Faculty Development

iPad App Recommendations for Viterbo Faculty 

There are 60,000 iPad apps and counting in the iTunes App Store, and many more iPhone apps that can work on the iPad.  Below is a list of apps by discipline and purpose; feel free to comment so we can add more apps to the list.  Disciplinary apps are below Productivity apps.

Disciplinary Apps: Art | Business | Education | History/Geography | Literature | Music | Nursing | Sciences | Social Sciences 

Top Apps for Viterbo 

These apps have worked well for other iPad users at Viterbo.  There are thousands of great apps, but here are our top picks:  

• Chrome – Google Chrome is available on the iPad, and is a great alternative browser to Safari.
• DropBox – Mobile access to documents stored in DropBox.  Integrates with a folder on your computer for easy access and file transfer.
• Evernote – This is a research and notation app that allows you to text, email, tweet, or use the client to enter notes.  You can import and annotate visual and video content, as well as websites, pdfs, and other documents.  It’s intended to be a robust idea organization tool, and those in the academic community who have used it give it very high marks.
• MoodleEZ – While Moodle functions well in Safari on the iPad, the MoodleEZ app allows you to upload documents and interact a bit more seamlessly with course materials.
• Office² HD – This “office suite” app connects seamlessly to Dropbox, Google Drive/Docs, and Microsoft Live.  It also has the added feature of using Word’s “Tracked Changes” feature.  At $7.99, it’s cheaper and has better features than its closest competitor, QuickOffice HD.
• Prezi Viewer - This app lets you view your Prezi presentations, present them using the iPad via the touchscreen interface, and make quick edits to your Prezi's on the fly.  There is also an offline presentation mode.
• ScreenChomp – Recordable whiteboard that lets you create quick explanations and video tutorials.  From the makers of Jing and Camtasia, this screencasting tool is sleek, easy to use, and easy to share.  All files are hosted on ScreenChomp's website.
• Socrative – This app gives you a clicker system accessible from any web-enabled phone or computer.  Instructors can create questions on the fly or before class, and all data is stored and available for later analysis.

Disciplinary Apps: Art | Business | Education | History/Geography | Literature | Music | Nursing | Sciences | Social Sciences 

 Productivity Apps 

 Productivity Suites  

• Keynote – Presentation App from Apple.
• Office² HD – This “office suite” app connects seamlessly to Dropbox, Google Drive/Docs, and Microsoft Live.  It also has the added feature of using Word’s “Tracked Changes” feature.  At $7.99, it’s cheaper and has better features than its closest competitor, QuickOffice HD.
• Pages – Apple’s software to write, export to ePub and PDF documents.
• Prezi Viewer - This app lets you view your Prezi presentations, present them using the iPad via the touchscreen interface, and make quick edits to your Prezi's on the fly.  There is also an offline presentation mode.
• Quickoffice HD - An excellent app for viewing and editing Microsoft Office files.  It also seamlessly connects to Google Docs, Dropbox, and Evernote.  Highly recommended.

 Writing and Note-taking  

• Audiotorium Notes – Note taking for text and audio notes
• Dragon Dictation – Will translate speech to text that can be copied and pasted into another iPad program.  Comes from leader in the speech to text world, Dragon Naturally Speaking.  Does not work as well if you do not enunciate clearly.
• DropBox – Mobile access to documents stored in DropBox.  Integrates with a folder on your computer for easy access and file transfer.
• Evernote – This is a research and notation app that allows you to text, email, tweet, or use the client to enter notes.  You can import and annotate visual and video content, as well as websites, pdfs, and other documents.  It’s intended to be a robust idea organization tool, and those in the academic community who have used it give it very high marks.
• Good Reader – this app allows you to read, listen to, or watch any file (including .doc and .xls).  It’s a good general file management tool, but also allows you to annotate PDFs.  One of the other neat features is that you can sync with any FTP server or DropBox account, so file access is very robust.
• Notability – A handwriting, typing, and drawing app that also records voice annotations.  Import PDF files, record commentary for students, and email or sync with Dropbox.
• Penultimate – For the hand-writing notebook lover.

 Classroom Tools  

• AirSketch - A whiteboard tool that allows you to project and annotate a PDF or image to a computer through a wireless connection.  There is also a free version.
• Attendance – quickly take class attendance, email students who are absent.
• eClicker Host – Will work with any iPad, iPod, iPhone, or laptop computer.  Easy, quick polling, as well as in-class assignment development.  WiFi based, allows up to 32 students per session.
• iTunesU - This is the app version of Apple's iTunes University.  You can download course notebooks through this app to easily access all content in a particular app without downloading it all at once.
• SyncSpace - An interactive whiteboard that can be shared between two iPads or through an iPad and a web browser.
• Socrative – This app gives you a clicker system accessible from any web-enabled phone or computer.  Instructors can create questions on the fly or before class, and all data is stored and available for later analysis.

