Our chief tester for this post is now three years of age and has very clear opinions on what makes a good iPhone / iPod Touch application. Many have been downloaded and uninstalled pretty quickly afterwards. Only the following five applications have enjoyed a sustained level of interest. Some are of great educational worth, others will develop creativity but are really just a bit of fun and a great distraction when needed. Most importantly, all are free to download from the Apps Store.

No doubt many of you will disagree with this ‘Top Five’, but our chief tester had the final say on what made the list so we apologise in advance. Please suggest any you think should have made the list using the comments box below.

1: Feed Me!

Feed Me is a fantastic app created by the good folks at Honolulu-based Edutainment Resources Inc. With crisp graphics, a great user-interface and amusing game play this has resulted in a fair few hours of histerical laughter and enjoyment. It also has some great educational content including recognition of colors, shapes and patters as well as some early mathematics skills.

Essentially, each question is multiple-choice, with the player needing to choose from a choice of three possible answers. They then drag the answer to the mouth of the monster who begins to wave his arms excitedly and open his mouth wide as the object gets nearer. Once the player has dropped the object in it’s mouth it will either give a contented burp of enjoyment or suffer some serious indigestion depending on whether the answer was right or wrong.

There are mutlple levels within the game, with the player earning a different trophy for their trophy cabinet at the end of each. One minor improvement here would have been to have allowed the player to replay a previous level as the levels become increasingly challenging and for young children it would be preferable to repeat earlier levels.

A truly great application that will delight young children and develop their thinking skills.

2: Giraffe’s Memory Match Zoo

Speaking as somebody with the memory of a sieve, I was delighted to see how effective this application was at encourging children to really work the old grey matter and develop their memory skills. I am sure there are many more matching pair type applications available from the apps store, but this was the one that proved the most engaging and retained interest for many weeks.

With quality, colorful graphics and amusing sound effects as each animal is displayed, this app provides a great educational resource and a stimulating distraction. You will be surprised at just how quickly children as young as two are soon able to complete the grids.

3: Baby Flash Cards

There is a reason that Baby Flash Cards by Dream Cortex has had well over 100,000 downloads from the app store – it is quite simply as good as an app for flash cards can really be. That said, they have released ‘Baby Flash Cards 2′ with an added voice to read out the cards for any parents too lazy (sorry… busy) to read them out to their own children. Our chief tester felt she had moved beyond flash cards by the time of this post being writtent so we are unable to talk about this latest version.

High quality graphics are used throughout, with cartoon-style images which are both clear and stimulating to young users. There is also a range of ways to use it, with cards able to be displayed in alphabetical or non-alphabetical order. For youngsters who are beginning to learn to read the cards can also display the word before the picture is added.

As parents we often worry that we do not devote enough time to edcational activities such as Flash cards. Having a copy of this on your iPhone or iPod touch makes it easy to steal an extra five minutes here or there while you are out and about.

4: Baby Piano Lite

Kudos again to those lovely people at Dream Cortex for providing this fun little musical application. The app comprises a colorful seven-key piano with cute, animated animal characters. It will soon have your little angels producing masterpieces of their very own. Well… at the least they will be making a bit of a racket but highly enjoying themselves in doing so!

Despite being the free ‘lite’ version of the app, this is surprisingly full-featured and will retain interest over a good period of time. It is possible to switch between having piano sound effects or the sound effects of animals as the keys are pressed. Two modes of play are also available – freestyle and ‘play along’ in which the next key the child should press is highlighted as they are guided through playing a nursery rhyme.

5: Make a Martian

Make a Martian, by 3DAL, is a great little application for developing imaginative and creative little minds. Combining excellent animated graphics and an extremely easy to use interface, your little ones will soon be creating a wide range of fun and colorful alien life forms.

So, there we go. These are the five free apps that we have seen bring the most enjoyment and development to one little mind. Are there any different ones that would have made your top five? Let us know by sending a comment below.

Hangman has always been a popular way to develop vocabulary knowledge and literacy. Not only is it educational but it is also a fun activity.

You can use our FREE learning game generator to make two different interactive hangman-style games. The Flash-based games can be stored as a bookmark on your browser, linked to from another site, embedded into your own VLE or website or even added to the main content within What2Learn. The added advantage of this last option is that you will be able to see the scores your student get in this game.

Safari Survival Hangman Will you guess the word and save the zebra in time? Play a sample game Make your own game

Alien Abduction Hangman Will you guess the word and save Grandma before she gets beamed aboard? Play a sample game Make your own game

Anybody can make these games – all your need to do is fill in eight boxes to give the words you want in your game and we will do the rest.

