Apps+for+Educators

30Hands allows a user to make pictures, annotate them, record a voice explainer and then packages it all into a video. Luhtala likes it because it’s intuitive and easy to use with no training. Its simple interface and ease of use make it great for young students, like kindergarteners. One downside is that the teacher has to manually enter individual student accounts.
 * Apps for Educators **

Adobe Voice is a recently released education product from Adobe that allows students to narrate a story over an array of digital images. It doesn’t require any video, rather the tool moves images forward in a cinematic fashion.

Book Creator is only available for iPads, allowing kids to easily create their own iBook by importing images, multimedia, text, and audio. Its simplicity makes it good for kids of all ages. Even though it has been around for quite some time, some educators still call it their number-one tool. One downside is that the output can only be viewed on iOS devices.

Tellagami is a tool to share quick animated messages. Users pick a character, record an audio message or type text and send it to someone else. It can be used in conjunction with other tools to make it even more powerful.

ExplainEverything is another tool for creating video like tutorials. Students or teachers can take photos or images, annotate them, record voices over them and explain different concepts that way. It could be good for giving students directions or for having students explain what they’ve learned.

Haiku Desk is a free presentation tool with many themes and Creative Commons images to choose from. Users can import photos, make charts, and generally tailor a presentation to their own style. [|Blendspace] is a free tool for blending and flipping classroom. [|Peardeck] Pear Deck was founded by educators on a mission to improve teachers' lives by making rich, active teaching easy. Pear Deck integrates easily with Google. Inquiry based learning!

SlideIdea is another tool that allows teachers and students to make presentations come alive. The tool allows users to embed polls, annotate slides, and add audio recordings over images or text on a slide.

**Knowmia** is a free presentation tool alternative to ShowMe or ExplainEverything. While these tools have similar functionalities, some teachers see them as progressing in sophistication with ScreenChomp best for elementary school teachers, ShowMe a good choice for middle school, and ExplainEverything a better option for high school students. Knowmia includes a class roster list and some learning management system functions in addition to the presentation tools.

**ReadWriteThink Timeline** allows students to arrange work sequentially.

** VIDEO TOOLS ** **iMovie** is still the preferred tool for many teachers using school issued iPads or other Apple products in their classrooms. It comes preloaded on the devices, is a powerful tool and can be used in conjunction with other apps like Green Screen or Tellagami.

**Green Screen** is an app that allows students to combine recorded video footage with a background of their choice. The weatherman standing in front of a map is a good example of the green screen effect. Many educators report using it in conjunction with other video apps.

**iStopMotion** is a fairly simple tool for creating animated videos. Students can record or import audio and match it up to their visuals.

**CrowdFlik** is a free app that allows a group of people observing the same event from multiple perspectives to combine all their photos or video footage together. Users upload all the collected footage and CrowdFlik stores it in the cloud. Then users can edit the media clips together into a video containing multiple viewpoints or perspectives of the same event.

**Koma Koma** is a simple stop-motion animation tool. It only has four commands — shoot, delete, play and save — so kids can focus on the content without having to worry about complicated controls. One teacher asked her students to use the app to record music videos that include claymation and collage. The simplicity allows for lots of creativity, and it’s free.

**VideoScribe** is another, more expensive, way to create animated videos. It replicates the stop motion fast note taking style that has become popular in advertisements or when explaining things.

** PHOTO EDITING ** **Pixlr Editor** and **Pixlr Express** allow for free, easy photo editing and fun filters and overlays respectively.

**SnapSpeed** is a free photo editing tool which, in conjunction with a camera phone, lets a user select a part of a photo and highlight that without discoloring the rest of the person. It’s a good way to call attention to different parts of a photo.

** AUGMENTED REALITY ** **Aurasma** is one of the most popular augmented reality tools and it’s free. It allows teachers to “tag” physical objects with videos, animations or 3D scenes so that if a student hovers over the object with their mobile device they’ll see the attachment.

**Chromville** is a free app that is part augmented reality experience and part game. Focused on younger students, it’s centered around a world in a galaxy far away where the colors are fading. Students download a blank coloring page, fill it in with color and then hover over the images to make them come to life.

** READING ENGAGEMENT ** **BiblioNasium** is not a mobile app (yet) but it to be a great way for younger kids to engage socially around reading. Similar to GoodReads, but aimed at a younger audience, the platform allows teachers to pose reading challenges in a set time period. Students can add books they’ve read and post reviews. ** MATHEMATICS ** [|DESMOS] Desmos is the next generation of graphing calculator: in-browser, beautiful, and free!

** ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS ** **Subtext** allows teachers to upload PDFs and embed questions to help students be close readers and understand point of view. It also prompts readers to write comments at the end of each chapter, creating a reading journal. It is free.

**StripDesigner** lets students become comic book writers using their own photos and templates available within the app. Student can write text bubbles, place them in the frame and create color gradients for added effect.

