Our blog will give you insights into the world of learning. We’ll post information on apps that help students learn in class, during study period and on the go. We’ll give reviews of popular edu-apps so you can read up before a purchase. Plus we’ll tell you about upcoming educational events in your area and upcoming educational tips & news.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Learning
Khan Academy
Khan Academy
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From preschoolers to high schoolers, there are few educational apps that can measure up to Khan Academy when it comes to the wide range of courses it offers to students of all ages. And, best of all: It’s free.
Khan Academy’s YouTube videos cover most subjects at a range of levels: math, science and engineering, arts, humanities (which includes history and social studies), economics, AP courses, and test prep.
English language arts (ELA) seems to be one notable weakness of Khan Academy classes, though their offerings in this area are growing. There are also no foreign language courses, though Khan Academy instruction is available in dozens of languages, with varying numbers of offerings.
Khan Academy is popular among students, parents, and educators because its videos are engaging and targeted at visual learners, using photos, maps, and other illustrations, and because it allows students to work at their own pace.
The courses include quizzes to test students’ comprehension. Khan Academy has also shifted toward developing materials in conjunction with the Common Core. Another advantage is that it’s a versatile program that can be used on a desktop/laptop or mobile device.
A junior version, Khan Academy Kids, targets young learners from 2 to 7 years old. It’s a mobile device app that covers math, ELA, logic, and social-emotional learning by using books, games, songs, and videos.
Looking for more online learning resources for kids? Check out our round-up of some fun and free education websites.
BEST FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
PBS KIDS Games
PBS KIDS Games
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PBS KIDS Games is a free app and a great supplement to PBS’s legendary, kids TV programming and original series.
Young kids will love the games built around their favorite PBS characters and shows: Daniel Tiger, Elmo, Curious George, Wild Kratts, The Cat in the Hat, and Dinosaur Train.
Parents can feel secure that their preschoolers are getting fun, educational content with no ads. The educational components include letter and word recognition, naming objects, math shapes, and solving puzzles.
While the app is designed for kids ages two to eight, it’s really best for little ones under 5. It’s particularly ideal for those who haven’t yet started kindergarten, since older kids are likely to find the app too childish.
BEST FOR KIDS K-8
BrainPOP
BrainPOP
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Like Khan Academy, BrainPOP is a one-stop-shop educational app: It has hundreds of animated educational videos, accompanied by interactive quizzes, activities, and games.
The topics covered by the app are science, social studies, math, English, arts and music, health and social-emotional learning, and engineering and tech. The main difference between BrainPOP and Khan Academy is that the latter is better for high schoolers, while BrainPOP focuses on upper-elementary and middle schoolers.
BrainPOP Jr. is designed for kids in Kindergarten through third grade, and BrainPOP ELL is for English-language learners. Like Khan Academy, BrainPOP has Spanish- and French-language versions, and—because it’s aligned to the Common Core and state standards—it’s used by many school districts to supplement learning.
BrainPOP’s price tag is one thing that may give families some pause: It’s around $16 per month for a home subscription. However, many kids may be able to gain access through their school or teacher’s license. And, it’s a particularly good option for homeschooled kids.
Luckily, there are also some free apps affiliated with BrainPOP that are available on mobile devices: BrainPOP’s Featured Movie (also available in Spanish and French versions), BrainPOP Jr.’s Movie of the Week, and BrainPOP ELL.
BEST FOR HIGH SCHOOL
Quizlet
Quizlet
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Self-directed study is an important skill for high schoolers, and Quizlet is one of the most effective educational apps for material that a student will be tested on.
Teachers and students can create study sets and flashcards on many topics—from the periodic table to U.S. presidents to vocabulary words. The Quizlet Learn feature provides different modes of testing, such as true and false questions and multiple-choice. And, based on the user’s performance, it increases in difficulty over time. Quizlet is particularly good for foreign language study.
Quizlet has over 500 million study sets already created by existing users and archived, so new users can search to see if materials had already been created that match up with their needs.
That said, like Wikipedia, the study sets aren’t fact-checked, so users need to be aware that they may contain errors. However, it’s a free and cheap resource (the Quizlet Plus membership that gives users access to all features is only around $4 per year), so users should weigh the benefits with the drawbacks.
BEST FOR COLLEGE
Evernote
Evernote
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Evernote is a free note-taking and organizational app that’s used widely in the business world. It’s particularly helpful for managing projects and improving executive functioning skills, which is why it has filtered down to the student population.
It allows students to make notes and lists, to collect images and links, and to share and sync them easily across platforms and devices. Users can make separate notebooks (like folders) for each subject area, and tag notes for easy access.
It also has a minimalist interface that helps students who tend to get distracted to stay on task, and has editing tools like color-coding and highlighting. The microphone feature is especially useful for students who have difficulty with verbal memory.
Although Evernote’s Basic plan is free, it doesn’t give people access to all the app’s organization and sharing features. For example, users can only work with two different devices on the Basic plan, and it has a limited, monthly upload limit. The Personal version costs about $8 per month and may be a good investment for students who find themselves using the app daily. There are also even more advanced versions for business use.
