Rate My Professor

Rate My Professor is an essential tool for any college student. College is hard enough, so you shouldn't have to worry about having crappy professors on top of all of the other stress. This site is a life saver! What you do is search the name of the professor you have or are planning to have, and you look at reviews that others gave her or him. Rate My Professor has an average score for each professor, and overall consensus reasons why he or she is good or bad. The reviews also include what class the professor taught for the reviewer. You can write reviews for professors as well! I always go to this site before scheduling classes. It gives me peace of mind to enter a classroom with a professor I know is good.

EverNote

Evernote is an amazing app you can download on both your phone and your laptop or even just opening the website through a web browser (evernote.com), that helps with organizing your notes/ideas. It works and functions just like google docs for the most part. EverNote does have two things that distinguish it from google docs though. Evernote does indeed have limited space available for you to store notes/ideas/documents. Another feature that is a major win over google docs is the easy access to it. As a writer, i get random ideas all of a sudden that I want to keep in mind for later. If you have the app, Evernote notification is in the top bar of your phone and you can access your notebook immediately. When google docs it will take a few minutes to open it and if you don't have internet access that's not going to happen. Evernote is free however you will need to pay if you want more space in your account. But it as an amazing way to organize thoughts no matter where you are.

Remind 101

Remind 101 is an app that allows teachers to connect and communicate with students, parents, or peers. It gives educators the ability to make sure that anything important they need students or parents to know, they actually receive and read it. Since we live in a world where peoples noses are stuck in their phones, we can use that to our advantage when it comes to reminding students of important things coming up. This is better than emailing since not many people open or work with their emails anymore since there are so many easier ways to communicate with the world around us. Remind 101 allows teachers and students (or parents) to send text messages without getting either phone number. It goes through the app/system as a name or code that is connected to the classroom. This keeps privacy and communication/connection high. Teachers can make an account and classroom through the website remind101.com and send a code that comes with creating a classroom to the students/people they want joining their classroom. You don't need a smartphone to do this. You don't need to download the app either. You need a phone or a laptop which makes it easy for those that don't have smartphones yet.

 

Funbrain

Funbrain is an educational website for grades K-8. While looking around this website, I found some really cool games for students to use. One game in particular that was interesting was Math Baseball. In this game, you choose addition, subtraction, etc and then you answer questions on those topics in order to score. This kind of game is really great for students because they get to have fun while practicing their math skills at the same time. This would be a good resource to have your students use if possible in the classroom, but it would also be good to share this website with them and their parents so they can practice at home too.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a resource where you can basically type papers in place of Microsoft Word. Google Docs is really nice because you can work with someone on the same paper or activity from two different computers. Being able to do this is very helpful when thinking about group work. Being able to work on one part of an assignment while your partner works on the other is great and extremely helpful. I have been using google docs in my math class when we do partner writing assignments so my partner and I can finish the typing in half the time. Another great part about Google Docs is being able to send comments on specific sections of your work. When working with a partner, there can be times where one of you is unsure of something so it is nice to be able to discuss that right on the document. This resource is great for both students and teachers.

Reading Eggs

Reading Eggs can be used from the website or the app and is used to help students learn to read in a fun and exciting way. I first found out about this resource when I was tutoring a few weeks ago at a local elementary school. The students that I work with absolutely love reading eggs and the teacher I work with says that it really does help them improve over time. This resource is made for 2-13 year olds and the content will vary based on the different level you choose to have your student work on. Along with reading exercises, there are fun videos for students to watch too. This is a great resource overall and it is nice to see how excited the students are when they get to use this in class.

iPiccy Photo Editor

 iPiccy Photo Editor is a great resource for simple Photoshopping images. It is easy to use and manageable for those who know nothing about Photohop.  It allows you to edit any photo on your computer. You can make small fixes such as reduce brightness, get rid of red eyes, etc. You can also do creative Photoshopping such as posterizing yourself, or putting your face on a wanted poster. It is really fun to play around with these features. iPiccy could be used for students to edit photos for a presentation or other assignment. The features are free, and you can use as many as you want for each photo.