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We all know how challenging it is to teach, but teaching online, that’s a whole different story because it is definitely even more challenging to teach remotely, virtually, and online.
Teaching inside a real live classroom is indeed stressful, and it can be 10x more stressful for online classes given that many teachers have to shift from traditional learning methods to online strategies which can be an unfamiliar experience for some.
But not all hope is lost with 8 of the best educational apps for online teachers that will make teaching online more effective, easier, and most importantly enjoyable for both parties which are the teachers and students, making it a win-win situation.
With remote learning still being implemented for safety measures during the pandemic teachers now have the chance to explore and integrate the use of educational apps in order to stay connected and teach effectively even if there are still no face-to-face classes.
There are a lot of interactive and engaging apps that you can download from the App Store or Google Play Store but here are some of the best that you can try to use for your online teaching career. Let’s go ahead and check them out and let us not waste another minute!
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<<Make online learning more engaging. Check the best iPad apps for teachers below.
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8 Best Educational Apps For Online Teachers 2022
1.) Quizizz
Quizizz is a fun and quirky questionnaire tool that teachers will be able to use in order to come up with a unique style of giving quizzes, homework, and other written activities.
There are many quizzing apps that are available online, one of the most popular ones is the application of “Kahoot” but for me, Quizizz will most likely gain students’ attention than all of the other quizzing tools out there.
Specifically for its unique feature letting, you host live games with students or friends which is fun and students absolutely love it! The engaging theme and interface is also something to take note of since students especially kids love to use apps that are colorful and interactive as well.
Additionally, it is easier to operate than any other quizzing application out there. Quizizz is both available on the play store, app store, and even on windows so you will be able to have access to the application on any device that you have.
Teachers are required to create an account for Quizizz in order to post quizzes and record grades, but the students have the option of creating an account or not. The reason why students are not required to create an account is that each quiz has a code that only the creator will be able to distribute that code to the students via any messaging apps or they may send it to any learning management system that their students are enrolled in.
In creating a quiz, you have access to Quizizz pre-made quizzes if you desire—you can change the questions a bit and even change the choices for those questions or you can also make your own quiz from scratch.
The only downside of this app is that it does not give the user an option to create questions that are not multiple choice. However, to compensate for this lack of feature Quizizz auto-generates each student’s scores, progress, and time after they have submitted their quiz.
The database will be shown to the creator of the quiz, and it will be arranged from the highest to the lowest available score. Students will be able to compete competitively with their classmates if the creator of the quiz enables the option of a leaderboard for students to see who got the highest score.
What makes Quizizz great is that it has a unique and fun type of way for teachers to provide feedback for their students and that is in the form of a meme, another great way to relate to students.
For every right and wrong answer of a student, teachers can give feedback through customized memes of their choice. Making it an interesting concept for students to enjoy and be more motivated to study.
Download here for iOS and Android.
2.) Epic!
Epic! is a digital collection full of elementary-level reading materials, it offers more than 40,000+ quality books, learning videos, reading quizzes, and many more. It is an interactive application that younger students will easily be able to use with a little bit of help from their parents.
This is a perfect application for both teachers and students to use in order to completely go paperless and make the distribution of reading materials much faster and accessible for all students.
It is also an affordable application that has a 30-day trial for parents to use however, teachers—especially elementary teachers, can avail of the application for free. No need to worry about the expenses because the application is supportive to those teachers who are trying their best in order to fully utilize online teaching.
The application is very easy to use, and it can sync to your Google Classroom so that your students will also have access to the books that you will make visible to them.
The application can also be a medium for teachers to send students emails, and it can even be a way for them to progress a student’s reading capacity by showing teachers if students have been able to read many books on the application.
The great thing about this app is that it has a monthly challenge for students to accomplish if they like to, when they read more than 5 books a month they will receive a Reading Challenge Certificate that can be both a motivation for them to engage themselves in more reading or it can also be an incentive for them to receive higher grades that will be granted by the teacher.
Either way, this is a good addition to the app in order to encourage students to read more than what their teachers require them to read.
Although it is an application mainly used by teachers to easily give reading materials to their students, it can also be a leisure application for them because it does not only cater to educational books but also recreational books for the students’ enjoyment.
That is why students should take the advantage of this application because it has a variety of e-books and even audiobooks that students will surely be able to enjoy, and it may even improve their reading comprehension.
Overall, Epic! Is a great app to promote reading fluency and is also a great way to keep track of a student’s progress while keeping them entertained and educated at the same time.
Download here for iOS and Android.
3.) Evernote
Evernote is a digital note-taking application that provides accessibility for outside-the-classroom learning with soft copies of a handout lesson.
