5 Free Apps to Use in the Classroom

By Julie Phelps, Contributing Editor, Valencia College

Students have smartphones and want to use them all the time! My solution: well, if you can’t beat them, join them. With that in mind, I began looking for apps that can help facilitate learning. I want my students to use electronic devices for learning ‘good’ and not as the ‘evil’ learning detractors that we educators often perceive them to be. Here are some of my favorites to use in the classroom, plus one to keep an eye out for on your algebra students’ screens.

1. Kahoot! is a game-based classroom response system that uses quizzing to present content and generate discussion. The game can be displayed on a shared screen. Students can join the game on their own smart device/computer as long as they have a browser and a good internet connection.


2. Quizizz is game-based tool similar to Kahoot!. With Quizizz you can randomize the questions to allow students to go at their own pace. The game also displays the correct answer when they make the wrong choice.


3. Socrative allows the educator to initiate formative assessments for students. The educator can ask open-ended questions and vote on the results in addition to the multiple choice and true/false questions. The drawback is that the tool is only free up to 50 users.


4. Evernote is a tool for both educators and students to capture and share notes across technology platforms. The notes are searchable and can be text, images, video, audio and/or handwritten. There are other apps that do the same thing, but many of those do not communicate across platforms and they are not free.


5. Desmos Graphing Calculator is a web-app interactive, easy to use calculator. A slider tool animates the graph to demonstrate transformations and supports the founders belief that people learn by doing. The embedded tools are intuitive. Zooming and points of interest can be found by just touching the screen.

Bonus links!

Beta (testing version): Classkick is a new web-based free app. The educator can create a class assignment for everyone to access either to work on individually or in small groups. The app can monitor student progress as they work through the question in real-time and can give feedback to each student individually.

And one to watch out for in algebra-related courses: Photomath, a camera calculator that is also a free app that does exactly what it sounds like. Just point your camera toward an algebraic math problem (type or hand-written) and Photomath will tell you the result with detailed step-by-step instructions.