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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech

Collaboration Apps, Tools, and Resources That I Would Use If I Were Still in the Classroom

Back in 2001, when I started as a teacher, the technology boom was in its nascent stage. I remember toting a large bag filled with papers home most nights and going to sleep drowning under a vast sea of student homework that needed grading. My classroom was even worse, cluttered with books, manipulatives, globes, maps, and learning stations that left little room for anything else. However, as I write this in 2018, things have changed dramatically. Today’s teachers have edtech in their corners.

Digital teaching and learning tools have streamlined education processes and provide learning experiences that stretch far beyond the materials that were available for me back in 2001. Teachers used to have to meet in person to collaborate on lesson plans, assessments, or other projects. Now, with the proliferation of collaboration apps and tools, educators can work with colleagues from all over the globe, without leaving the classroom. Imagine the possibilities. If I were still in the classroom today, I’d use these collaboration apps, tools, and resources:

Google Apps for Education: Educators can make excellent use of the free apps available in the Google Suite for Education. Students can efficiently collaborate on their documents with a real-time display of who is editing which parts. Together, a group of students can prepare a presentation with a slideshow, create a diagram, and so much more.

Zoho Meeting: This program allows you to host and attend online meetings from your device. The Desktop Meeting Plugin lets you arrange or attend meetings from your desktop, connecting with only one click. Share and switch screens between the presenter and participants to share information efficiently.

Kami – Kami is the paperless teacher assistant, which allows teachers to create, upload, save, and share their materials using Google Drive and Classroom. It enables students to make notes, highlight, and add shapes on the PDF files shared in class. The app is available for free. The paid version comes with extra features such as the ability to communicate with an additional 150 students, an option for adding images, and text-to-speech technology.

Classpartoo – This is a cloud-based classroom management app that helps teachers deal effectively with their everyday tasks such as recording exam grades, attendance, and student behavior. This app also includes teacher communities where teachers collaborate and share material. School administrators, using this program can set up a functional SIS or integrate it with their existing SIS.

Eazyschool – This online software empowers every school to create, collaborate, and communicate. Its interface allows teachers, administrators, parents, and students to interact. Teachers can arrange report sheets, process child progress reports, and interact with other schools. It is a web-based application, which is compatible with various browsers.

Zoho Calendar: Make individual and group plans using the Zoho Calendar app. Set reminders ahead of schedule, up to 90 days. Groups can share their calendars with other members of the same group or outside the group. Email invitations also can be sent to any email platform from the app.

MURAL– Brainstorming is simple, easy, and fun with MURAL. The app allows multiple students or group members to work together to collaborate, share ideas, and determine solutions. It will help make thoughts concrete and visual, so they can be further evaluated. MURAL creates

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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech, Math Education

Math Apps, Tools, and Resources That I Would Use If I Were Still in the Classroom

Back in 2001, when I started as a teacher, the technology boom was in its nascent stage. I remember toting a large bag filled with papers home most nights and going to sleep drowning under a vast sea of student homework that needed grading. My classroom was even worse, cluttered with books, manipulatives, globes, maps, and learning stations that left little room for anything else. However, as I write this in 2018, things have changed dramatically. Today’s teachers have edtech in their corners.

Digital teaching and learning tools have streamlined education processes and provide learning experiences that stretch far beyond the materials that were available for me back in 2001. If you are a math teacher, you may be thinking that edtech doesn’t apply to you, especially if you believe that math cannot be taught using digital tools. Students don’t have to see each step or review every problem under the tutelage of a teacher. Tons of apps can help students learn and practice math, and while it helps to have a teacher nearby, it is not necessary. If I were still in the classroom today, I’d use these math apps, tools, and resources:

Marble Math– With Marble Math, children aged nine through twelve will learn mental math and solve math problems. With mazes, marbles, and math, your child can have hours of fun and become a math genius at the same time. There are puzzles and fun around each turn in the maze, so never be afraid to forge ahead. The app also allows you to go back to previous problems and redo them if needed. 

Khan Academy– Khan Academy has more than 40,000 interactive Common Core-aligned practice questions and above 10,000 videos and explanations in economics, history, math, and more. This is the best study app and tutoring app for students of all ages who are struggling in science and other subjects. You can easily bookmark your best content to “Your List,”  which can be used offline when you’re not connected to the Internet.

Thinkster Math: Thinkster Math is using virtual tutoring to help students understand why they went wrong and how to correct those mistakes. Not only does it help grades improve, but it also sharpens the logic process for students who struggle. This can make a significant long-term impact on their ability to perform well in math.

Montessori Numbers-Coupled with the Montessori Letter Sounds app, Montessori Numbers helps teach children the foundations of math. Three- to seven-year-old children can use this app to begin understanding numerology, numerals, numbers 0 through 100, quantifying, counting, and more. Children can play lots of activities and games that have multiple difficulty levels. 

Matific: Matific strives to help students improve their math skills using hands-on mini-games and a modular learning system. The goal is for students to internalize the basic concepts and move on to more challenging activities. It is designed to help open the door to scientific thinking along with making math more interesting.

Jump Numbers – This app helps young children work on their addition and multiplication skills using skip counting. The game is designed for kids aged 5 to 10. The learning process has a background story to add fun to the process. The game gets more challenging as players get to higher levels and complete more tasks.

Sushi Monster: This app uses lively cartoon characters and games to make learning math fun for children in middle school. It helps them gain proficiency in adding sums and multiplying numbers; progress is rewarded with stars and trophies.

Drive About: Number Neighborhood– Children explore this imaginary world that contains fun activities to help them develop their math skills. Activities include number identification and writing, counting, matching, and ordering. Suitable for children aged 5 and below.

Talking Calculator: This app enables children with sight impairments to use a calculator independently. It has big, bright colored buttons to help the children, and it talks to them, telling them what button their hand is hovering over. After they enter their calculations, the app announces the answer.

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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech

Grammar and Writing Apps, Tools, and Resources That I Would Use If I Were Still in the Classroom

Back in 2001, when I started as a teacher, the technology boom was in its nascent stage. I remember toting a large bag filled with papers home most nights and going to sleep drowning under a vast sea of student homework that needed grading. My classroom was even worse, cluttered with books, manipulatives, globes, maps, and learning stations that left little room for anything else. However, as I write this in 2018, things have changed dramatically. Today’s teachers have edtech in their corners.

