As online course sites like Coursera, Udemy, and Skillshare become more and more popular, it’s important to have the right tools for making your courses easy to understand and follow. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best apps for online courses.
You’ll find some free options on this list, but it’s important to note that if you’re serious about creating a high-quality course and getting the most out of it, you should invest in buying a few premium apps. Each of these has a free trial period so you can test them out before deciding which ones are right for you.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Online Courses
Schools these days make use of technology more than ever before; in fact, for teachers, there are always more and more apps to download on their and their students’ mobile devices that are created specifically for educational purposes. In the online stores and in particular, in those of Google Play and Apple store, there are many free of charge apps with each one including its own specific features. In this regard, here is a list of 15 useful apps for teachers.
Apps and tools for teaching
1- Nearpod
The first app that proves ideal for livening up lessons, and made especially for teachers, is the one called Nearpod. This application allows teachers to present multimedia lessons that students can upload to their mobile devices. The Nearpod app is completely free and offers different layouts, which make it suitable for various teaching activities.
nearpod.com (ios) / nearpod.com (Android)
2- Viper (Windows)
The second app worth mentioning and proving suitable for teachers is the one called Viper. It is in fact a valid Windows application that contains ready-made themes which allow teachers to present them directly to pupils. In this app, students are also able to compare their work to understand how to write better by avoiding grammatical errors, paying more attention to syntax and typos.
viper.en.softonic.com (Windows)
3 – Attendance
The third app that proves effective for teachers, who have an Android device, is the one called Attendance. Teachers can use it to draw up a list of attendance in their various classes, and to help them keep track of the studies and classwork of each individual student. This app also allows a photo to be added to each name so that the teacher can better verify and follow the necessary information.
Attendance (Google Play)
4 – TooNoisy
The fourth app for teachers is a little bizarre, but in some ways useful; in fact, it is called TooNoisy. It was created to detect environmental noises and it can be used for both an Android device and with an iPhone in a classroom. This app specifically emits a beep when the aforementioned noise threshold is excessive. The main function of this app is dictated by the fact that students, themselves, can become more aware of how to behave, and regulate their behavior. It also helps students avoid the risk of punishment by a teacher or educational representative if they aren’t following the rules.
toonoisyapp.com (ios and Android available)
5 – ThingLink
The fifth app that a teacher can download for free from Google Play on his mobile device is the one called ThingLink which is used to keep students attentive during lessons. In addition, the app is useful for creating interactive images for teachers who intend to use them to better explain a topic or make concepts clearer to students who download it on their mobile device.
thinglink.com (Android)
Audience response
6 – AnswerGarden
With this free tool, teachers can ask their students a question which can be answered with a single word or short phrase. Responses are received through a web link, QR code, or AnswerGarden’s iOS app, and begin to populate on a display screen in a word cloud. The words that are submitted most often will appear as the largest in the cloud. This is a very handy tool to use for brainstorming activities with a group in the classroom.
answergarden.ch (ios)
7 – Poll Everywhere
The first company to offer an alternative to clickers, Poll Everywhere started as a service that allowed students to respond to a poll via text message. Now students can also respond through a web browser or through Poll Everywhere’s mobile app. Polls can be created using multiple-choice, ranking graphs, clickable images, and questions that include LaTeX syntax and alphabets from different world languages.
polleverywhere.com
8 – Slido
With Slido, students can submit questions through a regular web browser using a unique event code. Questions which appear on the presenter’s screen can be upvoted by other participants, moving the most popular questions to the top. Once a question has been answered, the presenter or teacher can remove it from the queue. Slido also offers audiences polling with multiple-choice and word cloud options.
sli.do
Book publishing’s apps
9 -Blurb
This site helps teachers create photo books with text that use templates for a variety of book types: cookbooks, children’s books, portfolios, memoirs, magazines, and more. Books can be kept in digital form or purchased as a paperback, a hardcover, a magazine, or an e-book. Printed books are not cheap; save this for something special.
