Proper education lays the foundation for a highly successful life and a promising future. Therefore, education ranks amongst the prime necessities of an individual’s life. With the ever-evolving professional arena creating some of the greatest career opportunities, a strong elementary education has become the need of the hour.

If you are one of those judicious parents, you will inevitably know what it means to impart the right education to your children. Therefore, you will always look for the right educational institution and resources capable of meeting your expectations.

Effects of Digitization

However, digital transformations and tech innovations have entirely transfigured the conventional educational ideas and processes. Smart innovations have entered into the educational landscape, thus changing it for the better. Today, we have smart classrooms that make education a highly enjoyable affair for students.

If smart classrooms are the preliminary step towards effective digitization, e-learning, and online tutoring take this revolution further. Today teachers and parents have access to some of the most useful and effective educational resources.

That brings us to the latest innovation in the educational sector. We are talking about learning and educational apps ensuring a strong educational and career foundation for students.

Mobile apps in primary education

If you wish to take huge strides towards development, the stepping stones should be strong enough to support you. Quite similarly, a strong primary education will prepare the grounds for proper secondary or higher education.

Mobile learning apps contribute in the field of primary education to a great extent. From helping your kids cover their lessons to developing a few basic skills; these apps take collaborative and participatory education to the next level.

Knowing the benefits

With numerous educational apps in the global landscape, you will inevitably have countless options to choose from.

But, how are these mobile apps going to benefit your kids? Take a look.

1.      Proper utilization of free hours

Mobile apps transform the learning process into a fun affair, which is quite important to generate interest amongst primary-level students. These apps also come with various skill development tasks and games. As the result, students will get to develop their analytical skills.

2.      Staying connected

With some of the best mobile apps, your child will have the opportunity to stay connected with their tutors or teachers. Although wrongly perceived at times, these apps are not alternatives to traditional classroom teaching. Rather, they add value to the entire process.

3.      Learn to share           

Educational applications come with social sharing and integration features. Students share what they learn, thus contributing to collaborative education. Such features also encourage feedbacks and inputs from other students and teachers, thus fostering an environment of shared learning.

4.      Understanding and using technology

Sound technical knowledge happens to be a necessity today. And technological education must begin at the elementary levels. The introduction and widespread use of mobile applications in primary education will help students achieve a certain degree of proficiency in using technology.

Final thoughts

The app revolution is transforming almost every sector in a nation. As far as the primary education sector is concerned, they are truly making some effective contributions.

Apps for Teachers

Technology has changed teaching trends significantly. Today, the focus has shifted to STEM education and more emphasis is being given to STEM classes. The educator has also become the student and requires more than just a workbook to teach and motivate students to learn and understand using technology.

Just like every sphere of life has an app, there are numerous apps available specifically for teachers to engage students, improve student behavior and make classroom sessions more interesting and fruitful.

Here are 5 must-have apps that all teachers should have to get desired results in the classroom.

1. The ClassDojo App

The ClassDojo app acts as a classroom tool that provides techniques to bring quick changes to classroom behavior. One good thing about this app is that it allows the teacher to capture and generate date related to student behavior and share with parents as well as administrators.

Teachers also can use the app to give feedback and encourage or motivate students. The app allows teachers to submit and view data and reports related to student behavior.

https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/classdojo/id552602056?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.classdojo.android&hl=en

2. Edmodo

The Edmodo is a wonderful support aid for teachers. This amazing app helps teachers improve their level of interaction with students, even when both are not physically present in the school. The Edmodo app lets teachers and students enjoy secure classroom discussions and easy sharing of assignments. Besides these features, the app lets teachers upload important files related to projects and lessons that students can use and refer to.

https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/edmodo/id378352300?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fusionprojects.edmodo&hl=en

3. Remind 101

The Remind101 app helps teachers send announcements and notices to parents and students. Although a common functionality, this app has a unique feature – it prioritizes privacy.