When I was a teacher, helping students to become competent writers was a chore, though not an impossible task. Grading the written assignments of students was also a difficult task, as many of them butchered the English language and treated grammar as though it was a skill that could be disregarded. To further complicate things, if students needed help editing a paper or project at home, they were on their own.

Now, all of that has changed, well, sort of. Students have access to a host of grammar apps and tools that will not only help them correct their grammatical errors, but also teach them to be better writers in the process. If I were still in the classroom today, I’d use these grammar and writing apps, tools, and resources:

Grammar Pop– If you’re looking for a fun word game for adults or you want your kids to learn parts of speech as quickly as possible, the Grammar Pop is for you. With this fun game, you match words with parts of speech of pop clouds and advance from nouns and verbs to gerunds and participles.

Mingoville– With 10 missions, you can use Mingoville to learn English language. The app has a dictionary that is available in 32 languages and contains over 10,000 audio clips to help you learn to pronounce all types of words. There are also 130 games and activities that will reinforce spelling, reading, grammar, and pronunciation. If you love to sing, there are also 10 songs that you can sing along; you can also participate with your friends.

Quill– Quill is a writing tutorial app for teachers designed to help students become better writers. Quill is a nonprofit organization, and its goal is to provide tools such as Quill to help make students better writers. Quill uses web applications to create engaging content for students that helps them learn grammar, writing skills, and vocabulary. Using the teacher dashboard, you can monitor students’ progress according to the Common Core Standards; this feature also makes grading more intuitive and meaningful.

Turnitin for Educators: This website has a wide array of functions designed to help teachers check the integrity of their students’ work, and it helps them mark students’ work. It helps to prevent plagiarism by comparing the works submitted by students with a vast text comparison database, OriginalityCheck. The GradeMark function helps teachers give feedback and remarks to their students, and QuickMark enables them to mark students’ work directly.

Word Sort by Grammaropolis: This tool uses Grammaropolis characters to help teach the parts of speech. Children play by taking a word as it floats across the sky and dragging it into a container that holds the appropriate part of speech. It also has pages explaining parts of speech along with their grammatical function and game character personality.

Writing Challenge App: This app aims to guide students who want to do some form of writing but need some creativity nudging. The app delivers a prompt every minute, suggesting new ideas, characters, scenes, and even plots.

Grammarly– This platform helps the student to improve their grammar and build confidence in their writing ability.

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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech

Classroom/Behavior Management Apps, Tools, and Resources That I Would Use If I Were Still in the Classroom

Back in 2001, when I started as a teacher, the technology boom was in its nascent stage. I remember toting a large bag filled with papers home most nights and going to sleep drowning under a vast sea of student homework that needed grading. My classroom was even worse, cluttered with books, manipulatives, globes, maps, and learning stations that left little room for anything else. However, as I write this in 2018, things have changed dramatically. Today’s teachers have edtech in their corners.

Digital teaching and learning tools have streamlined education processes and provide learning experiences that stretch far beyond the materials that were available for me back in 2001. If the edtech of today were available back in 2001, I could have used classroom management tools to help me deal with my sometimes unruly 4th period class. I could have used behavior management tools to develop and manage a student reward system. Parents could have logged on to an app to see whether or not their child was behaving themselves. Yes, sir, edtech would have saved me a lot of time, effort, and stress. If I were still in the classroom today, I’d use these classroom management apps, tools, and resources:

ClassDojo: This classroom management app can be a powerful tool when it comes to motivating students to maintain exemplary behavior. Teachers can give points or take them away when students don’t comply with the set expectations and rules of the classroom. Even better, parents can see this information quickly and easily.

Too Noisy: Do you have a rowdy class that often allows their volume to swirl out of control? Particularly for educators who have students with auditory sensitivities, the noise of the classroom may be overwhelming. Too Noisy demonstrates when the room is getting too loud with unique graphics that show how close you are getting to an intolerable level.itivities in their classrooms who may find a high noise level distressing.

Lan School – Lan School is a classroom management tool that works on Windows, Android, Mac, and iOS. It is a management software built to keep students engaged and learning while staying within the walls of a safe digital environment. It provides tools to monitor students’ screens to make sure that they stay on task. It also has a chat function that allows instructors to communicate with students and help them with their projects. The broadcast feature allows the teacher to broadcast his/her screen to the rest of the class.

The Great Behavior Game: This game is designed for educators who work with students in fifth grade or lower. The game allows teachers to award points and penalties for specific behaviors. The scoreboard can be used to issue rewards to winning students at intervals during the day. The app also allows educators to generate reports and collect data for future reference.

Classtime – Classtime is a classroom management solution designed for students and teachers; it includes analytics, real-time grading, and libraries. It allows teachers to create, share, and download lessons and assessments from over 30,000 available materials. It provides a time-effective solution for teachers in the classroom.

DyKnow –  DyKnow is a classroom management software solution that helps you monitor devices, reduce distractions, and keep students on task. This software enables teachers to see how students are spending time on their devices in class. It can restrict the students’ access; i.e., it can manage what a student can and cannot access during a course through a customizable blocking plan.

Eduphoria! – It is a classroom management tool that enables a learning environment through budget maintenance and education enhancement. Eduphoria! empowers teachers. The integrated apps assist in every aspect of the school day, from lesson planning to monitor student progress, streamlining administrative duties, and providing a collaborative platform for education professionals.

HiClass – This is a variable room management solution through monitoring, broadcasting, and more. HiClass computer classroom management software is very easy to use and offers a rich set of functions that enable teachers to broadcast, control, communicate, monitor, or collaborate with students individually or as a group, to ensure that every student gets the most out of class time.

Stop Go!: The time between classroom activity changes can be very disruptive with disorderly behavior. Using this app, you can bring order to the process. The app functions like a traffic light, signaling to students when the time is right to move or get to their seats. When the light changes, a bell also chimes in case some students might have missed the visual prompt.