BEST FOR ADULTS
edX
edX
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Founded by Harvard and MIT, edX is one of the top Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) platforms. It allows anyone free access to university courses from the country’s top universities and professors and, unlike its competitors (like Coursera), edX is a non-profit organization.
Although courses are free, if users want official course credit, they will have to pay: Fees can vary massively. Still, the app offers thousands of courses in a wide range of subjects from universities like Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT, Michigan, NYU, and many international universities. Sessions range from practical offerings like Japanese Business Management to enrichment classes like Intro to Italian Opera.
edX courses are available in a range of languages, though there are many more options in English. Courses vary in length—some are six weeks long, others last 11 weeks—and most involve a commitment of three to six hours a week. Video lectures are followed by short quizzes, and for more hands-on courses like computer programming, there are interactive labs and features.
In addition to one-off courses, edX offers professional certificate programs, such as the MicroMasters Program, to help working adults beef up their resumes and professional development.
BEST FOR READING
Newsela
Newsela
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Newsela is an app that allows students from grades K through 12 to access news articles written for their specific reading level. It takes articles written by respected media outlets and rewrites them for five different reading levels.
It then tests students’ comprehension through quizzes that follow each news article. One of the reasons Newsela is such a great app is that along with facilitating reading comprehension, it provides media literacy and knowledge about current events to students. In the era of fake news, media literacy is particularly important, given the evidence that many students can’t tell the difference between news and ads.
All Newsela articles are Common Core-aligned, which makes it a popular tool among educators. The app also includes a lot of content in Spanish, which is great for dual-language immersion schools and English-language learners.
While certain features of the app are free, full access is only through a paid license, although students can access it through their school’s license. Unfortunately, Newsela doesn’t list the cost of the expanded version publicly, which would be helpful for transparency.
BEST FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Duolingo
Duolingo
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Duolingo is by far the most popular app for learning a language, in part because it’s free. It’s a game-based, language-learning tool that can be used by a wide range of ages, from middle schoolers to adults.
Users are guided through instructional activities that cover all four skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. They get immediate feedback about errors and an explanation.
Duolingo offers education in 37 languages for native English speakers. The instruction is much more comprehensive and varied in widely-spoken languages like Spanish, than it is for more rare dialects.
Duolingo is particularly appealing to teens, as the app has a reward system for users who meet their daily threshold. There’s also an in-app, social network component that encourages younger users to invite their friends and compete with them to see who can advance the quickest.
Of course, with all foreign languages, cultural immersion is the only thing that can truly result in fluency, but as far as language-learning apps go, Duolingo is the gold standard.
BEST FOR MATH
DragonBox
DragonBox
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While Khan Academy does a great job with math, the various DragonBox apps specialize in math learning, using games to make it fun. Some reviews even call the app “addictive.”
DragonBox Algebra 5+ and DragonBox Numbers are designed for younger learners, from 4 to 8 years old. The special thing about Algebra 5+, one of the more popular apps, is that no prior knowledge of algebra is needed, since it’s simply learning a type of puzzle game. The Numbers app introduces young learners to addition and subtraction.
DragonBox Big Numbers is designed for 6- to 9-year-olds and builds on Numbers, by giving kids more complex problems with carrying and borrowing. DragonBox Algebra 12+ is the most advanced app, covering algebraic equations.
None of the DragonBox apps are free, although you can buy them for a one-time fee instead of a monthly payment, making it well worth the money. Algebra 5+ costs around $5, and the others mentioned are approximately $8.
FAQs
How Effective Are Apps at Providing Educational Instruction?
While most of these apps have been around for several years, and are valued as learning tools, they aren’t a substitute for person-to-person instruction. In general, there’s data suggesting that math apps are somewhat effective at raising test scores, but the same hasn’t been found for reading apps.
How Should I Use Educational Apps With My Younger Children?
The use of apps should be limited to younger children, in particular, in line with the recommendations suggested by pediatricians. Children younger than 24 months generally shouldn’t have screen time at all, and those from 2 to 5 years old should be limited to one hour a day. In addition, pediatricians recommend that parents engage with these apps along with their young children.1
The best educational apps have features that allow children to be actively engaged, not get distracted, and connect the app content to their existing knowledge. Finally, open-ended, choose-your-own-adventure-style apps are more likely to be educational than linear ones, because they are child-led instead of app-led.
Best learning apps for adults
Amazon Kindle
Price: Free / Book costs vary
Amazon Kindle is one of the best learning apps
Amazon Kindle is one of the more traditional learning apps. The service has an untold number of reference guides, how-to books, self-help books, textbooks, and more. You simply buy them, download them, and read them. It’s delightfully old school, but some people enjoy that. Books are generally less expensive than their physical counterparts. Your device can also store tons of them without running out of space. Those who don’t like Amazon Kindle have other options. Google Play Books and Nook by Barnes & Noble are both excellent options as well. They both have a large assortment of guides, tutorial books, and other educational literature. Google Play Books and Nook also fill this role quite well.
