Last time, we covered 10 teaching strategies for remote online learning. Today, we’ll expand the topic of online teaching a little bit more and create a list of the best assets for teachers and educators. The listed education tools feature apps, extensions, and databases for learning materials. You will find libraries, interactive game-based lessons, apps for scheduling, communication, quizzes, grading, and feedback. All tools serve different purposes and there’s something for everyone.
Article overview:
1. Chrome Extensions for Teachers
2. Mobile Apps for Teachers (Android and iOS)
3. Other Tools and Platforms
1. Best Chrome Extensions for Teachers
We wanted to share some of the most awesome extensions for Chrome available for teachers. Most of them are pretty useful not only for online classes but also for the years to come long after the pandemic is over. This list contains free extensions that you can install on your browser and access with one click.
1.1. Mote: Voice and Notes Feedback
This Chrome extension lets you add voice notes and feedback to shared documents easily.
It’s integrated into the Google package (Gmail, Docs, Classroom, Sheets, Slides, and Forms), as well as it allows you to create voice notes for any website directly from the extension menu.
Features:
- Emojis
- Over 20 languages, including English, French, Spanish, and Arabic
- Voice comments within Classroom Stream and Private comments
- STEM mode for mathematical expressions and chemical compounds
1.2. Insert Learning
The tool allows teachers to insert instructional content directly on any page like questions, discussions, and insights. When the students go to that website, they can respond and join the discussion and take their own notes.
Features:
- Insert questions and comments within an article by clicking on a paragraph
- You can also insert videos in a sticky note by embedding code from YouTube or another video provider
- Highlight text and insert sticky notes
- Assign a lesson to a specific class
1.3. Calendly
Since Calendly is a website for scheduling meetings, you will first need to create a free account there. With the Calendly extension, however, you can access all your meetings and events from your Chrome browser and Gmail to quickly set up ad hoc meetings and share links to your Calendly event scheduling pages.
The purpose of this tool is to connect to your current calendar. Once you send a link, your students can see your available hours and sign up for a session, class, or tutoring. You will then receive an email notification for the scheduled meeting.
1.4. Talk and Comment
As a cool addition to Insert Learning, this extension lets you make voice notes and comments on any service. These services include Google Docs, Classroom. Gmail, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Slack, and Facebook. All you have to do is record your voice comment via the widget. Once you’re done, the extension will generate a link with the record so you can paste it.
1.5. Screencastify
The free tool allows you to record short videos and screen captures. You can trim the start and endpoints of your videos, merge, crop, and add text to the videos, and draw on the tab with a pen tool. In addition, all videos autosave to Google Drive, while you can still share them to YouTube, Classroom, and export them as MP4, Gif, and MP3.
1.6. Fullscreen Interactive Slides
With this tool, you can present your Google Slides documents full screen while staying in edit mode. Meaning, that you can present the slides fullscreen and edit them at the same time. The extension is a great addition to use during a Meet or for making presentations on projectors. It’s a very valuable tool for teachers and educators during remote classes.
Features:
- You can navigate through your document with arrow keys or scroll with your mouse. Once you’re done with the presentation, reload the page to exit.
1.7. Print-Friendly and PDF
The purpose of this extension is to remove navigation, ads, and junk from web pages and optimize them for printing. You can edit and delete content, including images, before printing. You can also generate PDFs from a web page for sharing, saving, and archiving, while still keeping the clickable links.
Features:
- Print preview
- Email Page
- Changing the size of the font
- Save as PDF
- Remove images and other content
1.8. Kami
Being one of the most popular tools for online teaching, Kami helps you sort assignments and grade them. It’s an all-in-one asset that makes any document interactive. This includes PDFs, images, and all kinds of learning resources. You can easily collaborate with your students through notes, video, and audio recordings and drawings.
