Digital Tools for Schools
For more information about these tools and their use, please contact your ed-tech team. Though there are many other tools available, these tools are, for the most part, free, available on any device, have an easy sign-in process, and we've used them successfully with students.
What can a digital ecosystem look like?
Tools for workflow, feedback, formative assessment, design and art, geographic thinking, coding, video creation, portfolios and reflections about learning, skills practice sites, as well as online research resources.
Write and publish their work for an audience and share, collaborate and comment:
Google Sites allows very easy site creation for portfolios.
Seesaw allows students to share their work with their teacher and their parents.
Book Creator is a great browser-based publishing and creation app.
We have access to Canva for Education. The best online publishing platform.
Kidblog is now called Fan School. Portfolios for students to share their work with peers and their teacher.
Typing Club: Improve Typing Skills
Similar to Canva, this is Adobe's student content creation platform.
Sites for reading and writing skills
Educational Games
All BGSD students have access to Read&Write.
Epic: Thousands of free ebooks for students.
Pobble is a writing prompt site that provides picture prompts and story starters.
Read Write Think has hundreds of reading and writing lesson plans.
Dogo News is a kid-friendly news source for current events.
Articles and Lesson from The New York Times
Curipod for instant AI writing and idea feedback for students.
Google's Read Along uses AI to help students practice their reading.
Diffit is an AI powered tool to created differentiated reading passages with questions.
Smithsonian Tween Tribune is a leveled reading site.
Read Theory is a free reading comprehension site with leveled reading passages and questions and allows teachers to track progress.
Read Works is a reading comprehension resource with printable passages, lessons, and question sets.
Mind maps, displaying words in a visual format
Popplet is a kid-friendly mind map creator
Word art allows you to create word clouds with your own images.
ABCya has many creation tool.
Tag Crowd is a word cloud creation with many options (word count, etc.)
Formative Assessment
Google Forms for digital tests, surveys, data collection.
99Math: Interactive Math Game. I like this one.
Note PRODIGY is NOT recommened for it's agressive use of in-game advertising and marketing to kids.
Socrative makes exit tickets easy.
A powerful exit ticket and feedback tool.
Flippity allows you to create flashcards, Jeopardy style games and much more, all through Sheets.
Kahoot is a fun quiz game.
Plickers is a student response tool that uses an iOS or Android app to read paper response sheets. No student devices? No Problem.
Curipod is an AI infused student activity tool.
Quizizz is similar to Kahoot but is more individually paced.
Pear Deck for interactive presentations
Duolingo now has math practice.
AI question creation. Limits on number of practice times. Quizlet Live is fun!
Irritated by Quizlet's practice limits? Import your sets into Knowt with an extension!
Blooket for interactive games with content. Students LOVE it.
Gimkit is another online learning game.
Boddle is an interactive math app. To me it's too much distraction and not enough math.
Good to track progress but be sure to turn off the timer and pair it with other practice.
Create posters, visuals, and infographics
Google Drawing is a simple but powerful visual creation tool that is very easy to use.
Unsplash is a great source for free stock images.
Timeline JS allows you to make a very attractive timeline from a Google Spreadsheet template.
Pixabay is another great source for free stock images.
Portfolios, unit previews, self-paced courses, digital notebooks, multimedia lessons, timelines… and much more!
Piktochart: a great infographic tool with a Google sign-in.
RemoveBG is amazing and easy (for removing backgrounds of images.)
Easelly is a simple infographic creator. Not too many options for templates, but it gets the job done.
Adobe Spark is now Adobe Creative Cloud Express. It's great for making posters, movies or editing video and photos, simple web pages and more!
Canva is a fantastic for teaching design or making visuals.
Gravit is a fantastic vector image creator for graphic design.
Create digital stories: combine audio, video, music, pictures, drawings, maps, cartoons, or any combination into a final product
Google's My Maps allows you to annotate, add content, calculate distances, and share and save your map.
Twisted Wave allows you to record audio on your Chromebook.
Explain Everything is an interactive whiteboard that allows you to record audio, video and add text or annotations then share or embed.
Storyboard That creates colourful comic style storyboards.
