54 Online Teaching Tools for Educators

Try these tools to improve the K-12 learning experience

Over the past few years of “learn from home,” K-12 education has changed. Yes, we’re back in traditional classrooms. But now, technology is playing a larger role in learning.

As a supplement to in-person learning, online tools help students learn more quickly and efficiently. Digital resources can make learning more engaging and interactive, keeping learners focused for longer periods of time.

Are you using digital teaching tools in your classroom?

Here are some favorite digital learning apps, programs, and websites available. Try out these online teaching tools to make your lessons a little more engaging:

Digital Storytelling Tools

1. Animoto — Enhance your digital classroom with Animoto, an ideal tool for creating teaching videos and presentations. It takes just minutes to create a video that can bring your lessons to life. Its powerful features can be used to create stunning presentations incorporating images, video clips, music, and text. Also, a great option if you’re looking to create your own educational music video.

2. Creaza — Creaza has two tools teachers can use: Cartoonist and Mindomo. Cartoonist creates cartoons or personal digital stories, consisting of professional backgrounds, characters, props, images, and text. Mindomo is about creating mind maps and easily turning mind maps into stunning presentations. Both are perfect tools to turn your lessons into stories.

3. Smilebox — Smilebox lets you quickly and easily create slideshows for your students. To get started, download and install the Smilebox application. Then simply, select the photos you want to use, choose a template, add comments, add music, and voila. A simple way to turn images into an engaging classroom experience.

4. Storybird — This app allows students to write their own books with creative writing classes. As a teacher, you can also use it yourself to tell a story about a specific topic. Studies show that students using Storybird can improve their reading and writing proficiency by up to three grade levels in less than one year.

5. Puppet Pals — This iOS app allows you to create your own unique shows with animation and audio in real-time! Simply pick out your actors and backdrops, drag them onto the stage, and tap record. Your movements and audio will be recorded in real-time for playback later. This app is currently only available for iOS.

6. Pixton — This app allows children to create their own cartoon characters and comics and present the lessons they have learned with the class through cartoons. If you’re looking for a fun and unique class project that students will love, give Pixton a try.

7. MySimpleShow — One of the truly most simple video tools, MySimpleShow allows you to create a fully animated video in minutes. All you need to do is upload a script, and voila, your animated video is created. Perfect for teachers just getting started with animated video creation. Oh, and it’s free for educators!

Reading Tools

8. Children’s Storybooks — Many wonderful, free illustrated children’s books are available to read at Children’s Storybooks Online. Stories span age ranges from preschool, young children, teens, through young adults. The website may look a little outdated, but their extensive library of illustrated books will surprise you.

9. Poetry Idea Engine — Created by Scholastic, this is a perfect tool to get those poetic ideas flowing. Learn the many ways to write poetry and create your own haiku, limerick, or free verse poem with the Poetry Idea Engine. If you’re writing educational song lyrics, this is another valuable tool.

10. Bartleby — Bartleby is an online source of literature, reference and verse, providing students, researchers and the intellectually curious with unlimited access to books and information on the web, free of charge. The indices are by author, subject and title.

11. Free Rice — This unique tool is great for building vocabulary. For every correct answer you choose, 10 grains of rice are raised to help end world hunger through the World Food Programme. While your students play this vocabulary game, they learn while donating food to people in need.

12. RhymeZone — RhymeZone is a language arts reference tool and comprehensive search engine for words. Includes the functions of a rhyming dictionary, thesaurus, and spelling check. Just type in a word to find a whole bunch of related words. If you’re writing educational songs, parody songs, or poetry, this is a tool to help you discover words that rhyme.

13. Raz Kids — Raz-Kids delivers over 400+ interactive, leveled eBooks spanning 29 levels with new books added every month. Also corresponding eQuizzes test comprehension, providing teachers with skill reports for data-driven instruction. Online running records let teachers digitally assess each student, saving valuable classroom time.

Classroom Management & Organization Tools

14. ClassCharts — ClassCharts allows teachers to produce instant seating plans, with an incredibly helpful integration of pupils’ school pictures and data from SIMS. With just a few clicks, teachers can quickly change the seating arrangement of a classroom on ClassCharts. This tool is essential for improving student behavior and saving you precious time.

15. TeacherKit — TeacherKit makes classroom management a joy, not a chore. Routine tasks — taking attendance, recording a grade book — become so straightforward they’re a pleasure. You can also log students’ attendance, add behavior notes for students, record students’ grades, and create student-level reporting. An excellent all-encompassing package.

