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This article called 60 Apps to Teach STEAM in the Classroom
covers kids of all ages, but I think the app list for middle and high school are good apps.
http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2014/08/09/60-apps-for-teaching-steam

I know we were supposed to list something with a tablet application, but I also wanted to include this on VR. I think it could add a lot to the science classroom when we can add this technology.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ar-apps-for-student-learning-monica-burns

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Aaron Perkins- Back at again with the Gneiss Apps

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Aaron Perkins- Back at again with the Gneiss Apps

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This blog details several rock solid geology apps. For middle and high school ages, the only app included that I wouldn't recommend is the Lambert app, as that seems to focus more on areas of geology that wouldn't be touched on until college. GoogleEarth is a common app that many students are likely to be familiar with.

I personally dig the idea of the iGeaology and Earthviewer apps. iGeology, with it's ability to give geologic info on specific locations, could be used to increase engagement by letting students see exactly what's under their feet, and it also offers plenty of analysis opportunity. Earthviewer is like a tectonic plates simulator, but it comes with a geologic timeline and can display major cities as things move; there's a lot of additional data here that you wouldn't get with a pure tectonic plate simulator.

Finally, Earth as Art offers pictures taken of various landscapes & landforms, with an added function to view time-lapse videos of the landforms. This could be useful for engaging students with stunning photography.

http://betweenarock.co.uk/random-science/theres-an-app-for-that-must-have-geology-apps/

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Rachel Kirchoefer- NLM Bio, Chem, and Environ Ed Apps

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Rachel Kirchoefer- NLM Bio, Chem, and Environ Ed Apps

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Three apps were released by the National Library of Medicine last November. In "Bohr Thru", students collect protons, neutrons and electrons to build Bohr models for the first 18 elements on the periodic table. There appears to be in-class game sessions. In "Base Chase", students grab base pairs to crease DNA strands for animals. Both of these are appropriate for high school aged students . In "Run4Green", students collect coins for performing environmentally friendly tasks. This one is good for middle school students.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/sis_student_games_2016.html

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While investigating apps for our tech task, our group looked through two websites that I have since revisited. There are many different science areas covered on both sites- but thought you might find some of these useful! -- also... Labster--- online virtual science lab.
Happy "apping"

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/40-most-awesome-ipad-apps-for-science-students/

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The iPad has found its way into hospitals, retail stores and homes across the nation, but it's also making a big splash in the classroom, even with some of the best online colleges. With a great selection of apps focused on everything from word processing to keeping in touch with classmates, the tablet computer can be an invaluable tool for learning - no matter your age. Online science students haven't been left out, of course, and there are a wide range of applications offering help with chemistry, biology, astronomy and even the math that comes along with certain fields. If you're a college student looking to supplement your science studies, these apps are some of the best for learning, sharing, researching and just plain having fun.
Chemistry
Get beautiful photographs of the elements or explore what happens when you design your own molecules using these great iPad apps.

1. The Elements: A Visual Exploration: One of the most celebrated apps on the iPad, this periodic table is much more than a list. Online science students will find themselves inspired by the beauty of the elements and may just learn a thing or two to boot.

2. Periodic Table of the Elements: Those looking for a less fancy periodic table will be well served by this app, laying it all out in a way that's easy to interact with and reference.

3. Molecules: Visualize all kinds of molecules using this app. You can zoom in, out and look at molecular structure from every possible angle. This could be a great tool for online chemistry students looking to put a picture to the things they read about in textbooks.

4. Buffers: Students working in the lab will appreciate this tool, which makes it easy to design buffer solutions for pH control. Doing double duty, it acts as both a reference guide and a calculator.

5. Ball & Stick: Like to create your own molecular compounds? This app will let you visualize them or any other type of molecule, which is great for research into structural biology, pharmaceuticals and more.

6. NIOSH Chemical Hazards: The chemistry lab can be a highly educational place, but it can also be a dangerous one. Learn from this application which chemicals pose a danger so you can stay safe, which could be especially handy for those looking to launch careers as lab technicians.

7. Self Assembly: Check out this app to embrace your creative chemist side. With it, you can design your own molecules and watch them self-assemble into more complex structures.

Biology
The iPad has been a hit with many in the medical profession, so it's no surprise that there are loads of apps like these that can help students learn more about the biology behind it all.

1. OnScreen DNA Model: You don't have to be a biology major to appreciate the awesomeness of this application, which allows students to see the structure and composition of DNA up close and personal.

2. 3D Brain: There's still a lot we don't understand about the brain, but this application makes it easier for students to start learning what we do know and exploring its structure.

3. 3D Cell: Similar to the 3D Brain app, this tool will let learners slip in and out of the structures of a cell, with information on what each part does and helpful videos.

