5 Free Education Apps for Teachers to Supercharge Your Teaching!

2.) TeacherPlan Lite, Education, Free, by Niel Ryan – TeacherPlan Lite (iOS Universal) – If your teaching routine feels like it’s in a rut or the daily lesson planning is requiring too much precious time to plan out each day, this free planning app may just be the help you need to keep your teaching style creative and fresh.

This Education app comes with a professional lesson planning template and 5 lesson planning ideas, allowing you to create your own quick lesson plans in 3 easy steps. TeacherPlan Lite has prewritten lesson ideas that can be inserted into your lesson template with just a tap of your finger. Type or dictate your lesson (if device has functionality), and even shake your iPhone or iPad to get a lesson plan created for you in a matter of seconds. Once you’ve completed a class lesson, save your created plan to your calendar, email, clipboard, or a .txt file. You can also export lessons as a .txt file to another app (like the Edmodo app below) – and print out.

Teacher Plan Lite is free to use, but if you want access to 100s of lesson planning ideas, you can upgrade to the Premium version: Teacher Plan for $13.99 currently.

The overall app rating for all versions of this mobile app is 3.5 stars (out of 5) based on 19 app user ratings. The current version (2.0.2) has received an overall iTunes app rating of 4 stars based on 13 app user ratings.

3.) ZipGrade – Grade Tests with Your Phone’s Camera, Education, Free, by ZipGrade LLC – Save time and enjoy the convenience of grading multiple choice quizzes and tests right in your classroom, even without WiFi or internet access. Using your iPhone or iPad’s camera as a scanner, you can quickly scan your students’ tests sheets right after testing to get back accurate and immediate results.

This Education app allows you to create an unlimited number of quizzes for your students and classes. Simply start by printing out your free answer sheets on the ZipGrade website. Then create a 20, 50, or 100 question quiz, create and scan your answer key, and you’re ready to administer a test. Afterwards, you can easily view grades and statistics. You have the option to use each student’s name or student ID number for reporting purposes. You will also get organized test results “for reporting and exporting via PDF and Excel-readable format.” In addition, ZipGrade has syncing between devices and the web. And you can use the “companion website (cloud.zipgrade.com) to bulk upload student lists and export via the web.”

ZipGrade is a free mobile app that lets you demo the app’s functionality by scanning the first 100 test documents for free. This teaching app provides free-to-download answer sheets in varying sizes and formats on the zipgrade.com website at no cost (PDF and PNG). And if you like the app, you can upgrade to the Full Version for $1.99 for 2 months or $6.99 for 1 whole year of use.

ZipGrade has an overall iTunes user rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 based on 102 app user ratings. With the most recent update, the current version(1.13) has a 5 star rating based on 7 user ratings.

4.) Groovy Grader, Education, Free, by Dryrain Technologies – After using this easy, convenient, and colorful grading tool, you’ll happily relegate that “old fashion” paper grading calculator to the bottom of the pile. The Groovy Grader app allows you to quickly calculate grades on homework assignments and tests right on your iPhone or iPad. This digital slide grader comes with adjustable setting options that allow you to change the number of test questions on a given test (100s), display the number of correct answers, and number of wrong answers. You can also choose to display the grade as a whole number or to one decimal place.

This iOS Universal Education app is free and has received an overall user rating of 4 stars (out of 5) based on 633 iTunes user reviews. The most recent update (version 4.0.4) has a 5 star rating based on 6 app user reviews.

5.) Edmodo, Education, Free, by Edmodo – “With over 20 million users, Edmodo is the largest, fastest growing social platform for education. Awarded the 2013 EdTech Digest Award for Best Product, Edmodo makes the idea of a paperless classroom a reality.”

This communication app makes it safe and easy for teachers and students to stay connected on academic matters. Make a profile, set up your classroom, create a group and you’ll be able to enjoy secure classroom discussions, post assignments, and have students take and submit quizzes within the application. You will also be able to keep track of grades in your Gradebook, upload and share files, use other apps to import files directly to the Edmodo application, and even create polls. Some app features worth noting are the classroom activity feed, student progress tracker, educational resource library and the professional learning networks.

This app for teachers is completely free. It has received an overall iTunes user rating of 3.5 stars (out of 5) based on 3,620+ app user reviews. The current version 4.5.2 has an overall user rating of 4.5 stars based on 25 user reviews.

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