App Reviews

Spellwizards is a fantastic web based app that aims to help young children in all stages and in all years of primary school to enhance and develop a multitude of literacy based skills. Logging in via the website parents, teachers and children can access different types of information within the site all of which are aimed specifically to whoever the user is. For instance a parent or teacher has access to progress reports on their child so they can track their performance as they learn. This can then be used to assess further steps or guidance that may be needed.

Devices:

Math Facts Mahjong brings together the game of Mahjong Solitaire and maths practice. Together, these components form a surprisingly fun and effective way to develop arithmetic skills.

Devices: Android , iPad

Famisafe is a dedicated parental control app for your children's phone location, geographical boundaries (geofences), app monitoring and blocking, web content filtering and remote screen time control. The application is free from in-app adverts and is suitable for parents who wish to monitor the digital and GPS activities of their child. The app offers a 3-day free trial upon sign up with a further subscription thereafter. There are many different levels of subscription depending on the features required by the user.

Devices: Android , iPad

LingoDeer is an interactive, language-learning app that covers Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. The app allows you to interact with the above languages in a structured and contextualised way, which the users can follow at their own pace and according to their own ability level.  Through self-study, these lessons and the subsequent review exercises focus on reading, listening, and writing skills to gradually reveal key terms, linguistic structures and rules.

Devices: Android , iPad

BioBlox2D is an app which allows users to engage in a fun, stimulating, Tetris-like game that also develops their understanding of key Science concepts and challenges their existing Biology knowledge. BioBlox2D focuses on the Biological process of protein-ligand docking by allowing users to manipulate the orientation of a variety of different molecules in order for them to bind with the specific protein found at the bottom of the screen. The app also includes quick fire questions to challenge the user beyond just this process, but also in the recognition of specific molecules, thus providing a useful overlap with Chemistry. The app is supported by a website which includes instructions and a user video.

Devices: Android , iPad

Little Robot Shapes and Colors is a beautifully designed collection of games designed to help young children develop shape and colour matching skills.  It provides an unpressured environment and a calm play experience that children will enjoy using to learn.

Devices: iPad

LingQ is an interactive, language-learning app that progressively guides the user through language study in real-world, immersive contexts.  The variety of languages on offer is quite impressive, ranging from Spanish, French, Italian, German, English, Chinese, to 25 others. The app centres on purposefully-designed and authentic texts and podcasts, which the users can read and/or listen to at their own pace and according to their own ability level.  Considering the user’s ability level, key words are made to stand out and referenced to an in-app lexicon sourced from online dictionaries.

Devices: Android , iPad

Anonymise any classroom photographs you take with this app.  Faces are either blurred or masked automatically so that you can make more use of photographs in your classroom but still conform to school policies.

Devices: iPad

This app is aimed at creating a world language to make communication easier for people travelling between countries. The goal of the app is to introduce the language to users and help, through a series of lessons, users learn and become proficient in the language itself. The lessons are broken down into a simple set of processes similar to how any other language would be learned and uses many techniques to help the user become as proficient as possible with the language.

Devices: Android , iPad

Note Quest is a great app which helps people of all ages to learn and review or drill all the notes needed to become a competent piano or keyboard player. Through levelled sequences of fun and enjoyable piano practice ‘games’, the app helps the user to learn the notes of the keyboard quickly and successfully. The app is highly engaging and simple to use and although the graphics are more suited to a child user it would be extremely useful for anyone who is learning the piano. It could be used as an introduction to the notes of the keyboard, an aid for practice between lessons or for use by a piano teacher as a resource within lessons.

Devices: iPad

LetterSchool is a beautifully designed handwriting app that will teach your children how to write letters (both upper and lower case) and numbers (from 1 to 10) in an animated and fun way. Using a set of four activities, LetterSchool can really enchant your children  to play with the app for a long time. This is a literacy based app that is aimed at helping young children who are taking their first steps in learning how to read and write. Based on a large amount of research the app has been developed to provide children with the best approach in learning how to first formulate letters and shapes and then how to create letters as part of words. The research behind the app has also created the best approach for children as they learn how to create letters. This app could be used as both a school and home learning app as the learning that is undertaking through it could be applied to either usage.

Devices: Android , iPad

Colouring in is calming, enjoyable and prompts creative thinking.  PicoToONs brings the experience of physical colouring books to electronic devices and adds some extra graphical flourishes to distinguish it from the paper versions.

Devices: Android , iPad