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The best (and mostly free) apps to help you keep up in class
By design, school is supposed to challenge you -- to push at the boundaries of your understanding of the world and make you a more well-rounded person. It's not supposed to be easy as much as it is fulfilling, but thankfully, there are ways to make your educational journey a little less difficult. Luckily for you, a lot has changed since most of the Engadget team went to school. To help out, we've gathered a few apps here that should prove especially useful as you gear up for more long days of learning. (Trust us, you'll probably miss them someday.) Oh, and don't worry: Every one of these handy apps is available for iOS and Android, so everyone gets to benefit.
Pixar opens a free Khan Academy course on storytelling
Pixar is offering a free course through Khan Academy that can help you find the kind of stories you want to tell -- and help you tell them better. The "Art of Storytelling" is the latest installment in a series of free courses from the studio called "Pixar in a Box." It discusses ways to build worlds and characters, how to make sure your stories reflect your unique perspective, along with other relevant advice. And if there's anybody qualified to give storytelling advice, it's the creators of Toy Story, Wall-E and Up.
Khan Academy brings its free learning to Android
Online education platforms are rapidly gaining in popularity as more and more people revel in the idea of learning just about anything – from sciences to the arts, all from the comfort of their own homes. Khan Academy, the non-profit educational organization that works towards providing a word-class education to everyone, has announced that it has released a dedicated Android app as well as a redesigned iPhone app.
Google's latest science camp for kids starts on July 13th
If you want your kids to learn something while they're out of school but would rather not ship them to some distant summer camp, Google is about to come to your rescue. It's kicking off the latest edition of its annual Camp Google on July 13th, and this year's virtual educational event promises themed weeks that might just sate your young ones' curiosity on big scientific subjects. They'll learn what the ocean is like through underwater panoramas, for example, and watch live video chats with astronauts. The whole shebang is free, so it won't hurt to tune in if you want your children to go back to school knowing more than they did when they left.
Khan Academy brings its online course catalog to the iPad
Despite having an iOS app for some time now, Khan Academy hasn't offered the full range of course material on those mobile devices. With an update today, though, eager learners can access the company's selection of courses on an iPad. The new version brings 150,000 exercises to the mobile device, with the opportunity to get instant feedback. Khan Academy's iOS software got some slate-specific tools too, including handwriting recognition and a "friendly guide" that observes your response time to suggest activities that'll help you get better at the tough questions. There aren't any plans to bring the app to Android or Windows yet, as the e-learning provider says iPad is its most popular platform behind the desktop experience. However, folks with one of Apple's tablets can nab the update from iTunes now. [Photo credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The New York Times]
Khan Academy releases iPad app
MIT alum Salman Khan has an ambitious plan. He wants to provide anyone, anywhere with a quality education. To that end, he's created a website with over 2,700 K-12 lectures spanning math, history, science and more. Now he's bringing all this online learning to the iPad with his new Khan academy app. In keeping with Khan's philosophy of learning, the Khan Academy app and all its resources are available for free. The app lets you login to your Khan Academy account and track your progress as you work through the courses. You can also download videos and playlists for learning on the go and follow along with subtitles that'll help you navigate through each lecture. You can grab the Khan Academy app for free from the iOS App Store.
Khan Academy iPad app screenshots show progress
The Khan Academy is an online non-profit organization whose goal is to provide a "free world-class education to anyone anywhere." Think of it as TED for everyone, except Khan's videos, resources, and lesson plans can actually help you be one of the TED speakers one day. Currently the Khan Academy is only accessible through a browser, but, John Resig, Dean of Open Source and head of JavaScript development at the non-profit, has shown off a few alpha screenshots of the upcoming Khan Academy iPad app, and it looks awesome. Initially the 1.0 version of the iPad app will allow video navigation and viewing, interactive transcripts, and offline support. However, future versions of the iPad app will allow for in-app exercises. No word yet on a release date for the app, but combining the Khan Academy with the iPad could prove to be a truly disruptive combination of technologies for traditional education. And especially with kids coming out of US colleges with upwards of $150,000 in student debt, perhaps our more traditional education models need to be disrupted.