Teachers will be able to use this in order to share upcoming homework and projects with students. Teachers will not have to worry about manually typing their written documents because Evernote can be utilized in order to effortlessly scan, digitize, and organize paper documents, whiteboards, handwritten notes, and drawings.
Since you’re teaching online now, Evernote makes it possible for you to migrate digitally with no sweat. It is important for teachers to manage their time wisely. That is why one of Evernote’s promising features is the tools that are needed to keep your work and time organized.
Teachers can create their own searchable notes for easier access, notebooks that they need to read, checklists, and to-do lists to remind them of what is in store for a particular day’s schedule.
Online teaching is a challenge for every teacher, many students will most likely have a harder time focusing on the lesson that is why it is necessary for teachers to come up with an idea on how to get students to be more engrossed with the class discussion.
Those ideas can be jotted down on Evernote’s homepage to remind teachers, it will keep track of fun activities that can liven up the discussion.
Evernote can also be used to craft presentations so it will be easy for students to access the presentation, although screencasting is another way to make presentations visible to the class it may get interrupted because of connection issues.
Presentations made from Evernote can be shared and distributed throughout the whole class, so you do not need to screencast any presentations at all. The application can also be used for keeping articles or clippings from the web for academic research, together with taking down lecture notes so as to not miss a vital thought during class discussions.
Download here for iOS and Android.
4.) ClassDojo
ClassDojo is an application that takes learning to a whole new level of fun and friendly interactions between teachers and students.
Teachers will be able to constantly encourage their students by giving them praise for their hard work and dedication by creating a positive and motivated classroom culture even when learning is conducted online.
It is basically an online classroom management platform that teachers can use to keep track of student’s class records, observe student’s behavior, remind students of upcoming activities and announcements, and also allows teachers to freely communicate with the student’s parents.
In this application, students are able to create and send their digital portfolios to their teacher containing pictures, videos, texts, drawings, and audio recordings.
It is easy to utilize this picture because creating digital portfolios in ClassDojo is relatively easy, it features an editing tool that can help edit your pictures and drawings by adding texts, and making the colors more vibrant.
Teachers have their own toolkit provided in the application which helps them perform tasks like designating groups, picking students for recitation by the randomizer, and it can also keep track of the noise level during online class in order to minimize noise and keep students aware of the lesson.
ClassDojo has its own messaging app for both students and the student’s parents. Instead of telling the students what they need to inform their parents, the teachers are allowed to directly contact those parents in order to share the progress of their children.
They can also send the works of their students to the parents. Class recordings can also be conducted in this application, and the teachers can send them to both the students and parents for their reference of the online class.
ClassDojo is a popular application amongst teachers, students, and parents. It depicts a wider image of a student’s daily experience inside the classroom and a valuable way to instill social and emotional learning for students.
This concept can also be the same when conducting online classes, synchronous classes are always limited within a week that is why it is crucial for both teachers and students to still have efficient communication the whole week, and ClassDojo is there to provide it.
Download here for iOS and Android.
5.) Seesaw
Seesaw is another digital learning journal for students to compile their digital works. Students will be able to show their teacher their work and ask for advice on some points they have to improve before fully submitting their work.
This is a good way for teachers and students to communicate with one another because the feedback of the teachers is important to students who want to have a higher grade for their work.
In the application, students are given the option to post their work either publicly—where other classmates will be able to see their work, or they can privately submit it only to the teacher.
Teachers have the ability to post a variety of tasks ranging from form texts, photos, videos, audios, files, and drawings. Upon completion of their tasks, teachers can provide feedback for their work and they can also send their submitted work to the parents of the student using the Seesaw Family App.
If you were to purchase the premium version of the application, both teachers and parents will be able to see the student’s progress and skill set gained for the whole term—this will enable teachers to see what are some of the student’s struggles and what need to be improved on.
Seesaw enables students to gain more confidence within themselves through sharing their thoughts, knowledge, and ideas on the app.
It is also a useful application for teachers, students, and parents to stay connected, no need to use any personal messaging apps. The application itself is very user-friendly for both teachers and students where both can easily use it, and for those international students who have a hard time then the translation feature of the application will surely be a big help for them.
Seesaw is a must-have application for online teaching as it is not only one of the applications that can store digital works of students, but it is also a medium for easy and accessible communication for teachers, students, and parents.
Download here for iOS and Android.
6.) Remind
Communication is an important aspect that needs to be established between teachers and students, especially with online learning.
Remind is one of those applications that can help with linking teachers and students without much effort, it is a classroom communication website and application where teachers can send messages to their whole class and even privately message one of their students.
