The 2019 Best Apps for Teaching & Learning are of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning. Apps recognized foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover.
Chatterpix Kids
Give your photos a voice with ChatterPix! Chatterpix can make anything talk — pets, friends, doodles, and more! Simply take any photo, draw a line to make a mouth, and record your voice. Use ChatterPix whenever you’re doing a video project with students on the “no photo” list. They can take a picture of whatever they want, record their voice and still participate.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
EarthViewer
EarthViewer allows students to visualize changes to Earth’s surface over its four billion year history. Students can interact with a moveable globe, similar to Google Earth, and animate four time scales – modern, ice age, paleo, and ancient Earth. Overlays can be added to show the locations of current borders and cities, important fossil finds, and impact craters. Animated charts comparing temperature, oxygen, carbon dioxide, day length, luminosity, and biodiversity allow students to investigate relationships between these variables over geologic time. EarthViewer also features in depth articles and videos as well as a detailed list of external references and a teacher quick guide are also included.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: 6-12
Equity Maps
Chart & record the interaction of students or colleagues to measure and graphically illustrate levels and types of participation. Participants are clearly labeled, and participation can be easily tracked by tapping on the student’s icon. There are also icons for chaos, pair/share, small group breakouts, silence, media, or teacher talk. Analytics are viewable immediately and can be broken down individually for the purpose of conferencing with students and providing feedback.
Figment AR
With Figment AR you can “turn your world into an augmented funhouse” as the developers share on in the description on the App Store.This fun app lets you create scenes filled with imaginative objects out of the world around you. You can add interactive animals, objects and emoji’s to make your scene come to life. One of my favorite things about this app is that you can create “portals” to step into another dimension while adding environmental effects like rain, fireworks, snow and more.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
Green Screen by Do Ink
Green Screen by Do Ink makes it easy to create incredible green screen videos and photos. The green screen effect works by combining images from multiple sources into a single video. These images can come from photos or videos in your camera roll, or from the live video camera. With Green Screen by Do Ink, you can tell a story, explain an idea, and express yourself in truly creative and unique ways.
iCell
Students can choose between animal, bacteria, or plant cell from the main screen. Explanatory text has three options: basic, intermediate, or advanced. Students can zoom in or out and can rotate cells for a 360-degree view of the cell. Basic text typically gives one or two short sentence descriptions of structures, intermediate gives longer descriptions with additional vocabulary, and advanced gives very detailed descriptions with challenging vocabulary.
Platform: iOS, Android, Windows Grades: 5-12
iCivics – Suite
iCivics is a suite of apps ranging from “Win the White House” and “Your Bill of Rights” to “Immigration Nation” and “Executive Command”. There is a total 11 apps in the iCivics Suite. “Win the White House” will help students to explain the electoral process, identify the influence of the media in forming public opinion, and analyze how parts of a whole interact to produce outcome in complex systems.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: 6-12
Khan Academy Kids
This interactive app allows kids to manipulate shapes, letters and numbers throughout. Kids can learn reading, language, writing, math, social-emotional development, problem-solving skills, and motor development. Open-ended activities like drawing, storytelling, and coloring encourage creativity and self-expression.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: PreK-2
Mixerpiece
Mixerpiece is a sort of digital magnetic board, with more than 200 items and shapes which you can use and combine to create new works of art while learning art history. Have students demonstrate their understandings of the art elements – line, shape, color, form – using original masterpieces. Students can learn to identify similarities or differences in pieces of artwork by putting them together into something new. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.
Nearpod
Nearpod is an app that helps you create interactive lessons in a 1:1 setting. Save prep time by easily importing existing lessons (pdfs, jpegs, ppts) and adding interactive features such as Virtual Field Trips, 3D Objects, Quizzes, Polls, Open Ended Questions, etc. Customize every lesson to meet the needs of your students.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
Novel Effect
Novel Effect uses voice recognition to compliment read alouds with sound effects and music. Novel Effect features a catalog of over 200 popular and well-loved titles for children, with new titles regularly being added. Parents, teachers, and librarians can use it to spice up their read alouds or revisit old favorites by adding a new soundscape. Students can practice their reading fluency as the app responds to their voice.
Object Viewer for Merge Cube
With Object Viewer from Merge Cube, students and teachers can convert their 3D designs into augmented reality (virtual) objects they can hold and preview on the MERGE Cube. Students can also preview their creations prior to 3D printing to ensure accuracy. Teachers can use Object Viewer to convert 3D models from popular libraries such as Google Poly and Remix 3D into virtual objects to illustrate complex topics and bring lesson plans to life.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
PBS Kids Scratch Jr.
PBS KIDS ScratchJr is a creative coding app where learners can create their own interactive stories, games, and animations by snapping together colorful programming blocks to make their favorite characters move, jump, dance, and sing. Learners are empowered to solve problems, design their own projects, demonstrate knowledge and develop computational thinking skills that are foundational for later academic success.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: K-2
Quizlet
Quizlet is a free app which enables teachers and students to create digital flashcards. Quizlet can also automatically generate interactive games and even tests of the material you enter into it. Five or ten minutes of typing (or pasting=) up front can yield literally hours’ worth of automatically-assessed activities inside and outside of the classroom.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
Sites in VR
Sites in VR is an interactive virtual reality experience where learners can immerse themselves in places around the world! From tourist attractions to landmarks to cultural and religious centers, there are SO many options that learners can explore.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
Sora
Sora is the school library companion to Overdrive and Libby. With Sora students and teachers are able to access audio and e-books through a digital platform customized for school library users. Sora is able to be connected to a school library collection, and given the school district permissions, the local public library collection. Educators are able to assign texts to students to read and students are able to self-select. Badges can be awarded to readers for various achievements
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
Stop Motion Studio
Stop Motion Studio helps you to create terrific stop action movies with a whole host of unique features. Like the frame-by-frame editor, the never get lost timeline and the sound editor. Add backgrounds, foregrounds, sound effects, use paint brushes, and more to make your stop motion video.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
Tynker
Tynker empowers students to learn to code through play. Solve engaging puzzles, modify Minecraft worlds, program robots and drones, create custom games, make drawings, and build and animate characters. Students can unleash their creative potential through this fun, interactive introduction to computer science.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: K-8
Wakelet
Wakelet is a one stop shop for curating resources for your school library. As an app on your mobile device you can send links directly into a Wakelet collection for personal or public use. You can create a collection of resources together with teaching teams for students to use for reference on projects. Collections can be made up of websites, links, notes, tweets, pictures from your device and more.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: All
Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram Alpha is a credible source for instant expert knowledge and computation, using algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you. This app is so much more than just having an encyclopedia in the palm of your hand, it really is like having someone who will look up what you are wondering about and interpret the available information.
Platform: iOS & Android Grades: 5-12
Lifelong Quest 