Are you looking for the best apps for teachers? You are not alone. At least every new teacher ask this question to them self. Teaching is a really difficult job, I agree. It’s not easy to be a successful teacher. Especially if you’re an online teacher like me. There are many things you need to know and organize to enhance your teaching profession.
Here are the best online free apps for teachers.
Nearpod
The first app that proves ideal for livening up lessons, and made especially for teachers, is the one called Nearpod. This application allows teachers to present multimedia lessons that students can upload to their mobile devices. The Nearpod app is completely free and offers different layouts, which make it suitable for various teaching activities.
nearpod.com (ios) / nearpod.com (Android)
Viper (Windows)
The second app worth mentioning and proving suitable for teachers is the one called Viper. It is in fact a valid Windows application that contains ready-made themes which allow teachers to present them directly to pupils. In this app, students are also able to compare their work to understand how to write better by avoiding grammatical errors, paying more attention to syntax and typos.
viper.en.softonic.com (Windows)
Attendance
The third app that proves effective for teachers, who have an Android device, is the one called Attendance. Teachers can use it to draw up a list of attendance in their various classes, and to help them keep track of the studies and classwork of each individual student. This app also allows a photo to be added to each name so that the teacher can better verify and follow the necessary information.
Attendance (Google Play)
4TooNoisy
The fourth app for teachers is a little bizarre, but in some ways useful; in fact, it is called TooNoisy. It was created to detect environmental noises and it can be used for both an Android device and with an iPhone in a classroom. This app specifically emits a beep when the aforementioned noise threshold is excessive. The main function of this app is dictated by the fact that students, themselves, can become more aware of how to behave, and regulate their behavior. It also helps students avoid the risk of punishment by a teacher or educational representative if they aren’t following the rules.
toonoisyapp.com (ios and Android available)
ThingLink
The fifth app that a teacher can download for free from Google Play on his mobile device is the one called ThingLink which is used to keep students attentive during lessons. In addition, the app is useful for creating interactive images for teachers who intend to use them to better explain a topic or make concepts clearer to students who download it on their mobile device.
thinglink.com (Android)
Audience response
AnswerGarden
With this free tool, teachers can ask their students a question which can be answered with a single word or short phrase. Responses are received through a web link, QR code, or AnswerGarden’s iOS app, and begin to populate on a display screen in a word cloud. The words that are submitted most often will appear as the largest in the cloud. This is a very handy tool to use for brainstorming activities with a group in the classroom.
answergarden.ch (ios)
Poll Everywhere
The first company to offer an alternative to clickers, Poll Everywhere started as a service that allowed students to respond to a poll via text message. Now students can also respond through a web browser or through Poll Everywhere’s mobile app. Polls can be created using multiple-choice, ranking graphs, clickable images, and questions that include LaTeX syntax and alphabets from different world languages.
Slido
With Slido, students can submit questions through a regular web browser using a unique event code. Questions which appear on the presenter’s screen can be upvoted by other participants, moving the most popular questions to the top. Once a question has been answered, the presenter or teacher can remove it from the queue. Slido also offers audiences polling with multiple-choice and word cloud options.
Teachmint
Honestly, this is one of the best platforms for teachers who want to switch to online teaching. The nature of this platform, the ease and effortlessness that it brings to the table, and the features that it provides are absolutely unique and edgy in comparison with the other similar platforms in the market. It is the best app for teaching online.
From security to affordability, this platform covers all the major concerns that a teacher would have while going online. The simplicity and security of the platform are two major things that stand out. Specially designed and optimized for India, Teachmint stands out from the rest of the crowd.
Features:
- Live Class Recording
- Automated Attendance
- Interactive Online Whiteboard
- Online Tests and MCQ Assessments
- Fee Management
- Automated Grading
- Content Sharing
- Inbuilt LMS and more
Animoto
Animoto is an ideal application for teachers to create teaching videos and other presentations. When teachers take their classes online they struggle with the problem of engaging with students and making their classes interesting. Animoto acts as a great help in this front and can be used to create presentations that include images, videos, and sound clips.
