If you have a young student at home the time to kickstart education isn’t the first day of school. This is the perfect time to incentivize a child to start learning, and in the case of many apps the incentive is “fun.”
Inside the Klein household apps are commonly use to educate. Erin Klein, a school teacher and a well-known educational speaker, uses apps both in the classroom and with her children. She told 7 Action News that she found a hit with Kahoot!
“When I knew it was a hit at home with our own kids, that’s when I knew it was absolutely going to be a win in the classroom,” said Klein.
Kahoot! is sort of like a trivia game adults would play at a restaurant, or favorite bar, except it’s geared towards children. You can play solo, or have multiple people log into a single game and compete against others online or play head-to-head in person. Klein launched several games with her four children facing off and within minutes the kids lit up — it looks like they’re playing a video game, but they’re drawing on their education to play.
“In school we have to close our doors because they get so loud, but that’s exciting,” said Klein. “ That’s what you want to see in a classroom, learning should be fun.”
Klein noted that the newest addition to the app is a build-your-own quiz section. For teachers like her it means they can build a quiz and send it home with students. If you’re a parent, or a student, you can build a quiz that tests the same information you’re learning inside the classroom.
There’s more than 70 million monthly active users on Kahoot! right now with a library of more than 50 million learning games. According to the company they’re already being used in 60-percent of the classrooms in the U.S.
You can learn more about Kahoot!, download the app or start an account by checking out their website.
Here’s a look at apps parents, and experts, are finding useful for students heading back to school:
This is an app that can be used alone, or with a group of people, to create an education-based quiz game.
What makes this especially cool is that businesses use this for work and have to pay, students and teachers don’t pay a dime for the app and it’s use.
There’s plenty of pre-built quizzes that you can find to teach your children math, history and language arts — there’s also a number of fun games that aren’t education based within the app. What makes this app even cooler is a new option to create your own quizzes within the app using pictures or questions — that means teachers can create quizzes tailored to a class, or parents can turn their student’s homework into a quiz so they can study it again, and again.
This app/website is an amazing game-based learning tool for ages 5 through 11. If you want to incentivize your young child to learn, this is a great option.
ABCya.com has more than 100 games and they’re free to play — all the games are interactive and require different skills to play ranging from math to language arts, even science. The web-based version uses Flash, which can require frequent updates, but the app is a breeze to use.
ABCya has been featured on everything from Apple to the New York Times and features numerous award-winning games.
Parents can navigate the games easily by picking your child’s grade, selecting a subject and then browsing the games offered for that specific skill set. There are also varying levels of difficulty so you can select the proper “challenge” for your student.
StudyBlue is a simple app with a great use: create flash cards in the blink of an eye. There is no more need to purchase card stock, colored pencils, or spend hours drawing/writing.
StudyBlue essentially allows you to take a picture, or use one already on your phone, and then write a description, a title and more. What’s more? You can even add audio to your flash card — take that paper old-school flash cards!
The nice part about StudyBlue is that you can share your flashcards with friends through the app, and there’s an easy to use shuffle tool that’s easier than real-life shuffling.
Quizlet is StudyBlue on steroids — it’s a bit more complicated to use, but has a much larger amount of games to choose from.
In addition to basic flash cards you can turn your vocabulary test, or science homework, into full-fledged games. It takes a little time to get used to but it has a lot of options for a free app. Unlike StudyBlue, Quilt can also be used on a desktop.
This app is the only non-free item listed in our article, but that’s because it’s one of the best organizational tools we could find online.
iStudiez Pro does it all: manages your class schedule, contacts for teachers and fellow classmates, sets reminders for assignments/tests and much more — there are various apps on your phone that can help with this, but this app brings it all into one easy to find place. It’s almost like you bought a digital agenda book for your student when you download the iStudiez app.
The app is available on your phone, and on your desktop — but it’s much less expensive to download on your phone iPhone at $2.99 versus a $9.99 sticker price for your computer.
This is a great app for kids between the ages of 2 and 6-years-old. There are thousands of interactive games, videos and activities that will help your child excel.
In addition to games there are also worksheets and other items that you can do with your child/student to help with reading, phonics, writing and math.