Features:
- Google Classroom, Canvas, and Schoology integration
- In-app grading and real-time feedback
- Creation of interactive exercises
- Present documents on-screen
- Special education inclusive learning tools
1.9. Classroom Zoom
Not to mistake it for Zoom, this tool is an extension of Google Classroom and doesn’t offer software for video conferencing. What it does, however, is visualize student work over the Google pack, so you can have a closer look and evaluate it all at once. How does it work? The tool takes all the information from the revision history and visualizes it in a neat timeline. Not just for one student, but for your entire class. With this infographic, you can easily understand the process and make decisions quicker.
Once receiving access permissions, Classroom Zoom visualizes information about your student’s work in Google Slides, Sheets, Docs, and Drawings, including deadlines from the class calendar. Of course, this refers to work assigned through Classroom.
1.10. Dualless
If you don’t have a dual monitor, this would be a great solution for you. The tool splits your browser windows into 2 and allows you to adjust the ratio as you see fit. You can merge the splitter windows back into a single one or make it full screen.
Features:
- Bookmark management
- Utilizes space for 16:9 monitor
- You can resize the windows according to a ratio of your choosing: 3:7,4:6,5:5,6:4,7:3
1.11. Bonus Extensions and Tweaks
Confetti Cannon! 🎉
Plain and simple, this extension for teachers puts virtual colorful confetti all over your screen. It’s a cool and motivating way to celebrate the successes of your students.
Giphy
In short, this extension gives you access to all gifs and stickers from giphy.com. Your students LOVE gifs, so why not get their attention by drag-and-drop some in the middle of a lesson.
2. Best Mobile Apps for Teachers
Mobile apps for teaching have also become inevitable. Fortunately, both Google Play and Apple’s App Store offer a huge choice of tools, designed for teachers and educators to make their work easier. Below we’ve selected our favorite apps that we believe will enhance your communication with students and make the process fun and inspiring. We also featured apps with databases with helpful materials for you and your students.
2.1. Khan Academy
A worthy asset for teachers, educators, students, and everyone who wishes to learn. It’s basically a huge database of thousands of videos, interactive exercises, and articles on different topics. The personalized learning library has resources for maths, science, finances, economics, history, politics, grammar, and more subjects for free.
Features:
- A huge database of videos, lessons, quizzes, exercises, and tests with instant feedback
- Allows bookmarking and downloading content for offline learning
- Includes mastering system with feedback and recommendations based on the level of the student
Available for: Android and iOS
2.2. Quizizz
We strongly recommend this one for a joyful learning process. Basically, this free app allows you to create fun quizzes, assignments, and presentations, ideal for group activities. You can create and host quizzes for your students, or find already existing ones amongst a huge database of science, maths, English, and general knowledge topics.
Features:
- Database of quizzes
- Hoisting and creating quizzes
- Insights
- Training sessions
- Respond to live presentations and polls
- Complete surveys
- Students can invite friends to compete with
Available for: Android and iOS
2.3. Slack
One of the most popular and preferred tools for communication and collaboration. This app allows you to communicate with your students in group chats or send secure individual messages to a particular student. You can also send documents and edit them in sync with real-time updates.
Features:
- Dedicated channels
- Setting statuses
- Integration with Google Drive and Dropbox
- Share documents with multiple people
- Customized notifications
Available for: Android and iOS
2.4. Todoist: To-Do Lists, Tasks, and Reminders
Being Google’s editor’s choice for 2020, Todoist is a great app to organize, plan, and collab on your projects. With it, you can capture and organize your tasks, remember deadlines via reminders, and more. It’s your personal digital organizer.
Features:
- Prioritize tasks
- Organize projects with boards
- Assign tasks and collaborate
- track progress
- Integration with Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Amazon Alexa
Available for: Android and iOS
2.5. Study Blue Flashcards and Quizzes
This app helps you create and share digital flashcards, study materials, and interactive sessions for free. Perfect for both teachers and students to create their materials with images and audio content, get to know about new flashcard recommendations, and stay connected to their classes.
Features:
- Customize study materials with images and audio
- Create quizzes and track progress
- Set study reminders
Available for: Android and iOS
2.6. Epic: Kids’ Books and Educational Reading Library
This digital database offers over 40K high-quality books, learning videos, and quizzes for kids 12 and under. The platform is an ad-free safe space for children of all reading levels and is great to use both in classrooms and at home.