**Kidblog** offers a free, safe place for younger students to blog. Teachers have control over all the publishing features and student blog entries are private by default. Despite the sanitized environment, many teachers feel their student write better for the larger class audience than they do when they know only a teacher will read their work.

**Poems By Heart** is a game to help students memorize classic poetry. While many teachers are moving away from memorization as the most important skill in the classroom, it can be fun for brain training.

**Poetry**, a free app made by the Poetry Foundation, is a wheel that spits out a poem. It is a way to broaden students’ thinking about what kinds of poetry they like and gives them access to a wide range of poetry in different styles.

** COMMENTING TOOLS ** **Ask3** is a tool for quickly sharing text and audio between teachers and students. It allows a user to turn an iPad into a whiteboard, record voice and text to either ask a question or get feedback. It’s a good way to have an interactive conversation with another student in the class.

**Join.me** allows educators to screen share with students so both parties can control the same desktop.

**PDF Expert** is an app that allows students to annotate, highlight, place bookmarks and in other ways mark up digital texts. One frustration is that it doesn’t integrate well with Google drive.

** CODING ** **Hopscotch** is a simple, free app to teach rudimentary coding ideas to younger students. Students can make characters of their choosing do actions using a visual coding language consisting of blocks of code.

**LightBot** is another programming tool for slightly older children. Rather than trying to make a character move or create an animation, this app is more of a game, with students using a visual programming language to move through various levels. The “lite” version is free, but the version with codeable puzzles costs $2.99.

** NOTE TAKING AND ORGANIZATION ** **Clear** is a simple, gesture-based to-do manager. It’s easy to stay organized, take notes, make different to-do lists and delete things.

**Evernote** is a note-taking and organizational app that has become common in and outside of education. One nice feature allows users to upload handwritten notes to better enable users to keep all their thoughts in one place.

**Notability** is favored by many schools for note taking. It allows teachers and students to share notes and annotate PDFs.

**PaperPort Notes** offers a free alternative note taking tool to Notability.

**Paper** allows for more creative note taking for those who like sketches, diagrams and other non-textual notes. It has clean, simple visuals.

** DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP ** **Digital PassPort** tool for teaching digital citizenship lessons. Created by Common Sense Media, a non-profit that has been creating digital citizenship content and curriculum for schools, it comes highly recommended.

**Nearpod** is a participatory presentation tool that allows students to interact with the content while keeping control with the teacher.

** BIBLIOGRAPHY ** **EasyBib** and NoodleTools are both bibliography tools that can help students stay organized and track their research online. Once a student signs in for the first time these apps connect him or her to other online resources they’ve stored.

SOCIAL MEDIA Educators have been using Pinterest for a long time to share ideas with one another. Now some educators are finding it to be a simple portal to parents who want to support their learners at home. Teachers can stash resources on different subject areas on boards so parents can further learning at home. It can be a great way to bolster the school to home connection in some communities.

Instagram is best known as a social media tool, but some educators are using it to help students document their experiences. Hashtags can help keep photos of the same topic together and students can use it in the field to take notes. Later their ‘grams and tweets from the field can be pulled into something more cohesive using Storify.

Storify is a way to archive social media. Some educators are finding it to be a good way to archive a school’s backchannel over a day or week. There’s no app yet, but this could be another powerful tool for adding transparency to the discussions taking place online.

** APPS FOR EDUCATORS/LIBRARIANS ** **edWeb.net** is a community of educators discussing tips and trends through online discussions. While the site hosts webinars that teachers can attend for continuing education credits,

**Follett Destiny** is a powerful tool for active librarians who spend lots of time visiting classrooms.

**DestinyQuest** is a free app that allows students and teachers to access the library catalog from a mobile device. Students can search for resources, leave reviews, and check account information.

**Follet TitleWave** gives librarians an easy way to order new books. When out and about, if an educators sees a book that would make a good addition to the library she can take a picture of the cover and the app will automatically start populating a cart.

**Google Voice Connects** is a call forwarding service.

** MISCELLANEOUS ** **EduClipper** is a popular portfolio tool that allows teachers to manage the portfolio for a secure environment, but still allows kids to work independently. Students create their own content, use online resources and mash it all together to create projects.

**ThingLink** is a free app that lets a user tag images with audio or video and share them widely.

**Remind101** is an easy way to text students through a distribution list. They can see the message, but have no access to the teacher’s cell phone number.

**Socrative** offers free versions of its app for students and for teachers. It’s an easy polling app that gives teachers an instant assessment of whether students are understanding concepts in class. Teachers can also create short answer questions in the app. Polleverywhere is a similar tool.

**Symphonizer** is great for music classes. Teachers or students upload sheet music and can then turn the page by smiling.

**Voice Dream Reader** will take any text, like an online article, and read it aloud. It has a much nicer computer voice than many computer assisted devices and could be a good alternative.

**WordLens** is the free app to go to for a quick translation from one language to another. Just hold a mobile device over the text and scan it for a translation.

**WhatWasThere** is a free, interactive app that tells users the history of the spot where he or she is standing. It could be a good tool for history teachers.