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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists, Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech

Early Childhood and Elementary Education Apps, Tools and Resources That I Would Use If I Were Still In The Classroom

Back in 2001, when I started as a teacher, the technology boom was in its nascent stage. I remember toting a large bag filled with papers home most nights and going to sleep drowning under a vast sea of student homework that needed grading. My classroom was even worse, cluttered with books, manipulatives, globes, maps, and learning stations that left little room for anything else. However, as I write this in 2018, things have changed dramatically. Today’s teachers have edtech in their corners.

Digital teaching and learning tools have streamlined education processes and provide learning experiences that stretch far beyond the materials that were available for me back in 2001. When it comes to digital learning in the early childhood or K-12 classroom, there is no shortage of apps will help teachers develop or find curriculum, or deliver instruction effectively.

Are you a teacher who is looking for apps or tools for their early childhood or elementary education classroom? Don’t worry I have some great recommendations for you. Below you will find a list of early childhood apps, tools, and resources that I would use if I were still in the classroom.

Montessori Preschool – is a comprehensive early learning app. It covers phonics, letter tracing, counting, shapes, colors… in a fun and engaging environment. With new games added every 2 months, the app also offers tons of activities to develop critical thinking, learn foreign languages and even think like a coder! With its carefully crafted designs, Montessori Preschool is beautiful to look at and answers a number of user requests such as child profile management, screen time management and even device space management. The app is free to download and 10 games are completely free to try. Users who want to try more have a 7 day free trial period before the subscription (monthly or yearly) starts.

Toca Hair Salon – Cut, color, comb, and style the hair of six different characters in your own hair salon! Children are in charge of their hair salon and have all the tools of a real stylist including scissors, electric hair trimmers, towels, shampoo, conditioner, and hair dryer. They can choose from 12 different hair dyes and 8 hair accessories

Funky Fruitilicious– The Funky Fruitilicious app helps children to learn in a delightful environment using visual learning techniques. The experience is most enjoyable when parents serve as a guide for their kids while playing it with them. The app is designed for preschoolers trying to learn the concept of counting and the basics of numbers. Funky Fruitilicious uses a variety of colorful game activities as well as funny audio sounds to improve kid’s learning.

Flashcard Stash– The Flashcard Stash is a new kind of flash card that is built on top of a dictionary, which enables you to look up the flash card words and save them. For instance, you can click on highlighted words for a quick definition or click on functions in the top right of every vocabulary flashcard such as synonyms, audio, and sentences. The AR Flashcards make learning fun and more entertaining for toddlers and preschoolers. With about 26 beautifully rendered animals to help your toddler learn the alphabet, learning is fun with AR Flashcards.

JumpStart Preschool – Your preschooler needs to have fun learning, and JumpStart Preschool gives you just that! It is designed for your little kids to learn pre-reading and critical-thinking skills while on the go. Your kids will learn to recognize and count numbers, practice shapes and colors while on the search for the best wiggly creatures to complete the collection. They will listen to stories by flipping through pages as words are read aloud.

Lexia Core5 Reading– Lexia® Core5® Reading is available to teach reading for preschoolers to fifth graders. It creates reading lessons based on research, to find the best ways to teach individual students or small groups. Using this app, teachers can organize their learning environments in the most productive and conducive way. This app can be used in combination with Lexia® PowerUp Literacy™ and Lexia® RAPID™ Assessment to optimize reading experiences and reading groups in schools.

Make A Scene: Farmyard– Make a Scene: Farmyard stimulates children’s creativity and allows them to design their own scenes. Little kids love cute farm animals, and this app has sheep, cows, ducks, chickens, and more. With hours of entertainment, they will learn and practice vocabulary, motor skills, and coordination simultaneously. They will be able to numerous scenes in this dynamic farmyard; for preschool to adult, this app will not disappoint.

Preschool Puzzle Math– Preschool Puzzle Math is a puzzle-solving game that teaches children math. It allows them to practice counting, simple addition, and subtraction. Preschool Puzzle Math helps your child develop the fundamental math skills that will help them going forward with mathematics. Your child learns to count, add, and find their way around tasking puzzle games with free-flowing gameplay. Suitable for ages three to seven.

Nico & Nor Coconut Star– Explore the Coconut Star World by solving puzzles using push, pull, and texture to get to new stars to win. This app provides a cheerful sojourn into the world of forces and motions using fireworks, water traps, and real-time feedback. The app provides opportunities for children to develop their scientific method skills. The Ramps program has two apps (Coconut Star and Ramps Journal) working hand in hand to help preschool kids and their teachers to record videos and results from experiments.

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox– Preschoolers love games and are the best at learning, so Monkey Preschool Lunchbox combines both these elements. Designed for two- to five-year-olds, this app has six games to teach colors, letters, counting, shapes, sizes, matching, and spotting the differences. Fun monkeys assist the child, and cute sounds and designs make it appealing to young eyes and ears. Children will also learn fruits and numbers. Virtual stickers provide positive reinforcement for a job well done.

Toddler Toy Factory: Help your kids improve their reading, spelling, memory, and hand-eye coordination using virtual toys. This matching game allows kids to pair identical toys. The “Make” room lets kids drag single letters into the toy machine to build toys. The toy is ready once the word is spelled out and then read out loud.

TeachMe: Kindergarten: Help your child ace kindergarten using this fun app. It contains all the subjects that children learn at the kindergarten level such as how to spell, write, add, and subtract. The app rewards student progress, and these rewards can be used to make in-app purchases. Parents and teachers can monitor the child’s development.

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Matthew Lynch published in Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, and Virtual Reality, Best of the Best Lists

Virtual or Augmented Reality Apps, Tools, and Resources That I Would Use If I Were Still in the Classroom

Back in 2001, when I started as a teacher, the technology boom was in its nascent stage. I remember toting a large bag filled with papers home most nights and going to sleep drowning under a vast sea of student homework that needed grading. My classroom was even worse, cluttered with books, manipulatives, globes, maps, and learning stations that left little room for anything else. However, as I write this in 2018, things have changed dramatically. Today’s teachers have edtech in their corners.

