Using the iPad to record work

Puppet Pals HD

This app can be used to create a short animated movie that looks like a puppet show. You have the option to either choose ready-made characters, or you can take a photo to create your own character. You can also choose from a selection of backgrounds or can take a picture to create your own. Once you have chosen the characters and background you can then begin making a recording. You can move the characters around to different parts of the background and can take them off stage and on stage, you can also record audio. You can pause the recording so you can do bits at a time. (£ inexpensive)

Chatterpix Kids

In this app you can take a photo of anything, draw a line for a mouth, record yourself saying something and then make the photo talk. It could be used to take a photo of a character or person from a story or topic you are looking at and the child could talk about how the person felt or what they did. (£ inexpensive)

Little Story Creator

This app lets you instantly create collages, arrange photos or get creative with videos, text, borders, stickers, videos, audio and your own drawings. Share your creations via email and view and experience them in any browser. Easy to use. (£ free)

Book Creator

This app can be used as an alternative way to record work and achievements, or to make projects and write stories. Books can easily be exported to a variety of e-book readers such as iBooks, iPads or iOS devices. You can use it to add photos taken with the iPad or pictures saved from the internet, add your own voice recordings, type in text or even annotate with drawings using a finger or a stylus. (£ inexpensive)

Pictello

This app that helps you make a social story, a visual schedule or even a slide show of pictures. Each page in a Pictello story consists of a photo or video and some text, which can be read aloud by a Text to Speech voice or your own recorded audio. (£ moderate)

Special Stories

This app allows you to easily create stories and records of work utilising photos, text and audio. You can create a digital book that includes some writing, a photo and a sound recording. (£ moderate)

Clicker Writer

Clicker Writer is a literacy support tool that is aimed at helping young writers develop their independent skills and removes barriers that may be holding them back in their writing. It includes: child friendly Sassoon font and dyslexia friendly font; a simplified keyboard; word prediction; sentences read aloud once punctuated; sentence construction support; word banks for key words or topic words; mind mapping tools. Also comes with access to free resources. (£ expensive)

Docs Plus

This app provides secondary school students with a range of age-appropriate tools to support writing across the curriculum. The predictor suggests age-appropriate vocabulary based on the context of students’ writing and students can also use the audio note creator. ‘Wordbar’, give instant access to the specific words and phrases needed. It also comes with a built in speech feedback, a mind mapping tool and a document reader that will read pdf or word documents. It has an exam mode setting that allows users to view the question as they write their answer. Also comes with access to free resources. (£ expensive)

Widgit Writer

This app lets you create symbol-supported documents on your iPad. Documents out loud with the iPad speech voice. If you have an internet connection, you can write in symbols using Widgit’s smart symbolisation. If the internet isn’t available then you can write using the offline symbol database. Links with Widgit Online account. (£ inexpensive)

Pages

Pages is a word processor developed by Apple Inc. It is part of the iWork productivity suite and runs on the MacOS and iOS operating systems. It allows users to quickly create documents on their devices. Apple Pages is compatible with Microsoft Word. If you’re creating documents in collaboration with Word users, or if you’re sending your Pages file to a Microsoft Word user, you can save the Pages files as a Word document or export the Pages file as a Word document. (£ free)

Apple Dictation (£ free)

1.Display the on-screen keyboard, then tap the microphone. 2.Start talking. The device listens to your voice and turns it into text as you talk. Use keywords to insert punctuation or paragraph breaks as needed. 3.Tap ‘Done’ to stop dictating. 4.Adjustment text as necessary using the keyboard. (£ free)

Dragon Anywhere

This app needs a live internet connection. Dictate documents of any length, easily edit, adjust formatting and quickly share them on the most popular cloud-sharing services. (£ SUB)