 Screencasting  

• Explain Everything - A robust recordable whiteboard/screencasting app that allows you to record multiple "slides" of images, text, and annotations.  Presentations can be exported to email, sent to Dropbox, or uploaded to YouTube.
• Educreations - A few less features than Explain Everything, but it's free.  Recordings can be shared through email, Twitter, or Facebook.
• ScreenChomp - From the makers of Jing and Camtasia, this screencasting tool is sleek, easy to use, and easy to share.  All files are hosted on ScreenChomp's website.
• ReplayNote – Screencasting tool that records what you are doing on the iPad, your voice, and then exports it to YouTube.

 Browsers  

• Chrome – Google Chrome is available on the iPad, and is a great alternative browser to Safari.
• Atomic Web Browser – free and .99c version – paid version allows for mobile and standard web browsing
• Puffin Web Browser - The best browser on the iPad that supports flash.  Flash pages can be viewed, but are slow on the iPad.

 Textbooks  

• CourseSmart – a PDF browser of textbooks from publishers Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Wiley, MacMillan and Cengage.  Available online, on Android, or in iPad.
• Inkling – Interactive textbooks, accessible only on the iPad.  Texts go beyond simple PDFs, providing videos, hyperlinked content, and other tools right inside the text.  A list of books is available at https://www.inkling.com/store/.
• Kno – Like Inkling, you can use interactive textbooks through their app.  Unlike Inkling, you can view books on your iPad or on the Web, and have all features in both formats

 E-books  

• iBook – The standard reader that comes with the app is very powerful, and focuses on making books more than a text experience.  Embedded charts, videos, and other visuals are a part of these books.  You can import PDFs to “your bookshelf,” and it also supports ePub, an open source reading format.
• Kindle – Vast availability of items for purchase, especially textbooks.  One recent improvement is the inclusion of page numbers in the Kindle edition.  Kindle is also developing a “library edition,” which we will be looking at in the near future.  Now offers textbook rental for students - http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000702481 
• Google eBooks – Access the Google Books project through the iPad.  Purchasing and offline reading is integrated into this app as well.

 Library and Research 

There are only dedicated apps for a few of our library databases. Naxos Music Library, Micromedex, and Science Direct all have apps which are decent, but lack some basic functionality. Gale, the Chronicle, and Ebsco also have apps, but they are almost useless for academic research. All of our tools are accessible through Safari, including our new ebook library, Ebrary.  

• The World Factbook: An app that stores information from the CIA World Factbook so that the user can access it any time, regardless of internet connection.
• iSSRN: An app from the Social Science Research Network in which the user can access over 260,000 social science papers written by those in the field.
• OECD Factbook: This app, put together by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, offers an entire mobile factbook filled with statistics on categories such as Prices, Energy, Labour, Population and Migration, Education, among many others.
• USA Factbook and Quiz: United States maps, important documents, president biographies, quizzes, individual state information, and more. Good study tool for basic US history.
• USA.gov App – Federal, state and local information on your iPad.
• Simplepedia – Wikipedia app that browses offline.
• Dictionary.com – Robust dictionary and thesaurus that can be used offline.
• Free Translator – Connects to the Google Translate API for translation into many languages.

Disciplinary Apps: Art | Business | Education | History/Geography | Literature | Music | Nursing | Sciences | Social Sciences 

Disciplinary Apps 

 Art  

• Adobe Photoshop Express – Edit and share photos.  A full version of photoshop  called PS Touch is also available.
• Architory – History of western architecture, focused on first year architecture students.  History of architects, a lexicon of terms.
• Art Authority – 55,000 works of art from 1000 western artists.
• iMovie: An app version of the popular video editing software. Ideal for light and straightforward editing tasks.
• Life for iPad – the Life Photo Collection
• LOCPix – Digitized photos from the Library of Congress.
• Louvre Museum – Virtual tour of the Louvre in Paris, France.
• Phoster – Use photos or images to create print-ready posters, including borders, texts, and other pre-made graphics.
• SketchBook Pro for iPad - professional-grade paint and drawing application.

 Business  

• Bloomberg for iPad – Stocks, news, and financial projections from one of the most prominent names in business news.
• Business Statistics  - Basic 101 reference on statistics for business students and managers
• Hoovers Near Here – App version of Hoovers database of companies.  Uses location data to locate companies in your area.