The app lets the teacher hide their contact details and/or identity when sharing information with parents and students. In addition, the personal details of recipients too are kept hidden. The ‘privacy’ feature offered by the Remind 101 app makes it different and more effective compared to apps that offer the same features and functionalities.

https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/remind-safe-classroom-communication/id522826277?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.remind101&hl=en

4. Math Formulas

It is quite difficult to remember all the math formulae related to different equations and mathematical concepts. Not remembering the formula in a classroom setting can send teachers into a tizzy. This is where the Math Formulas app comes to the rescue.

It is a compilation of innumerable math formulae. These formulae cover almost every topic in math, from trigonometry to geometry and algebra to matrices. However, this particular app is available only for Android devices, but you can get similar apps for iOS devices, as well.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nsc.mathformulas.lite&hl=en

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/maths-formulas-free/id645431389?mt=8

5. Geddit

The Geddit app is designed to help teachers identify students’ weaknesses and strengths. This amazing app lets teachers understand a student’s attitude to learning and their ability to understand different aspects of a lesson.

This interaction through the app allows the teacher to cater to the individual needs of students, conduct a one-on-one session for better comprehension and assist students get confident to progress to the next level.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geddit-student/id827542924?mt=8

If you are an educator, these are the 5 apps you should have on your smart device to improve interaction with and make learning fun for your students.

Smartphone apps have definitely changed a lot of things associated with our lives. One thing is for sure that the young people around the world, particularly the ones in schools and college have been greatly benefitted by the use of smartphone apps. As per some sources, over 40 million students from different parts of the world make use of Android apps for education in some or the other way. No doubt, this figure is expected to increase manifold in the near future. This is the reason why even teachers are not behind in utilizing the platform of Google and iOS apps to help their student in improving performance. In case you are wondering how on earth the educational apps can prove helpful for the teachers then you must go through this blog.

Sharing of Information

With the help of mobile apps, teachers are now able to distribute information among their students, that too in almost any kind of form. Be it Word file or PDF, with just few taps now a teacher can easily send across multiple files to his or her students, which can be assignments, study materials, exam details, etc. Not just that, the same apps can even allow the teachers to assess their students’ performance, and provide instant feedback on the same. Nearpod and Exitticket Student Response System are two such perfect examples. Extremely easy to use and highly efficient, these mobile apps can be used to encourage as well enhance digital teamwork between the students and their teachers.
Considering the huge numbers of educational apps users, Google recently came up with an excellent mobile app called Classroom. This brand new app will allow the teachers to keep their students informed about the upcoming assignments, and it will also help the instructors to set the status of the assignment as done/incomplete. Since its inception, over 30 million assignments have made their way through this mobile app.

Bringing in Agility and Mobility

So, unlike the traditional ways that involve distribution of paper based assignments among the students and then collecting the same from them for the assessment, the mobile app version offers greater flexibility and efficiency. Most importantly, this version of education significantly brings down the amount of time wasted in the allocation of assignments; its collection; assessment of the same, and finally sharing the feedback with the respective students. In short, the mobile apps for educational purpose have added amazing mobility and agility to the teaching and assessment methodology.

Something More

The mobile apps for education are not just about teaching purpose, but some of them perform larger roles. Nowadays, teachers can maintain a record of their students’ set of behavior through the mobile apps. The same apps can be used to report a case of bad behavior to the supervisors or to the respective parents. Teacher’s Assistant Pro and Teacher Aide Pro are two such apps you can check out. Hence, the apps are helping teachers to organize their classroom in a more effective way. In this way, teachers now have more control over the students’ performance with the help of mobile apps.

People often say that interesting methods or ways should be used when it comes to help the students learn something. We too are of the opinion that the conventional methods of teaching do not go well with most students of today’s times, as they find those methods quite mundane. This could be one of the reasons why there has been tremendous rise in the use of educational apps in the last few years. Currently, the educational apps have not only changed the way toddlers or kids used to start their learning phase, but also the face of today’s classroom.

Worldwide trends on how education sector is embracing technology  

Android smartphones, iPhones and iPads are being widely used these days by the teachers as well as their students to share study materials, complete and submit assignments, and evaluation of the same. For example, around 1000 schools in the United Kingdom incorporated iPads in their teaching methodology. More than 1.5 million iPads were brought into the system by the schools, and the device successfully replaced the conventional textbooks with e-books. No doubt, the incorporation of online textbooks made it possible for the students and the teachers to explore the vast pool of information. So, the application of iPad in the classroom has definitely turned out to be a successful one.

