By Lauri Brady

Whether you need to get better at organizing your presentations, managing digital documents, or tracking hall pass use, there’s an app here for you. We broke down apps by category, including LMS, assignments and writing, and formative assessment tools.

Read through each one to see what you need, or head right to the section that addresses an organizational need you already have.

LMS

Think of an LMS as your digital “home base”—a place to have discussions, share resources, and create and collect assignments.

1. Schoology (Free or fee-based for integration into your school’s Student Information System or SIS)

Schoology is a tool that allows teachers to organize all of their resources, adding assignments, quizzes, links, and more, by each specific class. Students can submit work directly within the LMS, and their built-in grade book allows you to filter assignments, score work inside the grade book, and much more.

If you’re using iPads, then you’re going to need some kind of LMS. This one is worth looking into.

Honorable Mentions:

• Google Classroom
• Edmodo

More: 20 Best Google Classroom Tips From Google Pros

Digital Notebooks

Your digital notebook is a great way to take, annotate, organize and share notes.

2. Notability ($2.99-$5.99)

Create, annotate, record and share notes with this full-featured app. The only storage limit is the space on your iPad. Notes auto-backup to Google Drive or iCloud and can also be imported. Note: This app is for iPad only!

3. Evernote (Free)

Evernote is another great tool for taking and sharing notes that integrates with Skitch for annotation features on images (no annotation support for PDF files, though). Evernote is cross-platform, so you can access your notes on any device or operating system. Space is limited to 60 MB on free accounts, which can present challenges when using across classes or as a portfolio.

4. Penultimate (Free)

This organization app is a freehand note-taking tool that also saves content directly into your Evernote notes.

5. OneNote (Free)

OneNote offers many of the most-loved features of Evernote, but the app is useless unless you have an Office 365 subscription. Microsoft users will love this app, although it’s not as robust as the desktop version.

File Storage and Sharing

Find your best option for storing and sharing files of different formats with students and families. Your LMS may serve the purpose of storing files with a degree of sharing capacity, but projects created by students may require access to cloud storage in order to share from multiple devices and locations, or in order to be moved off a device.

You’ll need to create an account for each of the options listed below, but they all include a certain amount of free storage (with affordable plans beyond that).

6. Google Drive (Free)

Educators and students in Google Apps for Education districts have unlimited storage space for free. Movie files uploaded will play (and can be shared) just like YouTube videos but without the ads, comments, or distractions. For teachers simply using Google Drive in their classroom or in conjunction with Google Classroom, storage space is limited but very reasonable, at least to get started.

7. and 8. Box and Dropbox (Free)

Both Box and Dropbox are worthy cloud storage options, allowing files to be organized, stored and shared with others. Box gives you 10 GB to start, whereas Dropbox only gives you 2GB; you can earn more storage by inviting others to become Dropbox users.

More: 7 Essential Tools for Digital Document Management

Assignments and Writing

Creating and checking citations and bibliographies can be tricky, but there’s an app that simplifies the task!

9. EasyBib (Free)

EasyBib integrates with Google Apps and effortlessly creates MLA, APA, or Chicago-style citations. Search for a book or scan the book’s barcode for instant citations. Ask students to write their own citations and then use this app to quickly double check their work. 

Screencasting

Use these tools to create video tutorials that can be used in a flipped classroom or as study materials for students. The tools can also be used for students to show what they know.

10. and 11. Educreations & ShowMe (Free and fee-based options)

Both of these apps allow you to create pages with images and audio and include interactive whiteboard features.

Educreations stands out for its unlimited web image search feature, typed text tool, and abilities to erase a recording and start over—you can also save a draft to finish at a later time. You can only save one draft at a time, however, which could be potentially problematic if you share devices or are working on screencasts in more than one class at a time. The current draft needs to be completed and published or deleted before you can start a new one.

12. Explain Everything ($3.99)

This is a full-featured screencasting tool, allowing you to insert videos and interactive web content. A huge bonus is the ability to save your screencasts as video to your camera roll for use in other apps.

More: 4 Essential Tools for the Flipped Classroom 

Interactive Content Presentations

Don’t just take screencasts—use these apps to create and organize your interactive presentations.

13. Nearpod (Free)

Take presentations to the next level by integrating interactive content (questions, drawings, websites, image galleries, and more) with Nearpod. You can take advantage of most of the features of this site for free, but once you’re hooked you’ll want to look into a subscription.

School premium user upgrades are available at $100 for 3 years through PAIUNet and your local IU. The premium account will provide you with far more storage space, the ability to assign Nearpod Presentations as “homework” (self-paced), and several awesome interactive features/activities.

14. EdPuzzle (Free)

EdPuzzle does for videos what Nearpod does for PowerPoint. Ensure students are engaged in what they are watching by embedding interactive content into videos to assess student understanding. No longer does watching a video have to be a passive activity.

There are several other tools like this, but EdPuzzle gives you the most options for free. Teachers can use videos from a variety of sources including YouTube, Vimeo, LearnZillion, Khan Academy, TED Talks and more.

Formative Assessment Tools

15. – 18. Socrative, Kahoot, Quizizz, and Formative 

All of these tools allow you to quickly assess student understanding and analyze the data to guide instruction. All of these tools are cross-platform and can be used on any device with access to the Internet.

Pricing varies depending on the platform.

Student Driven Digital Portfolios

Digital portfolios are a great way for students to learn new tech skills, while keeping an easily accessible record of all the work they’ve done, year after year.

19. See Saw (Free and fee-based options)

This is a portfolio environment that allows students to upload images, edit, add voice annotations, and share. It’s a powerful tool in any classroom because teachers can also comment and provide feedback.

Students can self-enroll into classes with no email address required. The app Shadow Puppet Edu is designed to be able to save to Seesaw as well, making it an excellent add-on.

Parents can easily leave feedback for their child as well with the parent app or by scanning a QR code. Once signed up, they receive email notifications when new work has been added to the portfolio.

20. Class Dojo (Free)

Class Dojo provides classroom management tools for teachers to build a community with parents and students. Teachers can share classes for co-taught classrooms or specialists, reinforce positive behavior, and keep parents in the loop with simple communication tools.

More: How to Foster an Authentic Writing Journey With Digital Portfolios

General Classroom Tools

Sometimes the classroom needs a re-working in the general organization department.

21. YouTube Channel (Free)

Curate a collection of videos for classroom use. Create playlists by subject or unit. Upload your own content or gather videos that support your curriculum.

22. e-hallpass ($.79 per user)

e-hallpass is a great organization app for 1:1 schools looking for an innovative and low-cost online digital tool to manage and control hall pass usage. e-hallpass was developed by Eduspire’s software division, Eduspire Solutions, and offers many advantages over the traditional paper hall pass or wood block.

Schools can know who is in the hall at any time and receive alerts for students who don’t check in. The tool tracks hall pass usage trends, generates hall pass usage reports by student, and flags student hall pass outliers.

It handles all pass solutions: bathroom and locker, and any teacher, office or library/hub space. For more information, visit e-hallpass.com.

Lauri Brady spent 12 years in the classroom teaching 4th and 5th grade before becoming the elementary technology integrator for Central York School District in Pennsylvania. She supports five elementary buildings across the district providing classroom support, coaching, and professional development—a job that she LOVES! Lauri also instructs graduate-level professional development courses for Eduspire, a leading provider of innovative online and face-to-face classroom tech integration courses for educators.

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