46 Of The Best Free Apps For Teachers

by TeachThought Staff

What are the best free apps for teachers?

That’s a pretty general and subjective idea. The best free apps for teachers as human beings–health, finances, and entertainment? The best free apps for teachers in the classroom? To connect with other educators? To stay on top of emerging tools and trends in education? To use with students?

For iOS, Android, or Windows Phone? Can we assume there’s WiFi access? Is data use an issue? What about data privacy? And what do we mean by ‘free’ Truly free? Are in-app purchases available? Necessary? Is it a free version that has hideous banners everywhere?

To say that there is a lot to consider is an understatement.

That said, we’ve taken a wide-lens view of the modern teacher and taken a stab at what might be considered 46 of the best free apps for teachers available for iOS. They may have some paid options, but they’re each entirely useful without spending a penny.

While we do look at music, health tracking apps, and other teachers-as-a-human-being apps, we focus mostly on the kinds of digital content that will help you teach more effectively to a wider range of students in more compelling and dynamic ways than ever before. All free.

ClassDojo offers a beautiful classroom management platform for teachers to easily encourage any behavior or skill in the classroom and keep parents in the loop.

Haiku Deck makes it a snap to create beautiful presentations that will wow your audience – whether you’re pitching an idea, teaching a lesson, telling a story, or igniting a movement.

Shadow Puppet is a digital storytelling app for iPad designed for kids. Students record mini-movies or presentations that combine photos and their voices.

Google Drive is one of the best free apps for teachers to safely back up all your files — like videos, photos, and documents – so you can’t lose them. Easily invite others to view, edit, or leave comments on any of your files or folders.

Dropbox is the place for your photos, docs, videos, and other files. Files you keep in Dropbox are safely backed up and you can get to them from all your devices. It’s easy to send large files to anyone, even if they don’t have a Dropbox account.

OneNote is your very own digital notebook to capture your thoughts, discoveries, and ideas. With OneNote you can seize that moment of inspiration, take your class notes, or track that list of errands that are too important to forget. Whether you’re at home, in the office, or on the go, your notes are available to you on all your devices.

NASA invites you to explore and discover the latest images, videos, mission information, news, feature stories, tweets, NASA TV, and featured content with the NASA App for iOS.

Twitter lets you Tweet, Retweet, reply, and favorite in a flash. Quickly see recent Tweets and top trends. Share your location, a song, or your thoughts with a flick of the wrist on one of the best free apps for teachers on social media.

Adobe Voice helps you create stunning animated videos in minutes. No filming – just talk to tell your story. Pick from over 25,000 beautiful iconic images to show your ideas and Voice automatically adds cinematic motion and a soundtrack. Persuade, inform and inspire anyone online. Make an impact.

Google Maps Street View allows you to explore the world at street level. Search for cities, places, and businesses. Browse layers including roads, borders, places, photos, and more. Visit the Earth Gallery to find exciting maps such as real-time earthquakes, planes in flight, hiking trails, city tours, and more.

Read&Write for Google Chrome boosts confidence and attainment for students with dyslexia or English language learners who struggle with reading and writing.

Google Photos is the home for all your photos and videos, searchable and organized by the people, places, and things that matter.

Skype enables video calls, conferencing, and more for school-to-school or school-to-expert video interactions.

TikTok is a learning platform and social network. Algorithms help teachers access lesson ideas and teacher hacks from other users.

Evernote for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch gets you effortlessly organized with notes that sync between all your devices. Be productive anywhere.

Duolingo makes it easy to learn another language from your phone in your spare time. They’re one of the best free apps for teachers (and students) to learn virtually any language, virtually!

Khan Academy houses thousands of standards-aligned practice and lessons in K-12 math, grammar, science, history, and other subjects.

OneDrive app iOS lets you easily work with your personal and work files when you’re on the go.

Quizlet is a formative assessment tool where users can create, present, and share quizzes on a variety of subjects.

FlipGrid is one of the best free apps for teachers to promote student engagement and discussion. It allows teachers to facilitate video discussions and organize students into groups with access to particular discussion topics.

