What Are The Best Smart iPad Apps For Collaborative Learning?
by TeachThought Staff
Using the iPad for collaborative learning isn’t the most seamless thing in the world.
For one, you have to define what you mean by collaborative learning, and here we can loosely define it as “a kind of learning where collaboration is an integral part of the learning process.” This means not just publishing ideas, but publishing them in ways where writers can receive feedback, reflect, and revise their writing or thinking.
Further, this means not just tweeting thoughts or content, but doing so intentionally to promote feedback and interaction. And it also means working together in real-time to accomplish collectively forged and monitored goals, whether you’re building a fortress with a massive tunnel system in Minecraft, or working with experts outside of the classroom on a presentation using Google Drive.
The following 12 apps (and one modeling article) are modern, ‘smarter’ apps whose design (or significant parts of design) is based around the idea of collaboration and collaborative learning.
See also 12 Of The Best Vocabulary Apps For Middle & High School Students\
12 Smart iPad Apps For Collaborative Learning
1. Zoom
Developer Description: No matter where education takes place, Zoom can help engage students, faculty, and staff for learning, collaboration, and administration.
2. Mural
3. Cue Think
Developer Description: Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the Internet. Users like you provide all of the content and decide, through voting, what’s good and what’s not. Reddit is made up of many individual communities, also known as subreddits. Each community has its own page, subject matter, users, and moderators. Users post stories, links, and media to these communities, and other users vote and comment on the posts. Through voting, users determine what posts rise to the top of community pages and, by extension, the public home page of the site.
Developer Description: Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork in Microsoft 365. The Teams service enables instant messaging, audio and video calling, rich online meetings, mobile experiences, and extensive web conferencing capabilities.
Developer Description: Twitch is an American video live streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions. In addition, it offers music broadcasts, creative content, and more recently, ‘in real life’ streams.
6. Minecraft for Education
Developer Description: Whether it’s a playlist on your phone, a link on your laptop, or a cool video you watched on your iPad—you can save, organize and share it for free. Designed for creative pros, Collect lets you bring all your inspiration in one place and never lose track of it again.
8. Parlay Ideas
Developer Description: Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and where something is in a process. Imagine a white board, filled with lists of sticky notes, with each note as a task for you and your team.
9. Loom
Developer Description: Loom is a video messaging tool that helps you get your message across through instantly shareable videos. With Loom, you can record your camera, microphone, and desktop simultaneously. Your video is then instantly available to share through Loom’s patented technology.
10. Explain Everything
Developer Description: Agenda is a date-focused note-taking app for both planning and documenting your projects. From business professionals and technical users, to students and artists, Agenda is for anyone wanting well organized and easily navigable notes that help drive your projects forward.
12. Padlet
11. Mindmeister
Developer Description: MindMeister is a completely web-based mind mapping software that runs in any standard web browser. The mind maps you create are saved automatically in the cloud, online, and can be accessed from anywhere, as long as you are connected to the internet.
Developer Description: PowerPoint is Microsoft’s presentation software that enables users to create engaging presentations that consist of individual pages, or slides, which may contain text, graphics, sound, movies, hyperlinks, and other objects. PowerPoint enables users to add animation and effects to slideshow elements.
Other Apps And Tools For Digital Student Collaboration
Google Drive
Drawp
Breakout EDU
Wikipedia Description: Vimeo is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices.
Developer Description: Not strictly ‘in the classroom,’ with iNaturalist you can “take your nature knowledge up a notch with Seek. Use the power of image recognition technology to identify the plants and animals all around you. Earn badges for seeing different types of birds, amphibians, plants, and fungi and participate in monthly observation challenges.”