Digital teaching and learning tools have streamlined education processes and provide learning experiences that stretch far beyond the materials that were available for me back in 2001. For instance, if you want to teach your students how to tell stories, you could allow students to reimagine existing stories using virtual reality. You can give students the opportunity to bring their favorite books to class and re-imagine parts of the story or the entire story. For example, they can create an alternative ending to Jack and the Beanstalk and retell their version in virtual reality, by creating a short cartoon. If I were still in the classroom today, I’d use these virtual reality apps, tools, and resources:

King Tut VR – King Tut VR provides a virtual reality experience of the tomb of King Tutankhamun. This app requires a virtual reality headset. King Tut was a great Egyptian pharaoh in the 18th dynasty. He was buried in a legendary tomb, which you can explore virtually while learning about the art, treasures, and hieroglyphics of the time. This app takes you back in time with a fully immersive environment, which makes you feel like you are actually in King Tut’s tomb.

Lifeliqe – This learning platform educates students with the use of 3-D models, augmented reality, and virtual reality. It includes subjects such as biology, culture, physics, paleontology, geometry, and so on. There are 620 preinstalled lesson plans for different subjects. The interface of this platform is quite easy to navigate. Lifeliqe is available as a website and app with its implementations on iPad and Windows showing the most functionality.

myVRscope™ – is an immersive microscopy Virtual Reality (VR) lab ecosystem, where students and faculty access microbiology content and conduct lab activities on-demand using VR. myVRscope™ leverages a virtual 3D photorealistic compound light microscope for learner activities and integrates the user experience with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab instructor- Dr. Beaker. The product was developed by the Immersive Learning Experience (ILX) team in the Innovation Center of Excellence (ICoE) at Adtalem Global Education- with the explicit design intent to create an ‘intelligent, immersive learning experience’ for on-campus and online learners alike that combines Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Star Chart: Teachers who want to bring astronomy lessons to life will need to use Star Chart. Using augmented reality, students can point their device at the night sky and use the app to identify what constellations they see. Alternatively, you can also scroll around the sky using just your fingers.

Sites in VR: Go to all the exciting places you would like to without any restrictions. The app features Islamic relics, ancient cities, and temples. Historically significant sites in Saudi Arabia, Macedonia, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Kuwait, Belgium, France, Africa, and even Mars await you. The app features over a thousand high-quality images rendered in a panoramic 360° view; it provides the all-encompassing, immersive experience.

Algodoo– Algodoo is a physics-based 2-D sandbox freeware from Algoryx Simulation AB as the successor to the popular physics application Phun. Bring your ideas to life withAlgodoo. Use the drawing tool, materials like ropes, lasers, gears, motors and even water to test your funniest ideas in a simulated world. Share your inventions with friends and challenge them to use their creative abilities. The simulated world is based on the latest technologies in advanced engineering simulations and virtual reality simulators used by Algoryx.

Unimersiv: This is a virtual reality educational tool available to students of all ages. It allows students to watch academic virtual reality videos to promote an immersive learning experience. Topics include history, space, and anatomy.

Cospaces– With this app, you can create virtual reality, and you have total control over its personalization. You can choose from different items and personalities to create your characters. The app makes the experience as realistic as possible and unlocks potential worlds of virtual reality. All you need to access your virtual life is the free CoSpaces app and a headset.

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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists

American English Language Learning Apps, Tools, and Resources

Are you looking for American English language learning apps, tools, and resources that you can use with your students? If so, we have you covered. Check out our list below. Let us know if there are any that we missed.

Mondly– If it is your goal to be bilingual, trilingual, or learn 33 languages, Mondly is an effective tool. This app supports free language learning in Spanish, American English, British English, German, French, Chinese, Greek, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Romanian, Vietnamese, Hindi, Finnish, Indonesian, Hebrew, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Croatian, Finnish, Persian (Farsi), Afrikaans, and Turkish. The forms of learning each language are all unique and high-quality. You will learn vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, sentence structure, keywords, conversational skills, and more with this app. It is geared toward making any level learner of any age become fluent.

StudySync – StudySync offers a comprehensive, technology-driven English Language Arts curriculum for grades 6-12. The curriculum integrates reading and writing with embedded skill lessons to build foundational knowledge and improve critical thinking, comprehension, and inquiry skills. Teachers have the option to use StudySync as a completely digital curriculum or turn to the printable options. With the belief that all students deserve equal access to education, StudySync offers tons of differentiation options for various student needs, including English Language Learner segments, extensive use of video and audio components, and repeated readings. Extended writing projects use explicit instruction along with self, peer, and teacher assessment to encourage deep understanding and future skill application.

Gus on the Go English– With Gus on the Go English, learning the English language is fun! Your child can learn simple vocabulary concepts with interactive visual and auditory lessons on shapes, colors, numbers, and so on. The review at the end of each lesson unlocks an interesting vocabulary game that supports what your child has learned. Gus on the Go comes in other languages in the form of Gus on the Go Korean, Hebrew, Mandarin, French, Spanish, and German.

Naver Papago Translate– Papago is a multilingual talking parrot that is ready to help you with all your translation needs. Proficient in 11 languages, Papago can help you on your travels, business trips, and language classes. Papago means Parrot in Esperanto, a bird with language and speech abilities. The 11 languages supported on this app are Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and Russian.

Speak and Translate – Speak and Translate is a voice and text translator that works offline. Offline, ten common languages are available, including Chinese, English, French, German, and Spanish. While using the online mode, there are 117 languages available for text translation and 54 languages available for voice translation. With a section for translation history, users can review past translations or access commonly translated phrases. The app also includes a text-based language detection algorithm for the user that isn’t sure of the source text language. Speak and Translate is currently compatible with iPhones, iPads, and the Apple Watch.

SpeakingPal English Tutor – Using speech recognition and with each session lasting less than two minutes, SpeakingPal English Tutor is a quick and easy way to review English skills. The app includes interactive video dialogues where the user’s response impacts the video events. While the user roleplays a character, feedback is given based on their word choice and sentence structure. For each answer required by the app, the user can hear a native speaker and compare their responses. A progress page is provided to make it easy to see improvements. Scores and progress can also be shared with friends.

