Interesting iPad Apps that High School Students Wish Existed

High school students often have ideas a bit more original than adults. A teacher discovered teens' creativity with respect to iPad apps by asking them a bonus question. When asked for their ideas about what iPad apps they felt should exist, some teenagers' ideas were rather far fetched while others had the potential a positive impact on the world. This article discusses some iPad apps that some teenagers from south central Michigan believed would make excellent iPad apps. Amazingly, some of their ideas already are iPad apps, but at the time the teenagers did not know it. Other apps have yet to be created.

Health Related iPad app ideas
Three ideas for iPad apps pertained to the health field. One of the teenagers surveyed is a volunteer fireman and is hoping to become an EMT. His idea was to have an iPad app for quick reference on the scene. He would enter the patient's respiration rate, heart beat, and other vitals and the app would provide instant reminders about how best to treat the patient in those circumstances. This made sense as the stress level at an urgent scene for an EMT may make someone lose focus, and having an app to help recall the basics would help rescue the victim. After some investigation, however, we discovered that an app like this already exists. It is called Mobile EMT. Yet, it was great that one of America's teens put this much thought into a very important iPad app to help others.

Another health related app was an urgent health response system app. With a 3G or Wi-Fi connection, a victim of a heart attack or other urgent health related issue could use that app instead of wearing an urgent care necklace around their neck. The app could store their medications and their health conditions, too, and could be an app that medical professionals rely upon if an unconscious patient arrives at the hospital. Again, after researching the iTunes app store we discovered that a similar app already existed, called iEmergency+ (I.C.E). The student was quite disappointed that the idea that he thought was an original thought was already invented, but was also happy that the app existed for emergency situations.

Other health related app ideas involved a way for someone to monitor their health with external peripherals. This included a glucose meter, and some way to press a gadget for obtaining pulse and/or blood pressure.

Pointless iPad app ideas
Two students hoped for some more humor in an app. One student wished for an iPad app like the dancing Baby Cha-Cha so he could watch a baby dance on his screen. A similar app is called "Magic Disco Baby", but it received many bad reviews and was only designed for the iPhone. So, technically, this app does not yet exist for the iPad.

A truly original app idea which accentuated the sometimes pointless nature of iPad apps is an app that shows paint drying. A student believed an iPad user could virtually paint a picture or a fence with plain colors or virtual graffiti. Then the app could run in fast forward showing the shine disappearing from the painted image, eventually resulting in peeled paint chips. This app definitely did not exist, but perhaps someone will want to develop this idea just for the fun of it.

Translators for Music
Finally, teenagers loved listening to music. Two ideas they had for iPad apps involving music included a lyrics display and a language translator. The lyrics display would scroll the lyrics across their screen while a song is playing, much like a karaoke app. Yet, this teenager wanted it to work with any song, not only pre-programmed songs. Similar apps existed which displayed a listing of the lyrics, however, we could not find an app that also scrolled the words for any song in her music collection.

The second music app idea involved a music translator. Instead of simply translating words from a foreign language as if reading from a document, one teenager wished an iPad app would sing the songs in a language of their choosing. This idea was inspired by a foreign exchange student who was still learning the English language but enjoyed the music itself. It would also be good for a student who was learning any other language due to how the brain often remembers information when it is related to song.

Having teenagers share their ideas stimulated their creativity and helped them feel important. Some of these iPad apps may have already existed, but it was nice to know that our youth continue to dream and exercise their creativity.

What do you think of some of these ideas? Would they be apps that you would use? Please comment below.