You can engage students better through use of technology, provide them with more information straightaway and even increase their knowledge. But it requires a slick mind to keep the students away from texting and games and focused on studies.
To help you with this, there are certain apps you might want to try. Some of these apps are purely for your benefit such as tasks like planning lessons are made easier and some are for the students.
Working with Simon Swift, an education expert who owns Swift in the UK, here are 8 apps you must have if you are a teacher.
Kahoot
Kahoot will turn you into the most engaging and brilliant teacher in your entire school. Do you ever feel that you have great atvities planned in your head but are often not able to transform them into doable actions?
Well Kahoot will let you create a game for your lessons! All you have to do is enter the information and a custom game will be created that your students can play in the web browser or should they choose to download the app – easy as you like.
Seesaw
We all know how parents love to celebrate each and every single achievement of their kids. You can achieve that by keeping parents in the circle by using Seesaw – a student portfolio app. Students can showcase their best work to their parents, earning you some praises as well as keeping parents updated with their child’s work. Everything will be crystal clear. If there ever was a win-win situation.
Download this app that is available on almost all platforms and get going.
Slack
There is every chance that you have heard of Slack. It is one of the most widely used project management platforms in the world. But you can use it for educational purposes as well. Think about it, you will be connected to the students 24/7. They can work on projects together. Everything will be in one place and all will be great.
Make Slack your project management tool for teaching. It has a great advantage over tools like WhatsApp because it is far more professional.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a detailed project management tool designed specifically for classrooms. Google Classroom will allow you to manage your classroom digitally and in a very effective way. You can make use of other Google apps such as Google Drive to upload and share course work. The tool also allows you to grade assignments and pretty much do everything that go on in a classroom.
You can make announcements and create interesting and helpful discussions.
Teach Learn Lead
Teach Learn Lead will transform you as a human being and teacher. Networking broadens your horizons. And Teach Learn Lead is a Facebook like platform for teachers. Imagine sharing all your skill and experience to others and building on their experiences.
You can improve your teaching skills by getting to know teachers world over. Download Teach Learn Lead now and expand your knowledge both as a human being and a teacher. Many teachers find mentors and senior teachers through this app. There are many retired and experienced teachers that are on this app just to help you out. How nice is that?
Nearpod
Nearpod is a great tool. It gives teachers and professors amazing opportunities for creating interactive lessons, assessments, assignments and other actions. Imagine how much easier it would be to capture your students’ attention. Especially young students will go nuts. You can add text, images, videos, embossed content and what not.
Mind you the output would be more like an interactive quiz rather than a hardcore game. But that is kind of the whole point. The students can follow the work on their own devices. And there is a podcast like option where a teacher uploads something and all online students can view and update.
Such innovations are making studies a lot of fun.
Additio
Paperwork is going out of fashion these days and that probably an excellent news for the environment. We are on a dying planet and we do not want to enhance the already critical damage. This app will also make you feel good and we particularly encourage the use of any activities that reduces the use of paper.
So instead of writing down the grades and marking on a piece of paper, Additio acts as a digital classroom register. The teachers can take attendance, mark grades, and keep record of class activities and many other things. It may seem like it is a complicated app but it is really very simple. It even helps you plan the lessons.
There is a free and paid version, for $8 per month (which is slightly on the higher side, I concede), the teachers can have advanced features like performance analytics. However, free version would do for most teachers.
TED
TED is one of the most famous educational and innovation apps in the world. Their method of ‘preaching’ is old school, however the ideas are new and innovating. TED app does not consist of any games or bright graphics. What it does have is an outstanding collection of lectures, videos, audios and what not from the top experts in their respective fields.
As a teacher, if you want to enhance your grip on any subject, download TED app now. You can also connect with other teachers and share your life stories.
Ted is networking and tutoring combined.
So here were the eight apps that we think would be supremely useful for you as a teacher. If you have any comments about these apps or you feel we have wrongly included and cruelly excluded some other app, do let us know in the comment section.