Skype, which is one of the most widely used applications in the entire world, has its own platform for the teachers, and it is known as ‘Skype in the Classroom’. By the end of 2013, more than 50,000 teachers joined the online classroom to assist their students in the learning process. More than 3,000 Skype Lessons are available for the teachers to explore, and they are using the resources happily.

Our take

We strongly believe that the era of blackboard and chalk is soon going to be a thing of the past. The educational apps is not only affecting the way in which classrooms are managed, but also the way through which students learn. Well, the change is definitely a positive one. Unlike textbooks, one can easily update the e-books with just few taps, and not to forget the huge numbers of trees we save through this method. Nowadays, students or teachers do not have to wait for the new books to arrive or wait for the updated edition. The next best thing about the e-books through the educational apps is that financial issues do not come in the way of a student’s curiosity to learn. There are plenty of Android and iPhone/iPad apps available through which students can have access to numbers of e-books for free.

Teachers also believe that the incorporation of technology in the education sector has made it possible for the kids in the classroom to be self-sufficient researchers. And, this finding is basically a result of the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. The findings also focused on the fact that the learning process of today’s classrooms has turned out to be much more autonomous than before. So, the modern classroom is radically different from its predecessor, where the students had to depend mostly on the teachers to gain knowledge and clear their doubts.

The world we live in today is so much surrounded by technology that almost every aspect of our lives depends on it. Be it healthcare or the education sector, technology has made it made its presence felt in every segment. Take the instance of education sector. It won’t be wrong to say that technology has turned over the conventional approaches of education on its head. This helps anyone to seek knowledge from anywhere and anytime. This has also led to a massive proliferation of apps on the app store. Hence in 2014, 18.3% of the total apps downloaded from Apple iTunes were educational apps. Out of the thousands of apps we present our list of apps that have really made use of technology to create out-of-the-box solutions for the education sector –

Nearpod

In case you have to make a multimedia presentation for your students then this free app can be of great help. With this free app, you can download or make multimedia presentation in just couple of hours and even share it with your students in real time. On the other hand, your students will be able to go through the presentation, interact with other students sharing the presentation, and submit their responses. While they do it, you can easily keep an eye on their interactive session and analyze their performance.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.panareadigital.Nearpod&hl=en

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/nearpod/id523540409?mt=8

Mathcube

If your kid is just beginning his or her learning phase then this easy to use app can be an excellent option. In an entertaining and interesting way, Mathcube will let your kid to learn how to solve simple sums involving addition, subtraction, etc.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.livezen.mathcube.google.free

iTunes Link https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/id864191079?mt=8

Exitticket Student Response System

To help student get instant feedback about their performance, this Android and iPhone/iPad app can be really helpful for the teachers. ExitTicket allows teachers to let their student know about their strong and weak points, which in turn will allow them to work accordingly, without wasting any time. This will definitely empower both teachers and the students by cutting down the time wasted in providing feedback and working on them.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exittix.exitticket&hl=en

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/exitticket/id618649934?mt=8

Explain Everything

This app will let you to narrate, animate, export, annotate, as well as export almost anything you like, and all these things can be done with the help of its whiteboard tool, which is highly interactive in nature. Teachers can use this app for educating their students in an interesting way. It allows you to add objects, existing photos, and even import PFD files from the local storage.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.morriscooke.explaineverything&hl=en

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/explain-everything/id431493086?mt=8

Coursmos

With this free app, you can make micro-courses. All you have to do is upload a video that you already have or shoot a fresh video lesson by using your phone. Once the video is ready for uploading, simply provide a title and few lines to describe the micro-course. In this way, you can let all your students to have access to your micro-course by sharing with them. You can share through social networks or email.

Android link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.coursmos.app&hl=en

iTunes link https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/coursmos/id692934231?mt=8

Nowadays, there is no dearth of apps related to education. No matter if you have an Android powered smartphone/tablet, an iPhone or iPad, there are plenty of wonderful educational apps waiting for you. And, this is evident from the fact that over 10% of the total apps available in the Google Play Store are learning apps. So, go for them.