The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their picks for Best Apps for Teaching & Learning 2019. “Apps recognized foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. “

If you are interested in the best apps for your library, media center, or classroom, you can read our 2019 series here or find all past apps discussed in our archives.

“EarthViewer allows students to visualize changes to Earth’s surface over its four billion year history. Students can interact with a moveable globe, similar to Google Earth, and animate four time scales – modern, ice age, paleo, and ancient Earth. Overlays can be added to show the locations of current borders and cities, important fossil finds, and impact craters. Animated charts comparing temperature, oxygen, carbon dioxide, day length, luminosity, and biodiversity allow students to investigate relationships between these variables over geologic time. EarthViewer also features in depth articles and videos as well as a detailed list of external references and a teacher quick guide are also included.”

Platform: iOS & Android 
Cost: FREE
Grades: 6-12

Read teacher reviews of this app on the Common Sense Education site. EarthViewer is included in this article sharing some of the best free Android apps for STEM and in this article describing ways to incorporate science apps for the classroom by Fizzics Education. It is also included in this article about suggested apps to use when teaching geography from Supporting Education.org.

Watch this one-minute video to see how one educator incorporates the app into her lessons about plate tectonics and continental drift: