Tag: Education »

Learning how to write a good academic essay is a vital skill for many students but it's not always easy to learn how to achieve such great results. Enter an app by the name of High School Writing which hopes to help students learn exactly what they need to know to approach essay writing, right down to addressing college application essays.

The app, recently updated, includes ten major essays that students should learn. These consist of: Argumentative (Persuasive), Cause and Effect, Compare and Contrast, Descriptive, Expository (Informative), Five-Paragraph, Narrative (First Person), Narrative (Third Person), Opinion and Reaction (Response) Paper. Each essay type is vital for numerous different purposes so this app should cover all eventualities. It even goes onto teach students how to write the best college application essays to ensure that they know how to sell themselves appropriately.

Currently priced at $14.99 (regularly $19.99), High School Writing is one of the more expensive apps out there - however, its ability to teach critical thinking in such a simple way is priceless for those desperate to improve their grades.

High School Writing is available now. It's an universal app with the iPad offering some great dual-viewing fields allowing for side by side comparison of websites for research purposes.

Realising that the world is a globe and thus in theory someone on the other side of the world is in the exact same spot as I am now is a very odd thing to get to grips with. Written down it sounds a little like madness so it's no wonder that once upon a time people thought the world was flat. After all, if there's no easy opportunity to travel the world, how could anyone realise that actually the world doesn't stop at a certain point?

That brief, bordering on philosophical piece of rambling aside, Dig2China provides its users with the opportunity to see exactly where they would be if they were able to dig a hole through to the other side of the earth right that second. The phone vibrates as it 'tunnels' its way through the planet in order to surface at the other side.

Once the app pinpoints the new location, fun facts like the current time, weather and official language are shown plus there's a Wikipedia link for further information. Dig2China makes for an ideal yet fun geography app for young and old.

It's out now priced at $0.99.

Learning a new language is challenging work. Fortunately technology is around to make things a little simpler courtesy of apps like Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

The app is aimed at those learning English as a foreign language, promising cutting edge features such as full sentence pronunciations and thousands of detailed graphics that aim to bring words and definitions to life.

In all, there are 58,000 example sentences that can be listened to with the option for either British or American voices. 183,500 words, phrases and meanings are explained clearly with an integrated thesaurus providing plenty of synonyms and lists of collocations. As the dictionary will explain, collocations are words that go together. See? Even as a first language, there's a whole bunch of words that could be learned through this app!

Priced at $28.99, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary is on the heftier side of pricing but it's for a good reason. It's a comprehensive app and one that a book of the same depth would be considerably more expensive. For those learning English as a foreign language, this is an invaluable resource.

It's really quite easy to get words jumbled up, especially for those not 100% confident with their English language skills when it comes to writing things down. It's not so much the obvious mistakes that are easily made but more the subtle ones. Things like spelling breach as breech or compliment as complement. Small and subtle but it makes all the difference. For those who are keen to ensure that such blips are a distant memory, an app like WordWit has the potential to not only educate and entertain in its mission to decode the secrets of confusing word usage and spelling.

Hundreds of misused words are paired with the incorrect entry with the user needing to figure it out for themselves. Simple explanations are offered for these variances to ensure that the differences are laid out obviously for those learning their way around the language. There are even handy mnemonics offered to ensure that the correct answer is remembered easily for the future. All of WordWit's entries have been written from scratch by their team with even the quotes featured throughout carefully researched and chosen for the purpose of educating. The quotes themselves are frequently educational too which is always a benefit.

Crucially, WordWit maintains the fun factor with quizzes available to keep things entertaining as well as educational. The ideal way for any student to learn in particular. The quiz functionality isn't the only way to learn though with the option to look up specific words or browse the selection too.

For the word addict, it's also possible to suggest words that the developers may have missed out first time thus hopefully ensuring that they feature in future updates.

Fun and a way of learning something. What more could be needed in an app? WordWit is out now for $1.99.

I never get to visit zoos as often as I like as my nearest zoo is over an hour's drive away. Throw in the expense of visiting and it's just not as frequent as I'd like.

It's a similar problem for the likes of my young cousins who don't get to see animals anywhere often enough other than through the internet or books. Pocket Zoo HD won't whisk anyone physically to a zoo but it does the next best thing by offering over 30+ live animal cams so that users can see creatures from all over the world.

Animals available to view include amongst others the cuddly penguin, the majestic tiger, the quirky meerkat and the fearsome killer whale. Pocket Zoo isn't just about live cameras either with over 200 wildlife videos included as well as a virtual zoo with series of original animal illustrations. A string of facts are also included to educate young animal fans as well as real animal sounds.

