AppEd Review Roundup: Easy to Use Web Apps, Useful in Every Classroom

These Web-based Apps are Highly Rated, Easy to Use, and can Play a Role in Classroom Lessons and Assignments That Involved Reading, Writing, Story Telling, and More!

Do you prefer tools that are efficient, straightforward, and get the job done? We like them, too! This month, App Ed Review has curated four of our favorite easy-to-use websites for your classroom! Each of the websites we share in this RoundUp cut across the subject areas and can be easily embedded into middle and high school teachers’ lesson plans.

Remember, for each website or app that we review, we include: an extensive evaluation of it using our validated rubric, 3-5 instructional ideas about how teachers can use it immediately in their classroom, and an original app description. We hope you find this month’s picks useful, and remember to visit us at www.AppEdReview.com to learn more about us and our work! 

1. Do your students keep making the same grammatical mistakes again and again? Use Grammarly. This website checks students’ (and teachers’) writing for grammatical mistakes and helps students understand proper grammar. Users can upload a document and Grammarly will read the document and show who ever uploaded it any grammatical issues they may have. Each issue can be corrected or ignored as the user goes through the document. A Freemium website, more advanced options including plagiarism and thesaurus features are available upon purchase. Grammarly is definitely one of the easiest to use websites for writing, and it earned a whopping 9.5 out of 10 for its quality design. View the full review here.
2. Penzu might just be the easiest-to-use website for writing ever created! The Penzu website links with both its iOS apps for the iPhone and iPad and its Android app that runs on a number of devices! Students do have to register with Penzu, which requires them to provide an email address, username, and password. However, once they do, students are able to write and share journal entries. Penzu also includes a bevvy of writing tools, which are very similar to those found in most word processing apps and programs. Plus, students can upload images and insert hyperlinks right into their journal entry, and when they are ready to share it, students can do so simply by making the journal public and posting its URL address or by emailing it to someone. The ways teachers can incorporate Penzu are almost limitless, and they can start thinking about those ways by clicking here!
3. Being former teachers, we here at App Ed Review know how important it is for students to understand different vocabulary words and learn their synonyms. That’s why we wanted to share Rewordify. This resource lets students read texts that use modified language. All students have to do is copy-and-paste text into the dialog box in this website, and Rewordify will provide them with a simpler text, which makes this resource a dynamic one for teachers who are differentiating their instruction. In addition, Rewordify can be used to learn new words and evaluate the readability of a text. Using our rubric, Rewordify earned perfect scores for its Utility and Connection to Future Learning. Check out our review by clicking here.
4. Would your students benefit from visualizing scenes from Shakespeare or planning sequences in their own movie projects? Check out StoryboardThat for this great, free, storyboarding helper. Students log in and click “Create a Storyboard,” filling blank cells with different characters, backgrounds, text, shapes, uploads, and more! When finished, students click “Save” and then they can send their storyboard to anyone they want by downloading it as a PDF, PowerPoint, sharing an embed code, etc. StoryboardThat scored a 5/5 in Navigation. However, don’t think StoryBoardThat is just for English, there are some many ways to use it. For more instructional ideas, click here.

That’s all for this month’s Roundup.  If you would like more information about any of the apps mentioned here or that are on the App Ed Review website, please contact us at info@appedreview.com.