Instructional Aids

Quizlet – Flashcards, memorization games and quizzes via app or browser. Both free and paid levels are available.

Socrative – Great alternative to “clicker” systems. Participants use the student app on a smartphone or tablet. Apps are available for both teacher and students, so it is possible to create and serve formative quizzes from your phone or tablet. In addition to the standard quiz mode, there is also an option for “quick questions” which do not require the quiz to be pre-made, and a space race game which tests to see which team can answer the quickest. Both free and paid levels are available. Paid subscriptions cost $59.99 per year for K-12 or $99.99 per year for higher education/corporate. Subscriptions allow (in addition to the standard features) up to 10 rooms (public or private) vs 1 public room in the free edition, roster import, higher student counts, shareable links, silent student hand-raise, restricted access via student ID, a personalized header for students, and instant quiz sharing. Additional features are added periodically. All in all, this is an excellent tool for handling surveys and for formative tests. I use it to create quizzes that aid my students in preparing for exams. Highly recommended.

Kahoot – Nice, free online “clicker” quizzing system. More colorful that Socrative (designed for younger students). Requires that students be able to see the instructor’s screen to read the question (which could be seen as a positive or a negative). Though originally completely browser-based, Kahoot has recently added student apps for iOS and Android in addition to being able to use it from any browser. Kahoot allows you to create quizzes, surveys, discussions (pretty much just a limited survey) and a “jumble” where students are asked to put items in order. You can integrate portions of YouTube videos in the question (Kahoot allows you to choose the entry and exit points for the video). I like Kahoot better than Socrative for in-class quizzing the format just seems to work better for generating discussions. Check it out and decide for yourself.

Active Prompt – Allows you to upload an image and then allow students to drag a dot or other screen image to where they believe the answer is. An unusual teaching application, all online and completely free to use.

Poll Everywhere – A fairly nice polling service. The free level allows up to 25 respondents to participate. There are plugins that allow Poll Everywhere to be integrated into PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Sheets. Poles can be multiple choice, word cloud, rank order, clickable image or about 18 other types. Students can participate via the app or by text message. The only downside is that if you need more features or want more participants the price of the service jumps to anywhere from $120 per year for 50 responses per poll and grading options to $2,400 or more per year to access all options. Caveats aside, the free version is worth a look and paid levels may be worthwhile for some organizations.

Formative – Formative is a really nice service that allows instructors to create and deliver quizzes or other (presumably formative) assessments online, observe what students are doing in real time, and remotely intervene when students are struggling. The instructor can set up multiple classes, each with its own student roster. Once the quiz is created, it can be assigned to one or more classes. Formative has tools to track student progress and growth based on Common Core and numerous State standards (Premium Plan). A basic level is available to use free of charge, the premium teacher plan is $12 per month, institutional plans are custom priced.

Flubaroo – Flubaroo is an add-on that is used to automatically grade and generate statistics on quizzes created in Google Forms. If you are using Google Forms for quizzing, you will probably like Flubaroo. Flubaroo is free and it works. Lots to like and if you don’t like it, no biggie.

ExamView –

TedEd – Very cool way to make a lesson out of any YouTube video. Lets you choose a video, write an introduction, include supplementary information, and create online quizzes. Very nice way to create content for a “flipped” lesson. Completely free and easy to use.

EDPuzzle – The EDPuzzle interface allows you to quickly search video content from YouTube, Khan Academy, National Geographic, TED Talks, Veritasium, Numberphile, Crash Couse and Vimeo. Once you choose a video, you can add an audio track, audio notes or written comments or questions scattered throughout the video. Once it is complete, you invite students to view and their answers are recorded for grading. EDPuzzle is free for teachers to use, but premium features such as an integrated grade book and collaboration tools must be purchased. This is a nice tool that you can use for free. In some ways it is an expansion of TedEd, but definitely a different tool. Its free, so give it a try.

