It's back to school time and you know what that means--sales across all department stores nationwide (might we suggest you consider a wardrobe update during this time?), and adorable kids crossing the street with over-sized backpacks, and plenty of gridlock in front of your school. Well, we're not too thrilled about that last part, but what's better than sending your kid off to school with a MacBook, iPhone and iPad loaded with useful apps?
Flash Cards
Bear with us here. This Mac application might look a bit work-intensive because of it's simplistic user interface, but school is supposed to be hard work, gosh darn it! Plus, the more time you spent entering the data, the more you'll have to remember it. They say that long-term memory is what you're supposed to tap into to pass tests, right? We're probably wrong, but we're right to direct you to a free Flash Card alternative. You don't understand how hard it was to find this.
Dictionary.com - Dictionary & Thesaurus
Sure, we have all these search engines that can accommodate our lack of vocabulary prowess, but we still have to select which link has a legitimate definition. Well, a handy iPad app takes away all the work. The free Dictionary.com app includes a dictionary and a thesaurus. The most wonderful thing about this app, which will please students and teachers alike, there is no internet connection required to use this app. When you're not trying to impress your teachers, you could use this app to your advantage to post coherent status updates on Facebook and become the envy of all of your friends. It's cool to be literate.
Free Graphing Calculator
It's hard to find a free calculator app that actually lets you graph the coordinates, but here's one! It's not the TI-83, but it sure beats showing up to class empty handed. This app has a number of useful arithmetic functions and exponentiation, and it can calculate things like square root, cube root, log base 10, random integer and cumulative normal distribution (by the way, we haven't used any of these terms since high school. Ahh!). This free app can also graph up to four equations at once, enables you to pinch to zoom in or out, and it can find roots and intersections. There's also a unit converter, which comes in handy in 10th grade Chemistry--trust us.
Stay in school kids.
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Kkrimmer
September 15, 2010 at 4:12pm
We bought our college bound children a couple of apps, using the Gift an App in iTunes, the one that I also bought for myself is a computer dictionary, with chat abbreviations and an extensive dictionary. http://tinyurl.com/acomputerdictionary
ystk-loving_ext...
August 27, 2010 at 2:50pm
There's actually a beautiful SRS (spaced repetition system, ie electronic flashcards) called Mnemosyne. There is an iOS flashcard app called iSRS - and it synchronizes with Mnemosyne on your computer over Wi-Fi.