Lingvist – is an innovative language learning platform designed to help users learn quickly and effectively by tailoring courses to their needs. The platform uses statistical analysis, spaced repetition, and machine learning algorithms to make language learning faster and more efficient by filtering out anything a user doesn’t need or already knows, customizing the course content according to their precise level.

Voxy– Offering a host of products for individuals, teachers, language schools, and higher education institutions, Voxy is focused on English language learning. From finding a one-on-one teacher to guide a student through English lessons to crafting personalized curriculum based on a teacher’s requirements, Voxy avoids boring textbooks and rote memorization and instead focuses on real-world applications and hones in on the English that your learners need right now.

Busuu– This is an easy to use app that teaches English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Chinese, and six other languages to its over 60 million users. Language lessons can be scheduled to fit your timetable using the study plan option. Join the growing community of language students on the Busuu platform.

DaySchool– This is a multilingual learning system that supports children learning German, English, and French. It is a solution for independent schools. It includes support for a contact database, admission management, development, report cards, camps, and payments. The system helps educators support and encourage the children in their everyday activities while speaking in their mother tongue.

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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists

Spanish Language Learning Apps, Tools, and Resources

Are you looking for Spanish language learning apps, tools, and resources that you can use with your students? If so, we have you covered. Check out our list below. Let us know if there are any that we missed.

Gus on the Go: Spanish – This is an app used to learn the Spanish language. With nearly over 90 Spanish words to learn, Gus, the friendly owl, ensures that your child learns every necessary stuff that is needed through a wonderful guaranteed experience.

HiNative–   HiNative is an app specifically designed to ask questions about any language you want and get answers from real native speakers around the world. You can ask questions such as, “How do you say this in German?” “What’s the difference between these two words?” “Is my pronunciation correct?” You can also teach other users about your native language and the uniqueness. We have a friendly, give-and-take community waiting to help!

Spanish Stagecraft– Learn Spanish by solving puzzles to unravel a mystery and immersing yourself in a Spanish cartoon world. Spanish Stagecraft has four sets of 16 language exploration puzzles and includes listening and reading comprehension challenges. There is also an opportunity to upgrade to unlock 16 additional challenges. As students’ progress through the game, they are introduced to multiple contexts for each word. Research shows that tying visual representations to what we read and hear allows for deeper levels of comprehension. Spanish Stagecraft is built on this research. As students move objects through the game, they immediately receive visual and auditory feedback about how their actions influence the language. For example, putting a cat on a table would lead the app to say, “The cat is on the table.” Moving the cat to the side of the table would cause the app to change the sentence to, “The cat is next to the table.” This app is best for beginners and intermediate Spanish learners.

Spanish Word Wizard for Kids – Spanish Word Wizard for Kids uses a talking, movable alphabet to allow students to see and hear the sounds of letters and words. It is an immersive Spanish app, with no translation. With over 1,500 questions and answers as well as the ability to add custom words to create spelling quizzes, Spanish Word Wizard for Kids makes a valued addition to any beginner or intermediate Spanish class. Both Latino and Castilian voices are included.

MindSnacks Learn Spanish– With MindSnacks, you can learn any language; this version is for learning Spanish. Whether you need to learn vocabulary, conversational skills, reading skills, or pronunciation, play the nine games in this app, and you will be an expert in no time. You will learn to get around, order foods, meet people, and more. There is one free level and 49 other levels available for purchase.

Mango Languages– Mango Languages offers many languages to learners and presents them in easy-to-learn lessons. Mango has been around for years and keeps updating with more and more languages. With modified tools and lessons, Mango is constantly evolving to educate its users. Mango uses colorful buttons on a gorgeous user interface and lots of different ways to learn. Some lessons have games, some quizzes, some reading, some pronunciation. Everything you need to know about languages is taught through Mango.

Lyrics Gaps– Lyrics Gaps is a unique way to learn new languages. By translating your favorite songs into a new language and allowing you to practice typing it out, you will soon be singing all your favorite tunes in foreign languages. You can invite your friends over or sing directly onto Lyrics Gaps from an Internet connection to have a battle with your friends in other languages.

Babbel– You can select from more than 10 languages Babbel has to offer. Benefit from the real-life dialogues, conversations, and the speech recognition feature to learn proper pronunciation. Revision sessions test you on the knowledge you have acquired by applying it in a new context to increase your proficiency. Lessons are limited to short, interesting 15-minute sessions.

Oh, Noah! – This tool uses a variety of features to teach users Spanish vocabulary. This is a story-based interface designed to present a simplified approach to learning languages. It is designed to be a useful resource for Spanish speakers learning English and English speakers learning Spanish. It features characters, games, videos, and activities–all working together to reinforce language learning.

Mondly– If it is your goal to be bilingual, trilingual, or learn 33 languages, Mondly is an effective tool. This app supports free language learning in Spanish, American English, British English, German, French, Chinese, Greek, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Romanian, Vietnamese, Hindi, Finnish, Indonesian, Hebrew, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Croatian, Finnish, Persian (Farsi), Afrikaans, and Turkish. The forms of learning each language are all unique and high-quality. You will learn vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, sentence structure, keywords, conversational skills, and more with this app. It is geared toward making any level learner of any age become fluent.

Duo-learning – This is a language learning platform that enables students to speak and practice foreign languages with defined parameters and benchmarks. It works with a communicative approach that lets students practice together on specific topics that match their pedagogical goals. The platform helps to track students’ learning curves with onboard testing.

Busuu– This is an easy to use app that teaches English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Chinese, and six other languages to its over 60 million users. Language lessons can be scheduled to fit your timetable using the study plan option. Join the growing community of language students on the Busuu platform.

Speak and Translate – Speak and Translate is a voice and text translator that works offline. Offline, ten common languages are available, including Chinese, English, French, German, and Spanish. While using the online mode, there are 117 languages available for text translation and 54 languages available for voice translation. With a section for translation history, users can review past translations or access commonly translated phrases. The app also includes a text-based language detection algorithm for the user that isn’t sure of the source text language. Speak and Translate is currently compatible with iPhones, iPads, and the Apple Watch.

