Modern tools are transforming our day-to-day lives. We use apps to help us meditate, websites to help us cook, and pieces of tech to help us connect to friends around the world. We could barely have imagined some of these tools a decade ago, but now we find that we can hardly live without them.
In this post, we’ll be looking at some modern tools which were specifically designed for classrooms. They’re fun, educational, and completely free. We highly recommend that you load them up and give them all a go.
#1. Kahoot!
Kahoot! is an online learning platform with more quizzes than you could possibly count. Well, actually, that’s not strictly true. According to the Kahoot! website, there are just over 100 million activities for students to have a go at.
It’s a great way to bring some healthy competition to the classroom. Students can take these quizzes head-to-head, and see who comes out on top. If you let your students know in advance that one of these quizzes is coming up, they might even take the time to revise the content. It won’t really feel like revision – they’re just making sure that they’ll have enough knowledge to beat their friends.
In general, the game-like environment of the Kahoot! website will motivate students to pay attention, participate, and learn. Another useful feature is that teachers can add quizzes of their own. If you can’t find the quiz you’re looking for, out of the 100 million options out there, you can easily build your own.
While your students are quizzing, you might also notice which students are struggling with a particular topic, or have an important gap in their knowledge. If half the class gets a question wrong about centripetal forces? You’ll know to teach that topic again.
#2. Socrative
Socrative is a bit like Kahoot!, but with some extra features that take the idea of educational activities to a whole new level. This really is a high-quality tool, and we couldn’t recommend it more.
Basically, a teacher sets an activity for their class, and all the students have to complete that activity on their individual computers or tablets. From the students’ perspective, it’s a lot of fun. Instead of feeling tired, or bored, or distracted, they can throw themselves into the educational activity, which is designed to be as exciting and engaging as possible.
Meanwhile, as a teacher, real-time insights are popping up on your screen. You can see when a student gets a question right, or wrong, and how long they had to think about it. You can see if one student is racing ahead, or another is falling behind. It’s the kind of interactive data that teachers in the past could only have ever dreamed of.
In terms of the sheer volume of activities, Socrative can’t compete with Kahoot!’s astonishing numbers. But in terms of real-time data, it doesn’t come much better than Socrative. After giving it a go with a couple of classes, you’ll find yourself wondering how you ever lived without it.
#3. FlipGrid
This one is very different from the tools we’ve mentioned so far. FlipGrid is a service that lets teachers create safe, online groups, where students are able to express their ideas by filming little videos.
For example, you might set up a group for your geography class. You post a topic to the group, such as “Where would you most like to go on vacation?” and invite your students to post their thoughts in the chat. One student might make a video about how much they want to visit the pyramids in Egypt, while another makes a video about skiing down the side of Mount Everest.
Students can view and respond to each other’s videos. It creates a sense of community, and collaboration, and fosters a positive learning environment. Students can also use props, costumes, and in-app filters to enhance their videos. It makes the learning experience more engaging and memorable for everyone in the class.
There might be a student or two who don’t feel comfortable filming themselves. Luckily, FlipGrid allows them to share an audio message instead. If that’s too much, there’s also an option to send a text-based message. But in general, kids respond really well to the FlipGrid system. Often, the students who are quietest in the classroom are the ones who come to life when they have the chance to get creative and make a video instead.
#4. Padlet
Like FlipGrid, Padlet provides an opportunity for students to collaborate in a safe community space. This time, instead of a platform for sharing videos together, Padlet is a digital notice board that lets students build bright, visual displays.
Let’s think about that geography example again: you ask your class to think of a place they would like to visit on vacation. Every student could find a photo of that place, and upload it to the Padlet notice board. Suddenly, you’re looking at a rich display with dozens of photos from exciting places around the world.
That’s just one way to use this website. It’s a really versatile tool. Padlet can also be used for mind-mapping, note-taking, lesson planning, and more. Best of all, it’s easy to use, with a simple drag-and-drop interface. It also supports a variety of media types, including text, images, and videos.