4. Monster Anatomy HD: If you're going into a medical field, you're going to have to know your anatomy. This award-winning app can be a big help, visualizing and identifying every structure on the human body, and can also be useful for students enrolled in online health science degree programs.

5. Skeletal HD: From the smallest bones to the largest ones, this program will help you study for any anatomy exam like a pro.

6. Pocket Heart: Get up close and personal with the human heart using this app that provides modeling, videos, vocabulary and much more.

7. GeneIndexHD: Mapping the human genome was a huge feat, but now students have access to a huge amount of information on every known gene out there through an application. Look up genes, find info on websites, get access to media and even follow genetic research journals using RSS through this great learning tool.

Astronomy
Many of the apps that have best showcased the power of the iPad are astronomy apps. These are some of the best to help you explore the solar system and beyond.

1. Star Walk for iPad: Consistently ranked as one of the best iPad apps out there, any space-loving student should add this app to their collection. Packed with features, it lets users explore the night sky in real time, finding out more about what stars, constellations and planets are in the sky above.

2. SkySafari: If you want to learn more about our own solar system, this app is the way to do it, with tools to explore planets, constellations, and just about anything else you could imagine.

3. Solar Walk: Use this 3D solar system application to move through space and time and observe all of our neighboring planets in great detail, including in-depth articles on their history and makeup.

4. Moon Atlas: The moon has fascinated humankind for centuries, and even with having been there, our modern times are no exception. Through this application, students can learn about the natural satellite's topography and explore it further.

5. Supernova: Ever wanted to see a supernova in action? This application lets you do just that, modeling exploding stars and nebulae.

6. NASA: Here you'll find one of the best applications on the iPad for studying space. NASA provides the basics - like information on the planets - as well as up-to-the-minute video, news and much more.

7. 3D Sun: The sun, while so close to our own planet, is still a bit of a mystery to scientists. Explore what we know and still need to learn about the star and see some amazing 3D images through this application.

8. Mars Globe HD: Our closest neighbor, the red planet of Mars, has sparked human imagination for years - primarily because of the possibilities for life the planet holds. Students can study this amazing planet and the features that cover its surface using this mapping application.

9. Buzz Aldrin Portal to Science: Find news, multimedia content, videos and tons of other resources all about space exploration on this handy iPad app.

Reference
Your iPad can also be a valuable research tool. Pull up these apps to do a little scientific reading for your next project.

1. Science Glossary: With this tool, students can look up just about any relevant term they don't know and find biographies of some of the most famous scientists of all time.

2. Wolfram Alpha: Get a search engine geared towards science and math with this application. Students can easily find facts, figures, maps, graphs and more.

3. Need to keep your research handy when you're on the go? This app has you covered, storing, organizing and archiving all the important information you need. This could be especially useful for students who are constantly on the move, such as online military students.

4. PLoS Reader: Through this application, you can read new articles published by seven different journals using interface designed just for the iPad.

5. PubMed on Tap: Start your research right on your iPad by using this PubMed app. Students can search for, store, email and organize references - and may even be able to read some full-text articles.

6. Kindle: There aren't many books you can't read when you have this app. Simply install and buy or download whatever science-related reading material strikes your fancy.

7. Math Ref: Look up formulas and other important mathematical information though this great reference tool.

Tools
From timing your experiments to converting units in the lab, these tools can help you save time and learn more.

1. iLab: Timer HD: With iLab Timer, students can keep lab notes about their experiments and get access to reliable and easy-to-use timers.

2. Seismograph: Measure any kind of vibration or shaking using this app, from how much you generate jumping up and down to a real life earthquake.

3. TempConvert Universal: It can sometimes be confusing to go back and forth between different temperature scales, but this tool makes calculations a breeze.

4. Unit Conversion Pro: No matter where you are in the world or what you're trying to measure, you can easily convert units using this handy iPad tool.

5. National Geographic World Atlas: Look up maps, facts about the world and much more through this great atlas provided by National Geographic.

6. SpaceTime for iPad: This application is much more than just a simple calculator. It lets students solve and graph a huge range of problems, add color, manipulate forms and so much more.

Miscellaneous
Look up science myths, do some popular reading or debunk your science-phobic friend's arguments with these helpful apps.

1. Mythbusters HD: If you enjoy the Discovery Channel show, why not get access to it on your iPad as well? You'll get to see how this mythbusting team uses science to debunk some of the most persistent urban myths.

2. Science Illustrated: Carry this science publication with you where ever you go with this application that lets you read it right on your iPad.

3. Popular Science: Follow the latest news in science and engineering with this iPad magazine.

4. Skeptical Science: Have a friend that simply won't believe something you know to be scientifically true? Use this application to find the myriad of real-world studies that support your position.

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40 Most Awesome iPad Apps for Science Students - BestCollegesOnline.com

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The iPad has found its way into hospitals, retail stores and homes across the nation, but it's also making a big splash in the classroom, even with some of the best online colleges. With a great selection of apps focused on everything from word processing to keeping in touch with classmates, the tablet computer can be an invaluable tool for learning - no matter your age.

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Just another site.. padlet wouldn't let me post two page previews in one block...

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Amanda Bohnert      Blogging.. the worksheet is dead- 

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Amanda Bohnert      Blogging.. the worksheet is dead- 

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I also found this interesting blog post about blogging in the science classroom. Not sure how I feel about it yet- but some of you might find this interesting!

http://see.ludwig.lajuntaschools.org/?p=442

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One of the major changes that I made this year was to switch to using individual student blogs as the centerpiece of student assessment (the other major change was to implement standards-based grading). I started using student blogs for a number of reasons including:

1. I was tired of grading worksheets with the same copied answers on them.

2. I realized that these worksheets weren't always helpful in learning content, and in fact, much of the time they got in the way of learning.

3. Student in my classes have access to a MacBook cart whenever they are in my classroom and we have fantastically dependable wireless internet connectivity for these laptops (yay tech support!).

4. Blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress are free.

5. I'm increasingly wary of multiple choice anything as real assessment and wanted students to write more.

6. I wanted students to have a permanent, online record of their achievement throughout the year, not some pile of papers shoved in a binder (or trash can).

7. I wanted students to have an audience for their work that would include each other, their families, the community, and the world.

With all these highfalutin ideals in mind, we launched our blogs at the beginning of this school year, with some fear and trembling. Very few students had done any blogging before, although a couple had existing blogs from their English classes. The first challenge was to get everyone signed on to one of the blogging services. Most students chose Blogger, probably because we thought that that would be easier initially since we all had Google accounts. The only problem was that, at that time, at least, Google Apps accounts like my students had did not work with Blogger very well. Students ended up having to create their own Google accounts just so they could use Blogger. This wasn't a big deal, just not as smooth as if Blogger were integrated into Google Apps.

So how did we use the blogs? They became the go-to location to post assignments for me to read and grade. For a week or two, though, I operated a lot like I did last year, posting assignments on Edmodo and using its great assignment features to have students turn things in online, as well as posting them to their blogs. I realized that this was a duplication of effort and soon instead of sending out "assignments" in Edmodo, I just sent files and links as "notes." This meant that these resources no longer came with a due date and that I was not using Edmodo to see who turned in which assignments.

Instead, I figured out how to work Google Reader to monitor my students' blogs. After subscribing to each students RSS or Atom feed, I organized all of their feeds into folders in Google Reader:

Reader allowed me to keep track of when students published new posts and to quickly find a particular student's blog if we wanted to discuss something that they had posted. We still used Edmodo extensively for communication, just not for assessment. For example, if students made changes to their blogs, the changes would not always be highlighted in Reader so I asked students to message me on Edmodo if they made changes to a blog post that I had commented on already.

Speaking of comments, I did not personally comment directly on each student blog post. I figured that other readers of their blogs could do that. Instead, I gave feedback about each post as part of the student's gradesheet entry. Some comments were pretty general (nice job! or something similarly lame) but I got better (I think) at commenting and left specific advice for ways to change the posts to better meet the standards.

One criticism that I've heard about my grading system is that it doesn't spell out for students exactly what they need to do to meet a standard. I think that would be a concern, except for the fact that I tried to provide constructive comments on most everything students did and I let them respond to the comments by fixing their posts for a higher grade. Students did have to make the first effort at a blog post to try to show what they have learned about a particular topic or skill. I worked with them from there to improve their understanding by providing comments and discussing their posts with them. I had a number of students say that this was their favorite part of my class this year: the fact that they could try out a post, get some feedback, and go back and fix it as needed.

What did students blog about? Everything, really. Most of it was even related to the class ; ) As students and I discussed topics or performed labs in class, those topics and labs found their way in some form into students' blogs. Some posts were simple text-based blog posts but at other times, students used a variety of web2.0 tools to put "learning artifacts" on their blogs. These learning artifacts included the use of Prezi, Glogster, Quizlet, Google Docs, Photobucket, DomoNation, Xtranormal, bubbl.us, and other tools.

If you've viewed the example posts linked above, you may have noticed that different students used different tools to discuss the same topic. That's because I did not require that a particular tool be used with each assignment. Students were free to use the tool that they thought would work best for that particular post. If you are interested in exploring the wide range of content and quality that was produced this year, here are the links to all the student blogs.

Here are some of the awesome things about student blogging, in my experience:

Since students used many different tools to create artifacts for their blogs, I was never bored grading their posts, and in fact, was usually incredibly entertained and impressed by what students can create given the freedom to do so.