Lingvist – is an innovative language learning platform designed to help users learn quickly and effectively by tailoring courses to their needs. The platform uses statistical analysis, spaced repetition, and machine learning algorithms to make language learning faster and more efficient by filtering out anything a user doesn’t need or already knows, customizing the course content according to their precise level.

Quick Study– Quick Study is a great app to help you learn foreign languages. With text-to-speech and audio recordings to help you learn to pronounce words correctly, Quick Study will help you learn one or more of more than five common languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, and more. You can easily create lists, vocab sets, and practice your new lessons all for free.

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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists

Learning Apps, Tools, and Resources that Every Teacher Should Use

Are you looking for learning apps, tools, and resources that you can use with your students? If so, we have you covered. Check out our list below. Let us know if there are any that we missed.

BrainPOP– BrainPOPwas founded in 1999 with the purpose of using animated, visually aesthetic media to foster student learning and aid teachers. The developer’s renowned educational materials include BrainPOP Jr. (K-3), BrainPOP Español, BrainPOP ESL, and GameUp™. BrainPOP can be used in many ways ranging from introducing concepts to demonstrating difficult problems.

Assessment Generator– Assessment Generator is an app that lets users create effective, mobile-friendly assessments with automated scoring and feedback. Assessments can be used to gain insights into your client’s needs and problems, which help you shape your marketing to fit the proper demography. The app can also be used to generate leads that you can convert to new clients.

TeAchnology– TeAchnology is a website providing free teaching resources. It includes over 46,000 lesson plans, 10,200 worksheets, rubrics, teaching tips, worksheet makers, web quests, and more. With an easy-to-use search bar and lots of preformatted categories such as holidays and critical thinking, TeAchnology can save teachers a lot of time in preparing lessons and coordinating units. The website includes lessons and ideas across all subjects and grade levels, so it can be used by any K-12 teacher. They also offer an email newsletter for updates, more free lesson plans, worksheets, and printables.

CK-12– Helps students and teachers to improve elementary learning worldwide by making personal education tools available. Learn more than 5,000 math and science topics at a speed that suits you. Math topics include arithmetic, measurement, algebra, geometry, probability, statistics, trigonometry, analysis, and calculus. Science subjects include geography, life science, physical science, biology, chemistry, and physics. Other subjects include SAT exam prep, engineering, technology, astronomy, English, and history.

Speare.com – Speare.com bills itself as a “thought processor.” Their goal is to make writing as easy and flexible as thinking. With Speare.com, your thoughts are turned into building blocks that can be sorted, ordered, divided, and snapped back together in any sequence. You can easily order your thought building blocks into paragraphs, chapters, and complete documents with a simple finger swipe or click of a mouse. With a speech-to-text option, thinking out loud can suddenly become the beginnings of an essay or book. Ideal for students that needs additional help writing, Speare.com can also be used as an alternative method to take notes or brainstorm in any classroom.

No Red Ink– This platform uses student self-assessments to construct sentences that pretest, practice, and evaluate students’ grammatical prowess and acquired learning. The app helps build stronger writers through interest-based curriculums, adaptive exercises, and actionable data. With the authentic assessment feature, students can rephrase sentences, modify and mark up texts, organize ideas into outlines, and manipulate multi-paragraph documents. The unlimited, adaptive practice feature personalizes instructions to meet each user’s needs and includes support for learners when they get confused. To make learning fun and interesting, lesson content is generated from topics that interest the user, such as popular celebrities, friends, and hobbies.

Seesaw– Seesaw is a digital portfolio that shows you real-time glimpses into your child’s school day, which can be easily shared with parents to help them stay in the loop and support their child’s learning at home. Thus, this app helps clarify parent-educator communication and gives students more control of their education. It is a tool for drawing and recording, which makes it authentic and fun.

Flashcard Stash– The Flashcard Stash is a new kind of flashcard that is built on top of a dictionary, which enables you to look up the flashcard words and save them. For instance, you can click on highlighted words for a quick definition or click on functions in the top right of every vocabulary flashcard such as synonyms, audio, and sentences. The AR Flashcards make learning fun and more entertaining for toddlers and preschoolers. With about 26 beautifully rendered Animals to help your toddler learn the alphabet, learning is fun with AR Flashcards.

Triptico – Triptico is a website containing tons of interactive resources for teachers. Teachers can customize these resources to fit their classroom by changing the language, difficulty level, content, and age range. All customized resources can be saved and shared. Some examples of customizable interactive resources that are available include quizzes, cards, timers, spinners, and selectors. Triptico also encourages teachers to collaborate and includes libraries of resources created by other teachers that are free to use. These libraries are easily searchable by age group, subject area, and topic.

Scootle– Scootle is a portal that has access to over 16,000 educational resources to assist users in learning and teaching others. Contents are made available to assist educators in arranging digital content and lessons; it helps teachers collaborate using digital resources to support the Australian curriculum.

Zoho Wiki – Zoho Wiki is a knowledge management tool. It allows companies or teams to have a central knowledge repository with custom permission levels of pages so that only those who need access have access. It is also easy to continue brand control across the Zoho Wiki page with customizable banners, colors, and backgrounds.

Primary Pad– PrimaryPad is an online word processor created for schools that encourage student-teacher collaborations in real time and making it easier to develop concepts, collaborate, share and transfer of information. A passionate teacher created the PrimaryPad idea for schools to keep things fun, simple, fast, and easy-to-use. PrimaryPad integrates with other tools such as Wordle, PrimaryWall, and PrimaryPaint.

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Matthew Lynch published in Best of the Best Lists

Writing Apps, Tools, and Resources That We Love

Are you looking for writing apps, tools, and resources that you can use with your students? If so, we have you covered. Check out our list below. Let us know if there are any that we missed.

ABA English– ABA English is designed to help you become a good listener, speaker, reader, and writer of the English Language. The goal is to help you learn English naturally—first, by listening and comprehending, then, by speaking like native English speakers, and eventually, by writing in English using its syntactic rules. Each part begins with a video portraying everyday situation followed by an array of activities tailored from the content of the video.