Perusall – Perusall allows reading to be assigned, read and annotated by groups of students. Text can be in the form of an e-book purchased through one of Perusall’s publishing partners, or instructors can simply upload their own PDF files to the system. One nice feature is that you can upload a large PDF and then assign reading from specific pages. There is also an option to automatically grade submissions. Perusall combines features from Google Docs, forums, and LMS into a compelling offering. If you already have an LMS system, Perusall can be integrated into Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard, Sakai, Desire2Learn/Brightspace, and Schoolology. Perusall is completely free (it appears to be supported by textbook sales), but if you teach in an institution that they do not have in their system you will have to email them and request that they add your school before you can set up a class.

Send Anywhere – Send Anywhere allows the user to quickly and easily transfer files between devices. To use, simply install the app on your devices — Windows, MacOS, Linux, Apple iOS, Android, and Kindle are all supported — then simply choose the files you want to send. The app generates a 6-digit code. Enter this code into the app on the receiving machine and the files transfer and are ready for download. Or, if you prefer, you can create a link to the file for multiple user downloads. It is fast and easy. The free version supports files up to 10 GB and total linked files also limited to 10 GB and The free version is supported by inline advertisements. The Plus version costs $5.99 per month, allows files up to 50 GB total linked files up to 1 TB, has features to manage and safeguard the files, and removes advertising. Access codes expire after 10 minutes, links created with the free version are good for 48 hours on the Plus version link expiration is configurable. Send Anywhere is faster and easier than uploading to cloud storage and can easily be used to share file between friends or colleagues.

LibreOffice – Need a powerful office suite, but don’t have the budget for MS Office? LibreOffice to the rescue. If you are accustomed to MS Office, LibreOffice will take a little getting used to, but it is absolutely as powerful as its more famous brother. The suite includes Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Math, and Charts. The first 4 applications are roughly equivalent to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access; while Math is a formula creator and Charts is a (surprise) chart generator module. Math and Chart can work within other applications in the suite or as stand-alone applications. They are free to download and use, so there is nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

Google Docs – Included with Google Drive, Docs allows the user to create documents, spreadsheets, drawings, presentations, surveys and more all for free. Even better, teams can share and simultaneously edit these documents. Overall, this suite is very capable and can take care of the needs of 99% of users.

Microsoft Office – Ok, you’ve probably heard of this one. MS Office has been king for quite a while but has recently lost ground to open source alternatives like LibreOffice or online services like Google Docs. Nevertheless, MS Office is still the de facto standard by which all other office suites are measured. A few years ago, Microsoft added online versions of several Office applications to compete with Google Docs. These are more limited than their desktop cousins but are still very functional and free to use.

Grammarly – Grammarly is a grammar and spelling checker that works in Google Chrome, MS Office, and Windows. The free version does an excellent job finding problems with word usage, punctuation, and, of course, spelling. The paid version adds additional grammar checks, can be optimized for specific document types and has a plagiarism checker. I have used the free version for a while with generally good results. I’m sure the premium version is even better, but I find the $139.95 per year (can also be purchased for $59.95 per quarter or $29.95 per month) price tag to be a little steep. For now, I am content with the free version.

Prezi Present – Tired of PowerPoint? Prezi is a different way to present information. Everything is put on one screen and you simply zoom and fly around to each point. It can be extremely effective for some types of presentations. If you like mind maps, you will like probably like Prezi.
There is no software to download, everything is done online, though the Pro and Pro Plus levels allow offline editing. Completed presentations can be downloaded, so a network connection is not required to present unless the Prezi includes online elements, like YouTube videos.
Free accounts allow up to five public presentations. Paid subscriptions allow unlimited presentations, privacy controls, image editing, PowerPoint conversion, and other tools. Subscriptions start at $7.00 per month (billed annually).

Wordle – Quickly create a word cloud from any text. Honestly, this is not something that I use, but I was in a class where student responses were entered as they were given and a word cloud generated in real time and displayed as a visual for the closing discussion. The online version is barely workable since it relies on Java applets, but there are also free Windows and Mac versions available for download.

