12 of the Best Apps for Education

 

 

Traditional classroom teaching has changed drastically in the past decade. Gone are the days of paper handouts, dusty projectors and irritating blackboards. Now with the incredible variety of lesson planners, digital graders and material designing apps, teachers have lots of options when looking to engage their students. In this article we’re listing the 12 best education apps teachers can use in the classroom. So you can keep parents in the loop, share material, plan lessons and take attendance all on your iPad or tablet. Teaching in the 21^st century is pretty great, right?

 

 

1. iDoceo

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We’ve heard from teachers that they want one app for everything: a planner, diary, schedule, grade-book and seating plan configurator. iDoceo is a solution many teachers have started to use. Offering the ability to keep attendance, plan seating, manage grades and create reports, the app brands itself as an “all-in-one solution” for teachers’ everyday needs. From what we’ve seen, this claim is hard to argue with.

 

2. Kahoot

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Making learning into a game has long been a strategy teachers have used to engage students. Kahoot has promised to bring this experience of game-based learning to classrooms in an accessible and interactive format. Teachers can quickly make a quiz and test their students in real time. From our testing, the app performs well with students of all ages, with up to 2000 learners taking part in the quizzes at a time.

 

3. Evernote

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One of the things teachers have long sought is an app that helps them keep materials from each class separate, so they know where everything is at all times. Rather than flipping through a notebook or scraping together scraps of paper, teachers can easily transition from one class and topic to the next. Our teachers who tested the app were impressed by its intuitive interface, being able to jot down information, thoughts or a to-do list in an instant.

 

 

4. Seesaw

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Keeping parents in the loop is something teachers have always struggled with. Whether this means sharing examples of student work with parents or suggesting areas for improvement and development, contacting parents has been an important (but difficult) part of education. Seesaw attempts to solve this, providing teachers with a means of uploading photos and even videos of student work, sharing it with their parents. Our team of testers were particularly impressed with the fun tools available, such as pens, coloring tools, highlighters and glow pens. It’s currently used by over 10 million elementary school teachers in the US alone.

 

 

5. Groovy Grader

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There are a lot of grading apps out there today, but we think Groovy Grader has them beat. Unlike other apps designed to replace teachers “old” paper grading, Groovy Grader allows you to view 50 or more grades on one screen. No touching the tablet or scrolling to look for the most common grades, with everything right in front of your eyes. We were particularly impressed by the responsiveness off the app under demanding use.

 

 

6. Teachers App

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While plenty of apps offer a test marks and attendance management platform, Teachers App offers some unique benefits. One of these is being able to automatically graph attendance and test data across time, so you can see each student’s individual trend. A very simple Backup and Restore function exports the data to a csv file, so you can rest assured your classroom data is safe if you ever lose your tablet or phone.

 

 

7. Klassly

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Klassly is one of those do-it-all apps teachers can use for just about anything. You can post polls, videos, pictures, updates, chat privately or in a group even request signatures from parents. Other great features we liked were the videoconferencing features, the ability to design and share photobooks and yearbooks, and the instant, on-the-spot translations. The app also features a well-thought-through calendar with an appointments organizer, so you won’t miss a meeting with a parent again.

 

 

8. Freckle

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One of the best things about Freckle is its ability to customize students’ level of work. Students get personalized Math, ELA, Science and Social Studies lessons tailored to their ability – so they’re constantly engaged and challenged. Our team of testers were impressed with the size of curriculum (over 49,000 math questions and 16,000 ELA questions) and accessible pre-test that means every student starts at the right level. While the app isn’t very accessible for younger users (in the first years in elementary school), we think it's perfect for students in middle and high school.

 

 

9. Additio

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Nowadays a lot of lesson planners don’t integrate with other tools teachers use. Whether it’s syncing your data with Moodle or exporting attendance to Excel – teachers are often left stuck in a bind. This is where Additio comes in. The app doesn’t only manage student assessment, plan lessons and communicate with students – but it can import or export things like grades and support materials to whatever platform your school uses, like Microsoft for Education, Excel, or Google Classroom. You’ll also be able to communicate with parents and families directly from the app. We particularly liked the custom templates that are available, great for planning curriculum units and lessons.

 

 

10. Padlet

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When the developers of Padlet told us the app was like “paper for your screen” – we wanted to put their claim to the test. What we found was this might even be an understatement. Not only can you write notes and text posts on the app, but you can upload videos, take photos or upload animations and documents right from the internet. You can then share this amazing content on an e-learning platform like Moodle or even PowerPoint. Students can even use the platform to create work themselves. Our testing team was particularly impressed with the intuitive user inference and the “fast feel” of the app – and the content we were able to make was very beautiful.  The app is free to try out, with prices going up to $ 1000 a year for entire school and district-wide deployments.

 

 

11. Mentimeter

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Mentimeter allows you to take real-time polls, ask questions, get feedback and connect with your class as students learn. Whether you’d like to quiz students on a history assignment or create an exciting ice breaker to start off a lesson, Mentimeter provides a useful solution. We were particularly impressed with the simple, engaging designs of polls and feedback that were perfect to display to classes. Teachers told us they found this app also useful for e-learning, engaging classes that would otherwise be reluctant to participate. This was due to its easy integration with apps like PowerPoint, Teams and Zoom. 

 

 

12. Dropbox

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The days of printed handouts to students are over. Ever since Dropbox was released in 2008, it’s taken the teaching world by storm. Rather than wasting lots of paper, teachers can now share information right through students’ iPads and laptops. All you do is upload the file to your computer and all students in your classroom will have access to it. The best part is the ability to share other multi-media files like photos, videos or PowerPoints directly with your class – without having to worry about them loosing materials ever again. Prices start at $ 9.99 for a personal plan with up to 2 terabytes of storage, going up to $ 20 a user / month for a business plan with 15 terabytes.