Teachers can create chat rooms for their students and even teachers so that they can message them important announcements, students and teachers can message back the teacher on that particular chat room but reply messages can be disabled by teachers in order for the announcements to stay visible.
A simple text is not the only thing that teachers can send to their students; it can also be in the form of any multimedia, so it is not limited to only announcements—this will allow teachers to send any videos that are related to their lesson for student’s reference.
Utilizing the application is very simple. Teachers can add members to the chatroom by sharing the link or by giving them the 5 digit code for it. The creator of the chatroom will confirm the students who have signed up for the chatroom before letting them inside the room to make sure that there will be no outsiders that will enter the room.
The app can manage up to 10 classes with an unlimited number of subscribers per class, giving teachers a way to communicate with all of the classes they handle outside school premises.
This app reinforces the communication you have established in the first place, you can now easily inform students about the upcoming quizzes, homework, and examinations that are due without ever having to worry about if the information has been brought to them.
Having this accessible communication between teachers and students, teachers will easily be able to inform their students if their synchronous class will be moved so the latter party will not have to worry about if there is a class or not.
This application will be able to help those students who are having difficulty in managing their time as their teacher will be able to remind them about the upcoming requirements that they should submit and the activities that will follow.
Personal messaging apps are a great medium for communicating but it is not the case when it comes to teachers and students, it is better if there is a separate app to be used for institutional purposes, and Remind is one of the perfect applications to use.
Download here for iOS and Android.
7.) Edmodo
If your students are having a hard time adjusting to online classes then incorporate something that they usually do whenever they are at home like browsing through their social media but make it all about education.
Edmodo is a social media type of learning management platform that teachers can use as a way of handling online instruction to their students. Teachers can create an account for their class and invite them by sharing the link or code of the class, from there teachers can post announcements and can be pinned on top of the news feed for all students to see.
It is somewhat similar to the Facebook app, but it leans more towards a learning management system rather than social media but it is still made to be like social media but for learning, so it makes it more interesting for students.
The app encourages the students to post whatever they want but within reason, and they can also comment on each other’s posts making it more interactive than just using a regular learning management system.
Although it is mainly a social media type of application, students can also submit their works on specific posts of their teacher. The teacher will be the only one to see the contents of their work, and they can choose to privately forward the works of students to their parents.
What makes Edmodo app different from other learning management apps is that it has a touch of social media to it. It presents an opportunity for teachers to post questions prior to the discussion to gather information about what are the students’ ideas on that particular subject.
From there, they can come up with ways on how to present and make it easier for students to understand the upcoming lesson. Teachers can also post a poll to ask students if they are having a hard time learning a particular topic.
Lastly, what I like about this app is it has the feature of creating an online forum where both students and parents can be vocal about their opinions and experiences during an online class. Teachers can moderate the posts of the students to ensure communication appropriateness.
Nevertheless, students are free to enjoy and be safe as they use the app for their insights and school works.
Believe it or not, online classes are more stressful and very different from the regular face-to-face class that is why this can allow students to express themselves on how they feel if they are having a hard time during synchronous classes.
Download here for iOS and Android.
8.) Nearpod
Next up is an app that will make you wonder why you’re only seeing it now, but not for long! Nearpod is an all-in-one interactive app that will liven up your lessons increasing student engagement and fun levels of in-class discussion as well.
Specially designed for teachers, this app will let you create and use interactive tools and engaging presentations that can contain quizzes, polls, videos, collaborate boards, and more! Sounds like a dream come true for teachers, right? and the possibilities are endless!
Not only that this app also takes the gamification of your lessons to another level, which will something your students will always look forward to every time your class starts.
Teachers in the Nearpod app will also love the formative feature that will let you know where your students are. And with Nearpod you don’t have to start all over again to create your lessons within it as you will have the option to integrate your already made Powerpoint presentations, worksheets, videos, google slides, and other curriculum resources easily.
Some of the game options that you can try out with near pod are the; Time to climb, Draw its, and Drag and drop, and a lot more!
The Nearpod app also includes premade standard aligned lessons, activities, and videos that are built in partnership with some of the best educational brands. You can use them as they are, but the best part about it is that you can customize them based on your class’ needs.
There are three teaching modes in the app that you can choose from. First is Live Participation where you can control the pace of the discussion and students can participate in the lesson virtually. The second mode is the Student-Paced mode where you give complete freedom to your students to move through the lessons where they work individually or by groups depending on the workflow of the lesson you created.
