Implementing edtech in your classroom while feeling constrained to your personal or professional budget is difficult. Luckily, there are plenty of edtech tools free for teachers! We scoured the internet and found over 100 free apps, websites, and educational programs. Here are our top 10.
Diigo: Introducing students to the world of research can be overwhelming. Even if they haven’t got a specific paper or project to deliver, learning how to digest information is a skill that takes practice, patience, and persistence. Diigo allows users to bookmark sites, highlight information, add sticky notes to pages, organize references, and easily annotate web pages. Students can also organize their findings into groups, so they’re not scrambling to find that one link to that one site that they need for a section of their project. As students work through research, they’re able to share findings with others so teachers and peers can track their progress and make suggestions.
Kubbu: Every student loves word jumbles, crossword puzzles, and games to break up hours of lecture-based instruction. Kubbu allows teachers to create online educational activities for every student while tracking their strengths and frequent misses. The application is cloud-based so students and teachers can access everything from everywhere. While this app is free, there is one catch. Teachers can only register 30 students with 15 activities, and student data will only be recorded for 30 days. While this sounds unrealistic for some, if you’ve got a small classroom, Kubbu is a great option.
Triptico: Why pick one tool when you can have dozens? With so many educational resources available for teachers, Triptico offers a variety of activities teachers can customize for their classroom. The site allows you to choose from four different categories: Tools, Timers, Selectors, and Quizzes. The range of activity allows students with varying preferences to experiment with different programs. Not to mention, diversifying the activities students engage in exercises different parts of their brain.
SpiderScribe: Brainstorming is often the most difficult part of any project or paper. SpiderScribe makes brainstorming easy by allowing students to visually connect and organize notes, ideas, files, events, and images. If students have difficulty linking ideas, SpiderScribe gives kids a visual representation to better understand their thought process. The best part is that multiple people can access one account, so team members and classmates can easily collaborate.
LiveBinders: LiveBinders are classroom binders that exist online for everyone to virtually access. The site allows students to quickly find materials without having to ask teachers and without needing extra printouts because let’s face it, worksheets get lost in messy backpacks, lockers, and desks every day. LiveBinders also allows teachers to organize materials based on curriculum, category, and classroom timelines. Once online, students can engage with live materials for maximum engagement. After a topic is covered and the binder is complete, teachers can publish materials online and share them with students and teachers from different school systems around the world.
Remind: Communication between students, teachers, and parents is essential for academic success. With Remind, teachers can text messages to students and parents for easy reminders, questions, and last-minute updates. And you don’t need phone numbers to send messages to students and parents, so no one feels as if they’re sharing personal information. Aside from schedule changes and updates, Remind provides easy, one-to-one, teacher-student communication for struggling kids – some of whom might not be comfortable verbalizing their questions.
Storybird: Storybird is a digital program that uses images to inspire students to read and write original stories. The program offers different formats for different learners at varying levels. For instance, some versions show images next to a jumble of words that students can arrange, so text correlates with imagery. Some versions prompt users to write their own stories based on pictures presented. Introducing colorful characters and playful settings inspires students to unlock their imagination and learn to love reading.
Project Gutenberg: If you’re looking to implement electronic textbooks, Project Gutenberg is a great place to start. Project Gutenberg offers over 54,000 eBooks available for download, all free for students and teachers alike. Find textbooks on every subject, older literature with expired copyrights, and audio books galore.
RealWorldMath: RealWorldMath uses Google Maps and SketchUp to create interactive, 3D, user-friendly activities that help kids apply math curriculum to real-world scenarios. Teachers can use existing lesson plans to incorporate RealWorldMath activities as students are challenged to engage with interactive problem sets, group projects, and digital representations of mathematical application. It’s the perfect formula that supports every teacher’s existing strategy while helping kids feel that what they’re learning about is relevant to their lives.
Wizer.Me: If you’re tired of overused worksheets and want to engage students with fresh, interactive activities, check out Wizer.Me, a tool that allows educators to create customized worksheets with a built-in formula for success.
Whether you’re teaching English or math, science or history, Wizer.Me helps you create visually appealing; media enriched, interactive activities that engage your students far more than paper sheets with repetitive problem sets and fill-in-the-blanks.
With practically everything digitized, digital citizenship is more important now than ever before. Never let budget cuts impact your students’ right to a tech-based education and check out these free tools!
