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I have researched and reviewed apps that I believe could be helpful in a high school math classroom.  Some of these apps I have had the opportunity to try out with my classes, and others I have not.  I would love to hear opinions from others in the education field on these apps or other apps that might be helpful.  Please feel free to leave your ideas/comments here or anywhere else on this blog.  Thanks!

myHomework

Price:  Free ($1.99 for the ad-free version)

Purpose/Capabilities: 

The myHomework app is a student planner that allows students to make a list of their classes and record their daily homework assignments.  The homework section has three categories: complete, late, and upcoming.  The user can check off the assignment (an upcoming or late assignment) when he or she completes it.  It will then move to the completed section.  There is a calendar feature that will show the user the assignments marked on the day it is due.  The user can change the priority or type of assignment, perhaps listing a test as a high priority. 

Recently added is the teacher feature.  Teachers can create accounts through Teacher.io (https://teachers.io) that students can link their myHomework accounts to.  The teacher and student both must create accounts in order to do this.  Teachers can post their syllabus, any assignments, and notifications of any upcoming tests with corresponding descriptions.  The teacher an also upload attachments for the students to download.

Positive Aspects: 

This app has 469 reviews through the iPad App Store with 4 ½ out of 5 stars and almost all good reviews.  The myHomework app seems extremely easy to use.  It is a great way for students to keep track of their assignments and upcoming assessments.  The teacher component of this app is very new but seems like a great added bonus.  A student can simply search for their teacher by finding their school and going through the teachers who have accounts through Teacher.io.  The student can then select to join their class.  The assignments and announcements the teacher posts will automatically be added to the student’s agenda.  The student can then check the assignments off as he or she completes them.

Negative Aspects: 

The app does have ads at the bottom of the screen that can be an annoyance.  It costs $1.99 to remove them.  The teacher component of the app is very new, and therefore there is not much information available on it.  I did create an account for myself and linked it to my myHomework account.  It seems to work well.

Quizlet

Price:  Free

Purpose/Capabilities: 

Quizlet is a website and an app that aids students in studying.  The app has three modes – flash cards, learn, and scatter.  The flash card mode shows one side of the flashcard and allows you to swipe to see the answer side of the card.  You can also play it like a slideshow and go through the different cards automatically.  The learn mode allows you to key in your response and mark whether you got it correct or not.  Once you got it correct twice, it says you mastered that card.  It tracks your progress and saves it for you to view at a later point.  Finally, the scatter mode is more like a game.  It times the user in matching up the expressions/terms that go together.        

Positive Aspects: 

One of the great features of Quizlet is that you can share flashcards and use another person’s   Quizlet has over 21 million flash card sets already created to choose from.  The site also allows users to create new sets and choose whether they want to make it private, share it with their “class” (group they are in with others, which might be great for teachers to share with their students), share using a password, or make it public for everyone to view.

already made flashcards.

Another great feature of the app is that it works offline.  Once the user has the flashcard set, he/she can use it without connecting to the internet.  This is great if a student does not have internet access at home or if students are using it in school and the network is slow or busy.

Negative Aspects: 

The Quizlet app does not yet allow you to create your own flashcard set through the app.  You can, however, create it using the Quizlet website (http://quizlet.com) and then it will automatically appear on the app so long as it is linked to the same Quizlet account.  The app does claim this feature is coming soon, which would be a helpful addition.

Obviously, since anyone can create or share a flashcard set, it is possible to have incorrect information on the cards.  Students should be careful when selecting a premade set.

Math Ref

Price:  Free/$1.99

Purpose/Capabilities: 

Math Ref Free is the free version of Math Ref.  Both apps, as the names suggest, are reference tools for middle and high school level math courses (and physics).  The topics include algebra, geometry, trigonometry, series and sequences, differentiation, integration, probability and statistics, physics, algorithms, financial, Greek alphabet, and prime numbers.  Within each of these topics, there are subtopics to get more information about.  It gives the definition or equation for the given subtopic and provides helpful explanations and examples for these topics where applicable.  Also included is a section for you to write your own notes about the topic.  You can print or e-mail the information to yourself.

Positive Aspects: 

The free version of the app has over 700 formulas, figures, tips, and examples, and the full version has over 1,400.  It is a great, quick way for students to reference information on different mathematical concepts that is all in one place.  When going through the material, students have the opportunity to add their own thoughts in the notes section for when they refer back to the reference tool.

In addition to all the reference material the app has, it also contains “tools” which include a quadratic solver, a remainder finder, triangle solver, angle converter, and more.

Negative Aspects: 

The information for each of the topics is limited, but it is a great starting point for students to turn to in which they can add their own notes in order to make it more complete.  The other issue that may occur is the definitions or formulas may be slightly different than the ones given in class or in the course book.   Students should be made aware of this.

