By Jessica Sanders

Students rely on a variety of apps and websites for collecting content and communicating with friends wherever they are—why shouldn’t they have the same tools for school, allowing them to share with other students or hand in their latest research paper?

Luckily, technology has now made it possible for them access resources for an exam, text their teacher, or complete digital homework wherever they are. These apps and websites can easily be download or bookmarked to keep in their e-backpack for later.

See what tools you should recommend to your students.

Grammar NOW!

Use this tool to encourage students to answer their own grammar questions and become better writers. The product is free to use and can take some of the work off your plate.

Diigo

Most research today is done online, making it hard to write notes on the edges of the text—as you would with a printout or book. Diigo allows students to take notes online with digital highlighters and sticky notes. Students can also use this tool to organized their resources and build a library of information to look back on.

Whooo’s Reading 

This online reading log allows students to track their reading and earn Wisdom Coins for logging books and answering Common Core-aligned comprehension questions. Not only does it encourage students to read more, but teachers can use the data dashboard to track reading progress and grade student answers to gauge comprehension. 

Google Drive

Google Drive—docs, forms, slides, etc.—is a valuable tool for every student’s ebackpack. Students can use these products to collaborate with one another or simply complete and turn in digital homework. They can access this work from anywhere with an Internet connection, as can you!

Note.ly

Encourage your students to stay organized with the fun, online interface of Note.ly. The corkboard background and simple features can make it appealing to the most resistant tech kids. Give students a few minutes at the beginning of each morning to create their list of goals for the day.

Remind

With so many distractions, it’s hard for students to buckle down outside of the classroom to study, prepare a project, or get homework done. Remind gives teachers a safe way to contact students through an outlet they use all the time, text messaging, and remind them of due dates or upcoming exams.

Pocket

Encourage students to use this browser add-on to collect and organize their study resources. With a simple tagging system, students can organize websites and articles for different projects or various parts of a single project.

PhotoScape X

If you’re teaching students about multimodal texts, or they’re creating graphics for a student blog, they’ll need a simple design tool. PhotoScape X is easy to use, while still providing all the most important features of photo editing and creation, like layering, collage, adding text, and more.

EasyBib

While students should learn how to properly cite their sources for research papers and essays, a long project could require a dozen citations. Let your students use this website to create the citations faster and correctly. They can also use it as a way to check that their citation format is correct.

iReadItNow 

Encourage your students to find new books and read more with this simple, free app. They should be able to find almost any book in the app’s robust catalog, and once finished they can mark it as “Read.” They can also see their own reading statistics, browse the bestsellers list, and look back on what they’ve read in their “My Books” tab.

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