Awesome Apps

This app updates daily with news and nonfiction stories in a variety of subject areas. The teacher can assign readings or allow students to discover their own. Stories can be sorted by reading level and lexile scores and are accompanied by questions that help students to improve their reading and analysis skills with high interest and current nonfiction texts.

Kami is an annotation app that works with Google Classroom. Students can mark up, highlight, and add notes to documents and pdfs. Assignments can be made in Kami and connect to Google Classroom or they can be made in Google Classroom and connect to Kami. It can be connected to Google Drive to automatically sync. This app could allow students to interact with text and create meaning from works that we study in English class. This close reading tool--annotation--can still be used even in electronic situations.

Canva enables the students to use multiple applications when creating a project. Canva has photo editing, charts and graphs and many different document types for the teacher and student to use. I would love to use this for digital Chalk-talk. It would be easy because Canva allows the teacher and students to collaborate on the same project.

Explain Everything is an interactive white board and presentation app. Users can write, draw, and move objects. It's a snap to add various media resources and to record voice or video to enhance project or to make a presentation more engaging. Some of the various uses include teaching and presenting, creating explanation videos, providing media feedback, creating templates, brainstorming, and animation. The app works seamlessly with Box, Dropbox, Evernote, and Drive, and is available on IOS, Chrome, Windows, and Android.
ISTE Standards Student: Empowered Learner, Knowledge Constructor, Innovative Designer, Creative Communicator
ISTE Standards Teacher: Learner, Designer, Facilitator
Grade Level and Subject Area- Appropriate for all grade levels and subject areas

This app allows you to create and publish your own podcasts. Students can use this for higher level thinking and creating. In English students could create podcasts discussing characters in novels and use each other's podcasts to learn and study characters.

This app allows you to create podcasts and share it with a group of people. This would work well in a Social Studies class by allowing students to create mini-lessons (podcasts). They could pick a topic from a unit and create a podcast as a group, then share it with another group. The other groups will listen to the podcasts and make comments. In the end each group can assess for learning from that podcast.

Slack can be used for students to collaborate on group projects. Students are able to search for key terms within the conversation to make sure that they are doing things correctly. It is also used in a professional setting, so it would be quite useful for our seniors as well as our Career and College Prep courses. Students can communicate during school as well as at home to make sure that each component of their project is finished.

NEARPOD = We have have numerous training on this but I finally got the chance to use it in class. It gives the students instant feedback on the lesson you are already presenting with MC quizzes, fill in the blank and even drawings! It is also a great tool for students to stay on top of things if you are absent.

This app lets student create all types of graphic organizers. In history we do a lot of cause and effects so this is effective for that purpose. It gets them thinking and analyzing

This is a language course app. It is free and easily accessible. The lessons are broken down into manageable mini lessons by topics. Language learners can select the pace at which they want to progress. There are immediate feedback to the exercises.

This app supports the ISTE Standard 1a, 1b, and 1c and is appropriate for French language learners in levels 1 - AP in grades 9-12.

A great tool for creating posters, infographics, flyers, brochures, and many visually appealing documents that allow students to express their knowledge of various topics.
ISTE STANDARDS: Knowledge Constructor 3c; Creative Communicator 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d
GRADES: K-12

Evernote is a tool to assist users with taking notes. Notes can be organized into separate notebooks to keep work and home separated or different work subjects categorized. Instead of only having your notes in a physical notebook or locked in a phone, users can access Evernote from any device. If a user wants to communicate with another user, a chat is available or users can share directly with another user as well.

Google Keep is an app that is a part of the G-suite that allows you to create notes, reminders, and set alerts. You can share the notes you make with others, allowing you to collaborate on things. This could especially be helpful for group projects - you can assign different jobs to the different people in the groups, allowing you to hold everyone responsible. It can also be customized! You can add color to notes, and sort them by the colors added. The app can be spread and used across computers, phones, and tablets - allowing for easy access everywhere.

Twitter can be used in the classroom by using it as a sort of message board for ideas and concepts that can be used for the students. Specifically, the app can be used in Social Studies by using it as a sounding board for current events. Student can use twitter for the class as a means of an assessment or as a do now for the students. With the continued support for technology and as the students are more and more interested in incorporating tech into their learning, twitter can be used as both a means for students to check their understanding, as well as the teacher to use as an assessment for the students.

Wevideo is a collaborative tool that enables the user to create videos and podcasts, with edit capability. Is a project-based learning platform to motivate learning which supports creativity and critical thinking. Enables use of Green screen with support for digital storytelling as well. Is available on Chromebook, PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android

ISTE Student Standards: Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, Knowledge Constructor, Innovative Designer and Creative Communicator
ISTE Teacher Standards: Learner, Citizen, Collaborator, Designer, Facilitator
Subject and Grade Level: Supports all ages and subject areas

Fotobabble allows you to use photos while recording audio. This could be used in many ways. Students could create character analyses via this app by finding a picture that they feel represents their character and then recording a discussion. They can create create a project on symbolism in which they use a picture that is a symbol in their reading and then explain the usage of the symbol and its importance. This isn't a video as it is just one photo, but it can still be helpful for students who are visual learners to communicate their ideas to others. They can create entire study guides with this.

A Web Whiteboard is a touch-friendly online whiteboard app that makes drawing, collaboration and sharing easy. This could be used in any class for checks for understanding and it is on the evaluating level of Blooms

Padlet is an app that allows students to create projects that are easy to share and collaborate with. It's like a black piece of paper - they can drag in a video, record an interview, write their own text, and upload documents. It allows them to also be creative by choosing custom wallpapers and themes. It's very flexibly - and it's used by teachers and students all over the world. The best part is that it can be selectively shared and edited among multiple contributors, so students can create a creative and engaging project, and the teacher is able to monitor their work.

This app allows students to create ebooks in an easy to use interface. This can be used in a social studies class to allow students to apply higher level thinking in creating review chapters as a class for units of material. Each group would be assigned a "chapter" of information and they can combine it for a class review.

This is a video player and editing app. Students can take pictures and create a slide show where they can add in notes on the pictures, interactive links, and youtube video on top of them. They can take pictures with their phones and choose any picture they want to edit.

This app is a podcast creator that allows students to create a audio file on an topic. It can be an informative and research based a particular topic. Several students can create podcasts on different concepts on a topic and their classmates can take a tour on the topic by listening to all of them. It can also serve as a peer teaching tool.

Flubaroo is a free tool that you can add to Google Classroom to grade multiple choice or fill in the blanks assignments. It helps you setup a self-grading Google Form in Google Classroom. It is pretty easy to use and saves a lot of time grading papers.

Edpuzzle allows students to watch and engage with videos while the teacher gathers data throughout the lesson. It allows you to take a video from Youtube or you can upload your own video, which you can crop to be an appropriate length for the lesson. It lets you embed questions as students are watching the video. On the teacher account you can see the progress that the students has made on the questions.

This conversational app, allows the language learners to converse with native speakers. It has text, audio and video chat. The learner is paired up with a native speaker based on similar interests. They then select the topics of discussion and make arrangements about when to chat. The conversations are authentic and allows the participants to be spontaneous and creative.

This language app supports ISTE Standards 1a, 1b, 1c, 6b and 4b for French language learners in level 3 - AP in grades 10-12

This app allows students to make videos using their smartphones. It is incredibly easy to use. I can see my students using this app for a variety of collaborative projects and activities. Students can use the app to respond to primary source document analysis tasks and perhaps use it to collaborate in their study groups.