Bookopolis Book Search– This is a social network for young readers with a built-in book discovery feature. Teachers can use this platform to build a society of readers and writers from their classes. Students can partake in book reviews and critical thinking to develop opinion writing. Teachers can track and critique a student’s work. The BookQuest option is useful for finding new book reading suggestions.

BoomWriter– A platform that encourages students to produce their best creative writing efforts. BoomWriter provides a competitive platform that can be easily incorporated into the syllabus using its unique mix of creative writing and social media tech. It provides a symbiotic experience for all parties involved. BoomWriter is available for teachers and students all around the world. 

Crazy Cursive Letters Joined Up Writing– This app is ideal for helping children learn new languages. It uses merged words to form new words. For every four words written accurately, a new fun character is unlocked. You can add the top 100 words or your own words.

Cursive Writing WizardHandwriting Practice– Kids learn how to trace using animated emojis with enticing tones. Once the child masters tracing, four interactive games open where they interact with letters. This app can be personalized to meet the needs of every child, and it monitors the child’s progress.

Dexteria– Dexteria offers therapeutic exercises developed to improve fine motor skills and handwriting in kids and adults. It can also be used to build strength and improve motor control. For best results, the exercises should be done regularly in small sessions. Dexteria is also designed with automatic tracker and self-reporting feature so that parents, teachers, and therapists can monitor both compliance and progress

EssayJack– EssayJack is a web-based tool to help students who need to divide essay writing into smaller, more manageable segments. EssayJack comes with writing guides such as text boxes, interactive tips, and prompts, split-screen composing, and a live word count. These features help relieve the stress of writing and format structures on students, thereby making them more efficient.

Ginger Page– Ginger Page was developed with dyslexic students who often have problems with spelling. Ginger Page helps dyslexic students learn better ways of writing English. With practice, students learn to use Ginger page’s powerful editing tools to review their text for errors, make corrections, and compose a top-notch text that conveys their message every time they write.

Grammarly– Grammarly is your personal grammar coach and an automated proofreader that helps students get better in the proper use of grammar and gain confidence in their writing ability. Grammarly helps correct about 10 times more mistakes than common word processors, and it corrects more than 150 types of grammatical errors and does a plagiarism check.

Handwriting Heroes–  As the name implies, Handwriting Heroes is a perfect, multisensory program that helps kids get a strong foundation for writing fluently and legibly. Through music, stories, and animation, your kids will learn the formation of lowercase letters and be able to explain why they are formed that way. The app comes with three levels of difficulty to entertain and educate elementary school kids of different abilities.

Handwriting Without Tears: Wet-Dry-Try– This app allows students to practice writing letters and numbers on a virtual chalkboard. Kids learn correct ways of writing numbers, lowercase letters, and capitals while practicing along. Kids can learn handwriting skills most productively and easily through the simulation of Blackboard and Slate Chalkboard with Double Line.

HelpKidzLearn– HelpKidzLearn is a group of software for young children and those with learning challenges to play online. This software is divided into five sections: Early Years, Games and Quizzes, Stories and Songs, Creative Play, and Find Out About. You will get the best out of these activities if you play them with your child. Always use them as a focus of discussion. Speaking and listening are very crucial for young children’s educational development, particularly reading and writing.

Jumbled Sentences– The Jumbled Sentences series is developed for beginners to perfect their writing skills. It provides beginners with a simple, interactive, and interesting way of learning word order. How do you play the game? Enter the parts to create a sentence, click on OK to check whether your answer is right, and you’ll earn one coin for every correct answer. Play as fast as possible to enter the next level. Collect as many coins as possible to get more hints and stickers. 

Kids Academy– With Kids Academy, your kids will learn to write letters and develop handwriting skills in a very interesting way. The app helps students to learn while playing a game that uses a proven multisensory approach to teach children how to lowercase and uppercase letters. Kids are guided by arrows and dotted lines through the letter tracing process.

Little Bird Tales– Little Bird Tales helps young children create and design stories with their own voice, art, and imagination. Budding artists will find that there is no end to the stories and worlds they can create as they build their creativity, writing, and reading skills. Reading and writing will be your child’s new favorite hobbies after they see how much fun they can have with Little Bird Tales. With no ads or popups, Little Bird Tales is a free app that allows children to easily share their creations with family and friends.

MaxScholar – MaxScholar is a learning platform designed for students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD, processing problems, and general difficulty reading. The platform is built as a digitally blended learning environment for developing reading, writing, and comprehension skills. It also teaches math skills with the use of customized software and engaging materials.

Microsoft Learning Tools– The Microsoft Learning Tools app is built-in extension tools that can be used to aid in writing and reading. This app is intended for all types of people, whether young or old, high or low learning skills. All the tools are designed with a complex function that is easy to use. These tools are all available in Office 365 products on Windows, Mac, iPad, Microsoft Edge browser, and so on. They are guaranteed to help with reading, writing, and comprehension, and they all are free.

Newsela– Newsela provides a personalized approach to learning, using different assessments, annotated documents, and writing prompts throughout. This approach can be applied to different subjects because of their adaptive readability. Teachers can easily access learning analytics to assess the level of each student’s progression and task completion.

Penzu Classroom– This is a platform that helps young writers and teachers in their job. Penzu classroom covers all classes of writers, no matter what type of writing they do. Whether it’s helping with your diary or journal, keeping track of a diet, or a pregnancy journal, Penzu has something for you. It has all the resources you need to preserve your ideas and develop rather than wasting valuable time writing it. You can also become one of 2 million happy users of this platform from around the globe.

PlagTracker– A plagiarism checker benefits teachers, students, website owners, and anyone who has an interest in protecting their content. PlagTracker is plagiarism software that checks to make sure that your work is sufficiently unique and that your writing is original.

Quill– Quill is a writing tutorial app for teachers designed to help students become better writers. Quill is a nonprofit organization, and its goal is to provide tools such as Quill to help make students better writers. Quill uses web applications to create engaging content for students that helps them learn grammar, writing skills, and vocabulary. Using the teacher dashboard, you can monitor students’ progress according to the Common Core Standards; this feature also makes grading more intuitive and meaningful.

