In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Pixie is a great way to let students incorporate creativity into almost any subject! The app has a number of different tools students can use to demonstrate their knowledge.

“Imagine your students creating their very own digital stories, nonfiction pages, comics or podcasts with little instruction. Pixie is an authoring tool students can use to share ideas, imagination, and understanding through a combination of text, original artwork, voice narration, and images. Students can use Pixie’s paint tools, text options, clip art, and voice recording to develop storybooks, curriculum projects, videos, and so much more.”

Platform: iOS , Android 
Grades: All
Cost: $9.99

This post from Class Tech Tips gives a quick overview of the app and discusses the online version of the app, called Wixie, which could also be a useful classroom tool. This page from Creative Educator has multiple different lessons that use Pixie in the subjects of language arts, math, science, and social studies.

Watch this video to see Pixie in action!

In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

The app Hopscotch lets you enjoy the process of building games while learning the fundamentals of coding!

“Coding” may sound a bit dry and daunting to some newcomers, but those are the last things that come to mind while using Hopscotch. The app lets you have as much fun making games as playing them, and with its colorful, friendly interface and stacks of help and tutorials, kids (and grown-ups!) can build all kinds of apps—while learning the fundamentals of programming.”

Platform: iOS
Grades:Upper Elementary – Middle School
Cost: Free, has in-app purchases

Their website allows you to see and play games created by other users, which is pretty cool. They also have an Educator page which includes free lesson plans.

Fractus Learning has this article about the app that includes some specific ways to incorporate it into your teaching, and also links to further activities for educators to use.  This article from Teacher Cast gives several tips for teaching with the Hopscotch app.

Watch this very quick trailer to see some of the fun games you can play and create with the app:

In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

This impressive app is available across different platforms and features a ton of interactive resources for students of varying levels to learn about all aspects of the periodic table. They even have a podcast for each element that gives an explanation for the story behind it!

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s interactive periodic table features history, alchemy, podcasts, videos, and data trends across the periodic table. This fact-filled, image-rich app is the only periodic table learners need. Users can opt to access the information at introductory, intermediate and advanced levels and it allows learners to view data like melting point, temperature or atomic radius for the complete table. With an Internet connection, users can watch videos about the elements.

Platform: iOS, Android
Grades: Middle & High School
Cost: FREE

The Educational App Store has this Teacher Review of the app and this article from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has this video (and transcript) that really details the app’s capabilities along with ideas for ways to get students engaged with the app. And the Royal Society of Chemistry also has an entire site dedicated to helping educators with resources, tools, and best practices.

Watch this quick video to see all the neat ways this app helps students learn about the periodic table!

In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity.

Apps like this one can be handy for students and adults alike!

“While also a handy app to act as a scanner for documents, receipts and business cards, Office Lens by Microsoft gives the user the ability to snap a photo of a sign or whiteboard and turn it into a text recognized document in any Microsoft product (such as OneNote or PowerPoint).”

Platform: iOS, Android
Grades: 3rd Grade through Adult
Cost: FREE

This article from the Microsoft Education blog has interviews with three teachers who share the ways this app has helped them save time in their classrooms. This tutorial from Using Technology Better shows you how to take a printed worksheet and turn it into a digital copy.  And this post from Weston Technology Solutions explains several examples of ways the app can be used in business situations.

Watch this two-minute video to get an idea of what Office Lens can do:

In June, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their Best Apps for Teaching and Learning 2018. The apps encourage qualities such as creativity and collaboration and encourage discovery and curiosity

The app Google Spotlight Stories is a VR storytelling app. Students are able to truly be part of the story and can even unlock mini stories by moving to different scenes.

This app puts the reader in the middle of a growing number of virtual reality stories and demonstrates new possibilities for interactive storytelling. Each of the stories is a 360 video experience to be viewed within a VR viewer or on a device or screen. Users are prompted to download a story before reading for easy repeat access. Among the elementary stories are The Windy Day, Buggy Night and Duet. The reader focuses attention on the scene, with the story adjusting and presenting a personalized experience.

Platform: iOS, Android
Grades: Upper Elementary – High School
Cost: FREE

The app is included in this list of helpful library tech tools, and is also included in this article from Teach Wire about how to incorporate VR into your classroom on a budget.

Watch this trailer for one of the Spotlight Stories, Back to the Moon: