Parents - What are your thoughts on the iPhone / iPad as an educational tool?

[pennyhill]

Hi everyone!

I am hoping to get a feel for how other parents are using the iPhone/iPad as an educational tool for their kid(s). It seems like there are a ton of options to keep track of: edu games in the Apple App Store, eBooks, videos on the web like Khan Academy, etc.

If you use anything like this, is it a pain to find the good stuff? 

[Emaye]

I personally love the iPad. We subscribe to brainpop, reading rainbow and far faria. The kids love them all. There are endless educational games and activities. I use it myself too, for reading and listening to the radio. it is portable and easy to operate for the kids. I just can't say enough things about it.

[heket]

We also have a free Brainpop and Brainpop Jr app. I got in early on Reading Rainbow's subscription. $60/ year is totally worth it to me. I have apps for space since we're working on astronomy, "school" apps for math and other miscellaneous items. I think I have a ton of PDFs- from free google books to curricula. The kids do homework paperless on it - right now math, grammar, and science. I'm hoping to add in Latin sometime in the next year. We can also watch items on YouTube (I have an iPad 2 and haven't upgraded the OS yet.). I also have lesson plans on it. I just love it and hope we can get a second one soon so I can have the kids work on math simultaneously, or at least have them available simultaneously.

[OTMomma]

I love using our iPad for educational apps- and most of the time I can just type into the search feature in the Appstore what I am looking for, and find something.  We just got done reorganizing our iPad to divide the apps into folders by subject.  I only regret that I have downloaded too many free ones that cluttered up our pad.