mobile access to our educational media collections. Free audio books, university courses, foreign language lessons, science podcasts and much more. Per Apple rules, you will need to use wifi to download files.
Dictionary.com: Pretty simple, but handy. A good dictionary in your pocket.
FORA.TV: FORA is an excellent resource for smart video, featuring a steady stream of talks by today’s thought leaders. To access their videos, you can download their free app, or point your mobile browser to m.fora.tv.
Kindle: This free app from Amazon lets you download books straight to your iPhone. The Kindle store contains many free classics books, but one of the easiest ways to access these books is to visit our collection of Free eBooks.
Louvre Museum: From the most important museum in Paris. According to Lifehacker, this “amazingly slick free app provides a virtual tour of its galleries and lets users check out the works of everyone from DaVinci to Michelangelo. The app gets you up close and personal with paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and even the French Crown Jewels.”
Moon Globe: The free app puts the moon in your pocket with 3D graphics and touch screen navigation.
NASA: Discover a wealth of free great space travel information on this free app. The NASA App collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources in a convenient mobile package.
Shakespeare: A nice app that puts the complete works of Shakespeare on your iPhone. As you’ll see, the app comes with some handy functionality: you can search the text by keyword and also increase/decrease the fonts. Plus the app automatically remembers the last page you read.
Stanza: Another good app for downloading free e-books on the iPhone. Once you download the app, navigate to the “Online Catalog” section and then focus on the “Project Gutenberg” materials, which contains a long list of free classics.
TED: TEDTalks need no introduction. They’re perhaps the most popular video lectures on the web, featuring talks by “the world’s leading thinkers and doers.” Now you can access these talks on your mobile phone too.
The Iliad and Odyssey by Homer: The ancient tradition and Western civilization go straight back to these two great books. Get them fore free.
USA Presidents: A flash card app that teaches you cool facts about the historical line of American presidents.
Given the iPhone’s capacity for audio and visual learning, it’s no surprise that many of the most popular education apps focus on language learning. Free Spanish Tutor, the most downloaded free app, comes from the 24/7 Tutor series, and it’s described as follows:
24/7 Tutor provides a set of the most common and useful words and phrases, organized by topic and category. An audio recording by a native speaker is available for each element. These are all integrated into a multi-function learning system, with measurement of progress tracked by quiz scores. A priority-filter mechanism is provided that allows you to optimize your efforts by focusing on those items most needing additional practice.
Another highly popular free language app is Japanese Phrases FREE. Like 24/7 Tutor, it also offers a paid version with additional content and features. There are also free applications available for French, Italian, Arabic, German, Korean, and Russian.
The second most popular free education app is Maps of the World, which allows users to browse 20 historical maps. While this won’t be useful to someone who needs directions, it’s a fun diversion for students of history and geography.
myHomework is an interesting student productivity app that allows students to keep track of their homework, classes, projects and tests while interacting with a visually appealing notebook-like design.
Other popular free apps cover the areas of SAT prep (Vocab Quiz SAT lite), spelling (Spel It Rite), and chemistry (The Chemical Touch lite).