Redbird Language Arts & Writing – Redbird Language Arts & Writing provides students in grades 2-7 with a personalized language arts and writing learning path by leveraging adaptive instruction and practice. This allows the platform to deliver precisely what each student needs to become a fluent writer and master communicator. Each grade level of material contains 9–10 units that focus on a writing or reading skill. The architecture of each lesson was developed to provide students with instruction and practice on reading, parts of speech, paragraph analysis, sentence composition, and sentence structures. All lessons cover new concepts or provide practice with concepts that have already been introduced. In our highly competitive economy, employers seek candidates that have strong written communication skills. Although educators know that mastering language arts and writing is essential for future success in college and the workplace, a troubling number of students across K-12 struggle with acquiring these vital skills.

Redbird Language Arts & Writing-After demoing this product, I was impressed by its nuances and advanced features, which work together to help students develop superior written communication skills. I wholeheartedly recommend this platform to all classroom teachers, administrators, math coaches, etc. who are striving to increase their student’s language and writing skills. You won’t be disappointed.

Shake-a-Phrase: Fun with Words and Sentences– This exciting language learning app provides creative writing prompts, vocabulary, and parts of speech practice. It provides a blend of education and entertainment in class or on-the-go. It has over 2,000 words and definitions in five interactive themes for children aged eight and above. This app provides a new random sentence every time you shake your device, giving you more words to learn. Test your abilities with adjectives, verbs, nouns, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Speare.com – Speare.com bills itself as a “thought processor.” Their goal is to make writing as easy and flexible as thinking. With Speare.com, your thoughts are turned into building blocks that can be sorted, ordered, divided, and snapped back together in any sequence. You can easily order your thought building blocks into paragraphs, chapters, and complete documents with a simple finger swipe or click of a mouse. With a speech-to-text option, thinking out loud can suddenly become the beginnings of an essay or book. Ideal for students that needs additional help writing, Speare.com can also be used as an alternative method to take notes or brainstorm in any classroom.

Storybird – An online writing platform that allows students at any level to find inspiration, write, read other’s writing, and receive feedback. Storybird has thousands of images to prompt students’ creativity and get them writing poems, long-form stories, short 500-word “flash fiction,” comics, and even picture books. With hundreds of writing prompts, lessons, video tutorials, and quizzes, teachers can assign work in class or use Storybird for homework or classroom extension projects.

Strip Designer – Strip Designer allows students to create their own personal comic books from personal or classroom photos. With more than 100 included templates, students insert their photos, add filters, text balloons, word stickers like “BANG” or “POW,” and even draw directly on their comic strips within the app. Once students have completed their comic strips, the files are easy to share via email, Facebook, Twitter, or save as a PDF. Strip Designer can be used as an engagement tool in literacy class for writing hesitant students, to create final projects across any subject, or as a fun reward.

StudySync – StudySync offers a comprehensive, technology-driven English Language Arts curriculum for grades 6-12. The curriculum integrates reading and writing with embedded skill lessons to build foundational knowledge and improve critical thinking, comprehension, and inquiry skills. Teachers have the option to use StudySync as a completely digital curriculum or turn to the printable options. With the belief that all students deserve equal access to education, StudySync offers tons of differentiation options for various student needs, including English Language Learner segments, extensive use of video and audio components, and repeated readings. Extended writing projects use explicit instruction along with self, peer, and teacher assessment to encourage deep understanding and future skill application.

TurnItIn for Educators – TurnItIn for Educators is a website that helps support academic integrity in schools. Teachers can detect plagiarized content with the world’s most effective plagiarism detection software. Using forensic linguistic analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP), TurnItIn can determine if students are writing their own papers or using a third party. The website also provides professional development resources for teachers to improve the feedback they provide for students and lesson plans to use with students to build integrity skills.

Virtual Writing Tutor – This website is a free grammar and essay checker that also proofreads your work. Simply copy and paste your writing into the text box and click a button. Virtual Writing Tutor can also provide word counts, calculate average sentence length, and assess word choice. The website does not automatically correct errors. Instead, students must review a list of suggested errors and make the corrections themselves. This forces students to think about the errors they are making, and over time, can improve their writing. The Virtual Writing Tutor also offers an error correction game for students to practice finding and correcting common English language errors and has a portal for teachers to set up pen pal exchanges.

Whooo’s Reading – The goal of Whooo’s Reading is accelerated reading comprehension and improved writing skills. By using open-ended questions instead of the standard true/false and multiple-choice style, students are required to think independently about texts. The Whooo’s Reading program automatically reminds students to improve their writing by asking them to cite evidence or answer all the parts of a question. Teachers can monitor student’s reading with automatic quiz results, graded by the Whooo’s Reading app, available in the teacher dashboard. To increase student motivation, students earn Wisdom Coins for reading and writing. These can be spent on accessories and items for their Owlvatars (owl avatars).

Word Hippo – Word Hippo is a one-stop website for all your word needs. It includes a dictionary, thesaurus, synonyms, antonyms, rhymes, example sentences, translations into over 80 languages, the ability to find words of different lengths based on specific letters or blends, the ability to find words in different forms (plural, past tense, present tense, etc.), and the ability to hear pronunciations. Word Hippo is particularly useful for ELL students, during writing or literacy classes, or while playing a Scrabble-type game.

Writing Challenge – Turn freewriting into a game with the Writing Challenge app. Helpful for students that struggle to free write or waste valuable literacy time trying to think of a topic, the Writing Challenge offers a set of prompts and allows the student to select the one they want. Then, every minute (or longer if the app settings are changed), it offers additional prompts to further the student’s writing, such as adding new characters, words, places, or actions. The best way to improve writing is to practice, and for students that struggle to practice independently, the Writing Challenge can decrease writing anxiety and help deal with the fear of the “blank page.”

Writing Prompts – Writing Prompts uses current events, random words, scenes, sketches, genres, and text to provide hundreds of writing prompts for whole class or individual student use. Simply swipe through the available prompts until one strikes your fancy or save favorite prompts in a favorites folder for easy access later. With additional packs of prompts available for purchase, there are millions of prompt possibilities so students will never run out of things to write about.

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