It’s that time again! Teachers, students, and parents will soon start gearing up to head back to school. So make sure you do your homework! Download this year’s must-have back-to-school apps for smartphones and tablets before you even pull up in the carpool lane.
An “App”-le For Teacher
Teachers are busy people! Preparing our kids to take on the world is no simple task. To help students reach their potential, teachers give lectures and assignments, grade tests and papers, give career advice, keep kids motivated, and update parents on their children’s progress throughout the year. That’s a lot!
And more and more smartphone apps are being developed to make a teacher’s job a little less hectic. Here are some of our favorites:
Smart Seat helps teachers with iPhones create seating charts, learn students’ names quickly, and keep track of attendance. The “random mode” even lets teachers randomly choose the next student to answer a question or perform classroom duties.
Confer is another iPhone app that gives teachers a quick and easy way of taking classroom notes about student behavior and achievement. Teachers will always have documentation ready for parent conferences. Plus, trends in student performance issues give teachers instant information to make instructional decisions.
Three Ring lets teachers create individual portfolios by scanning or taking photos of student work. Take the photo, tag it, and always be ready with examples to review with students, parents, and administrators.
Study Hall Helpers
Schools have different rules about allowable cell phone use between first bell and dismissal. But that doesn’t mean smartphones, tablets, and mobile apps aren’t powerful study tools for students! Here are just a few cool apps that bring flashcards into the digital age:
The Elements: A Visual Exploration is an iPhone app that helps chemistry students learn the Periodic Table of Elements in a new way- with stunning graphics and always up-to-date background information from Wolfram|Alpha.
More interested in World History? Need help with those Spanish conjugations? Check out Apple’s entire library of valuable education apps for iPhone!
Younger students who haven’t quite reached Algebra will love Math Bugaboo – an Android app that turns addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division drills into an interactive game of creepy crawlies. Bugs carry numbers across the screen, and students select the right answer by squashing the right bug. And yes- the game comes complete with glowing, gooey guts after each right answer!
For high school students who want to stay on top of their grades, an Android GPA Calculator app will make sure there are no surprises at the end of the school year. And the Android app Studious will let students cut down on the weight of thick planners and composition notebooks by providing a great system of recording assignments, receiving due date alerts, and keeping track of test schedules. It’s your planner in your pocket!