16. Trello — An online tool great for teachers to manage projects and personal tasks. This teaching tool allows a team of teachers to easily split up jobs, roles, and responsibilities. Trello allows people to create boards, lists, and cards to help organize and prioritize projects in a fun, flexible, and rewarding way.

17. myHomework — Many schools choose to use myHomework as a substitute for the paper planner. Overall this tool helps grow planning and organizational skills, eliminate missing assignments, reduce stress/anxiety for students, and improve college & career readiness.

18. GradeHound — Grade Hound helps you manage your classes, organize your assignments, and track your grades. The planner app makes organization easier than ever and helps you track grade progressions. Add classes, assignments, events, notes, and grades. Schedule multiple reminders and repeat schedules. If you specify a repeat schedule, on a per-event and per-assignment basis, you can specify whether you’d like to use a block or weekly-based scheduling.

19. Engrade — This innovative platform provides teachers with an all-in-one grade book that offers attendance charts, grade books, calendars, seating charts, behavior tracking, and more. It also gives teachers access to 3rd party lesson content, the ability to create custom tests aligned with common core standards, and a way to track individual student progress.

Parent—Teacher Communication Tools

20. Class Dojo — This app creates a positive culture as teachers encourage students to any skill or value — whether it’s working hard, being kind, helping others, or something else. It gives students a voice by allowing them to showcase and share their learning by adding photos and videos to their own portfolios. You can share moments with parents by sharing photos and videos of wonderful classroom moments.

21. Remind — This program allows teachers to send quick and simple messages to other teachers, parents, or students. With Remind, communication is faster and condensed so helps put an end to unread emails with colleagues and encourages students to complete homework with a reminder over the weekend.

22. Bloomz — With Bloomz, teachers, and schools save time by having all the tools they need to communicate with today’s parents in one easy-to-use (and free) app. Keep parents on top of the school calendar and help them participate in events or volunteer opportunities.

23. ClassTag — ClassTag enables parents to sign up via the app to volunteer or help with classroom activities. ClassTag also allows teachers to create newsletters and schedule parent-teacher conferences. While many teachers struggle to build relationships with parents for whom English is not the primary language, ClassTag offers the ability to send messages to parents in their preferred language and have their responses translated back into English.

24. Join Our Class — This is a personalized parent-teacher communication portal that offers a simple dashboard for viewing news, announcements, blog posts, birthdays, and photos all in one place.

25. Show My Homework — An app that allows teachers to set homework for their students which is also monitored by their parents. Complete with prompts, schedules, and attachments to help students to keep on track with their homework assignments.

Assessment & Quizzes Tools

26. Zzish — There are hundreds of fun digital assessment tools out there and they can all plug into ZzishHub. This includes their own assessment tool Quizalize. These tools allow you to get instant insights from your classroom. ZzishHub shows you which students need help and what they need help with, so you can easily personalize your teaching. It even tells you which apps, websites, videos, and worksheets have helped similar students improve the most.

27. KwizzBit — KwizzBit is a unique interactive quiz and audience participation platform. Using a smartphone or internet-enabled device, students can play and interact in real-time. KwizzBit allows both the player and the host to engage seamlessly in interactive entertainment.

28. Synap — This online education platform allows students, teachers, and professionals to make quizzes for free. You can even access other people's quizzes too, which is very helpful if you’re a busy teacher.

29. Vocabtest — An old-school online service conceived for performing vocabulary tests. And bonus: their site provides a free quiz creator. Teachers can use the quiz creator to create printable word tests.

30. ProProfs Quiz Maker — is cloud-based software to create and deliver online exams and tests. The ProProfs solution helps you to author quizzes, and secure tests and student assessments. It comes along with complimentary test templates, and automated grading.

31. Testmoz — This free test generator offers multiple question types, automatic grading, detailed reports, and a simple design. Additionally, tests are passcode protected, but it does not require students to register to take the tests.

32. Kahoot! — The classic interactive quizzing game! Fully customizable, Kahoot! makes it easy to create and share fun learning games in your classroom. Used all around the world, for students of all ages, Kahoot! is a must for any modern-day teacher.

Teaching Props & Worksheets

33. Pinterest — This site is packed with so many ideas for creating props and games for your interactive classroom. From making crafts to looking for new games to teach your students — Pinterest has it all! A one-stop shop for teaching ideas. You can create boards to save your ‘pins’ so you can get inspired and remember your favorite ideas.

34. SuperTeacherWorksheets — This site hosts thousands of printable worksheets and activities available for teachers, parents, tutors, and homeschool families.