Honeycomb

Team Gantt

Online Gantt

Adobe Creative Cloud – Adobe is now selling its applications by subscription. The most popular version gives you all apps for $49.99 per month and includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom, Audition, DreamWeaver, Acrobat Pro and more. For those willing to master it (or, in my case, become vaguely proficient), this is a powerhouse suite for producing nearly any kind of media from web to print to video to animation. professional class documents, illustrations, and videos. If you have a qualifying institutional affiliation, there is a student/teacher deal for only $29.99 per month. A subscription allows installation on 2 computers.

SmoothDraw – A very nice, totally free drawing/painting program made famous by Khan Academy as the primary tool used to do most of the “digital blackboard” work for its videos.

Photopea – A nice online photo editor. Photopea looks and feels a lot like Photoshop and files can even be saved in Photoshop PSD format as well as PNG, JPG, SVG, GIF, PDF, TIF, and several others. The ad-supported version is free. The paid version costs $40 per year which removes ads and allows more steps in the drawing history.

GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program is an Open Source alternative to Photoshop. Very powerful, but it has a strange interface that I find a little confusing. Personal preference aside, GIMP is very capable and more than powerful enough for professional quality results.

Paint.NET – A simple, but reasonably powerful image and photo editor. If you are looking to go beyond MS Paint, but still want a simple, intuitive interface, Paint.NET may be for you. Paint.NET also has a number of plugins available to extend its capabilities. Free, give it a go.

Krita – A very capable Open Source painting and illustration program. Definitely geared toward the artist market offering a range of highly expressive tools. The interface reminds me of the old Fractal Design Painter back before Corel acquired it. At this point, I don’t think Krita is quite as capable as Painter or Photoshop, but it is pretty awesome and it is free. Unleash your inner digital artist and give it a try. Versions are available for Windows, MacOS, and GNULinux.

InkScape – InkScape is a capable vector illustration tool. While not as refined, InkScape is a nice, free alternative to Adobe Illustrator.

CodeCogs – Creates graphics of math formulas. If you have ever wanted to include a properly formatted formula into your web page, you will appreciate CodeCogs. The output looks similar to the formula builder in Word. Based in LaTeX, but is pretty easy to use.

AutoTracer – A free online tool for converting raster images into vector formats that can be scaled without quality loss. Accepts jpg, pdf, and png files and can convert to svg, pdf, ai, dxf, eps, sk, and fig formats. Can be used to create svg files for doodle animation programs.

iMazing HEIC Converter – You may have noticed that pictures taken with Apple devices now have and .heic extention. HEIC is Apple’s version of the HEIF or High Efficiency Image Format, developed by the MPEG group. As the name implies, it is a more efficient format for storing images. Unfortunately, HEIC/HEIF is not currently supported on Windows or Android — though I expect that support is coming soon. The iMazing HEIC Converter is a free Windows application that quickly and easily converts HEIC to either JPEG or PNG formats.

Comic Life – Bring a little bit of “comic” relief to your handouts, newsletters, and certificates.

Been looking for Trigonometry — The Graphic Novel?
Why not write it yourself?

Go ahead and put a creative twist in your handouts. Comic Life is a software package designed to makes it easy to create comic books, newspapers, certificates using your own artwork or by manipulating photos. It has all of the basic tools necessary to lay out the page, and add pictures, text, speech bubbles, etc. The example cover above took less than 5 minutes. Available for Windows, Mac, Chromebook, and iOS. Only $29.99 for a single license or $44.99 for a household license for up to 5 users. Educational licenses are also available.

AutoDesk Professional Design Tools

AutoCAD – The standard that all CAD programs are measured by. AutoCAD definitely requires a learning commitment,  but is a real powerhouse. Unfortunately, that power comes at a price – both time and cash – that can put new users off. The good news is that AutoDesk has some very good educational programs that allow access at a much lower cost. In fact, if you are enrolled at or employed by a qualified educational institution you may qualify for a free educational license. Commercial licenses are available by subscription starting at $1575.00 per year.