Features:
- Ebooks, educational videos for kindergarten, 1st to the 7th-grade learning level
- Audio-enabled read-to-me materials.
- Audiobooks, bilingual books, educational videos, and quizzes
- Up to 4 individual child profiles
- Personalized recommendations
- tracking progress
- Online and offline reading
Available for: Android and iOS
2.7. FormsApp
You can use this tool to create Google forms and edit them on the go. It’s ideal for course evaluations, assessments, feedback forms or simply to create surveys for your students.
Features:
- Form templates library
- Google Form responses notifications
- Offline work
- Multiple Google Forms accounts
- Conduct surveys
Available for: Android and iOS
2.8. Seesaw Class
Always free for teachers, this app is a student-driven digital portfolio. It aims to inspire your students to express themselves by giving them the tools to create a portfolio to be proud of.
Features:
- Thousands of great activities ready to use in your classroom
- Helps you see and hear what each student knows so you can better understand their progress
- Differentiated support through comments and feedback
- Translate notes, comments, and captions into 50+ languages
Available for: Android and iOS
2.9. Groovy Grader
This iOS app is designed to replace the old school paper grading system with a more flexible and convenient digital one. It can work for 100s of questions and has the option to display the grade as a whole number.
Features:
- It can view 50 or more grades on the screen at once
- Turn auto-dimming screen off option
- Optimized for iOS 12 to use on iPad, iPhone and iPod
Available for: iOS
2.10. TeacherKit
A class companion for teachers to manage everything from maintaining a grade book to behavior management and progress reports. The tool generates data visualization for better comprehension. It’s also really easy to use with quick taps and slides.
Features:
- Organizing classes
- Importing student rosters
- Timetables
- Attendance log
- Creating and printing charts
- Behavior notes
- Grading scheme creation
- Keeping parents informed
Available for: Android and iOS
2.11. Saving Spree
This award-winning fun app aims to teach kids 7 and above, a serious lesson on how their choices can add up to big savings or big expenses. It’s a game-based app that teaches money management. It shows kids the concept of short-term saving, donating, and investing. This game also introduces the concept of earning money and guides them through making choices.
Available for: iOS
3. Other Resources for Teachers and Students
Since we couldn’t sort the following picks into the previous categories, we will list them here. Below you will see some amazing resources that will help you teach kids and students valuable practical skills like money management, creative writing, and coding.
3.1. Practical Money Skills
This website is all about teaching and testing money skills for students. It features fun educational games such as Cash Puzzler, Peter Pig’s Money Counter, and more. For older students, there are learning materials about mobile banking, evaluating finances, and crediting. The database also offers materials for teachers and parents on educating kids about finances.
The materials have a great comprehensive design with infographics, tables, and tests.
3.2. Boddle Learning: Math Game Platform Grades 1-6
You can sign up for free as a teacher or a parent to engage your students with a fun 3D math game. The tool allows you to create assignments, track performance, and address learning gaps with automated reports.
Boodle uses AI to adapt practice and learning to the right level for each student.
3.3. Boreal Tales: Grades 1-8 (Free Trial)
This platform aims to motivate students to write. It’s a game of literary and artistic creation to help them work on reading, writing, and exercise based on their education level. The diverse content features historical themes, objects, and characters to populate the adventures your students create.
Since it’s a teaching platform, it has a catalog with writing and reading challenges, sorted into education levels so you could easily find the appropriate challenges for your classes. You can also track progress and give personalized feedback.
3.4. CodeMonkey
A fun educational platform with game lessons for students to learn to code without prior experience. It features a teacher kit and support team to help you teach the basics of computer science. It’s also equipped with student solutions, grading, and curriculum management.
CodeMonkey offers educational resources for students of different grades and experience levels. Students not only learn coding basics but also how to code in real programming languages.
Final Words
Those were our picks for the best assets for every teacher and educator for 2022. We hope you have found one (or few) particular tools that will make a change and assist you with all you need to make your lessons even better.
In the meantime, you might be interested in some other valuable materials on the topic, so why not check out these articles:
