iTooch Elementary School App Review

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Using the iPad or and iPhone/iTouch for education is such a great way for kids to have fun while learning. Many times they don’t even view it as “work” because of the way the apps present the material.

I recently had the chance to review the free app iTooch Elementary School on my iPad (you can use it on your iPhone/iTouch as well) and want to share a bit about it with you. iTooch is a cute little orange cartoon character that will help your child proceed through the app.

When you first load the app, you’ll see that you have access to the worksheets via a library – which will be empty when you start. The free app has 10 extracts of titles available to download ranging from third grade language arts to fifth grade health.

Just clicking the download button on any of these will add it to your library. These extracts will give you a good idea on whether or not you’d benefit from paying for a full version. In app purchases range from $2.99 and up or you can buy complete full versions of grade appropriate apps also through the iTunes app store.

Touching the play button next to it once it’s installed will bring you to the help screen. This will tell you all you need to know to use iTooch in with your children or in your classroom.

When beginning the app, the student has a progress chart right on the front page, so both they and the parent/teacher can see their progress throughout the app. At the bottom there is also a settings button that allows you to change the grading system, reset the app and give in-app user feedback.

Touching “Here We Go” brings the student to the first group of questions.

You can see on the side that we are in Practice Mode – if you want to go to test mode, you can pull the lever. iTooch is there to help and he does funny random things while the child is trying to formulate their answers. If they are taking a longer period of time to do this, he checks his watch, turns to stone, turns into a skeleton, cute things like that!

If the student needs some help, touching iTooch will give them some more information on the topic at hand. Once they’ve read through it, they can go back and answer the question. When they’ve chosen their answer they’ll get immediate feed back with a check mark if correct, or an “x” on their answer with the correct answer then checked off.

In Test Mode, questions are posed in which the student has 1 minute to answer.

When they have completed the test they will get a score on it based on how you set it up in the app (either by ‘number’ or by ‘letter’).

I think this app has a lot of potential, certainly the free version is a great way to reinforce already learned skills and a fun way to learn new concepts. iTooch is cute and is sure to entertain your kids, the downside to that is they may wait to answer questions just to see his cute shenanigans 🙂 . I like that you can choose which topic and chapter you want to work on just by clicking on the circle on the home page. That way the student can decide what they want to learn if they don’t want to do it in order.

There are a few things that could be improved upon in the app. I wish that they had a soundtrack to go with it, that would read the text on the pages that you get to by touching iTooch. At the higher grade level 5, the reading in say the Health subject is a lot and in my opinion requires a high level of understanding. For students that struggle with reading this probably makes the app less fun to use and they may struggle to get through it. I also wish that they would start out with the Lesson and then go to the question, rather than asking the question first. I feel that students that either know the answer or “guess” correctly will just go on, rather than reading the lesson which is quite informative.

When it comes to answering the questions there’s a bit of a learning curve for some of them. Both the highlighting and fill in the blank type, had us getting a couple wrong or skipping them before we figured out the correct way to answer. It would be nice to have a quick tutorial for how to answer the different questions.

One nice little perk in the app itself is the pencil at the bottom of the screen. When you touch that you’re taken to a blank chalkboard where the student can doodle a bit, write notes, or solve some math problems. It’s a nice feature.

I definitely think it’s worth the time to download and try out the free version with your family/students. You may just find the resource you need to keep your kids from the “summer slide” with a few in app purchases and 10 or 20 minutes a day!

You can learn more about iTooch on their website, and you can view the app on the iTunes store here: https://itunes.apple.com/app/itooch-elementary-school-math/id484570190?mt=8.

I received compensation for the time it took me to review this app, however all opinions are my own and were not swayed by any payment given. Published by Tammy Litke.

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