35. Teach-Nology — Another go-to website for worksheets. Teach-Nology offers over 11,000 free printable K-12 teacher worksheets.

36. Mr.Printables — Enjoy tons of fresh ideas for preschool learning, kids' activities, kids' crafts, party printables, holiday fun, and even DIYs for beautiful kids' room decorations.

37. Teacher Planet — Your complete guide to free online worksheets for K-12 teachers and educators. This all-encompassing resource has free worksheets, printables, units, theme pages, crosswords, puzzles, workbooks, awards, certificates, diplomas, and more.

38. TeachersPayTeachers: Teachers Pay Teachers is an online marketplace where teachers buy and sell original educational materials. An awesome way to get unique lesson plans and support other teachers. All educational materials are 100% created by other teachers around the world.

Learning Through Music Tools

39. Jam Campus Education: That’s us! Jam Campus is a premium K-12 educational song library that your students are guaranteed to love. Including many popular school topics, Jam Campus uses catchy hip-hop and pop beats to create the internet’s best science songs, math songs, and history songs. A brilliant tool for teachers to introduce topics to their classrooms.

40. Music Therapy Tunes: On this site, you’ll find quality songs for teaching kids of all ages — from toddlers to teens. There are songs to teach language skills, social skills, conceptual skills, and many more. The site also included music therapy lesson plans for teachers, with song lyrics and chords as well as an informative blog page helpful for teachers.

41. YouTube: If you’re looking for free educational songs and parodies, YouTube is an excellent resource. The biggest library of songs and music you can use in your classroom. Some of our favorite channels are Jam Campus, Mr Parr, Science Music Videos, Mr. Betts Class, and Science With Tom.

42. Rhythm Friends: A music timing game that introduces the basic concepts of rhythm. Children tap their fingers to the beat to create their favorite songs.

43. SoundCloud: If you like to listen to music, this app is for you. SoundCloud has over 135 million tracks in the library that you can listen to offline. And if you’re creating your own educational song, SoundCloud offers many songs that are free of copyrights that can be used in your YouTube videos.

Online Learning Games

44. MyTimesTables — A fun and effective way for kids to learn their time's tables. Helps children to learn their first 20 times tables in a fun way.

45. DuoLingo — A popular app for language learning, available on Android, iOS, and Windows. Analyzed how millions of people learn at once to create the most effective educational system and tailor it to each student, track their progress and give personalized feedback.

46. Instructables — Instructables is a website specializing in user-created and uploaded DIY projects. Instructables has a tonne of awesome projects for teachers to do with their classes and supports teachers and students by providing free premium membership. Cooking, crafts, costumes, outdoor play, technology, etc.

47. Yousician — is the best way to teach, learn and play a musical instrument. Yousician is also the teacher’s aide to keep students engaged, practicing at home, and having fun. Use our expert-designed syllabus or create your own exercises.

48. CodeKingdoms — Code Kingdoms was built for kids, with kids, by (big) kids. This is a great platform for introducing kids to programming by showing them how to build their own Minecraft mods.

49. Quizizz: When playing live, students can see the class accuracy reflected as it updates the leaderboard live with each response. There are thousands of games available in the library, making it easy to get started or create your own.

Mindfulness in the Classroom Tools

50. Headspace — Studying and teaching can be incredibly stressful. To help manage your stress, Headspace is a digital service that provides guided meditation sessions and mindfulness training. And it’s available in app form, so you can meditate anywhere you go. For just 10-minutes a day, meditating with Headspace will help you and your students unwind and be present.

51. Calm — The mindfulness app that thousands of people all over the world use every day is being offered to teachers for free. Teachers will have unlimited access to Calm’s growing library of guided meditations and mindfulness exercises. This includes Calm Kids, specific programs tailored for age groups from pre-K through high school.

52. DreamyKid — Made just for kids, Dreamy kid offers meditations such as Body Scan, an ADD and ADHD session, ambient background noise, and more. General and issue-based meditations, new guided visualizations, and affirmations are added each month.

53. Stop, Breathe & Think — The title indicates what this app focuses on. Stopping, breathing, and thinking are all important life skills that are often undertaught. This app is best suited for ages 10 and up and ideal for individual use. With reward stickers and check-in features, this app makes it easy to track progress.

54. Smiling Mind — Modern meditation with programs for age ranges from 7 and up along with a Mindfulness in the Classroom program, this not-for-profit organization’s app also offers students a break from the pressure, stress, and challenges of daily life.