 Elementary and Secondary Education 

There are thousands of great education apps.  These apps are just a sample.  

• Cramberry Flashcards for iPad – Easy flashcard maker, accessible through the iPhone, iPad, and the web.
• GeoWalk HD – Articles on various topics (Animals and Plants, History, People and Inventions) are placed on an interactive globe model, leading to larger articles on the topic.
• iVocabulary: A language-learning study tool that gives the user access to over 2,000 files designed for foreign language vocabulary memorization. Languages available include Spanish, French, German, Italian, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and more.
• Mental Case Classroom Edition – Flashcard app that allows you t embed photos, video, audio, or images.  Pre-made decks available at Flashcardexchange.com.
• My Math Flash Cards App – Flashcards for basic math skills
• Rocket Math – Build a rocket ship with this app. Solve math questions to get extra "money" for better ship parts.
• Shake a Phrase – asks students to identify adjectives, nouns, and verbs within the context of a sentence.  Also includes “Story Starters” for encouraging creative writing.
• Wonders of Old Ancient Timeline – Visual timeline of ancient history
• Word BINGO – helps beginning readers recognize and locate more than 300 sight words.
• Word Wall – organized collections of words, develop sight words, word families, and rhyming.

 History/Geography  

• History 3d: Civil War – images from the civil war in 3D, taken from the negatives instead of scanned prints.
• World History Atlas - Overview of historical periods in map view
• Civil War America’s Epic Struggle – maps, multimedia, and images about the Civil War.
• Google Earth – Explore the world, including satellite imagery and other geo-located images.
• World Atlas HD – National Geographic maps of the world, from globe to street level views.
• Todays Documents – 365 of the most important documents from the National Archives

 Literature  

• British Library e-classics - digital copies of more than 40,000 classic books from the British Library collection.  Subscription required for full access.
• Shakespeare – the complete works of the Bard in one app.
• Story Kit – Create your own multimedia storybook.

 Music  

• Garage Band – Music creation and audio studio thatcan be used to create music or podcasts.
• Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD -  Play the piano anywhere with this app.

 Nursing  

• Muscle System Pro, Skeleton System Pro, Cardiovascular System, Urogenital System, Digestive System, I Muscle, Nervous System, Heart (http://applications.3d4medical.com/apps.php)  - Detailed, rotatable models of the human body and related systems.  Some can be seen in motion, some are static.
• Body Systems Anatomy Quiz - $1.99, based on content from “Systems Pro” apps.
• iPharmacy Pro – Pill identifier and medication guide, full and robust drug reference
• Medical Spanish – for times when a translator is not available, this app includes common phrases and responses in Spanish and English.
• MicroMedex – Drug Information only – for full version visit the library’s website.
• Nurse Tabs – Search for 340 common diseases and disorders by body system
• NurseTabs Pharmacology – Introduction to drugs, interactions, and considerations.
• Oxford Nursing Dictionary – tables, illustrations, techniques for nursing.

 Sciences  

• Chemistry Formulas – formulas for AP Chemistry.
• eleMints Periodic Table – Periodic Table of the Elements, including element properties, a molar mass calculator, and a plot graph.
• Frog Dissection – a basic dissection tool for the squeamish.
• LeafSnap – Identify trees from photographs of their leaves
• Math Ref - a mathematical app that lists “over 1,400 helpful formulas, figures, tips and examples of the equations and concepts”.
• Molecules – View, rotate, and study molecules through this app.
• Nasa HD – Explore NASA images, mission information, and news.
• OnScreen DNA Model – A visual guide to DNA.
• Quick Graph -  A basic graphing tool. Allows the user to punch in an equation and see it graphed. A great free alternative to any paid advanced calculator app, especially if all you need is the graphing function.
• Science360  – National Science Foundation access to engineering images and video, and news fromNSF funded institutions.
• Solutions - a chemistry app that helps you calculate the molecular weight, molarity and volume of chemical solutions.
• Star Walk – an extrodinary app that turns your iPad camera into a planetarium.  Night or day, locate planetary bodies and learn more through an elegant interface.
• The Chemical Touch Lite -  An interactive periodic table of the elements.
• The Elements – Visual exploration of the elements.

 Social Sciences  

• DataAnalysis – iPad App DataAnalysis is a general purpose iPad App for the plotting and analysis of all types of data that can be formulated as x,y pairs.
• Statistics Visualizer – dynamic graphs, statistics calculations, and results discussion.

Disciplinary Apps: Art | Business | Education | History/Geography | Literature | Music | Nursing | Sciences | Social Sciences