While the local technology director at your school may provide you with three thousand approved educational applications that exist within your district's technology framework, this does not mean that you will have sufficient time each day to teach using all those applications.
The fact is that schools do not need more educational software applications, but rather a single, tightly integrated, and well-defined system that stores all student data in one place and integrates with the system of record/grade book.
Why Less Is More with Ed-Tech Tools for Teachers
The following guide details the 23 technology platforms that provide you with the opportunity to save time and pass your district compliance requirements.
The reason for the huge influx of technology into schools has changed how education technology is used. K-12 education technology has approximately 3,000 applications available for all schools across the country.
Of those 3,000 applications, teachers are likely only using four of those applications every day. The explosion of artificial intelligence technology has changed the way we think about how technology supports classroom instruction and has created new options for quickly planning lessons and running classroom activities.
Don't make yourself crazy keeping up with 3,000 applications each week.
When thinking about which educational applications to adopt, think about the lifetime cost of ownership for each application. Include options for easy sign-on and strictly follow the guidance provided under current privacy legislation, such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If your application will not interface directly with your current Google or Canvas tools, it will not succeed in schools. Therefore, keep it simple. You and your students will not have sufficient time to learn how to use a new application when your students are waiting to begin class.
Here is the detailed guide.
It will provide you with an in-depth discussion of everything that is currently working in schools, including the current costs associated with implementing the technology platforms described above; a complete picture of how other real-life schools are utilizing these technology platforms; and a comprehensive overview of how to implement the technology platform described above for successful use in your school.
Core Learning Systems
Core systems and learning management systems (LMS) form the backbone of ed-tech tools for teachers.
When a core system fails, it causes everything else associated with that core system to suffer breakdowns as well.
The core of an LMS is typically a place where students will go to find assignments, their grades will sync automatically, and students will know exactly what to click on when they arrive each day. Without a strong core, a classroom can quickly fall into chaos with lost passwords and broken links.
1. Google Classroom
Google Classroom is used as the foundation for millions of schools throughout the world as a simple assignment management tool that integrates all of the applications found within Google Workspace.
Because it eliminates the need for each student to maintain unique and separate passwords, Google Classroom has become the best option for most schools due to the lack of a significant learning curve for teachers and administrators.
The basic version is free, while Google's Plus plan costs approximately $6 per user annually. It remains one of the top 40 most accessed daily LMS because it consistently performs reliably and does not experience crashes or data loss.
As far as analytics are concerned, you will not receive complex data. However, on a daily basis, you will receive complete performance reliability.
2. Canvas LMS
If your high school or school district is in need of a high degree of structure, Canvas Learning Management System is your best option. Canvas LMS provides structure through the creation of complex course structures, and it provides significant integration into many third-party software solutions.
Canvas LMS can scale to accommodate very large operations.
Canvas Learning Management System supports more than 12.6 million K-12 users each and every day to check grades and upload large files. The pricing for Canvas Learning Management System is quote-based and typically sold in a package with large institutional contracts. You can have free teacher accounts. However, the real advantage is found in a district-wide setup where everything syncs seamlessly.
3. Schoology
Schoology is a viable option for districts already running PowerSchool. It offers a standardized workflow across an entire district and syncs with your student information system (SIS).
On a daily basis, all assignments flow directly into the official grade book.
Large rollouts usually cost around $10 monthly per student, depending on the actual contract. You receive district-wide reporting and a standard course template that allows for parents to view all classes in the same format. Setting up takes a lot of upfront planning. However, the setup is smooth once you have started.
4. Taskade
Taskade is a complete workplace that gives you access to smart AI agents in your day-to-day activities. With Taskade, you can create reusable AI helpers for seating charts, taking attendance, grading quickly, and sending parent communication.
Taskade combines five different apps into a single screen on your computer.
The Pro plan is available for about $10 a month. It is specifically geared towards teachers from the elementary level to college who prefer one easy-to-read digital desk. Taskade has made a clear statement regarding its privacy policies, making it a safe option for daily educational purposes.
Time Spent on Lesson Planning
As a teacher, you spend the most time on lesson planning that you do not get paid for.
Thank goodness for new ed-tech tools for teachers that allow you to save time spent on preparing materials by generating rough drafts, creating standardized tests, and generating reading materials in mere seconds. You may still need to examine your finished product. However, you will never need to start from scratch at night again.
1. MagicSchool AI
This platform has numerous features. With over 80 different generator types, it is an all-in-one solution for teachers looking to automate their busy administrative work. It provides multiple types of lesson plans, creates complex IEP accommodations within seconds, and writes parent letters quickly!
For teachers, it is like having a digital assistant that handles endless amounts of paperwork.
The Plus tier is priced at $8.33 per month when billed on an annual basis. With enterprise plans available to districts, there are important options for single sign-on as well as data privacy agreements that keep everyone safe. Fully complying with the FERPA, COPPA, and SOC 2 requirements, this product meets all of the requirements that school boards demand when granting authorization to purchase.
Without the highest level of compliance, this tool is of no value to a public school district.
