Best Educational Apps
5 Best Educational Apps
1. BrainPOP
Similar to Khan Academy, BrainPOP is a comprehensive learning app: Numerous interactive games, exercises, and animated instructive movies are included.
Science, social studies, math, English, arts and music, health and social-emotional learning, and engineering and technology are among the subjects covered by the app. The key distinction between Khan Academy and BrainPOP is that the latter is more suited for high school students, whereas the former concentrates on upper-elementary and middle school students.
Kids in Kindergarten through third grade should use BrainPOP Jr., while English language learners should use BrainPOP ELL. Similar to Khan Academy, BrainPOP offers versions in Spanish and French and is used as a learning supplement by many school districts due to its alignment with state and Common Core criteria.
One aspect of BrainPOP’s cost that might cause families some concern is that a home subscription costs about $16 per month. Many children, however, might be able to acquire entry thanks to their school or teacher’s license. Additionally, it’s an excellent choice for children who are homeschooled.
Fortunately, there are a few free BrainPOP-related apps that are accessible on mobile devices, including BrainPOP’s Featured Movie (which has translations into French and Spanish), BrainPOP Jr.’s Movie of the Week, and BrainPOP ELL.
2. Quizlet
For high school students, the ability to study independently is crucial, and Quizlet is one of the best learning apps for content that will be evaluated.
On a variety of subjects, including the periodic table, American presidents, and vocabulary terms, teachers and students can make study sets and flashcards. Multiple-choice and true-false questions are two of the assessment formats offered by the Quizlet Learn feature. Additionally, it gets harder over time based on how well the user performs. For learning foreign languages, Quizlet is extremely useful.
Quizlet includes more than 500 million study sets that have already been made by past users and stored, so new users can search to see if materials that suit their needs have already been created.
Users should be aware that the research sets may contain inaccuracies because, like Wikipedia, they have not been fact-checked. Although it is a free and inexpensive resource (the annual cost of the Quizlet Plus subscription, which grants access to all features, is only $4), users should balance the advantages with the disadvantages.
3. Evernote
Evernote is a popular note-taking and organization tool that is available for free. It has spread among students because it is particularly useful for organizing tasks and enhancing executive functioning abilities.
Students may effortlessly share their notes and lists across platforms and devices, gather images and links, and build notes and lists. Users can create distinct notebooks (similar to folders) for each topic area and tag notes to make them easier to find.
It also features editing capabilities like color-coding and highlighting, which aids pupils who tend to become sidetracked in staying on task. For children who have trouble remembering vocal information, the microphone feature is extremely helpful.
Evernote’s Basic subscription is free, but it doesn’t allow users access to all of the app’s sharing and organization tools. On the Basic plan, for instance, users are only allowed to use two separate devices at once, and its monthly upload capacity is constrained. Students who use the program frequently could find it to be a good investment to upgrade to the Personal edition, which costs roughly $8 per month. For usage in businesses, there are also much more sophisticated variants.
4. edX
One of the leading Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) platforms is edX, founded by Harvard and MIT. Anyone can access university courses for free from the best colleges and academics in the nation thanks to edX, which is a non-profit organization in contrast to its rivals (like Coursera).
Despite the fact that courses are free, users must pay in order to receive formal course credit: Fees can differ greatly. Even so, the app provides tens of thousands of courses from academic institutions. Also, throughout the world, including Harvard, MIT, Michigan, NYU, and UC Berkeley. From useful courses like Japanese Business Management to enriching ones like Intro to Italian Opera, sessions are offered.
edX courses come in a variety of languages, although English has a much larger selection. Most courses need a weekly commitment of three to six hours, while course lengths range from six to eleven weeks. Short quizzes are given after video lectures, and interactive laboratories and features are available for more practical courses like computer programming.
To help working adults improve their resumes and professional development, edX also provides professional certificate programs like the MicroMasters Program.
5. Newsela
With the help of the app Newsela, kids in grades K through 12 may receive news stories catered to their individual reading levels. It reformats content from reputable media sources for five various reading levels.
The following news piece is quizzed that check pupils’ understanding. One of the reasons Newsela is such a terrific app is that in addition to promoting reading comprehension. It also educates children about media literacy and current affairs. Given the fact that many pupils are unable to distinguish between news and advertisements. Also, in the age of fake news, media literacy is crucial.
Since every story on Newsela aligns with the Common Core, it is a well-liked educational resource. The app also has a tonne of Spanish-language content, which is ideal for English-language learners and dual-language immersion institutions.
Although the app’s full functionality can only be accessed with a paid license. Also, some of its features are free for kids to use through their school’s licensing. Sadly, Newsela does not openly disclose the price of the enlarged version, which would be beneficial for transparency.
