How to Choose the Best Learning Apps for Education(Tips & Techniques)

There is no shortage of Learning Apps in today’s connected world. These range from full-fledged web platforms such as Blackboard or Angel that many schools use for their learning management systems to small mobile learning applications for both IOS and Android that you can find on iTunes or the Google Play store. 

There are thousands of educational apps available across disciplines.  Choosing the best learning app depends on your goals and what you want to use the application to learn. Chances are if you’re going to learn something, there is an app for that.

Of course, with all these learning apps to choose from, how do you determine what will become your best learning app? Or which ones are a waste of time to install. This is a hard question, and it depends on what you are looking to accomplish.

While there are a multitude of learning type apps for the desktop, mobile has taken over the world so that we will focus the majority of this conversation on the mobile learning app offerings available.

The process of choosing an app to teach you something depends upon the age of the learner as well as the topic or skill one wishes to learn.

Smartphone technology continues to advance and this will become more of a factor in education. This means colleges and universities will need to incorporate the use of learning apps more into their curriculum.

If you need further proof that you need to be paying attention to the learning app market and just mobile access in general for your students, then take a look at the latest Noel Levitz e-expectations reports. 40% of high school seniors now only use their smartphone when accessing internet-based resources, and this trend is only growing. By the time the next e-expectations report is released, that number will likely increase to over 50% or more. The use of mobile devices among college students has continuously grown every year that these surveys have been performed, and it will only increase.

It clear from the data that educators need to incorporate learning apps into their curriculum, but with the many choices, it becomes challenging to choose the correct one. The truth is there is no best learning app for every situation, and many factors play into this choice.

The first and foremost item to consider when searching for a learning app to incorporate into your courses is the purpose.  For example, if you are teaching a college algebra course, then an app that provides examples of quadratics could be useful, but you may not want one that is just a calculator and would do all the work for the student. Would not promote active learning and a learning app that is not conducive to learning would not be very useful.

Best Learning App List:

College/Teen – Learning Apps

1. Khan Academy – Khan is an excellent learning company, and their learning apps are also top of the line. Students can learn across the general core subjects, such as math, science. The data is presented in a context that builds conceptual understanding—not just memorizing formulas.
2. Math Formulas Free –Allows the students to have many of the standard math formulas for a variety of applications at their fingertips. And while it helps the students understand how to use methods, it does not just do the work for them. This app is available in both Android and IOS formats, so it’s an excellent fit for most students as they will likely own one of these devices. It is also available in multiple languages, so it’s not only useful for English speaking students.
3. The Great Courses – This is a must-have for college students. This application hosts a large selection of lectures from a wide variety of professors. This covers the majority of Major concentrations, so you are sure to find a point to help you get an A on that economics research paper.
4. Duolingo – Is a language learning app. The concepts for learning a new language can be hard to get a teen to learn, but Duolingo uses mini-games to present ideas that ensure students maintain attention.
5. My Study Life – This is a great little study app planner. It has some exciting features to remind you of upcoming deadlines and can send you notifications. This helps keep things on track as dorm life gets a little crazy.
6. Evernote – Evernote is a great note-taking app. It allows you to share notes between devices easily, so what you edit on the phone can easily be transferred to your mac. They have both free and paid versions depending upon the features. It’s more than note-taking. You can snap pictures and include them. There some great templates you can use to get started on your notes and lists.
7. Microsoft One Note – If your college or school system uses Microsoft’s Office 365, then forget about EverNote. One note is an online notebook. You can easily sync between any of your devices, whether they are Macbook, Windows 10, IOS, or Android. The app allows you to create notebooks on topics and further break that down into tabs. It’s straightforward to organize, and if your organization allows, you can insert a variety of other web components such as spreadsheets.
8. Lucid Chart – Lucid Chart is an excellent flowchart app, but also has engineering, database design. They have templates that would be useful across any discipline where you may need to present information on a graphical format. These can be tied to the Office 365 suite, which allows you to update a chart on Lucid Chart and have the changes reflected on your One Note presentation. This makes this app a must-have for any of the engineering type trades. 

Learning Apps for Kids

When you are looking for learning apps for kids, then there are also thousands of options. These are some of the apps we like for the younger learner.

1. Funbrain — Funbrain is not just an app its a company of apps. They have content separated by grade level, so it is easy to make sure your child is working on the appropriate content. The app offers game-like experiences that teach reading and math. Overall this is a highly rated app among homeschool parents.
2. Starfall — Starfall is another suite of apps that teach the 3R’s of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Like Funbrain, the concepts or presented in the form of games activities and are organized by level. This app seems to be better suited to the lower primary grades, 1st-3rd. 
3. PBS Kids Games has a wide assortment of apps as well as televised programming that are very effective learning tools. These are fun and keeps the child engaged during learning time. Not only are there subjects such as math or English. The apps also offer engineering and other topics to engage the child and get them thinking about what they like and discover where their natural talents lie.

There are a lot of these sorts of apps that can teach various subjects. The best one for each depends upon the grade level of the student and the purpose for the learning app. The only way to find the best one for your goal to search the app store then pays attention to the comments and ratings of other users. Then give the ones that look interesting a try, and you may find a great learning app.

Educational – Learning Apps

There are many other Learning Apps on the market that can be incorporated into online courses or even lecture classes. The is no one best learning app as they all have their strengths and weaknesses. The question is which one is the best for you, and that depends on it. It depends upon your purpose for acquiring a learning app, and it depends on the technical ability of the people who will use the learning app. The best way for you to determine which is the best one is by doing your research. A simple google search for learning app reviews will give you a vast number of others who have gone before you and have found out which of the learning apps, work best for different purposes. There are also reviews on all the app stores which you can read about the experience others may have had with a particular educational application. With a little research, you will definitely locate the right application for your learning needs. If you are only looking for the best iPad apps for college students check out our post.