Back in November we posted about our favourite Apps for use in the classroom. Now we bring you the low down on the best apps specifically for teachers.

Educreations (Free) – This is an interactive whiteboard app allowing teachers to annotate, animate and narrate a wide range of content. Lessons sync between the teacher and student iPads so that teachers can monitor the work being done and students can get any help they require. If a student doesn’t have an iPad, they can access all the material on the Educreations website. Full colour and exportable, you can even upload your own files with ease.

Showbie (Free) – The main message from this app is “make your classroom paperless”. Showbie makes it easier to assign and review work: teachers distribute the assignments and instructions, then keep tabs on the progress of the students and mark the work, adding annotations and voice/text notes where necessary. Each student gets their own individual folder so that their work can be stored intelligently, and it is saved to the cloud so students can switch between iPads and keep working. Makes marking meaningful and allows for the often tricky recording of progress and saving of work on iPads that are shared.

Socrative (Free) – This app allows teachers to assess their students using real-time questions and obtain instant results, allowing for a faster level of understanding of the progress of the whole class. The questions can take the form of quick polls, quizzes, multiple choice or true/false rather than formal questioning, meaning the teacher can create bespoke questions for their class and make the process more interesting and engaging. Results can be displayed in different ways and the data can be exported as reports, which should help with new assessment procedures. Active questioning and AfL all covered in one little app. It’s the future.

Remind (Free) – This app focuses on privacy. Using Remind, teachers sign up, create a class and can then send mobile messages to students and parents without needing to divulge any of their personal information, such as telephone number. The safeguarding works in reverse too, with teachers being unable to access personal details of the message recipient, as well as being able to access their stored message history. Can be used to schedule reminders, set homework assignments or inform parents of progress. Safeguarding, parental involvement and homework notification all in one app – where do we sign up?!

Too Noisy (£1.99) – This app allows you to set an acceptable noise level for a classroom and when that noise level is reached an alarm goes off. Allows for classes to take responsibility for their own behaviour, which is always a bonus but, let’s be honest, it’s also highly satisfying. And, as an added bonus, it’s available in a bundle with some other great classroom management tools at £6.99 for 5 apps, saving around £3.

If you have any other apps you have used and know are great, then post them on the Facebook page – we’d love to gather the results together to share with everyone.