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8 back-to-school apps you should share with students

apps K12

It happens every year: students vow to stay on top of academic work and remain organized all year. In theory, it’s a great idea. In practice, however, it doesn’t always work as social events, sports, and after-school jobs take up academic time.

But in today’s app-dominated world, students have a plethora of tools at their disposal to help them meet their academic goals.

Pass these apps along to students to help them stay organized and focused as they begin a new year. [Editor’s note: eSchool News has not reviewed these apps.]

1. iStudies Pro [1] helps students track schedules, homework and grades. The weekly interface view gives users a structured presentation of their class schedules. Assignments view is a comprehensive tool to help students organize academic work.

2. The Here Comes the Bus [2] app is designed for parents and children. Both parties will know where the bus is, meaning they also know when it’s time to catch it. With the Student Ridership option, parents will know whether or not their child made it on the bus, and if they did, at what time.

Next page: Six more apps

3. Deckset [3] offers a new, simple way to create presentations. Open a favorite text editor, write down thoughts and Deckset will turn them into beautiful presentations. Focus on ideas, not on designing slides. Deckset comes with 15 themes that are designed to work for many audiences.

4. SelfControl [4] is a free and open-source application for Mac OS X that lets you block your own access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the internet. Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click “Start.” Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites–even if you restart your computer or delete the application.

5. iHomework [5] lets users keep track of all the upcoming work for the school year, enter repeating assignments for work due every day, week, or month, record grades for every assignment and let iHomework predict report cards, add partners to group assignments and have quick access to their contact information, email assignments to friends, organize information, and log work on iHomework’s built-in color coded calendar.

6. With Notability [6], students and teachers take notes, sketch ideas, annotate PDFs, mark-up photos, record lectures, provide audio feedback and more. It is uniquely designed for each device to provide the best note taking experience at school, at home, and at work. And with iCloud, notes are always up to date.

7. Snap2PDF [7] enables users to carry important data and documents. It also helps them read documents in foreign languages more easily. Using the app, take a snap of the document and it has been saved as a searchable PDF file ready for use.

8. The Khan Academy [8] app lets users learn with videos, interactive exercises, and in-depth articles in math (arithmetic, pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics, calculus, linear algebra), science (biology, chemistry, physics), economics, and even the humanities with playlists on art history, civics, finance, and more.