As you explore and evaluate electronic writing environments, look for features that meet your needs. Ask yourself how these tools will help you address standards and meet the needs of 21st century learners.

1 - Planning and Note-taking Tools

• Idea Sketch. Create concept maps, flowcharts, and other ways to visualize ideas and plan for writing.
• Noteshelf ($4.99). Allows you to handwrite notes and organize them on shelves.
• Mind Mash. Brainstorm ideas and share with others.
• MindMeister lets students create, edit and share mind maps.
• SimpleMind+ is a concept mapping tool for basic mind maps.
• Total Recall is an easy-to-use mind mapping tool.
• iCardSort ($5.99) is a tool for brainstorming and organizing ideas.
• Toontastic is a great tool that ivolves drawing, animating, and sharing cartoons. Students learn about building a story arc. Students can share their projects online.
• TouchDraw has a great tool for creating flowcharts as well as any type of drawing.
• myHomework lets you keep track of assignments.

2 - Editing and Support Tools

• My Editing Buddy ($.99) is a word processor built for elementary students. Teachers can use the built-in editing symbols and sticky notes to provide student feedback.
• Storybuilder ($5.99) provides scaffolding for writing. It helps improve paragraph formation, integration of ideas, and inference. There are a whole series of these apps.

3 - Media Elements

• Audionote Lite is a great tool for note-taking. You can record audio notes as well as take traditional text notes.
• DoInk Animation & Drawing
• ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard allows users to record voice-over whiteboard.
• Easy Chart is a great way to create simple charts.

4 - Collaborative Options

• Popplet allows real-time collaboration online or through wifi. Users can explore ideas, plan projects, record throughts, collect inspirations, great galleries and take notes.
• Corkulous ($4.99) is a multipurpose all where students can place notes, labels, tasks, and brainstorms.

5 - Formatting and Publishing Options

• Storyrobe ($.99) allows users to create and share digital stories by combining images and narration. They can be published to YouTube, emailed, or saved.
• Sonicpics Lite is an easy tool for digital storytelling.
• my Memoir ($1.99) is a journal writing tool that can include photos. The output can be a ePub or PDF.
• Demibooks is a really cool way to create interactive books. However the are published to the App Store or through their PrintShop series. There's not a way to export in an open-source format.

Go to Five Real-World Issues.