blurb.com
10 – Book Creator
This flexible tool allows students of any age to create e-books. These books can contain photos, text, audio and video files, and even hand-drawn images, which are embedded in content like Google Maps or Flipgrid grids. Finished books can be shared through a link, downloaded as an EPUB, or even sold through iBooks and Google Play. Teachers can create classroom libraries, and the site has tons of resources and ideas for classroom use.
bookcreator.com
11 – Lulu
For student writers who want to publish their works, print-on-demand sites like Lulu are growing in popularity. By using this tool, authors upload manuscripts, which they can sell in print or as e-books through markets like Amazon. Authors are not charged a fee to publish, but when a book sells, Lulu earns back the cost of production plus a percentage of the profit, with the author keeping the rest.
lulu.com
12 – Storybird
Although this site is no longer free, it may be worth the price. Users can begin by browsing through a gallery of professional artwork until they find an inspiring image. When they find an image that interests them, they write a story or poem to accompany their chosen visual. Students can choose from a collection of images and build a picture book around them. The site also offers excellent resources for teachers, like writing lessons and private class settings.
storybird.com
13 – WriteReader
This is a great book-making tool for emerging writers. As students type in text, WriteReader will say either the name of the letter or the sound it makes, allowing students to get auditory confirmation that they are choosing the right letters. To enhance their books, students can add images or voice recordings. Teachers are able to include adult-written text below each student’s writing task. Finished books can be printed or downloaded as PDFs.
writereader.com
Classroom management’s apps
14 – BehaviorFlip
This platform was built with “Restorative Justice” practices in mind. Teachers are able to track students’ “coachable” behaviors in two categories—respect and responsibility—in order to help them detect patterns and provide a starting point for talking with students. The tool also lets teachers reward students for behaviors that demonstrate resiliency. It even has a mechanism for indicating whether behavior issues have been resolved after an incident.
behaviorflip.com
15 – Bouncy Balls
This fun web-based tool helps to keep noise at a reasonable level in the classroom. Teachers can open the website and set it up for students to view. When the classroom is quiet, the balls stay settled at the bottom of the screen, but when the noise in class starts to rise, the balls get more active, giving everyone in the room a visual cue about how noisy they’re getting in class.
bouncyballs.org
What are you thoughts about using online apps and tools in your own teaching? Do you find using them easy or difficult? Which apps have worked for you and which ones are your favorite?
If you are having difficulties finding apps that fit your didactic purposes, have you considered creating your own app? We recommend you take a look at our course to discover how to build your own digital tools.
Best Apps For Online Classes
Since the onset of COVID-19, we’ve had to make big changes to the way we work and interact with one another in general. The rise of online learning is part of this. Many people have taken the opportunity to learn new things and pick up new skills. There’s a range of great learning apps and websites which offer exceptional , stimulating reading materials, and helpful assistance whenever you need it.
might be something of a novelty to a lot of people, but distance learning is in fact long-established. In the same way that you might hold a through an all-in-one desktop app to keep in touch with colleagues, so you can stream live or recorded online lectures and seminars. Many of the methods now being used in the world of work have long been used for the purposes of online learning.
But there are so many different options out there when it comes to online learning, it can be difficult to work out which provider is best for you. In this guide, we’ll list eight of the best free educational apps and websites, to provide you with more information and hopefully a bit of inspiration.
The best educational apps and websites for online learning
One of the world’s best-known online learning resources, Coursera has several thousand courses from leading educational providers. Those include elite universities such as Stanford and Princeton, as well as big-name businesses such as IBM and Google. Coursera offers several thousand free courses across a plethora of different subject areas.
Whether you’re looking for an introduction to programming or you want to get to grips with machine learning, there’s a course on Coursera for you. Another benefit of using the site is that you can complete collections of related courses (known as “specializations”) to really sharpen your knowledge across a particular topic.