Features:
- High-quality videos
- Customizations
- Wide variety of fonts
- Storyboard templates and more
TeacherKit
A lot of teachers struggle when they take their classes online, and this occurs primarily because of the changes that are attached to the shift. Teacherkit is a tool that allows teachers to digitize their routine tasks such as taking attendance, recording the grades, and likewise. It helps to add behavior notes for students and keep track of their improvement so that you can focus on the important things such as teaching.
Features:
- Digital classroom tools
- Behavior notes for students
- Grading system and reports
- Progress reports and more
Evernote
As the name suggests, Evernote is a note-taking app and it helps teachers and students alike. The uses are many. It acts as a planner, helps teachers stick to their schedule, save paper in addition to this, study materials can be created and shared through Evernote. Projects, assignments can also be shared. It helps you store notes, documents and it creates a repository of the stored documents so that teachers can access it anytime.
Features:
- Availability of offline notes
- Large storage capacity
- Image recognition
- Full-time support and more
Educreations
This is an interesting take on a whiteboard mobile application. Like the ones that we have discussed, it makes teachers’ lives easier. It helps teachers and educators to create easy to follow tutorials for students. With features that help you with animation, diagrams, and other visual aids, the icing on the cake is that it lets you store the videos online as well as to share them on social media. It also helps to edit videos using an inbuilt video editor.
Features:
- Import photos and videos
- Easy content sharing
- Cloud sync and more
Schoology
Schoology is yet another educational app for teachers that works as an effective platform by helping teachers and students to post assignments, projects, videos, study materials, links, etc. It helps to boost engagement and attention in the classroom. It also helps in classroom management. Talking about classroom management, if you have any questions regarding the same, we have a blog detailing everything you need to know about classrom management, tips, and tricks:
Features:
- Tools for creating lessons
- Webpage tools
- Calendar
- Tools to create assignments and projects
Socrative
Socrative is an educational app that acts as a learning assessment tool. It helps to simplify grades and reports. With engaging assessments, surveys, polls, etc, this application for teachers helps to make classes interesting and measure the engagement of students.
Features
- Easy to use classroom tools
- 50 students allowed per classroom (150 students in the premium subscription)
- Assessments and results
- Content sharing
Quizizz
This is an educational app that is super useful for both teachers and students alike. Teachers can create interactive quizzes and circulate them to the students. This helps in breaking the monotony and in making the classes interactive. With classes moving online, most of the teachers are struggling to make their classes engaging and this educational app will help to add the necessary life.
Features:
- Student-centric
- Easy screen sharing
- Automatic reviews and results
Google Meet
Google Meet for teachers is another popular software application for online tutors, virtual teachers and anyone conducting classes online because of its integration with Google’s suite of other apps like Google Classroom and Google Drive.
Google Meet offers the following free options for its users:
- Share screen to your students
- Adjust your layouts
- Group classes up to 1 hour
- Chat with students in the chatbox
- And other normal features of a virtual video conferencing platform
Anyone with a Google account can create a video meeting or virtual class of up to 100 students (participants) and meet up to 60 minutes for free.
If you are conducting one-on-one tutoring classes, you can spend up to 24 hours together (but why would you?!).
GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting, as stated on their website, puts the “class in online classes.”
They are an up-and-coming competitor to some of the larger video platforms because of how they gear their functions to suit teachers and students in an online class.
With their free account, you can expect:
- Personal URLs for students to join the class
- Instant messaging, file sharing & screen sharing
- Powerful mobile capabilities for students
- Clean and simple interface with powerful functions
Unfortunately, their free version is quite limiting but it will allow you 40-minute classes/meetings but with only up to 3 participants.
GoToMeeting free would be perfect for independent tutors who have 1-3 students and classes under 40 minutes.
Conclusion
There are lots of different online teaching tools that you could use. We want to share some of these with you so that you can feel inspired and ultimately setup your own online course. We’ve broken this blog post down into different categories so no matter what type of e-learning you want to create, there will be something worth reading. These apps might just come in handy!