Amongst the multitude of AI tools and smart devices with massive computing power, teachers and students have countless teaching and learning apps at their disposal. From gamified milestone-based learning platforms to student progress trackers, you can pretty much install anything on your iPad these days.

When it comes to choosing the best apps for education, it can be a little overwhelming. Especially if you’re looking for the most effective learning apps, the best free education apps or easy to use communication tools.

So we’ve distilled the endless list of helpful educational apps into this simple list. If you’re looking for a little technological edge in the classroom, these apps are going to help.

Every teacher needs a brilliant note-taking, archiving, and collaboration tool. Evernote, Microsoft 365 and Google Docs have been big contenders for a while now, but then came Bear. This app gives you an easy way to create and share notes across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. 

Once your notes are there, you can use hashtags to collate different subjects or lesson plans. You can also share the notes with students and parents to save on printing time and cost.

You can view your word count and reading time, plus convert what you’ve written into a PDF or Word doc. 

Cross-link notes so everything is easy to organize and your notes are logged securely and across devices, via iCloud

Include students and parents to create a truly balanced teaching and learning experience 

Looking for a little inspiration for you or your class? Then you need TEDEd. From the popular TED talk phenomenon, this app gives you an entire library in your hands of educational talks and lessons from some of the world’s best innovators. 

All of these lessons are free and cover a range of subjects. Some of our favorites include The Psychology of Accents and Jamie Oliver’s “Why we should teach every child about food.”

TEDEd provides hundreds of interesting presentations and educational talks plus additional resources, talking points, and multiple choice questions

Perfect toolkit for planning lessons around a talk, or using the talk as a jumping point for digging deeper into a specific topic. 

It’s an endless well of inspiration for amazing new topics to teach.

Google Classroom is a no-brainer for teachers looking to maximize app assistance in their classroom. It brings the power of the entire Google suite, making it easier for you to integrate a long list of helpful tools into your classroom needs. 

For example, you can create assignments for individual classes, access students’ answers from the shared classroom, and even exchange private comments with your students who need some extra help.

Share assignments, presentations, and other class Docs with your students as easily as putting docs in shared folders

Keep all your files organized if you teach more than one class

Help students collaborate by accessing each others’ work, leaving comments, and sharing ideas on the shared Google Drive folder.

Do you love Wikipedia? Well, WolframAlpha is in a similar theme, but more focused on answers to complex questions. Wolfram Alpha gives access to an entire trove of knowledge on desktop and the main app stores. It covers everything from Math and Statistics to Life Sciences and Computational Science. 

By plugging in questions like “What is the unemployment rate in Chicago?” WolframAlpha provides a whole list of answers, information and further reading that will help you to expand on the problem.

WolframAlpha is an instant source for some of the more complicated answers around math and science. 

It provides fast answers to increasingly complex questions, making it easier to break down complex subjects in your classes

It also works across almost any iPad, tablet, or desktop device so it’s great for sharing with other educators and using in almost any scenario

Remind is a basic app that comes in handy when you’re trying to keep parents in the loop. The app allows you to chat with parents in over 90 languages with reliable and automatic translations. 

Remind also allows schools to join the conversation by providing an oversight and reporting area where admins can track communications, classes, and other relevant information.

Break down language barriers by communicating with parents in over 90 languages with automatic translation

Simple text messaging that’s designed specifically for interactivity between teachers, parents, counselors, principals, and everyone crucial to students’ learning.

Remind helps teachers coordinate with parents and make students’ learning more holistic and impactful.

Used in many offices, Slack is a great app across mobile and desktop that allows you to easily communicate with parents, colleagues, and educators in other schools or states. 

Slack has a free pricing tier, and comes with a range of features to organize your chats, such as channels, threads and archiving of discussions.

Slack is super easy to use and sync across your devices and it makes staying on top of different lessons, departments, or discussions easy

Teachers can create threads for multiple topics, from a space for educators to share ideas to subject lessons for classes

You can also snooze and mute channels or notifications if you need a break.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find something more beautiful than Typeform when trying to gather feedback and ideas. This app and desktop site lets you create forms that recipients (such as students, parents, or fellow educators) can easily fill in. 

There are also lots of setup options including the ability to add multiple choice, dropdowns, icons, and descriptive answers.

Typeform makes it really easy to collect feedback from the relevant parties when planning student lessons, for example. 

It works across almost any device so you can rest assured that it’s easy to access 

The app is also very easy to use so the learning curve is almost non-existent

Tablets like iPads have become an integral part of teachers’ classroom management, and we suspect it’s the same for you. That’s why you’ll love iDoceo –  a planner, diary, grade book, and schedule all in one. 

It’s only available for iPad, but it allows you to do so much including adding files to your class’ bulletin boards, sending bulk emails to all your students, and even configuring seating arrangements in your classroom.

Easily plan your classes ahead of time so you’re on top of everything

Create classes or import class data from other sources

Explore the iDoceo manual for productivity and optimization tips

Classlink is a single sign-on platform that allows students and teachers to access educational resources, files, and apps with a simple username and password. The beauty is that you don’t have to share or provide any personal information, which makes it incredibly valuable in today’s reality of cyber security. 

Classlink is also helpful for teachers who love to use technology in their classrooms. It supports thousands of apps, including Seesaw, Canva, Schoolinks, Office 365, and others. 

Let teachers personalize learning for each class they teach

Analytics area that provides insight into student engagement, learning, and other information

Doesn’t require you a Google account sign-in, which is an extra layer of security

ClassDojo is a highly helpful tool for teachers looking to encourage their students to express themselves in more creative ways. It is a reward system that awards points to students based on their behavior. Students get +1 points when they do good and -1 points when they do not so good.

It’s actually a really useful way to reward students and get them engaged, even in non-academic settings. 

ClassDojo also allows you to create your own targeted behaviors that fit within your goals for the class, ensuring that your students can make guided, measurable progress.

As well as this, ClassDojo allows teachers to communicate with parents by sending them either individual messages, or group/community based messages.

Use behavioral points to guide students toward creatively expressive behavior 

Share ClassDojo reports and other updates with students and teachers in over 35 languages

Create cute avatars for each student and keep things fun

Communicate with parents and communities as part of the school

Think of Classcraft as a World of Warcraft but for classroom learning and behavior reinforcement. Classcraft helps teachers reward positive behavior in their students by setting objectives and assigning points to their students based on their progress. 

Classcraft also gives administrators some insight into each classroom by helping them identify students who need the most support. Our favorite part of Classcraft is that it integrates well with other apps on this list like Google Classroom, Clever, and Classlink.

Students can create custom avatars and collaborate in a virtual gamified world

Share feedback about student performance 

We’ve picked our list of helpful educational apps to give you a technological edge in the classroom. From games to memorization tools, read on for more…

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Top 22 educational apps in 2024

Top 22 educational apps in 2024

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