Revit –

Inventor –

Construction Document Markup and Organization

Bluebeam ReVu – PDF’s on steroids. ReVu has serious markup tools and is aimed squarely at the construction industry. The software comes with access to Bluebeam Studio for sharing documents via the cloud. I use this for my blueprint reading class. There is also an iPad version and free viewers for both Windows and iPad, though the user experience on an iPad is less that compelling. A Mac version has recently been released.

PlanGrid – Like Bluebeam ReVu, PlanGrid allows the user to view and mark up PDF files. PlanGrid is accessed either by an app (Windows, iOS, and Android) or via a web browser. Although its markup tools are rudimentary compared to Bluebeam, the responsiveness and ease of use make PlanGrid a far better choice for most construction sites. Furthermore, PlanGrid adds the ability to write and manage RFI’s, job journals, time sheets, and other forms to help streamline paperwork for construction projects. PlanGrid is available by subscription starting out at $30 per user per month. A free 20 day trial is available.

Diagramming and Flow Chart Creation

Microsoft Visio – Very nice (but expensive) drag and drop drawing. There are vast Visio symbol libraries available for just about any need (usually free). I use Visio all the time to draw schematics for class and for work. Now available as a monthly subscription for the budget constrained.

Draw.io – A free, online alternative to Visio. No registration required, just connect to Google Drive, GitHub, DropBox,  or OneDrive and create your first document. While Draw.io does not have as many stencils as Visio, it is quite capable and will be more than enough for many users. Great for creating schematic diagrams, charts, even basic floorplans.

3D Design

Fusion 360 –

Rhinoceros 3D –

SketchUp –

FreeCAD –

Screenpresso – Very nice screen capture and annotation utility. The free version is very powerful and allows screenshots, region capture, video capture and basic annotation. I have used it often to make instruction sheets. Pro version adds more editing capability, OCR, video clipping and lots of other goodies for about $24.00. The only downside is that there is no Mac version (I use both Windows and MacOS daily). Try the free version, you will like it!

Snagit – Perhaps the best-known screen capture and annotation utility, from Techsmith, the makers of Camtasia video editing software. Features of Snagit are similar to Screenpresso Pro, but Snagit has a few more options and well as support for Mac. They offer a 15-day free trial, but there is no free version. Cost is about $50.00 per user and the license allows installation on both Windows and Mac. TechSmith Fuse app for iOS or Android allows you to send pictures directly from your phone to the Snagit editor.

Remind – A cool application that allows secure texting between instructors and students. No phone numbers need to be exchanged students op in via a code and can op-out at any time. Free.

StarBoard (Licensed Edition) – Originally marketed by Hitachi with the StarBoard digital pen display system. StarBoard has been spun off as its own company and now markets a line of interactive displays ranging from 65″ to 98″, a digital flipchart and a licensed edition of the annotation software which functions as a standalone package which can be used with any touch screen or pen display. The StarBoard software is packed with features including a customizable workspace, multiple pen modes, in-app Internet search, screen blocking, screen recording, an image gallery, PowerPoint import, and a nice selection of educational tools. StarBoard stands head-and-shoulders above other products in this category as a classroom tool. The only downside is the price. StarBoard runs about $120 per license, but definitely delivers. A 60-day trial is available (just be sure to download the license version).

