I was asked recently by a couple of people for a list of apps to take on devices for children travelling. Their situations were varied. One family member was going for a whole year and was keeping up with school via Distance Ed and the other family were going to Europe for a few months.
With travel – you definitely want kids to experience all there is to experience and that doesn’t mean sitting with their little faces glued to a device for every minute – I completely understand that. Technology is brilliant however for documenting their experiences and allowing them to reflect on events. It’s also perfect for maintaining contact with friends and family whilst away. I am a also a great believer in the importance of seizing opportunities for supporting kids to understand aspects of digital use and citizenship – so travel is a great time where there is authentic purpose for talking to kids about the rules – rules they should follow when taking photographs of people, for example and sharing those same photographs. There will also be moments when you simply just need to keep them occupied. Delayed flights, diverted flights, cancelled trains – it’s all part of travel with children and so here’s a list of apps I would recommend:
Digital Journal – Book Creator App – lets you take photos, add movies, annotate images, add text and sound. The whole creation can be exported as a movie at the end of the trip and kept for ever as a brilliant record of their travels. They can also upload it to YouTube as a private file and then share it with family members. Weebly or Edublogs or WordPress – if you would like them to publish as part of a blog.
Photographic Collections of a place or experience – Pic Collage – lets you create lovely photographic collages complete with little stickers, backgrounds, titles etc. They can then be added to the digital journal as complete pages. Snapseed – they can play with fillters for their photographs. iMovie – this is a unbeatable app to pull all sorts of footage together.
Coding for Storytelling – Scratch Jn, Hopscotch, The Foos
Game-Playing – “Where’s my Water?”, Minecraft, ‘Cut the Rope’, ‘Toca Blocks’, “Rules”.
Tables (if they are at the right age) – Squeebles – so they can keep these memorised with a quick 5 mins before other game play or tech use.
Mind Blowing STEM apps – The Everything Machine – for little scientists as it lets you build anything you can imagine. The user connects and controls hardware and sensors to make all sorts of things. Logic City – to build logic and problem solving skills.
Geography – Google Earth, Google Maps.
Also – as a management and cost saving strategy – if you are all under Apple’s Family Sharing – there is no need to buy multiple copies of these apps.