2. Diffit
Reading levels vary significantly within a classroom, and it takes hours of concentrated effort to manually modify texts. With Diffit, anyone can modify articles and passages for any individual reading level or Lexile score, instantly.
It automatically produces matching questions and vocabulary activities.
The Premium Tier costs $14.99 per month or $149.99 per year. Diffit is ideal for students in grades 3-12 and is especially useful for social studies and science classes where the difficulty of the text prevents students from being able to learn.
3. Brisk Teaching
You do not want to leave your main document to get assistance from an AI tool. Brisk is a smart Chrome extension that resides directly within your Google Docs or Slides application. It provides rapid grade processing and artificial intelligence screening without forcing you to switch screens.
The price of Educator Pro is $99.99 annually. It is especially popular among departments of middle and high school teachers who use it for grading lengthy papers as it cuts down on the number of times you have to click and switch between pages. It is also compliant with strict privacy standards, which allows it to be used safely within school districts who heavily utilize Google products.
4. Eduaide.AI
If you are on a limited budget and looking for a large resource library of pre-made documents and templates, Eduaide is your solution. Eduaide has 100+ resource generators that enable you to quickly generate resources such as daily lesson plans, short assessments, and student feedback.
With so many resources available at such a low cost to you, your teaching resources will be well-supported for all academic subjects.
Pricing for the Eduaide Pro version ranges from $5.99-$8.25 per month, which is an excellent price point to ensure alignment with privacy laws. It also allows for unlimited resource generation and availability of materials during peak resource generation times on Mondays.
5. Khanmigo
For many students, they need support that allows them to think through a problem as opposed to being given the final answer. Khanmigo acts as a Socratic AI tutor who allows students to work step-by-step through their own problem-solving processes instead of simply being given the answer by someone else.
The Khanmigo tool is provided free of charge to all teachers in the United States, while each district's student license will cost approximately $10 per student per year. Khanmigo is secure. Therefore, it is used to support many teachers in math and science classrooms every day, and with increasing use.
Interactive Delivery and Active Student Learning
Lectures that go on for a long time cause children to fall asleep.
For your students to be successful, you need a method that keeps every child answering, clicking, and drawing as you go through the lesson. These platforms can assist in keeping students actively involved in the lesson instead of passively watching the lecture.
1. Nearpod
With Nearpod, there are no more excuses for kids to hide out in the back of the room during class. With Nearpod's live streaming capability, students see your slides, videos, and questions in real-time on their devices. Nearpod is designed for a normal 50-minute class to allow the teacher to check in on student understanding throughout the lesson.
Individual paid subscriptions start around $159 per year, while a district subscription will allow up to 250 students to participate in a single lesson. District subscriptions have strong administrator tracking dashboards. Nearpod has consistently ranked as one of the top classroom tools daily as it captures and maintains student attention effectively.
2. Pear Deck
Pear Deck is perfect if your entire teaching life is built inside Google Slides. Pear Deck allows you to add interactive response buttons and provide autograded questions to your already built-in slide deck.
You don't have to create new slide decks from scratch anymore.
District subscriptions are priced at approximately $125 per teacher, per year. The subscription will provide you with shared department libraries and reports to indicate how well your students understand the core standards. New features include AI-generated responsive slides.
3. Curipod
Curipod allows you to develop a live poll in seconds by using AI technology. With Curipod, you can create live exit tickets and group activities with AI in less than one minute. Curipod takes the legwork out of conducting simple classroom checks quickly.
Curipod has paid plans starting at about $9 per month. It is an excellent resource to support students in grades 3 through 12. Curipod follows strict state and federal privacy laws to protect student data.
4. Padlet
Padlet allows you to create a simple, clean, and user-friendly interface for brainstorming visually. Using Padlet, students can create multimedia boards that contain text, images, and short videos. The use of Padlet as an exit ticket or group project requires little or no direct instruction to be successful. Therefore, teachers could easily utilize this online tool with students with no formal training or experience.
The cost for a subscription to Padlet for an individual starts at $8 per month, with many users giving it high ratings (4.7) on numerous software review websites because it eliminates all barriers to working together as a team on projects.
5. zSpace
Some subjects (like anatomy, physics, and other areas of deep science) require students to take hands-on approaches to learning, which cannot be replicated on flat computer screens. zSpace provides students with a unique way to learn how to dissect a frog, for example, through augmented and virtual reality simulations, rather than dealing with a real frog in the lab.
In order for schools to use zSpace, they must purchase both the specific hardware and software associated with this tool. Consequently, a large investment must be made by educational institutions to utilize zSpace. The cost may be high. However, the positive visual impact it has on high school students in STEM laboratories is undeniable.
Fast Assessment and Automated Grading Systems
These platforms are automated ways to reduce the time educators spend grading assessments and give them the ability to assess students instantly for whom they will need to offer additional assistance on that day, rather than a week from then.
1. Kahoot!
Game-based review creates an instant change in energy in the classroom. By changing the boring aspects of quiz taking to an exciting, competitive game-like format, Kahoot! increases the amount of time students want to participate in the learning process.