Screencastify creates screencast videos quickly and easily with this Chrome browser extension.
iMovie is simple, straightforward, and produces good quality movies. iMovie is hard to beat if students have access to iPads.
Stop motion Studio is an app that is available for the Chrome web browser and Chromebooks. Create stop motion animation sequences using your device's webcam.
WeVideo is a free online video editor that can be used on Chromebooks. Combine audio, video, pictures.
ABCya has many tools and this is a simple tool that allows students to create animated Gifs.
Book Creator now works on Chromebooks as well as iPads.
Soundtrap is an online recording environment that allows collaboration and looping and mixing of provided tracks.
The SIMPLEST video merging or editing tool.
Loom: A floating screencaster!
Bandlab is another great online recorder.
Create presentations, share content
Google Slides can be used to create presentations filled with images, text, and video. See the templates page!
Animoto can be used to create photo slideshows with music.
Slides Carnival has fantastic templates if you want to create a presentation.
Powtoon creates animated video presentations. Notify parents of use if students are under 13.
Pear Deck is useful for adding interactivity to your presentations.
Not included here: Nearpod, Prezi, Moovly, Haiku Deck
Use photo editing, design, screen capture, home design tools
Adobe's Color allows you to choose your palette for design and use the hex numbers easily.
PicMonkey: online photo editor.
Sumo Paint: online photo editor.
Sketchpad is a very neat HTML5 drawing tool. Draw with any touch screen or interactive whiteboard. Other vector design tools include Vectr and Gravit.
Try http://weavesilk.com/ for symmetry activities
Homestyler allows you to design buildings with 2D floor plans or 3D modeling .
Add annotation and comments to video
VideoNot.es is a Google Drive addon which allows students to add in their own time stamped notes and annotations on videos.
EDpuzzle can be used to crop videos and add quizzes and assessments right into the video. Show only what you want to show and check for understanding on fly.
PlayPosit is a platform to create and share interactive video lessons. Create questions and pause the video to receive student feedback. Real time monitoring of student progress is available.
Use instructional interactives: Games, manipulatives and exercises that increase background knowledge and skills:
Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. Various subjects are available.
Youcubed transforming the latest research on maths into accessible and practical forms.
Sumdog uses interactive math and reading activities to engage learners and compete with others around the world.
Spelling City builds students literacy, spelling and phonics through gamified activities.
Vocabulary.com is a site that uses adaptive questions to assist in vocabulary building activities.
Mathigon: Interactive Mathmatics site!
XtraMath is a free web-based application that allows students to work on their basic operations. XtraMath can be used in the classroom or at home.
99Math: Interactive Math Game
Brain POP is a website with linked videos and activities on various subjects. The Free site has been linked and the paid version offers many more options.
Virtual field trips, create virtual reality:
Google Earth is now on Chromebooks with excellent new Voyager journeys. New: Creation Tools!
Cospaces allows you to create virtual reality worlds or upload, add to real 360 images, and even code events in your world.
Panoform allows you to make drawings come alive in a 3D viewer.
Learn code and computational thinking, create games, create 3D models:
Code.org is more that just the hour of code. Contains a plethora of coding resources.
Code Combat is a fun, game-based way to learn coding.
Made with Code is a project-based learning site with coding lessons geared towards girls.
Khan Academy also offers coding courses.
Tinkercad is a great site for creating 3D models.
Teacher tools for communication, planning, classroom management, and workflow
Google Classroom. The control room for your digital classroom.
Classkick is a digital work system that allows you to see what students are doing and assess them.
Remind is a parent communication tool.
Bloomz: class communication
Class Dojo started as an extrinsic motivator but has turned into a parent communication tool.
Planboard is a free digital planner.
Classcraft allows you to gamify your classroom.
Planbook is another digital planner that has a small yearly cost.
Need a brain break?
Technology is not the innovation, it is a tool embedded in innovation. -Grant Lichtman
Created by: Darren Maltais, Black Gold Regional School Division, with Jacqueline Larson and David Froland.
Some additional ideas and resources from Richard Byrne. "Free Technology for Teachers." http://www.freetech4teachers.com/,
Edotopia, Edudemic, and Shake Up Learning.
Updated April 2024