Teacher's Guide to Using Free iPad Apps to Support Higher Order Thinking Skills

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Hot Apps for HOTS is an excellent guide packed full of apps and activities to support higher order thinking skills (HOTS). I learned about this eBook from a post by Tony Vincent in Learning in Hand almost a month ago and since then I downloaded the guide and read it from cover to cover and was really thrilled by the depth and practicality of the learning materials provided by the authors: Lisa Johnson and Yolanda.



" In this interactive resource, readers will cycle through 9 stations focusing on each level of Bloom's Taxonomy (from remembering to creating). Each station will include an apptivity with a specific app, example products, and additional resources to support iPad integration in the iClassroom. "

Here is a list of some of the apps mentioned in this guide :


Flashcardlet is an iPad app that allows you to easily create study materials and share them with others. You can create as many flashcard decks as you want and when you are done you can store or share them via email or in your Dropbox account.



This is a wonderful free iPad app that enables users to draw, sketch, scribble, and paint using a set of easy to handle tools including: paintbrush, smudge, text, stencils, glitter, chalk and many more. You can also paint with all your fingers using more than 44.000 colour picker and when your doodle is done you can share it with others via email.



This is a good free iPad app for recording short funny videos with Tom. Tom is a responsive cat that can interact with your gestures and repeat what you speak out to him. Final videos can be shared  through Facebook or uploaded to YouTube.



This is somehow similar to Talking Tom Cat. Ben is a retired professor of chemistry who enjoys his lazy life of reading newspapers and eating. To get him to his laboratory and do experimentations with him you need to poke and aggravate him. So much and learning with this app.



Popplet is a mind mapping and brainstorming app that you can use on your iPad to record and capture your ideas, notes, thoughts in a visually appealing way. 



This is a wonderful tool for creating short video tutorials and lessons. It allows you to sketch, doodle, and record your voice to talk your viewers through the why and how of it all. 

7- TED

This is the official TED app which is a library of more than 1400 talks from  some of the world's most fascinating people: education radicals, tech geniuses, medical mavericks, business gurus and music legends.



This a good storytelling app that students can use to create and tell their stories using a wide range of characters, actors, and photos. 


Videolicious is a video creation app that you can use to combine videos, photos, and music into HD videos shareable through YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.



This is a useful app for creating charts. It allows you to record pros and cons for any topic, assign weights to each factor, create unlimited t-charts, and email the charts to friends and let them tell you what they think.