Coursera
Price: Free / Class costs vary
Coursera screenshot 2021
Coursera is an online school of sorts. It has a variety of lessons and classes that you can take. Each one educates you on a different topic. It boasts well over 1,000 courses ranging from math to science and even technology stuff. The classes have lectures, reading assignments, and video content. Finishing a course will even earn you a certificate of completion. Some of the courses are free. Others you’ll have to pay for. It’s a delightful mix of old-school and modern learning. The only downside is that the app can be buggy at times. Some other, similar options include Lynda, Skillshare, and edX.
Duolingo
Price: Free / $9.99 per month / $95.99 per year
Duolingo screenshot 2019 final
Duolingo hit the ground running in 2014 and never looked back. It’s a language learning app with a lot going for it. It teaches you languages in bite-sized chunks through little mini-games. The lessons get harder the further you go, but it always manages to stay fun. It supports over a dozen languages. The developers also boast that 34 hours in this app is equal to a semester in school. It’s completely free to use. There are also no advertisements. It’s one of the great learning apps for both adults and kids. The new subscription service makes things a little less pleasant, but the free version is still good.
Khan Academy
Price: Free
Khan Academy screenshot 2022
Khan Academy is a popular online resource for learning. It teaches more traditional subjects like math, science, physics, economics, and many others. It’s usually the kind of stuff that targeted learning apps (like Coursera and Udemy) don’t focus on too much. The app boasts access to over 10,000 videos along with various lessons and courses. You can use it to learn new concepts or brush up on older stuff. Khan Academy’s big claim to fame is that it’s completely free to use with no fees or hidden costs. That makes it one of the best learning apps for academics on a budget. There is also a kid’s version for all of you with youngsters out there. Another great option here is edX, which features 2,000 courses from actual colleges for free.
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LinkedIn Learning
Price: Free
LinkedIn Learning screenshot 2020
LinkedIn Learning is one of the newer learning apps. This one has an interesting history. It’s a learning app with a bunch of courses and tutorials for professional use. You can also view all of Lynda’s courses there as well. In fact, we used to recommend Lynda’s app on this list, but they recommend using the LinkedIn Learning app so we will too. The UI on this one is perfunctory and simple. There are a ton of courses for things like office skills, creative skills, and other similar things. The app also comes with Chromecast support, offline support, playlists, and more. It’s actually a decent learning app. We only recommend it to those looking to learn job skills. It’s not great for learning how to cook or things like that.
See more:
10 best language learning apps for Android
10 best learning apps for kids
Photomath
Price: Free
PhotoMath is one of the more focused learning apps. As the name implies, this one is all about math. It uses your camera and OCR technology to read equations that you write down. It then gives you the answer. More importantly, it shows you the step-by-step procedure on how it came up with the answer. Thus, it gives you the answer and teaches you how to solve the problem. A lot of people struggle with math and an app like this can help. The free version provides the basic features. Going pro will get you the step-by-step instructions for completing equations, better explanations, and extra math resources. Two other math apps with similar functionality is Microsoft Math Solver and Socratic by Google. You can use all three if you want to for maximum mathematics learning.
SoloLearn
Price: Free / $4.99 per month / $45.99 per year
SoloLearn is a developer on Google Play. They have a large selection of learning apps that teach computer programming. They support web languages like HTML, more common languages like Java or C++, and even some more specialized stuff like Python. Each language has its own app and each app is completely free. Eventually, you’ll need to graduate to something a little more complex. However, you’ll have received an education you would’ve paid a fortune for in college by then. These learning apps are great.
Udemy
Price: Free / Classes vary in cost
Udemy is one of the more popular course-style learning apps. Like many, it focuses on skill based learning. It has courses on things like Adobe apps, Microsoft apps, and you can even learn things like public speaking, cooking, and other stuff. There are a variety of courses for free or you can pay to get one of the more in-depth ones. The courses usually revolve around video lectures with video examples. Thus, the app lets you watch them as you please. Some of them could use a little work, but overall it’s a positive experience.
WolframAlpha
Price: $2.99
Wolfram Alpha is one of the best learning apps for android
WolframAlpha is a serious app for serious scholars. It has a calculator along with a wealth of information about a ton of topics. Some of them include various types of mathematics, statistics, data analysis, physics, chemistry, engineering, astronomy, units of measurement, weather, geography, and plenty more. You basically ask it for stuff and it’ll show you either what it is or how to do it yourself. The Wolfram Group has a bunch of additional educational tools, including courses for various types of math, reference guides for things like fractals and fractions, and more. The courses and such cost additional money and are separate apps from Wolfram Alpha.
YouTube
Price: Free / $12.99 per month
YouTube is probably the best thing that ever happened to learning apps. The service is usually for viral videos, music videos, news, and entertainment. However, you can find instructions on how to do virtually anything on YouTube. That includes things like changing the oil in your car, figuring out a problem with your computer, and there are educational channels with tutorials on virtually anything you can think of. The only thing you have to pay is a minute or two of your time to watch ads. Alternatively, YouTube Red is an option that costs $9.99 per month. That removes ads, adds background play, and more.
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