Apps that Make Life Easier
Download the list of Apps that Make Life Easier (Word)
AAC App Comparison Chart (Word)
Apps Wheel for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (PDF)
App Categories
Apps by Category
Concept Mapping Apps
Idea Sketch – Free
Helps in creating and editing diagrams and outlines right away. Enter text and move the shapes around. So, it is very easy. Easily draw a diagram, mind map, concept map, or flow chart and many more. You can also convert it to a text outline, and vice versa. That is not all because Idea Sketch will help you to create anything you want such as brainstorming new ideas, illustrating concepts, making lists and outlines, planning presentations, and many more. If you create diagrams then you can save it to the Photos app and then synced to your desktop computer. If you want to share your idea then you can easily share it on your facebook account. All you have to do is just touch the “Save to Facebook” button to upload an idea to a photo album in your Facebook account. If you want to share it then you will only have to login to Facebook and share it.
SimpleMind+ – Free
This is a mind mapping tool for brainstorming, idea collection and planning. You can easily drag, arrange and add and edit topics on the Mind Map page. It allows you to cut, copy, paste, or move or duplicate topics between Mind Maps. Create new MindMap from selection or clipboard. Change colors, borders and lines for maximum presentation impact. Scroll, zoom and rotate page.
Dictionary
Merriam-Webster Dictionary – Free
In addition to all the definitions from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the app offers voice search – to let you look up a word without having to spell it – along with an integrated thesaurus, example sentences, word of the day, favorites, and more.
News Collecting Apps
Flipboard – Free
Creates a personalized magazine out of everything being shared with you. Flip through your Facebook newsfeed and Google+ Circles, tweets from your Twitter timeline, photos from Instagram friends, videos from YouTube, and much more.
Zite – Free
Zite is a free personalized magazine for your iPad that automatically learns what you like and gets smarter every time you use it. Zite delivers all the great news, articles, blogs, and videos you want and helps you discover new stuff.
Pocket – Free
When you find something on the web that you want to view later, put it in Pocket. It automatically syncs to your phone, tablet, or computer so you can view it any time, even without an internet connection.
Note Taking Apps
MobileNoter for iPad – Free
MobileNoter is a powerful and multifunctional note taking application which is able to sync with Microsoft OneNote. Although you can use MobileNoter as a stand alone application to take and store your notes. MobileNoter lets you view and edit your MS OneNote notebooks on the iPad. You can create new or edit or delete existing pages, create audio recordings and play media in your notes and add, move and delete images on your pages.
SoundNote – $4.99
SoundNote tracks what you type and draw while recording audio, so you'll never worry about missing an important detail. During playback, just tap a word: SoundNote will jump right to the proper time in the audio. It's easy to edit your sketches, too. Tap a drawing to select it, or tap twice to select an individual stroke. From there, you can drag it to wherever you want, or tap "Delete" to get rid of it. Use two fingers to zoom and scroll.
Notability – $0.99
Notability powerfully integrates handwriting, PDF annotation, typing, recording, and organizing. Smooth ink makes capturing ideas easy. Notability's zoom window helps you quickly and clearly draw and the palm rest protects your notes from unwanted marks. Scissors let you copy, and move. Re-style the color and width of any ink. Reorder or remove pages as needed. A variety of paper styles, pen colors and widths are available. Share your annotations with anyone using email or Dropbox and more. Audio recordings automatically link to your notes. Use the recording feature to capture your own voice for memos, presentations, or speech practice. Notability auto-syncs your notes in the cloud. Add pictures from your photo library or from the iPad camera.
PaperDesk – Free lite version or $3.99 for full
PaperDesk allows you to keep a "Desk" full of your notebooks. Each notebook has an unlimited number of pages in PaperDesk full version, and they remember where you left off when you last opened them. In PaperDesk LITE, you are limited to 3 pages per notebook. Bookmark pages to navigate easily. While playing audio, tap a word and PaperDesk will take you to the point in the recording when you typed that word. There is free access to myPaperDesk.com to store notes and backups. Insert images from the photo library or camera. Rest your wrist on screen while drawing. Upload entire notebooks to GoogleDocs, or share on Twitter.