It’s another one of those brilliant tools which will leave you wondering “How did I not know about this sooner?” Just remind yourself, “At least I know about it now.” It will help you to lead some really great lessons in the future.
#5. GeoGebra
We haven’t talked about math yet, but the moment has finally come. GeoGebra is a suite of tools including a bank of activities, a platform for creating graphs, and a collaborative whiteboard that lets teachers and students work together as a team.
GeoGebra comes with a million high-quality activities. It’s available in a wide range of languages and caters to a range of age groups. Students can get stuck in geometry, algebra, statistics, and calculus. They can plot functions, draw shapes, and analyze data sets. If it’s part of mathematics, you’ll be sure to find it in the GeoGebra digital suite.
On top of all that, the interface is user-friendly and accessible, making it easy for you to integrate this tool into the classroom. Here at CodeMonkey, we’re really big fans of the work that GeoGebra is doing, and we’re not the only ones who love it. Over the past few years, they’ve won a bunch of awards. You can see those listed here.
#6. TypingClub
In the modern world, typing is an essential skill. How many of us type in our day-to-day lives? How many of us type in the workplace? You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t type something at least once every single day.
If you want your class to get good a typing, look no further than TypingClub. This web-based program is nicely made, user-friendly, and proven to get results. It offers a variety of lessons and educational exercises that are designed to help students improve their typing at a steady, achievable rate.
It’s gamified too. There are levels, badges, and stars to collect. There’s even a playback feature, where students can rewatch their typing efforts from previous lessons, and see how much faster and more confident they’ve become. Just sit your class in a computer room, and watch them get better and better.
With just a few weeks of practice, your class will be typing like pros. And it will have a major impact on their performance in other subjects. The faster they can type, the easier they’ll find it to write essays, make presentations, and complete research assignments. If typing is an essential modern skill, then TypingClub is the best way to learn it.
#7. Quill.org
After developing their touch typing on TypingClub, you might decide it’s time for your students to do some creative writing. And that’s where Quill.org comes in. Their website provides free activities which help to develop writing skills in elementary, middle, and high school students.
By the time a student is finished with the course, they’ll find themselves writing in a clear, confident style, making parents and teachers proud. You might find that some of your students don’t really need help with this – they already write quite fluently – but for other students, this kind of support is invaluable.
And just like learning to touch type, students will find that writing fluency has massive cross-curricular benefits. Students are asked to write things down in virtually every subject, and written work is usually the way that students are marked and examined.
It isn’t fair when a student has loads of great ideas but gets terrible marks because they struggle to put those ideas down in writing. But Quill.org can help with that. They’ve already supported 7 million students, and now it’s time for your class to benefit too.
#8. Go Noodle
For this final tool, it’s time to get active. School isn’t just about reading and writing. It isn’t just about geography and math. It’s also about being happy, and healthy – and that’s what Go Noodle is about.
It’s a website full of exercise videos and dance routines. The videos are fun and musical, and encourage kids to leap from their seats and follow along. It’s a great way to wrap up a week of school on a Friday afternoon. Get one of these videos running for the class, and don’t forget, you’re allowed to dance along too!
We all want our students to learn from our classes, and become brilliant academic brainboxes. But we also want them to feel comfortable and relaxed, and to enjoy setting foot in school. Go Noodle cares about mental health, and turning classrooms into happy, positive spaces.
Some children might feel reluctant at first, especially when they aren’t used to dancing around the classroom. But with the right encouragement, they’ll find themselves laughing and waving their hands to the beat. All of us need a break sometimes. School is hard work, and dancing is a great release.
Final words
These are just a few examples of fun educational tools. With a bit of googling, you’ll find plenty of others. It’s a thriving industry, and new options are coming out all the time. This is a good time to be a teacher, and a good time to be a student – with all these websites and apps available, you’re really spoiled for choice.
And if you don’t have time to run all these tools, you can always suggest that your students try them at home instead. Websites like Quill.org, TypingClub, and GeoGebra are easy to access outside the classroom. As much as you’d love to cover everything in your classroom, sometimes there just isn’t the time.
