Organization is a pivotal skill that can be difficult to master, especially for children and adolescents. While there are thousands of productivity apps available for the iPad, only a precious few capably keep children organized in the classroom and at home. These five are the best.
Complete Class Organizer really lives up to its name, but also offers the ability to take course notes, record lectures, and track your grades. The intuitive layout is easy to navigate even if a bit of screen space is lost due to the graphics along the bottom. Once created, classes will appear by semester along the right side with a small week view schedule. You can also set a 6 and 12 hour reminders for assignments, and choose to add it to your iPad calendar as well.
EpicWin (iPhone $2.99)
In EpicWin, users customize an avatar and develop their fantasy character (dwarf, warrior princess, or undead skeleton) by completing various "quests." When kids complete tasks, they gain experience points and "loot." Parents and kids can rate the "epic-ness" of each quest (i.e. the task's level of intensity or importance), when it must be done, and define it through one of the following tags: Strength, Stamina, Intellect, Social or Spirit. The more tasks you complete, the more experience points you earn, which leads to leveling up. The app supports both time-critical and repeating tasks, displays reminders for overdue events, and can even include aspirational "someday" quests.
Chore Pad HD (iPad $4.99)
If you are looking for a more traditional domestic organization app, look no further than Chore Pad HD. This app helps parents create and assign family chores while kids earn check marks and green or red stars to track their progress, or lack thereof. The underlying purpose of this app is to help parents teach children about responsibility and organization. Auto-syncing is completely free with a Dropbox account, and the kid-friendly icons, check marks, and stars make it easy for parents and children to keep track of progress.
iHomework (iPad $1.99)
iHomework's wood-grained background with small, graphical tabs along the right side are pleasing to work with, and the design is reminiscent of calendar/planners popular in schools. Assignments can be tracked by course and you can even track your grades on each assignment. Assignments can be color-coded to help you stay focused when viewing your assignments in the calendar view. One feature that you won't find in most apps of this type is the integration with Questia, an online repository of over 75,000 online books.If your student struggles with organization as it relates to assignments, iHomework can help get them on the right track.
iRewardChart Lite (iPad free)
We know what you're thinking: not another chore app! The difference between iRewardChart Lite and other chore-centric apps on this list is that it aides parents in teaching their children about appropriate behavior, in addition to the responsibility inherent in organization. The app tracks children's progress in four primary categories: Responsibility, Other, Chore, and Behavior. Parents choose custom rewards that children earn after attaining a certain numbers of stars, which provides a good incentive for kids to be well-behaved and, of course, stay on top of their chores!
Educational apps showcased in this article were curated by appoLearning Experts Keith George and Maureen Weinhardt.