The job of educating the next generation can be highly fulfilling, but it is rarely easy. Long hours and endless paperwork can make even the best of teachers feel overwhelmed. Most teachers have access to limited resources both in the classroom and at home. Thankfully, modern smart phone and tablet apps exist that can help reduce the stress and mitigate the long hours of teaching. Try some of the following best apps for teachers if you are looking to get a little extra assistance with your teaching.
Remind
Scheduling and communication can be frustrating for many teachers. Communicating important dates like deadlines for projects or the date of upcoming tests takes time away from teaching and needs to be repeated in every single class during the day. The Remind app is an elegant solution to this problem. Designed specifically for communicating with students, it allows teachers to communicate with students and parents en mass and gives regular reminders of upcoming dates. Best of all, the app protects the privacy of both students and teachers by not sharing private contact information.
Subtext
Have you ever given a reading assignment to your students and wished you could share your copy of the book with every student because the margins are filled with your personal notes? The Subtext app allows you to basically do just that. This app offers the ability to underline text and create margin notes in any digital text. It also allows for that modified text to be easily shared with others. Not all students will have easy access to a digital reader, but if that technology is available in your school, this is an excellent app.
Class Dojo
The Class Dojo app is a program with a two-fold purpose. First, it helps build a sense of community in your classroom by encouraging specific behaviors. Second, it reduces the time teachers need to spend managing classroom behavior. Incorporating some of the traditional concepts of a martial arts dojo, this app allows you to efficiently disseminate a code of conduct to your students. With just the press of a button you can award merits to students that follow the code and demerits to those that don’t. This real time tracking is easy to share with parents, students, and other teachers as necessary. Furthermore, the app provides group statistics as well as individual statistics, allowing behavior adjustments to be tracked at multiple levels.
Kahoot
Students learn better when they are having a good time. The Kahoot app is an ideal way to make teaching more fun. This app is a tool that allows you to create a virtual game show in your classroom. Completely free to use and incredibly simple to use, there are basically no down sides of using this program.
Seesaw
The Seesaw app is an app that belongs in every classroom, preferably starting at grade school. This easy to use portfolio app is ideal for communicating strengths and weaknesses to students and their parents. With Seesaw, teachers and students can preserve their best work and work that needs improvement. This provides concrete examples for students and parents that facilitate learning and growth. Furthermore, during high school years this portfolio is a great boon to students that are applying to colleges.
Teach Learn Lead
While few teachers have much time for social media, the Teach Learn Lead app is an exception to that rule. This app is a social media app designed specifically for teachers. Everyone who uses this app is a teacher, which creates a very comfortable environment to discuss your trade, learn new teaching techniques, make new friends, or just to unwind with people who are facing the same difficulties that you face every day. If you are looking for the collected wisdom of those that have come before you, or want to share some of your own wisdom, Teach Learn Lead is the place to do so.
Slack
Almost every class requires some level of cooperation between students at some point. Whether it is for a group project or just to study together, team communication is important in nearly every classroom. The Slack app, designed to facilitate communication and improve productivity at the professional level, is also an excellent classroom tool. As a teacher you can use it both to communicate with students and for coordination with other teachers. It also allows you to monitor the projects of students working together, making it easier to provide assistance when they might need it or encourage them to work harder if they aren’t making any progress.
Teacher Aide Pro 2
Every second spent during class that isn’t spent teaching is basically a wasted second. While taking roll generally isn’t too time consuming, it is something that needs to be done every day and can definitely add up. Also, the traditional roll book doesn’t allow for quick information access. The Teacher Aide Pro 2 app is a simple solution to that problem. This app is a simple way to record student information and take attendance. The student information at your fingertips includes a full grade book, and contact information that allows for you to directly send an e-mail.
StudyBlue
Want to use flash cards in class, but don’t want to spend hours cutting them out? The StudyBlue app is your ideal solution. This app creates digital flash cards in just a fraction of the time it would normally take to make physical flash cards. Flashcards created by this app can have both a video and audio component and are easily shared with your students. The program also allows students to share flash cards they have made with you or with other students, improving the benefits that your class gets from this program.
Once you incorporate some of the best apps for teachers into your classroom, you are almost certain to find yourself with more free time. Whether you spend that time educating your students or just getting some much deserved relaxation is completely up to you. Taking advantage of these apps is sure to improve your teaching however you use them.
