As students are becoming more and more dependent on technology, it makes sense to seek out the best apps that can help them in their studies. Many schools are turning to technology for textbooks, turning in papers, sharing notes and homework assignments, collaboration between classmates, etc. Although I miss the days where books were actually printed on paper and socializing meant talking to the friend sitting next to you, those are not the experiences of our current students. Today’s teens have never known a time when computers were not in nearly every household or when google wasn’t a verb.
So, if you can’t beat ’em, why not join ’em? Below is our list of the top ten best apps for students plus one bonus app:
- Khan Academy–Cost: Free–Khan Academy continues to add more and more content for nearly every subject on earth. The site features short videos on individual topics. It started out math and science heavy but has since expanded to include all core subjects and a number of interesting partnerships, such as Paul J Getty museum and questions from LeBron James. If a student is having trouble with his current lesson on factoring, he can simply go to Math–Algebra–Factoring. The site also includes practice questions to test skills.
- Flashcards+–Cost: Free–This app allows you to add your own flashcard sets. You also have access to all of the flashcard sets that other users have created. You can download 100 common SAT vocabulary words or Latin root words. This is a convenient way to keep studying on the go.
- Clear–Cost: 4.99–Clear allows you to create a store lists in the cloud to use across multiple devices. It is simple to show that items are complete simply by swiping. You can also create several lists with sublists.
- Nanny for Google Chrome—Cost: Free–If you use Firefox, you can use LeechBlock. This is not an app but worth including due to the time that can easily be spent on social media sites like FaceBook, Vine, Instagram, Twitter, etc. It is not super user friendly but it allows you to add websites to a list that are not available during certain hours. Blocks could be added for social media sites during particular homework hours so you can be sure that students are using computer time for productive ventures.
- Snap2PDF—Cost: $1.99–This is a great app for students that have difficulty keeping up with handouts, worksheets, and notes. Students can take a picture using their phone and it converts it to a pdf file. They can then save them to easily email or save.
- Dictionary.com—Cost: Free for Basic–This app is a life saver during SAT prep. Easily look up definitions and synonyms.
- Brainscape–Cost: Free–This app is another way to study flashcards. The difference is that it has more features to monitor your progress and continue to learn the words. After each flashcard, the student has the option to mark how well she knew the answer from 1-5. The less confident words will be repeated more frequently during study than the more confident words.
- iStudiez Pro—Cost: $2.99–This app is great for time management. It allows students to add assignments to one calendar, set reminders for those assignments, and save info in order to use on multiple devices. Unlike a traditional calendar, this app can color code the different classes, attach grade tracking to your assignments, and allow you to break assignments into individual tasks.
- Graphing Calculator–Cost: Free–Some schools provide graphing calculators to students to use during the school year. However, other schools may only have a classroom set so students are not able to check them out in order to use during homework assignments. This app can help students with graphing various equations, including polar and parametric.
- iFormulas–Cost: Free–This app delivers the majority of formulas needed for high school math courses and some science courses. It needs a few updates to include statistics and chemistry.
BONUS: Last but not least, don’t forget to check out the free Tri-Ed Study App! Find local study spots, prepare for the SAT with practice questions, and win prizes just for using it!