Learning on iPhone is fun as well as informative. Here we present the best brain-feeding apps
ABC Spy
ABC Spy is certainly a little different from many education apps aimed at early years, in that it actually encourages activity as a source of learning. Through the app, children are challenged to use the iPhone’s camera to take a picture of something for each letter of the alphabet. As well as being a fun activity that keeps kids on their toes, it serves as a great way to consolidate knowledge of the alphabet. On top of the alphabet-based challenge, kids are encouraged to show off their creative side by choosing a frame for each photo and sizing the picture to fit, with trophies being awarded for every photo challenge completed. All in all, this is a great app, with plenty of bright colors and easy-to-use controls to keep children entertained for hours. There’s plenty to do and for the price, it’s incredibly great value – a worthy download for teaching the basics of letters and the alphabet.
Price: £0.69/$0.99 Developer: Stealth Education
Microsoft Office 2010 Pro
Microsoft Office 2010 Pro provides a great resource of video tutorials to help you master Microsoft Office without the need for hefty manuals or long-winded step-by-step instructions. Upon launching the app, you’re presented with a somewhat limited set of tutorial categories. Tapping on any of the different categories will bring up a playlist of videos that form an entire tutorial, conveniently these are split up into sections for more focused learning, but it would be nice if they were a little more comprehensive.
There’s a few options within the app to purchase additional tutorial files, but for the cost of the app, it would have been better to see a little more included in the first place. That said, the video tutorials are clear, concise and easy to follow, making this a great app for beginners and novices alike. Well worth downloading if you’re looking to learn and understand Office in a flash.
Special Words
Special Words helps children with learning difficulties get to grips with words, pictures and sounds, and the thought that’s gone into the app really shows. Everything from the plain background (children with Down’s syndrome and autism can be distracted by colorful or moving backgrounds) to the lockable options bar has been purposefully designed to aid in the learning process, and the result is something that’s effective, easy to use and fully featured. There are four different games to choose from, involving matching pictures to pictures, words to words, pictures to words and vice versa. All of these can be customized by adding, deleting or editing entries to the universal words list, meaning that the opportunities to expand this great learning tool are endless.
The app may seem simple to most, but its simplicity allows it to be universally accessible to children with all manner of learning difficulties and levels of development, and that’s something that only a few educational apps can boast.
Interactive Telling Time – Learning to tell time is fun
A fair few methods can be employed when it comes to teaching kids to tell the time, and Interactive Telling Time has certainly included a number of them in this great app. Making full use of the iPhone’s touch screen interface, ‘Set The Time’ allows you to move the clock’s hands to the time that’s displayed, whereas ‘Tell The Time’ requires you to read the time and set on the standard iOS barrel-option wheel. These two methods combined would be enough to teach most children the basics of telling the time, but there are also three different games to choose from that make the process a lot more fun. The app itself is bright and colorful yet clear and easy to use, meaning little adult supervision is required to get it set up. There are plenty of options to increase or decrease the difficulty of the tasks too. Few apps offer so many features in this price bracket.
Chirp! Bird Songs Europe +
Chirp! Bird Songs Europe + provides an interactive, audible encyclopedia of birds and their birdsongs from all around Europe. Fire up the app and tap on a country to get started. From here you can preview sounds by bird name in alphabetical order or even by commonness. There’s an attractive slide show of bird images and sounds to entertain, and a birdsong quiz to test your knowledge. On top of this, a single tap takes you to the Wikipedia page for each bird