You can make lots of other types of educational games using our free game generator.

The weather across the UK looks set to become a little grimmer again this week which, as ever, leads to the Catch-22 decision for headteachers – to close and risk the wrath of the media and parents, or to open and risk the welfare of staff and students?

For those schools who make the decision to close, the blow of even more education time lost can be reduced a bit by ensuring all students have access to a huge amount of interactive learning resources covering most areas of the secondary curriculum. With most students now having access to the internet from their own homes, getting them all on to What2Learn will ensure they keep engaged in motivating and effective learning activities until they return.

Award-winning elearning. Free for teachers and students!

Here are five key reasons to make ‘Snow Day’ into ‘What2Learn Day’:

• W2L is a national award-winning educational resource, proven to raise student attainment, engagement and motivation.
• With literally thousands of interactive learning games and exam drills, students of all ages and abilities will benefit.
• Students will be able to quickly create their own accounts and link in to your teachers.
• Student attainment in our core activities and any created by their teachers is automatically recorded to enable teachers to monitor and reward progress.
• What2Learn is free to access and free of adverts.

To learn more about what teacher accounts can do, take a look at our recently updated teacher guide or see what the latest features of W2L are here.

Sign up now – it is free!

For many student the Haitian earthquake is the first big humanitarian disaster in their lifetime (certainly the first they will be aware of). It will be important for them to have the opportunity to investigate and discuss this catastrophic event. To that end I have begun to collate some links to useful resources concerning the earthquake aimed at children.

CBBC Newsround

The Children’s BBC website is always a reliable and accurate source of information. Written to be interesting and accessible to young learners it includes stories, pictures, animations, videos and much more.

Geography worksheet

An activity in which students watch a video and then need to categorize information as either a cause or an effect of the earthquake.

PBS Newshour Extra

Some in-depth information for older students, links to video content and a printable worksheet to develop student comprehension (the answers to all questions can be found somewhere within the information on the website).

USGS Education

The US Geological Society have made the Haiti earthquake their featured topic. Including a summary poster, maps and a podcast this provides an excellent opportunity for students to understand why the earthquake has happened and why the impact has been so devastating.

Discovery News

Find out if more earthquakes are expected, as well as how aid agencies are managing to find and treat victims.

New English Lessons

A printable activity which English teachers can use to give students the opportunity to learn about and discuss the Haiti Earthquake at the same time as developing reading comprehension and literacy skills.

Do you know any others? Let us know by adding a comment below.

What2Learn is the award-winning games-based educational resource everyone is talking about.

Students – Play your way to exam success!

It has taken a little longer than we would have liked but we have just relaunched W2L accounts which provide content suitable for American students. These accounts provide students with:

Access to thousands of interactive learning games and exam drills. An online portfolio which can be personalized. The ability to link to friends to compete in a league to see who can achieve the most. Access to in-built rewards, such as characters students design and develop by spending credits earned by completing learning games. The option to unlock additional topics and game engines. Learn more about the content in our accounts for Grades 6-8 or Grades 9-12 or click here to make your free account and start learning the fun way!

Teachers – it is a great tool for you too!

Teacher accounts can be created which will allow teachers to link to their students through the magic of W2L Share Codes. Once linked, teachers can track student progress (all activities are automatically graded) with a range of detailed reports. Teachers can even create new sets of games specific to the needs of a class and make these available to their students and see their attainment in them. To learn more about what teacher accounts can do, take a look at our recently updated teacher guide or see what the latest features of W2L are here.

Sign up for FREE!

What2Learn is an award-winning educational resource which has been proven to raise motivation and academic performance. It is also FREE so register for your free account today.

Sign up now – it is free!

We have created some sample topics for you to unlock. This will give you access to games for some areas of the curriculum not previously covered. These new topics also include some new game engines which are unavailable elsewhere within W2L.

Students – To access these new topics simply enter the topic code into the share code box on your dashboard. You will then see a link to the games in your new topic on the dashboard.

Teachers - To access these new topics you will need to log in to your teacher account and press on the Topics link on the side menu. You should then select the link to ‘my recommended topics’. You will then be able to enter the topic code for any topics you wish to unlock.

Business Studies Basics

Enter topic code: 832265
A set of games to help KS4 students get to grips with some of the basic vocabulary and concepts in GCSE Business Studies.

Functional Skills ICT

Enter topic code: 832263
Suitable for Level 1 and Level 2 Functional Skills ICT, these games will develop student knowledge of software, hardware and standard ways of working.

