All About Apps: Our Top Picks

There are a variety of free apps designed with the instructor in mind, including Educreation, SlideShark, and Evernote.

As mobile devices such as phones and tablets become increasingly more common, more and more people are looking for ways to use their mobile devices for work. Fortunately, there is no shortage of free apps available to try.  Unfortunately, there are so many, it's often hard to know where to begin. Our staff has tried to do some of that work for you. We've weeded through the most commonly used apps to pick our top twelve apps for instructors. We found apps that can help you work on the go, create a lesson anywhere, conduct a lecture from the palm of your hand, or just organize your thoughts in a form that you can access anywhere at anytime. 

All of these apps are available for Apple or Android devices. We have focused in particular on apps that are free and work well with tablets.

CamScanner
This app turns your mobile device into a scanner. With CamScanner, you can take a quick photo of your document, adjust the borders and other image attributes, save it to your device for future reference, and share it with colleagues or students. CamScanner offers a great way to quickly digitize handouts or other resources.


Educreations

Educreations turns your mobile device into a smart board. By connecting your mobile device to a classroom projector, you can use your phone or tablet as a canvas on which you can write, type, and insert pictures. You can even record the white board and your voice to share the lesson later over the Internet.


Evernote

Perfect for keeping track of important info across all of your devices, Evernote is a simple way to take notes and manage to do lists on Apple devices. Your Evernote profile is synched so you can access your lists on your phone, tablet, or on any computer by logging in evernote.com.


Google Chrome

A web browser, Chrome allows you to synch your bookmarks and passwords across any computer device.


Google Drive

Google Drive provides free cloud-based storage and creation. With Drive, you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and more. You can then save them to the drive so you can access them from anywhere, share them with students or colleagues, or invite others to collaborate.


SlideShark

SlideShark is a presentation tool that allows you to project and run PowerPoint presentations from a mobile device. SlideShark provides presenters with a clean presenter screen, including the projecting slide and notes. SlideShark also automatically formats your presentation to project cleanly, so you don't have to worry about the image cutting off or the font being altered.


Splashtop

Splashtop allows you to remotely connect and control your computer from any mobile device. Unlike many other remote apps, Splashtop also allows you to access audio and video. Please note, this app does not have a free version.


Videolicious

Videolicious provides a fast way to create good looking videos using audio clips, video clips, and images after just a few clicks.


YouTube

An indispensable app, YouTube is the video-sharing service on which users can discover, create, and share videos. 

 

To see these Apps in action, keep any eye out for our "All About Apps" workshop on our Workshop page. For information on projecting from mobile devices, read our instructions for projecting from mobile devices.