Must-Have Apps for Techie Teachers



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


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.

The app is free to download for iOS, Android, and Windows 8 users.

EduBlogs


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.
EduBlogs is free for both iOS and Android users.

ShowMe


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


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.

Teacher Aide Pro 2


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


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.

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