German Vocab (KS3)

Enter topic code: 832269
W2L has never previously had any content for students learning German. This new topic puts that right with a number of games about numbers, weather, days of the week, months of the year, etc.


These topics are all going to be expanded and developed further.

Teachers – please share any topics you create with the rest of the W2L community.

As a teacher you will be keen to closely monitor and reward the progress your students are making. Now that you have made a game, wouldn’t it be much more usefyl to you if you could see whether your students have played it and the scores they have managed to attain?

If you have not already done so, sign up for a free W2L teacher account from our homepage and you will soon be able to do just this. As W2L will automatically mark the work of your students, think about the substantial time savings you will make. You will be able to see the attainment of your students in the original core games and in any games in topics created by you (or other teachers) that your students have ‘unlocked’.

Step One:
Before you can see the scores your students have attained in any games in W2L you must have done the following:

• Enabled your students to create their W2L accounts (learn more).
• Used your unique teacher shared code to link to all of your students (learn more).
• Organised your students into the appropriate groups / classes (learn more).

Step Two:
Log in to your W2L teacher account. Make sure that you are set to the required key stage by pressing the ‘change class’ button on the side menu. You will not be able to see reports for games within a certain key stage if you are in the wrong class.

Step Three:
Press on the ‘Reports’ button in the side menu. You will see a screen like the one below.

You will be able to start narrowing down the details you would like to see in your report by selecting a specific subject or topic and the particular group of students you would like to see results for. ‘Subjects’ are our original core content and ‘Topics’ are any additional sets of games that you have created or unlocked. Before pressing ‘Run’ please press the appropriate radio button to indicate whether your report is based on a subject or a topic that you have selected (as shown below).

Step Four:
Once you have chosen the class and the subject or topic you want a report for you can narrow your choices down even further by selecting all students and an individual game, an individual student and all games, or an individual student and an individual game.

With the launch of W2L version 3, teacher accounts are now able to do much more than they have previously been able to do. The key development is that teachers can now see the scores their students manage to attain in games created using our free learning game generator.


A summary of what is new in version 3 is available here.


To make it as easy as possible for teachers to make the most of this new version of W2L we have updated our teacher guide. Please download it here.

Why share your efforts?

• Become an educational author – we will tell you how many people have accessed your content.
• Having a positive impact on learning outside your own classroom can help you gain your next promotion or get you through your next threshold assessment.
• W2L is based on an ethos of free sharing – you and your students are accessing literally thousands of hours of our work for free. Please give a little back and help the system to grow.

How to share your games and topics

To make your games as widely used as possible you will need to be a little active yourself. We recommend the following steps but please let us know if you try anything which is successful.

• Tell us about it and let us feature it on the W2L dashboard and in our newsletter. Use our contact form to get in touch.
• Make sure that your colleagues in your own department know about the games you have made and how to use them. Demonstrate them in your next department meeting.
• Tell teachers of your subject in neighbouring schools about your games.
• Add your game or topic to the TES Resource Bank.
• Post about your game or topic in appropriate forums such as the TES Forums.
• Are you on Twitter? Tweet about your games. Please include hashtag #W2L.

Topics are the key addition to W2L version 3 and effectively make it possible for you to shape the educational content within the system to suit the specific requirements of your students.
If you want to see the scores your students have attained in some of the games you have created using our game generator you will need to create Topics. Topics are collections of games that you make available inside the main W2L system. Not only will you be able to track student achievement through these topics but students will be able to earn credits for their micons by completing your games.

Step One: Game creation

You need to have made some interactive learning games and quizzes using our game generator. Once you complete each game you need to make a note of the reference number of each of them.

Step Two: Create your Topics

Log in to your W2L teacher account and select ‘Topics’ from the side menu. You will then see a table like the one shown below which shows you any topics you have already made. It also gives you the option to add a new topic – simply enter the name of your new topic and press the submit button.

You can add as many different topics as you like.

Step Three: Adding games to your Topics

Once you have created a topic you can click on it’s name to begin adding games to it. Any games you have already added to this topic will be listed (see below).

To add more games to the topic you should enter the game number in the input box below the table and press ‘Assign this game’. You can add as many games as you want to your topics. You can also add games using a widget on the dashboard when you first log in.

Step Four: Get your students to ‘unlock’ your topic

Now that you have created your topic you need your students to ‘unlock’ it to gain access to it. To do this they will need to log in to their W2L account and enter your topic’s share code into the sharing box on the dashboard. You can see the share code of your topics by pressing ‘Topics’ on the sidebar – see the image in Step 2 above.
Once students have entered the share code of your topic they will see a link on their dashboard to your topic and all of the games it contains, as shown below.