You can also toggle between the Live Participation to Student-Paced mode which is quite useful to help address any misconception on the fly while you’re class is ongoing.
The last mode is called Front of class where you can use the app on the spot without students’ devices and facilitate class discussion and collaboration on your own.
Overall, Nearpod is a neat and awesome educational app that will take your teaching game to the next level with its different layouts and modes along with 20 and more formative assessments and dynamic media features that will aid you in your teaching help improve student outcomes.
Download here for iOS and Android.
5 Tips To Make Online Teaching Effective
1.) Create a Student-Centered Learning Environment
Getting students to engage and focus in a live classroom is already a tough challenge, and that becomes 10x harder when teaching online because a lot of factors come into place and it’s really a mind-boggling task for you to keep students focused on the lesson that is being discussed.
This is why creating a student-centered learning environment is crucial for teachers to initiate and you’ll really see the difference between letting your students take the reign from only relying on lectures that you will only read to them.
It’s best if you let them start up the conversation and just guide them through the lessons and have them reflect on their own thoughts and ideas that they deem to be related to the topic, this way you will also make the lesson more interactive and personal as well.
You should also create a lesson plan based on your students’ perception and of things that they know already in this way, they will not have a hard time processing the lesson and they will know how to relate it to their own lives.
It’s also best if you can provide learning materials and resources that students can self-learn and where they will not have a hard time accessing because the process of learning should be free-flowing because obstacles will only hinder them from learning further.
2.) Keep your materials interactive and engaging
One trick that I’ve learned from my favorite English teacher back in high school is to level yourself with your students. Find ways to relate to them and also find ways on how they can relate to you.
Try to incorporate trending videos or pictures into your lessons and even make use of the most popular language of kids nowadays which are memes, like what I have mentioned from the Quizizz app and you’ll surely find the engagement skyrocketing.
Always try to provide engaging content that includes intro videos, infographics, trivia, animations, articles, and assignments that can help them understand the topic more in a way that will make it more understandable and relatable as well.
3.) Be approachable
Make your students feel that they can approach you anytime, this will make way for open communication and this will also let you know in which areas of the lesson they are having a hard time with.
Welcoming questions is a must for an educator because it is the students’ way to learn. But also do make time for yourself and set a time limit until when you can only answer queries. Giving your feedback to students also empowers them and lets them know how they can better what they are already doing.
Letting them feel that you’re like an open book will make them more comfortable even if classes are still done virtually online, and the next thing you know you’ll be hitting your class goals one after the other.
4.) Be open-minded, and welcome feedback as well
Letting yourself learn new things will pave the way for a successful online teaching career, like what I have mentioned earlier some teachers are still new to how online teaching takes place.
You get to acquaint yourself with new tools and gadgets to use for teaching as well as learning new strategies on how to make it work. Keep an open mind and adapt new skills, a little experiment will not hurt anybody.
You can also opt to have a brainstorming session with your co-teachers to find ways on how to make the most out of online teaching, this way the faculty stays calibrated and will also move forward innovatively as well.
Learning is a give and takes process, your give to your students and you also take from them as well. Letting yourself receive feedback from students allows room for improvement and it is also the key that you can use to know how to perfect your formula for teaching.
Your students are the answer so that you’ll be able to know what’s the best way to educate them because they’re the ones who are mainly impacted by your teaching strategies.
5.) Have fun!
Last but not least is to let yourself have fun and relax. Stressing yourself out too much will do you no good in the long run and it might affect your health as well.
Also, don’t worry about perfecting your teaching style for your online classes. It’s okay to make mistakes because mistakes are the greatest lesson that we can gain. We need to learn from them and rise from them as well.
There’s no one-solution-fits-all for online learning, just like how different every classroom is. You just need to find the formula that works for you and twerk them every now and then until you’re comfortable with where you are and just enjoy life as a teacher—one of the noblest professions in the world.
Salute to all teachers!
Conclusion
There are a lot of amazing educational apps that are available for teachers to take advantage of to further our efforts into keeping the young minds on the right path that will help them to succeed later on in life.
And as an educator, it is your job to make sure that they get only the best and quality education that students can engage in and immerse themselves to help open their minds for all the opportunity that awaits them.
And it’s not only the students who are gaining the opportunity, teachers too are gaining the opportunity to widen the horizon and a chance to encounter a new learning curve to learn new things that will further themselves and evolve themselves as an educator.
Have you tried exploring these apps for your class? Or do you have a favorite tool that you use at the moment?
Let me know which apps you currently use for your classroom and please share your experiences and how they made a change in your classroom feel free to leave a comment below, it’s deeply appreciated!
Have a good one!