Sketchpad Explorer

Price:  Free

Purpose/Capabilities: 

Based on The Geometer’s Sketchpad software, the Sketchpad Explorer app allows you to interact with and investigate any document created in Sketchpad, allowing students to have hands-on experiences for investigating a variety of different concepts.  The teacher can create their own document using Geometer’s Sketchpad on their computer, or there is a large variety of pre-made materials available to use.  The students can then drag, manipulate, and animate the document to develop generalizations of the different mathematical concepts they are studying.

Geometer’s Sketchpad and Sketchpad Explorer are not only for Geometry related topics.  It is great for investigating elementary mathematics, algebraic concepts (such as slope, functions, understanding variables), trigonometry (unit circle, sine and cosine values and graphs, polar graphs and complex numbers), and calculus (limits, derivatives, and integrals). 

Positive Aspects: 

Sketchpad Explorer is a great, free way for students to visually see mathematical concepts in action by generalizing what happens when the visual is manipulated in different ways.  The app has a getting started tutorial that is helpful in learning the ins and outs of what the app is capable of.  It has several networked documents that can easily be accessed through the app.  This includes elementary mathematics, geometry constructions, ellipse constructions, dynagraphs, and slope.  It also has a link to the website for the app, which has many more already made activities to use in your classes that can easily be downloaded.  If you want to use this in your classes, you can save the document and upload it to your website/wiki.  Once the document is saved, students can access it at any time and refer back to what they learned.   Most of the documents take only seconds/minutes for the students to manipulate in order to make these generalizations.

Negative Aspects: 

Sketchpad Explorer was, for me, one of the more difficult apps to intuitively figure out how to use, at least initially.  However, once you have the documents already there, it is very easy to manipulate them to show the different concept.  It takes a decent amount of time creating different documents from scratch, but there are so many already made ones that this may not be necessary.

GoodReader

Price:  $4.99

Purpose/Capabilities:  

GoodReader is an app that allows its users to annotate PDFs.  Users can add typewriter text boxes, sticky notes, lines, arrows, freehand drawings, highlight important text, and more to their document.  There are a large variety of colors to use for all of these mark-ups, and they can each be deleted or edited if you make a mistake or want to change something.

GoodReader also makes it possible for its users to manage their files.  All annotated (or not annotated) text files can be saved in GoodReader.  The user can then create folders and subfolders to organize their work. 

In addition, GoodReader allows users to transfer files by syncing with different remote servers such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, and any WebDAV, AFP, SMB, FTP, or SFTP server.

GoodReader is primarily known for annotating PDF and text files, but it can also be used with MS Office, iWork (’08, ’09), HTML and Safari web archives, high-resolution images, and audio and video files.

Positive Aspects: 

GoodReader is a great app to assist in the workflow from teacher to student and back to the teacher in a paperless (or less paper) classroom.  Teachers can post assignments as PDF files on their wiki.  Students can go to the wiki, get the file, save it in GoodReader, complete their assignment directly on the document, and send it back to the teacher. 

GoodReader has so many options to mark-up text and is very easy to use!  After reading many reviews about GoodReader, I have found that many people refer to it as the “Swiss army knife” of apps.

Negative Aspects: 

GoodReader is $4.99, one of the more expensive apps that I am reviewing.  From what I can see, however, there is no comparable app that does everything that GoodReader does for less money.  IAnnotate and GoodNotes, are comparable apps that have free versions but with limited capabilities.  If you/your school can not afford $4.99/iPad, these free versions might be worth checking out.

Socrative (Teacher & Student)

Price:  Free

Purpose/Capabilities: 

The Socrative app has the same capabilities as the website.  There is a teacher version of this app and a student version of this app.  The teacher can create quizzes, exit tickets, or space race games for students to complete on the learning goals for the lesson.  It allows teachers to create both multiple choice and short answer questions.  It can be anonymous, or the students can be asked to fill in their name.  It can be used to quickly and easily assess students for content knowledge of any topic.  The teacher can run a “teacher-paced quiz” where student have a limited time to answer a question, then everyone goes to the next question, or a “student-paced quiz,” where students can have as much time as they need to complete each question.  

Positive Aspects: 

 Socrative is a quick and easy way for teachers to get real feedback on how well their students understand a particular topic.  The students generally like using this app because they can complete the questions without feeling insecure, since the other students in the class will not know their responses.  I use the quiz feature most often because it will create an Excel spreadsheet of the data from the class’s responses.  I mix up both multiple choice questions and short answer questions.   The teacher can program correct responses for multiple choice questions which will appear in green on the spreadsheet and wrong answers in red to make it easy to assess.  These assessments can be made ahead of time and can be as long or short and as general or specific as the teacher wants.

Negative Aspects: 

 There is no math type in Socrative, so it is hard to type in some equations.  In addition, I have had one or two instances where the student version of the app did not work for all my students during class.  In this case, I had them go to the website; it just took longer for them to get there.  There have been updates as recently as three days ago, so hopefully this has been fixed.

Overall, I love this app and website for the classroom.  It is an excellent way to informally (or formally) assess student understanding quickly and efficiently.  You have immediate feedback on how your students are doing before you move on to a new topic.