Khan Academy has as its mission “providing excellent free education for inquisitive minds worldwide.” It provides its lectures in the form of video tutorials and has proved hugely popular around the world. So, if you’re looking to take on a new course and expand your mind, this is certainly a very good place to look.
Furthermore, Khan Academy offers courses that can help you prepare for standardized tests across a range of qualifications, including MCAT, SAT, and LSAT.
Partnering with world-famous universities, including Harvard and MIT, edX has around 2,500 courses to choose from. It focuses primarily on the humanities and natural sciences, so if you’re looking to broaden your understanding of topics in these areas, it’s a great place to start. Languages and computer science, in particular, are among the most popular subjects on edX.
While most edX courses are free, there are some professional courses that will come at an additional cost, so make sure you know exactly what you’re signing up for before you commit yourself to anything.
Partly owned by the Open University, FutureLearn offers a wide range of free short courses across a range of different subjects. Its short, ‘micro-credential’ courses are available free of charge, and you can obtain a printable digital certificate upon completion (though this will cost you a little extra, with fees starting from around $40).
There are 14 subject areas in total, offering a variety of shorter and longer courses – depending on how deeply you want to go into the topic. As well as how easily or otherwise you’ll be able to fit it into your everyday schedule.
Whatever you’re into, you shouldn’t have trouble finding a free course that interests you from FutureLearn. It has courses in everything from healthcare, science, and engineering to the creative arts and teaching. FutureLearn also offers online degrees, though these are subject to tuition fees.
Also, run by the Open University, OpenLearn is dedicated to offering only free courses. It has nearly 1,000 of them, at three levels of difficulty and depth. These are introductory, intermediate, and advanced. This allows you to select whichever course works best for you depending on where your understanding of the topic is, and how much time you can devote to it.
Some courses are as short as 1-3 hours, while others can take up to 24 hours in total (not continuously, obviously). Subject matter tends to focus quite heavily on education and learning; particularly early years and childhood education, as well as working with young people. So if you’ve got an eye on a new career as a teacher, OpenLearn could be ideal.
Much has been made of the technological revolution of the last 20 years or so, and few can deny that our lives have changed considerably in that time. For this reason, many people have looked to carve out careers for themselves in programming, in the hope of becoming the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg.
SoloLearn caters to those looking to sharpen their programming skills. Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned veteran, you’ll find courses to help you take your capabilities to the next level. It offers a huge selection of courses covering programming languages including JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Python, Java, Swift, and C++.
Another platform dedicated to coding courses is Codeacademy. One really useful feature that Codecademy offers is its live practice window, which allows you to work on and practice your coding while at the same time still being able to view the lesson material. Its courses are designed to be as accessible and easy to follow as possible.
Like SoloLearn, Codecademy offers free courses covering a variety of different programming languages. More than 11 million people have completed Codecademy courses so far, and most of these courses can be completed in no more than 11 hours, making much easier for you.
You can also pay a monthly fee for access to the site’s premium plan.
Offering a choice of more than 130,000 free video tutorials, Udemy is one of the most popular learning apps around. Here you can learn more about a veritable smorgasbord of different topics. Whether it’s tech and business, creative writing, body language, or even yoga, Udemy’s specialist tutors will also be on hand to help you learn.
Another advantage of using Udemy is that it gives you the opportunity to learn at a pace that works for you – ideal if you’ve got a demanding career or (perhaps even more demanding) young children to look after. You can call on instructions and your fellow students should you have any questions or uncertainties in your efforts to learn.
Wrapping up
There are lots of good reasons why you might want to take on online learning, and the possibilities are almost limitless. Whatever your motivation for undertaking online courses, they can help you deepen your understanding of the topics that interest you, and possibly help you work towards that fulfilling job and career you’ve always aspired to. Happy learning!
Guest author: Sam O’Brien
Sam O’Brien is the Senior Website Optimisation & User Experience Manager for EMEA at RingCentral, a Global VoIP, video conferencing, and provider. Sam has a passion for innovation and loves exploring ways to collaborate more with dispersed teams. He has written for websites.
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