Aside from students, other people like custodians, nurse,
security guards, and especially teachers also bring electronic devices to
school. Because of the growing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend today, most
people in the corporate world are utilizing their own gadgets to get their work
done. For teachers, they don't actually need a pen, paper, or laptop in order
to accomplish their daily tasks should they have the proper devices.
Some famous apps that fit this description includes Google Drive
for document collaboration, Dropbox for file synchronization between devices,
Keynote for creating presentations, and Evernote for storing almost everything
that your students submit in its searchable online database. The list could go
on, targeting teachers and school staff, with tasks ranging from grading and
taking attendance to simplifying presentations or perfecting their use of the
whiteboard.
If you're a faculty staff and would like to take your teaching
methods to the next level, check out our list below for more apps that will
guarantee to suit your needs.
Edmodo is a full content management system for educators that allows
you to easily disseminate assignments and receive submissions. With the newest
version of the app, teachers and students now have the ability to like posts in
their stream and get a quick glance of who else liked a particular post. Users
will find threaded discussions in this app enjoyable because of its
Facebook-ish layout.
EduBlogs is a blogging platform that is designed for teachers to get the
word out to students. School educators and teachers alike can use this mobile
app to create blogs, post updates, moderate comments, and upload multimedia.
The app also has privacy control that provides options to make blogs private or
public, teachers can also leave private comments on student writing, organize
students in groups and lists, and monitor progress with detailed user reports.
ShowMe is an app that lets you turn your iPad into an interactive
whiteboard. It allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share
them with your students online. Anyone can use it if they want to create
presentations using images, drawings, text, and audio voice-over recordings.
You can keep your presentations private or shared with limited groups only, if
you prefer it that way. ShowMes are categorized by topic, so users can explore
other people's ShowMes to find unique lesson resources. Teachers can pay $4.99
for a monthly groups subscription to share ShowMes with a class. The ShowMe
Interactive Whiteboard is a collaborative tool for digital lesson-sharing that
can work for parents, teachers, and students.
Teacher's
Assistant Pro is an app for iOS that tracks student behavior and achievements,
including searchable demographic info on each student. It's easy to communicate
later with parents or administrators about what's happening with each student
or the entire class. You can send reports via email, text, or make a call
directly from your iPhone -- it's an app that thousands of teachers around the
world is already using.
Other tasks that you can
do using this app -- filter your students by class, action, or just about
anything you need, use random student lists and groups for class participation,
send announcements to all or some of your students or classes using Email
Blast, store parent names and student contact information including a photo,
phone numbers, email addresses, and unlimited custom information such as
student ID, and many others
You can
get Teacher's Assistant Pro for $4.99 for Mac OS, $5.99
for iOS Pro version or Free;
Android version is TBA.
The Teacher Aide Pro 2 is an
app for teachers and professors who would like to keep electronic records for
classes, with just a touch away from their Android phone or tablet. Instead of
being tied to a desktop device, teachers can now enter and access data anywhere
in the room. All data is stored in the device locally, so there's no need to
have Internet connection in order to access the data you need. However, you
also have the option to back up your students' data in the cloud to provide
extra security in case your Android device gets lost or damaged. Other features
that Teacher Aide Pro 2 offers are Attendance Tracking, Gradebook (Categories
and Weighting), Seating Chart, Random Student Caller with text to speech,
Student group generator, Easy 1 tap communication with parents, students, and
advisors, and Progress report feature.
You can get the Teacher
Aide Pro 2 app for $19.99 (Android).
SlideShark is a
free app for viewing and sharing PowerPoint presentations on the iPad, iPhone,
and iPod Touch the way they are meant to be seen -- with animations, fonts,
colors, and graphics intact. It also has the ability to broadcast slides via
the Web in real-time, which is useful especially when you have sick students at
home, and play embedded videos from your PowerPoint presentation. Some of the
key features provided by SlideShark include: File management with your own
secure, cloud-based account, plus option to import from leading cloud storage providers,
offline access to presentations (requires no Internet connection when
presenting), iPhone remote control and laser pointer capabilities when
projecting from your iPad, and more.
The
free version of the app offers only 25MB of online storage, but if you're
willing to pay $8 a month for the Pro version, you'll get 1 GB of online
storage or more. You can download the SlideShark app for iOS here.