Pocket Zoo HD looks like an ideal app to while away some time alongside younger relatives. It's out now for the iPad, priced at $3.99.

Babies are fascinated by pretty much everything going. It's no wonder too. After all, the world is an exciting and fun place to be in when you've never seen it before! While some technology is a little mature for little ones and the likes of Angry Birds might be out of reach for a few years yet, that doesn't mean that babies can't enjoy the iPad as much as any adult.

The latest app to help babies enjoy touch based interaction is Baby's Musical Hands. It's an app that features 15 brightly colored squares that babies can touch and interact with. Tapping a red square makes a drum sound while yellow plays piano notes and blue squares play a guitar noise. It's the kind of fun that babies will instantly love, feeling that they can change so much with a simple tap of the screen. Every now and then, a touch produces a rainbow burst of stars also which will no doubt cause a giggle of happiness from any baby trying it out. The overall mixture of audio and visual feedback is bound to cause delight as well as inform babies just how useful interacting with things is.

Full multi-touch support is there so that the iPad can never be overwhelmed by the baby wanting to touch in a few different places. For a more quiet experience, parents are also able to either use the iPad mute switch or turn the volume down so that the baby can continue to enjoy the visual joys without the sounds that come with it.

Having been developed by a father, Owen Goss of Streaming Colour Studios, Baby's Magical Hands is geared perfectly towards babies as they learn to interact with the world around them.

The app is available now for the iPad.

Finding the right school for your children is important business. So important that living in the right region can make all the difference. An app like GreatSchools Finder sets out to make this all a bit easier.

It's an app for families in the US to find out quickly just how good their local school is and how it compares with other nearby schools. It offers over 125,000 K-12 public, private and public charter schools in the country using a 1-10 rating for each. Test scores are provided as well as over 900,000 parent and community reviews too.

Map features are on offer so it's easy to see exactly where each school is located and numerous filtering options ensure that a parent can quickly view what's relevant to them such as filter out certain grade levels or distance requirements. Once the right school is found, it can then be saved to a list of favorites for easy consultation and can be shared with others too.

GreatSchools Finder looks set to be an ideal way of taking out some of the hassle of finding the right school, and it's available now as a free app.

Education is something that continues long into many people's adult lives. So many professions now require regular accreditation and studying for certain qualifications.

This is particularly true in the health care, fitness, finance, education, law and engineering fields where things change so fast that regular retraining is vital for success and promotion opportunities.

There's now an app in the form of Continuing Education Tracker which enables users to keep track of all their continuing education units easily. It tracks the specific course being undertaken, the relevant licenses and what budget is required for that time period. It's all very easy to view from one screen and it's also possible to email the information elsewhere.

It looks set to be a great way of keeping track of everything so that users can always see just how they're doing on their respective course. It could certainly prove to be a great motivational tool as well as organizational.

Continuing Education Tracker is available now for all iOS devices and is priced at $0.99.

Fans of the kids' favorite Dinosaur King TV show will be pleasantly surprised to see that there's now an app to satisfy their interest.

Dinosaur King D-Team Adventures allows users to look through numerous interactive pictorials and play some games all based around their favorite characters. There's 80 different dinosaurs in all to learn facts about them from physical data to name explanations so it's even an ideal app for those youngsters just interested in dinosaurs, let alone the show.

Once the fan feels suitably knowledgeable on the subject, they can then partake in the Dinosaur Quiz King game in which they must answer 10 randomly determined dinosaur related questions and then be scored accordingly. There is also the Dinosaur King Around the World Game which offers an exciting twist on the trivia format.

Dinosaur King D-Team Adventures looks set to be an ideal app for fans of the show, and it's available now for $2.99 for all iOS devices.

Everyone learns best through different methods. Numerous psychological studies have determined this and it's amazing how much it helps to know what works for each individual. For those who work best by listening to their revision material, iVocAudio could be an ideal learning tool.

When using iVocAudio, users simply need to record their own Q&A pairs with the iOS device's microphone and allow it to play back. It makes for an ideal revision tool for all kinds of subjects as it's ultimately decided by the user what they want to use it for. The app also allows users to download existing files from the iVocAudio site which is particularly handy for those looking to learn another language. Multiple folders are possible so users can switch between subjects whenever they so choose.

iVocAudio looks to be a great tool for anyone who needs to learn something. Heck, you could even use it for more regular things like a shopping list or birthday reminder tool. The potential is pretty widespread.

It's available now for all iOS devices and is only $0.99.

Check out the video below if you're still wondering if it's for you.