IPEVO Annotator – IPEVO manufactures low-cost document cameras, an interactive whiteboard system, and other classroom hardware. They have created a nice annotator application intended to extend the whiteboard capabilities and integrate the document camera, however, this free package stands alone as a very good annotation utility. Feature-wise, it sits between Ink2Go and Epic Pen, offering responsive screen markup (not pressure sensitive, but the “fountain pen” option creates a nice hand-drawn effect) and highlighting a whiteboard mode allowing a single screen or multiple screens (up to 4), unique spotlight and shade effects  (spotlight dims areas of the screen that are not under the “spotlight” the shade allows you to cover the screen and to “pull the shade” up, down, or sideways to reveal material), and an onscreen ruler and protractor. IPEVO Annotator will also allow you to record the screen or take a snapshot. There is also a button that allows you to launch the IPEVO Presenter app (doc cam). I like Annotator; it does not require any IPEVO hardware to operate, and free is a really good price, give it a try.

ScreenInk – This is a nice annotator from SwordSoft. It is free to download and use for as long as you like, but if you want to save files you will need to purchase a license for $2.99 — that’s right, less than three bucks! The interface is fairly clean, though I would prefer icons to be a little larger so they would be easier to hit with my stylus. Complaint aside, this is one of the most responsive screen annotators I have tried. It supports multi-color drawing screens (rainbow whiteboard?), pen, highlighter, eraser, line, text and shape tools; screen capture, a color picker, magnifier, rulers, and angles. Responsiveness is as good as Epic Pen, but ScreenInk has a much more robust toolset.

Ink2Go – Clean, easy to use screen annotation/capture software. Can be used with a mouse or (preferably) a drawing monitor or 2-in-1 laptop and a pen-stylus to “mark up” your computer screen. Has a whiteboard mode that allows you to write and draw on a  blank screen or you can choose to have lines or a grid on your “whiteboard. In a room with a good projection system, using this with a drawing monitor could replace the standard whiteboard. As an added bonus, you can save a screenshot of your work. Nice package for under $20.

Epic Pen – Epic Pen is another screen annotation utility. I really want to like this program, it has an easy to use interface (by far the easiest in this lineup), pressure sensitivity and is incredibly responsive. Originally Epic Pen lacked any kind of whiteboard mode — a show stopper for me– but the latest release has included a kind of whiteboard. Unfortunately, the implementation lacks the basic features found in other program whiteboards and if you are using extended monitors it will white out all screens. I would love it if the folks at Epic Pen would get serious about this product, but as of now, it falls short.

Presentation Marker – Another screen annotation/capture package. Offers more options than Ink2Go including pointer and spotlight effects, break timer and live zoom. I really like some of the extras and the updated version works well with Windows 10. In my testing, Presentation Marker has been a little unstable but that may be due to my aging computer. Test it out and decide for yourself. A free trial is available and the Pro version sells for $44.95.

Windows Ink Workspace – Ink is not quite an annotation package like other products in this list, but it does have the basic capabilities. Screen annotation can be done using Screen Sketch, though it feels more like annotating a screen capture rather than a live screen. Basic whiteboard capability is available using Sketchpad, however, there is no simple way to create and navigate multiple pages. In addition, Ink allows the attachment of sticky notes (virtual PostIts) which could be a useful presentation feature. Windows Ink was designed to work with the Microsoft Surface line, but works with other pen devices as well as long as they have Windows Ink support in the driver. I found Windows Ink to be responsive and simple to use, and since it is built into Windows 10, there is nothing to buy or install. It may not have the bells and whistles of its cousins, but depending on your needs, it may be enough.

Bamboo Paper – Wacom’s Bamboo Paper is a free(ish) app for Windows 10, iOS, and Android. It is not an annotator but works very well as a digital whiteboard. The app uses a notebook motif to help organize pages into related groups. Once a notebook is created, pages can be added to contain any content you create. Bamboo Paper allows the import of picture files as well as drawn items, so it is possible to set up pages in advance with base content and then annotate it live. The base app is free, but in-app purchases are available that add pens, brushes, and notebooks. In-app purchases range from 99 cents to $3.99, but none are required to use the base features. Bamboo Paper is extremely responsive to pen-stroke input, it has a simple and unobtrusive interface and it genuinely fun to use. If all you need is digital whiteboard capability, this may be just what you are looking for.