With many studies supporting the positive impact Kahoot! has on motivation and decreasing students' test anxiety, school plans range from $14.99 to $24.99 per host per month. It has been reported by a high school teacher that the use of Kahoot! increased the reading proficiency levels of students from an average of 72% when compared to peers that did not use Kahoot!, who reported reading proficiency levels of less than 50%.
2. Quizizz
Homework can be fun with gamified Quizizz. Students complete live in-class tests or can complete them from home at whatever pace is comfortable for them.
Quizizz uses AI to create many strong questions in a matter of seconds.
Pricing starts at about $6/month at the Plus level. Based on recent weekly surveys, 42% of educators who use AI are using platforms such as Quizizz for on-demand math and reading drills.
3. Formative
While multiple-choice questions can give you a general idea of a student's knowledge, they do not accurately assess how that student is processing information. With Formative, students are able to write longer answers and draw steps for math problems as they write them in real-time.
In fact, you can literally see them create their answers as they write.
Pricing varies based on district agreements, and it continues to score high for math and English teachers seeking to monitor their students' progress in accordance with state-specific learning standards.
4. Gradescope
While grading hundreds of complex STEM assessments during the weekend can be very time-consuming, Gradescope has automated this process by offering intelligent rubrics and extensive analytics for individual questions.
Gradescope will learn how to grade in the same manner you do, and will do so very quickly.
The product is free for many individual educators. Larger-scale institution-based licenses are available from Gradescope directly. Gradescope is the product of choice for secondary and collegiate departments that require extensive use and frequent usage of the problem sets in mathematics and science.
Communication with Parents and Teacher Development
When teachers do not communicate with parents, schools fail. There is a need for secure communication between districts and their approved platforms so they may communicate daily progress, share good work, and address student misconduct. There are also more effective ways to help teachers be better at what they do for a living.
1. ClassDojo
Connecting with students' parents and their teachers is essential in the early years of a child's educational journey. ClassDojo is designed for this purpose and offers a platform that tracks student behavior, provides teachers with access to photos taken in class, and translates messages sent back and forth between parents and teachers in real-time.
In addition, ClassDojo has become an integral part of the American educational system. ClassDojo is provided at no cost to districts and teachers and is funded solely through optional premium features available to parents. Today, over 90% of the schools in the United States use this platform to increase student attendance and allow busy parents to remain involved in their child's education.
2. Canva for Education
Communicating visually is far more effective than sending a plain email or a plain text message. Canva for Education allows both educators and their students to create stunning presentations, infographics, and newsletters. It enables visual storytelling to be more easily communicated across an entire district.
Every educator with a verified email account may access Canva for Education at no cost. As an example of how districts have benefited from Canva for Education, Berkeley County Schools saved more than 18,000 hours during one academic school year by using the platform, which subsequently created a direct connection to ClassDojo for swift parent sharing.
3. Flip
Not every student is willing to raise their hand in a busy classroom setting. Flip, supported completely by Microsoft, provides students with the opportunity to record brief video responses to various topics in order to engage in deeper discussions and reflect on their daily activities. Flip provides students who tend to be less vocal in the classroom with an avenue to express their thoughts and opinions.
The Microsoft 365 subscription includes access to Flip at no additional cost. In addition to being ideal for practicing a foreign language, Flip provides students with a platform for reflecting on their daily activities.
4. Sibme
Teachers require regular opportunities for coaching, but unfortunately, many principals do not have the time to effectively observe teachers as they perform their duties. Sibme is able to provide instructional coaches with valuable support in the area of remote teacher observations by utilizing intelligent video capture capabilities and artificial intelligence to produce reports for instructional coaches.
Sibme helps provide new opportunities for teachers to develop in their profession as a result of the quality of their observations.
The monthly fee for the Campus Leader plan is $25. Sibme has passed all the necessary security audits, and provides instructional coaches with real-time data to assist them in helping to rapidly improve the performance of the instructional staff of schools.
5. SchoolAI
Districts are fearful of allowing students to utilize any type of artificial intelligence software when proper monitoring is not available. SchoolAI is a viable alternative, and provides districts with safe and secure artificial intelligence tutors and lesson-planning systems complemented by comprehensive reporting dashboards for supervising the districts' use of artificial intelligence tools.
SchoolAI provides district administrators with complete transparency.
The monthly fee for each of SchoolAI's service plans is $11.99. SchoolAI meets all FERPA and COPPA requirements, so it provides districts with a safe and secure solution to implement artificial intelligence in the classroom.
The Bottom Line on Tech Integration
Purchasing more software does not necessarily lead to better teaching. The existing data indicates that while districts may spend thousands of dollars purchasing software licensing for various ed-tech tools for teachers, many teachers will still depend upon a small number of products that they rely on for their day-to-day use.
Success comes through cutting out the software that does not work with the core functionality of your school.
If a product does not integrate into your central hub, provide sufficient data security to protect students' information, or requires greater than three minutes to load, you need to remove it from consideration. Look for systems that offer thorough integration with learning management systems, have transparent pricing, and meet the highest levels of security certification. Your daily routine will be organized around one comprehensive hub, one planning tool powered by artificial intelligence, and one engagement device.
This provides you with the opportunity to expand your free time and focus on teaching again.