Special Education Apps in the App Store

For educators in special education, perusing the apple app store for relevant applications to use with students can be a time consuming task.  While the app store has an Education section to the app store, it does not have a Special Education category listed.  Many special education educators have begun creating their own recommended lists of special education apps. These apps span across multiple categories in the iTunes App store.  Apple has finally heard the needs of special educators and in its commitment to special education, it has created a Special Education section in the iTunes App store.  It is not yet a main category in the app store, nor is it a subcategory of Education.  This may be because the apps in Special Education currently bridge multiple categories in the App Store.  The list currently contains 30+ apps.   If you would like to learn about more apps for special education, you should visit Mobile Learning for Special Needs.   They review apps, accessories and resources for special needs and mobile learning.  They currently have listed 60+ apps, accessories, links, and discussions.

Mobile Learning for Special Needs: http://mobilelearning4specialneeds.wikispaces.com/Apps

Special Education in iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewMultiRoom?fcId=399470755

iTunes Special Education Apps

iUSF is now live

The University of South Florida recently released a new mobile app for iPhone and iPod Touch. The app will provide students with access to the following services:

Directory: campus directory with contact information for all USF System faculty and staff

Athletics: news stories from USF Athletics

Events: major university events pulled from the USF Events Calendar

Courses: course information from Blackboard

Maps: campus maps for all institutions and campuses within the USF System

News: news stories from the USF System

Emergency: emergency and non-emergency numbers for the USF System

Bullrunner: bus tracking and routes for the USF Bullrunner Shuttle System

Help: basic help information

Your iPhone or iPod Touch will need to run iOS 4 to download it directly to your device from the Apple Store. Below is a screenshot of the new application.

With this app students will be able to quickly look up information about their classes. The app will even show them on a map where their class is on a campus map. Students can even see the contact information of the professor of the class as well. This app shows the location of the bull runner buses as well as whether they are stopped or moving. Keeping up with events on campus, upcoming sporting events and past scores is easy to do as well. The app makes calls to emergency services on each campus as well.

Supporting Literacy through Podcasts

The University of South Florida has added a new resource to their iTunes U store for literacy, language, literature teachers and other educators. Through the collaboration efforts of The University and the Florida Department of Education a resource for supporting the learning and teaching of literacy was developed.

Lit2Go iTunes U Store

Lit2Go provides access to audio formats (MP3) of many  historically and culturally significant poems and  stories. A website has also been developed to accompany the Lit2Go iTunes U store.  The website (http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/) also provides a print out of the stories and poems. The collection includes famous classical authors such as Poe, Twain, and Shakespeare.

The Florida Center for Instructional Technology, which is housed within the University of South Florida, has headed the production/and development of the materials. The Center hired talented voice actors to record the numerous stories and poems available on the iTunes Store and website.  The website provides a search by author or story to make it easier to find specific stories or poems to incorporate into your lesson plan.  The iTunes store makes it really easy to download the stories and poems to your mp3 player for easy offline access. You will need to have iTunes downloaded to your computer to use the iTunes U store.  iTunes can be downloaded from the apple website (http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/)