Kahoot is a game-based formative assessment tool — teachers can design multiple-choice, true/false, and other games related to class content. Teachers can also access assessments created by other users.

Microsoft Word offers a free experience for viewing, creating, and editing documents.

Pocket saves articles for you to view later. Don’t lose track of the interesting things you find by emailing yourself links or letting tabs pile up in your browser — just save them to Pocket.

Newsify users can read and share their favorite websites and blogs with an amazing newspaper-like layout.

Nearpod enables teachers, schools, and districts, to use their iPads to manage content on students’ iPads, iPhones, iPods, or Macs. It seamlessly combines interactive presentation, collaboration, and real-time assessment tools into one integrated solution.

Wordflex Touch Dictionary was developed exclusively for iPad and with rich content from the Oxford University Press. This fun, fascinating tool offers a truly engaging reference for word lovers of all ages and interests. By using your fingers to manipulate word trees, you will experience language as an interactive adventure and will find information quickly and easily.

TED grants access to riveting talks from some of the world’s most fascinating people — wherever you are.

ShowMe allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online. It’s an amazingly simple app that anyone can use, no matter how young or old.

Phonics Genius is specifically designed to help students recognize and distinguish words by sounds.

ZipGrade is, hands down, one of the best free apps for teachers to grade multiple-choice tests, quizzes, and assessments instantly in the classroom by using your iPhone or iPad’s camera as a scanner. It is the most cost-effective, fastest, and most accurate way to grade tests in the classroom or where ever you are.

Seesaw is a student-driven digital portfolio that empowers students of all ages to independently document and share what they are learning at school.

iAspire is an iPad app and web-based solution for classroom observations, teacher evaluations, classified staff evaluations, classroom observations, classroom walkthroughs, implementation rubrics, and much more. Customize iAspire to fit the evaluation needs of your school, and save time by using iAspire to observe, evaluate, take notes, aggregate information, and share evaluation data instantly.

PhotoMath is the world’s smartest camera calculator! Just point your phone camera to a math expression, and PhotoMath will instantly display the answer with a detailed step-by-step explanation.

Google has it all. Say “Ok Google” and find everything from nearby restaurants to the calories in cheesecake. Google also shows you the info you need before you ask, like updates on your favorite teams and traffic alerts.

Lapse It is an award-winning full-featured app for capturing amazing time-lapse and stop motion videos. It is easy, fast, and intuitive.

Snapseed brings to your mobile device the power and control of professional photo editing software, previously only available on the desktop. Now with the tap of a finger, you can retouch, adjust perspective, re-edit, and more.

Spotify is one of the best free apps for teachers to stream music on a mobile device or tablet. Search for any track, artist, or album and listen for free. Make and share playlists. Build your biggest, best ever music collection.

Evernote Scannable moves paper forward. Scan contracts, receipts, business cards, and any paper that comes your way. Save or share documents instantly and move on.

Penultimate combines distraction-free, natural handwriting and sketching with the power of Evernote’s sync and search. Take class or meeting notes, journal your thoughts, or outline your next big idea—in the office or on the go. From the first stroke, Penultimate makes the experience of pen and paper more productive.

Pushbullet is a place where your messages, photos, songs, and links can all come together and be easily accessible.

Infinit is the easiest app for sending photos and videos to your friends; and transferring files between your phone and computer.

Sleep Cycle monitors sleep quality, wakes up during light sleep phases for less grogginess, tracks sleep patterns and trends, and more.

Apple’s Podcast app isn’t perfect, but it is one of the best free apps for teachers to listen to and download podcasts and can do just about anything the average listener needs. If you’re a power user, you probably have a favorite, and it’s probably not free. 🙂

30:30 sets up a list of tasks, and a length of time for each of them. When you start the timer, it will tell you when to move on to the next task.

Splash Math is an award-winning math program used by more than 12 Million children for fun math practice. It includes unlimited math lessons on number counting, addition, subtraction, etc.

Unit Converter offers you a measurement converter for Length, weight, height, area, temperature, time, pressure, speed, force and more.