App Ed Review Roundup – Apps We’re Thankful For!

Whether it be turkey, family, friends, health, or edtech, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on what we are grateful for in our lives.

How different would our classrooms be without edtech and everything it makes possible? This month we have taken a deeper look at the teaching tools that make our classrooms go – communicating, collaborating, writing, and assessing – and created a list of teaching tools for highly rated apps for which we are highly thankful!

As always, each of our product reviews includes an original description, 3-5 instructional ideas for using it in the classroom, a comprehensive evaluation, and screenshots that show it in action! If you would like to view other pieces of edtech that suit your needs, please visit our database that holds over 1,000 reviews!

1. Padlet allows students to share their perspectives and answers with the class, and helping teachers to spur classroom discussion. Available as both an app and website, Padlet is an e-bulletin board on which students can synchronously post research, state opinions, share images, jot answers to warm-up questions and more! All teachers need to do to get the Padlet experience started is to log in and create a Padlet board, distributing a share link to students either by course management system or link. Then, students are free to post to the Padlet bulletin board and view their peers’ posts in real time. Scoring a near-perfect 9.5 on our comprehensive rubric, Padlet is a top-tier instructional app we are thankful for.
2. Has an app ever done more for keeping students on the same page (literally) than Nearpod? Students always know where the class is whether reviewing a presentation, poll, or quiz, because during a lesson with Nearpod, teachers control what shows on students’ screens. As teachers flip through a presentation or other multimedia, students’ device screens using the app or website synchronously change to keep up. Teachers simply distribute a pin number for the content on their screens and students enter it into Nearpod and their screens becomes synchronized with the teacher content. For instructional ideas and more, check out why we are thankful for Nearpod here.
3. Students and teachers alike are thankful for Grammarly! Helping users to communicate most effectively, Grammarly is loaded with algorithms that catch grammar mistakes Microsoft Word misses. This website and extension can be used as a writing support for students, an editor for web-based college applications, a grammar check for teachers’ master’s classes, lesson plans, and more. To see the full power of Grammarly and its 9.5-rated design, click here.
4. Much thanks is in order for the amount of help Formative gives teachers when it comes to tracking students’ progress. In an era of data-driven decisions, teachers can easily monitor student learning with the straightforward tools in Formative. Teachers can create an account and add new assignments consisting of multiple choice, short answer, show your work, and true or false questions. Teachers can customize the content of the questions with images, text, videos, among other features. Once teachers have distributed the join code and students have taken the Formative assessments, teachers can click “Live Results” to see how their students are doing at a class-wide or student-specific level. Garnering a 9.1 overall rating from App Ed Review, we recommend Formative.

That’s all for this month’s Roundup.  If you would like more information about any of the apps and web tools mentioned here or that are on the App Ed Review website, please contact us at info@appedreview.com. And remember, be thankful for app-solutely everything this holiday!