Tag Archives: AASL Best Apps for Teaching & Learning

AASL Recommended Apps: 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.

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!

AASL Recommended Apps: Office Lens

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:

AASL Recommended Apps: Google Spotlight Stories

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:

AASL Recommended Apps: Incredibox

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

Enjoy and learn about music with this interactive app!

Incredibox is used in schools to introduce rhythm to students. Learners can play with Hip-hop, Electro, Pop or Brazilian sounds and create, record and share their creations. Incredibox is a musical app where you use drag-and-drop icons on the characters to start creating your composition.”

Platform: iOS, Android
Grades: All
Cost: $3.99

This post from The Techie Teacher has a bunch of suggestions for incorporating Incredibox into the classroom, including dancing or acting out vocabulary or historical events to the beats that students create.  And this article from 30 Day eLearning Challenge has a bunch of comments from educators sharing how they used Incredibox in their own lessons. Or take a look at this lesson plan from Scott Elementary School that uses the app!

Check out the app trailer here:

AASL Recommended Apps: Swiipe: News That Knows You

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

Ready to read the news in a different way? Check out the app Swiipe: News That Knows You. Developed by a fourteen-year-old in Ireland, this app lets you skip news stories you aren’t interested in, save certain news stories to read later or select a story to read immediately.

Updated with the latest news every day, Swiipe is a news service that knows you fueled by the most popular news outlets from across the globe. Swiipe allows young learners to curate a gallery of news sources. They can choose from among more than 60 sources in a range of categories, including sports, entertainment, or business. Articles may be saved for later reading.”

Platform: iOS
Grades: Middle and High School
Cost: FREE

This article from School Library Journal has great ideas for including Swiipe in lessons regarding news literacy. Common Sense Media gives the app four out five stars in this review, which includes some talking points for starting conversations with students.

And finally, you can learn more about the young app developer and his reasons for creating the app in this article from Mashable.