Penultimate – $0.99
Penultimate gives you the same feeling of writing on paper, with digital power and flexibility. Store your thoughts in notebooks for each topic, project, or category. Penultimate can manage as many notebooks as you can create, each with an infinite number of pages. Powerful ink selection and copy/paste is a touch away. Your handwriting and drawing looks spectacular in bold gel ink. Use colors or stick with classic inky black. Three different photorealistic paper styles are included, along with an eraser tool that's always the right size. The wrist protection mode prevents most stray marks from appearing on a page for writers of all grips. Image import allows photo annotation, cataloging, and design work. Send single page images or full notebooks in PDF format to anyone.
Side by Side - Free
Side by Side is a multiple-window reader/browser with offline reading and note taking capabilities. It turns the iPad into multiple resizable reading devices working in parallel. You can browse webpages, download files, read documents, or take notes on each split screen.
Organizing Apps
One Note – Free
A note-taking app for capturing all of your ideas and to-dos on the go, brought to you by Microsoft Office. Create searchable notes with text, pictures, and bullets. Make and manage to-do lists with checkboxes. Then keep your notes in sync using free Microsoft SkyDrive® online storage to access, edit and manage them from virtually anywhere, from your PC or almost any web browser. Access your notes online at www.skydrive.com
Evernote – Free
An easy-to-use, free app that helps you remember everything across all of the devices you use. Stay organized, save your ideas and improve productivity. Evernote lets you take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders--and makes these notes completely searchable.
PDF Reader App
GoodReader for iPad – $4.99
GoodReader® is the super-robust PDF reader for iPad. With GoodReader on your iPad, you can read virtually anything, anywhere: books, movies, maps, and pictures.
Presentation App
KeyNote – $9.99
Create a presentation complete with animated charts and transitions. Highlight your data with stunning 3D bar, line, area, and pie charts, animated with new 3D chart builds such as Crane, Grow, Radial, and Rotate. Use full-screen view to present right on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Use video mirroring to present on an HDTV, and preview your slides and notes on your device using the Presenter Display. Keynote works with iCloud, so your presentations stay up to date on all your devices.
Reading Apps
Read2Go – $19.99
From within Read2Go, you can browse, search, download, and read books directly from Bookshare using your Bookshare membership, as well as read DAISY books from other sources. The app gives you full control over visual choices for font size and color, background and highlighting color, and text-to-speech preferences. Read2Go features word-by-word highlighting for multi-modal reading. It will read words on the screen out loud. Read with Braille displays connected via Bluetooth.
Learning Ally Audio – $19.99
Learning Ally, formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic serves people with visual impairments or learning disabilities who experience difficulty in reading print material. Learning Ally provides downloadable DAISY-formatted audiobooks. Members can explore an extensive library of textbooks and literature titles. Learning Ally works with key textbook publishers to provide audio textbooks for K-12 and college level curricula. To use Learning Ally Audio, membership is required. Visit LearningAlly.org/membership ($99/yr for individuals) to see if you are eligible for membership.
Reading/Writing Apps
ClaroSpeak US Edition – $5.99
A high-quality text to speech reader capable of speaking any accessible text with a range of human high-quality voices. ClaroSpeak offers the option of visual highlighting in sync with the spoken words and a great range of color and font settings to allow for optimum reading. Use ClaroSpeak for proofreading text through listening. It can help with reading and literacy development and creating audio files from any text.
AppWriter US for iPad – $19.99
Choose between different reading strategies: read from cursor position, read selection of text, read sentence by sentence, read words as you type. Text is highlighted as it is being read aloud. It offers high-quality voices. All menus and buttons can be read aloud.
The word prediction supports writing skills by providing tools to construct sentences with ease. AppWriter predicts the word you want to use next to reduce grammatical or spelling errors. You can hear each word predicted before selecting it. AppWriter comes with American English and American Spanish. Created documents can be emailed, copied to clipboard for use in another app or exported to Dropbox or Google Docs.
Reminder Apps
Voice Reminders! – Free
Speak your personal memo, set the time and date, and be reminded in your voice. No need to type text. Speaking is quicker and more accurate than typing and speech recognition can sometimes get it wrong. VoCal makes a personal memo quick, easy and naturally has no spelling mistakes! The time/date setting is all done using Apples simple spinning click wheel design. Your alerts are delivered even when the app is closed! VoCal now includes a ‘snooze’ feature. It also includes the 'Echo' feature that will keep alerting you every minute or every hour until you have done what you needed to do. It can be used for everyday ‘to do’ lists to repeating annual reminders.
Remote Desktop Apps
Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad – $4.99
This app allows one-click access from your iPad to your home computer desktop with minimal setup. Install the free Splashtop Streamer on your computer: it supports Windows 7, Vista, and XP (including Home Premium), as well as Mac OS X 10.6+ (Snow Leopard or Lion is required for Mac users). The app automatically finds your local computers after you sign in to your Gmail account on the app and streamer to find your computers across the Internet. Useful for those who have tools or files on their home computer and wish to access them from school or work.
QCard - $4.99
Qcard was exclusively designed for people who need a better way to remember, manage and get things done. Qcard guides to completion, and send reminders to never letting the user forget. Completed Qcards are stamped and archived so only the things you complete appear in the past. Instantly create Qcards by ‘”shaking”’ the iPhone or iPad. Receive constant alerts when a Qcard is due . Create re-useable Qcards and lists . Step-by-step Guided Tasks option keeps the user on track during any prolonged task
Testing Apps
Teacher Clicker - Socrative – Free
Engage the entire classroom with educational exercises and games while capturing student responses in real-time. Interact with the data to further student understanding in the moment, and review the reports to prepare for future classes. Socrative will grade your pre-made activities. Saving you time, so you can engage more with your students on an individual level. Create a library of activities and share them with your colleagues and learning community.
Student Clicker: Socrative – Free
Combines smart clickers, student response and ease of use. Engage students with educational exercises and games. Students can see classmates’ ideas in real time and interact with the responses. Students can provide feedback on the lessons to the instructor and how well you understand the material. Students can ask the entire class poll questions or build a premade activity for the whole class.
Voice to Text (Speech Recognition) App
Dragon Dictation – Free
This voice recognition app allows you to talk into the microphone and types what you say. The app recognizes standard diction commands such as new line, new paragraph, question mark, and much more. The app has email, Twitter and Facebook sharing options.
Web Browser Apps
Talking Browser for iPad – $0.99
This is a browser that takes text found in websites and turns it into speech. Uses a clear and natural voice. Ask the browser to "read" aloud for you the webpage you are browsing. Perfect for reading stories (ebooks), news, long websites, forums and more. Currently the app reads only in English. French, German and Spanish to come.
Dragon Go! – Free
Allows you to speak what you're searching for on the web - so Google, Wikipedia, Youtube are defaults. You can also search for maps (using the location function), Twitter, and more. Share your Dragon Go! results through an easy-to-use pop-up toolbar featuring link share options across email, text messages, Facebook and Twitter. You can also type your Dragon Go! requests for the same fast, accurate results.
Web Reader HD - Text to Speech Page Reader – $4.99
Web Reader HD is a web browser designed to read the web out loud. It allows you to choose where in the web page you want it to start reading. The app can also be configured to start reading once loaded. The app has an interface designed to help you play, pause and hear the web. It comes with two great voices (one male and one female). The app includes playback speed settings. The app also lets you open web pages that you are looking at right up within Web Reader HD. The app can also read files synced to your Dropbox account. The app supports HTML, plain text, Microsoft Word, and RTF files.
Word Prediction App
Typ-O HD - Writing is for Everybody! – $14.99
Typ-O provides word prediction to help you write, even if your spelling isn't perfect. You can listen to your word before you select it, and check your text before emailing or pasting it into other applications. Includes spell checking, file management and a selection of four synthetic voices. Typ-O knows the most common spelling mistakes, and will often suggest words even if you have misspelled them.