Portfolios of learning

The blogs became a record of student achievement that we can look back on for proof of learning. Along with their color-coded gradesheet, a student's blog is a powerful indicator of the level of understanding for any given topic or skill that we learned throughout the year.

Wide audience of readers

Many people ended up looking at the students' blogs, not just me. For example, parent conferences will never be the same again, since it was so easy to pull up a student's blog in order to view and discuss the student's level of performance. Parents have access to the entire list of student blogs, too, so it was easy at conferences to point parents there if they wanted to compare how their student was doing to how others were. The kid who has three blog posts starts squirming in conferences when their parents see other students blogs that have 10 or more posts.

Student blogs were also publicized via Twitter or my blog, which led some traffic their way. At least one student and future teacher made lots of connections with the edublogging community this year.

Resources for each other

Not all students learn at the same rate or in the same way. This is one of those things about teaching that is easy to say, but hard to do something about. However, the blogs let kids work at their own speed and with tools of their own choosing. Inevitably, some student posts were finished before others and became learning tools for those students who were behind the rest of the class. Towards the end of the year, when they were a bit more mature in the whole process, some students even started giving credit for their peers' work that helped them write their own posts. It was very cool to see them learning from each other via the blogs.

There were some challenges along the way, of course, as we tried blogging our way through the year:

Blog writing is time intensive

If you want students to do a good job writing their own blogs, be prepared to give them plenty of class time to write, revise, and experiment with new tools. Every year it seems I get to discuss less and less content with students, but this year saw a big jump in the time I had to allow students to have workdays on the computer so that they could stay current with their blogs. I wouldn't have it any other way, but it will force me to look very carefully at what I have planned for next year's classes.

Part of the reason for spending time blogging in class is concern over the issue of fair access to the Internet in order to complete the blogging activities. Many students do not have easy computer access at home, although some do. I wanted to try to rule out any unfair advantage that students might have over others, but was only partly successful. Of course a kid with his own computer and Internet access is going to have more chances to blog and make amazing products than another kid who has to rely on computer access during the 50 minutes I see them in class. I'm not sure that's a reason, though, to not blog. Its more of a reason to agitate for more equitable Internet access in my community.

The Mac blogging platform is not as useful

There were some students, fortunately few in number, that for one reason or another, kept forgetting their Blogger account passwords and would get locked out of the system. For these few (maybe 5 students in all my classes) I set them up with blog accounts through our local MacServer. That let them use the same password as they used to log on to their laptop, but the advantages stopped there. We found that with the Mac-hosted blogs, there was no separate publish option, so as soon as a kid saved their blog, finished or not, it posted to my Reader. Also, we never figured out how to allow embedding within the Mac blogs so those students had to post simple hypertext links to the artifacts that they created rather than having them appear right in the blog page.

There was some plagiarism of blog posts, but it was usually incredibly easy to detect. The most obvious ones occurred when students simply lifted another student's blog post and pasted it in as their own. I had one student, famous among teachers at our school for this sort of behavior, try this stunt about 5 times in a row trying to meet one particular standard. I simply refused to put any grade in her gradesheet until I was convinced it was her own work. Google searches and Plagium worked great for me in providing evidence that someone had copied material from a source or another student blog. I probably didn't catch everything, and might jump in with our English teachers and somehow use Turnitin with the blogs to try to avoid problems next year.

Are blogs a rigorous assessment strategy?

One of the concerns that I had during the year was whether or not the new blogging paradigm is rigorous enough compared to the old model of lecture-worksheet-quiz-test-rinse-lather-repeat. This is a concern, of course, since I almost completely abandoned the traditional testing that I used to do (my Moodle site was very lonely this year). Could I tell whether students were learning? Aren't they just goofing around with web tools and having fun instead of suffering through the lectures that they need?

It was this article (via @mrsebiology) that convinced me that blogging can be just a rigorous as the tests that I used to give:

Rigor is the goal of helping students develop the capacity to understand content that is complex, ambiguous,
provocative, and personally or emotionally challenging.

Blogging in many ways is an incredibly difficult task for students. Not only do they have to research background information about a topic, they have to synthesize a variety of ideas together in a coherent piece of writing or media. They encounter interesting ideas about the course content and write about how these concepts effect their lives and society in general. In many ways, that's much more rigorous than any test I could give about stuff that I lectured on.

The worksheet is dead. Long live the blog.

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Blogging in the Science Classroom: The Worksheet is Dead

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One of the major changes that I made this year was to switch to using individual student blogs as the centerpiece of student assessment (the other major change was to implement standards-based grading). I started using student blogs for a number of reasons including: I was tired of grading worksheets with the same copied answers on them.