Apps and Sites for Students
Edu 210 By Brett MacKenzie
Socrative
Socrative is an educational website available on all devices (tablets, laptops and smartphones) that provides students of being able to view and complete class resources and assignments from a variety of platforms. The site also has an app, which makes it even more accessible and relatable for students. It provides instant feedback, personalized content, and reports the statistics and trends for individual students or in group format. Accounts and free and navigation is simple, with many support features and tutorials available to both teacher and student users.
Duolingo
Duolingo is an app for all platforms with the focus of learning languages, offering German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish Spanish and French. It's striking visual format and student-friendly incentive features (like the Streak Count to chart practice times, and Hearts during lessons which keep you 'alive' like a game) make it appealing to all learners, as well as having built in speaking, listening, translation and testing options available. Lessons are also immediately graded, making feedback and reflection instant and easy.
Voicethread
Voicethread provides a more in depth presentation style with student input made easily available. A website with no software to install, it is a collaborative multimedia slide show that can host all most forms of media (images, documents, and videos). Sharing is simple, sign up is free, and students, or other staff and contributors, can leave comments in a variety of ways (voice, text, audio file, or video). It is a great alternative to more bland and presentation programs, and has a fluid and visually appealing website and format.
Screencast-o-Matic
Screencast-o-Matic makes filming a lesson, tutorial, or technology demonstration simple and easy through a free and simple website. There is a premium option which costs $15.00/year and unlocks more connectability options, but the free version is excellent also. Videos can be watched as many times as necessary, so different varieties and speeds of learners are able to access the information at their own pace. Conversely, if used as a format for an assignment, the teacher can access and repeat assignments as many times as necessary.
iCell
iCell is a science app that allows the user to to interact with 3D depictions of the inside of a cell. With every type of cell (animal, bacterial, or plant) the option exists to have reading information as well as the virtual experience, and best of all there is three levels - Basic, Intermediate, or Advanced so the app is relevant to many age groups. It is hands on, visual, and kinaesthetic with 360-degree rotation and individual descriptions of every part of the cell.