Educational mobile apps have come to the forefront recently as families suddenly found themselves homeschooling.
With the recent global crisis being Covid-19, families now turn to homeschooling and remote learning to keep their kids “in school” while staying at home.
Most parents who transitioned to remote working had to juggle between work and managing their children’s education under the lockdown. With the increased usage of the Internet among kids, parents also had to pay attention to their online privacy.
Whether you are homeschooling just temporarily or no, you will need the best educational mobile apps to help you on this journey. Not only will it be useful for you and the kids, but it will uplift learning to a new level of fun that kids need at this time. For teachers, it can be a great help when teaching kids English or other subjects as it improves communication and adds fun element to teaching process.
Educational Mobile Apps Perfect for Homeschooling
Zoom
Zoom is the communication app that has helped the world to maintain educational activities amidst the crisis. Classes were transferred online, and Zoom became a staple for almost every virtual class.
Why is Zoom so powerful? It is a cloud-based video conferencing platform which can host virtual meetings via video conferencing, even with hundreds of participants.
Teachers have continued to teach their classes through Zoom’s conference rooms. Lesson plans and instructions can also be shared and exchanged on the app. Teachers communicate with students by groups, by families, or individually, based on the need or the activity.
The app comes in both the free and paid versions. In the free version, you can have unlimited one-to-one meetings and 40-minute group meetings.
Recently, Zoom has removed the 40-minute time limit for calls for K-12 schools in countries all around the world within its free plan. It is a stretch of generosity from a company that has been tested beyond its limits as everyone in the world suddenly had to work, study & socialise from home within just a few weeks.
Eric Yuan, Zoom’s founder and CEO, issued an official statement assuring users that whatever issues were uncovered about their app, they have been working hard to resolve the problems and improve the app’s security.
There are some changes after the privacy issues came out – now, you must have a meeting ID before you can join a conference call.
It may be a bit cumbersome but it makes the app more secure, which means that you can trust that your children will be safe as they use the app.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is still the go-to productivity software, now available on mobile devices. It is particularly helpful since not all families have multiple laptops or desktops.
Students can work on their reports and projects straight from an available mobile device. They can view, edit, and share files without switching between multiple apps. All of Microsoft 365’s applications are included, like Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, One Note, and One Drive.
OneNote, for instance, is a virtual notebook where you can keep all children’s notes organised per subject or topic. Kids can attach pictures, videos and links on their notebooks, something that regular notebooks cannot do while parents can just print selected pages from their notebooks if necessary.
A homeschool portfolio is a form of a track record of the child’s educational progress. Now, parents and children can do electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) right on their mobile device via Microsoft 365.
Indeed, you can boost student learning with Microsoft 365.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a part of Google’s G Suite for Education. This package includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, among other apps. It is targeted for teachers and students
This app is user-friendly and great for collaboration between students and teachers. Teachers or parents can create a class and post assignments, materials, and other comments for others to see.
You can invite a member via Gmail or they can join the class via code. A teacher can send the code via email to all her students in a group email.
Aside from materials, schedule and assignments, students can also participate in discussion forums or message the teacher (either in private or via group chat).
Aside from Google Classroom, the G Suite has other applications that are perfect of students:
- Calendar: track events, assignment deadlines, record attendance, and all things homeschool.
- Docs: for word processing
- Sheets: for spreadsheets
- Slides: for presentations
- Gmail: email
- Drive: cloud storage
- Forms: forms, quizzes, and surveys
- Google Meet: virtual classrooms
- Google Sites: site-building
Google Classroom can work well with other student information systems and websites.
Teachers and students can make Google Classroom accounts for free. Schools, however, must register for the Google for Education platform.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a top of the line curriculum provider that is absolutely free.
Khan Academy is known for its practice exercises, instructional videos, dynamic material, and a personalised learning dashboard.
This app empowers learners to study at their own pace in and outside the classroom. This educational mobile app helps finding informative resources for math, reading, writing, science and more.
The app provides more than 4,300 videos on lessons—math, science, economics, and humanities—either via streaming off the site or downloading for offline viewing.
Khan Academy Kids
https://learn.khanacademy.org/khan-academy-kids/
Just like its counterpart for K-12 students, Khan Academy Kids is a free educational mobile app created for young children.
The app is focused on holistic learning and has core subjects like early literacy, reading, writing, language, math, music, and arts. Its activities highlight the creativity and social-emotional skill-building.
Fun and charming characters guide kids throughout different activities and stories. Its original interactive content is very engaging even for young kids. Khan Academy Kids have activities, books, animated videos, games, and creative lessons that are tailored by experts for early childhood education (2 years old to 7 years old) that captivates children’s attention.
The app is a collaboration of Khan Academy Kids learning experts from Stanford and the materials are aligned with the Common Core Standards and Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework.
Khan Academy also has an extensive library and more than substantial learning materials for the different topics, something that parents hugely appreciate as well.
Unbelievable, the level of quality you get from Khan Academy for free, you also get with Khan Academy Kids – you will not see any ads on both apps for the sake of uninterrupted learning. It is why parents trust the Khan Academy apps as a learning partner in their kids’ learning journey.
CK-12
CK-12 is an app that offers concept-based learning and currently serves 134 million users worldwide. It aims to let students learn at their own pace for free.
Its products include Flexbooks, Flexbook 2.0, simulations, PLIX, adaptive practice, and more. It works well with different Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Google Classroom, Edmodo, Schoology, Canvas, and Kiddom, Clever, and ClassLink. CK-12 can also be added on Google Chrome as an extension
The subjects they cover include the following:
- Math: Arithmetic, Measurement, Algebra, Geometry, Probability, Statistics, Trigonometry, Analysis, Calculus
- Science: Middle School subjects like Earth Science, Life Science, and High School subjects Physical Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics
- English: Writing, Spelling
- Social Studies: Economics, Geography, Government, History, Philosophy, Sociology
- Other Subjects: Astronomy, Engineering, Health, Photography, Technology, SAT Exam Prep
- College: College Algebra, College Precalculus, College Human Biology, The Universe
It comes in different translations such as Spanish, Korean, Deutsche, Chinese, Greek, Polski etc.. Everything on the app and website is always 100% Free. CK-12 is supported by the CK-12 Foundation, a non-profit organisation that creates and curates superior quality STEM content for educational institutions, students, and teachers worldwide.
Kids Academy
Kids Academy has a learn-through-play approach that integrates technology, artificial intelligence (AI), gamification, and personalised learning.
The app has over 5000 learning activities covering Math, Science, Language Arts, Reading, and Social Studies.
The activities come as educational games, videos, printable worksheets, interactive songs, flashcards, and puzzles.
Parents can monitor their children’s progress, strengths, talents, and areas where children may need extra support through this educational mobile app.
ABCmouse.com
ABCmouse is a full online curriculum for children ages 2 to 8 years old, covering subjects like Reading, Math, Science, and Arts & Colors. There are step-by-step learning paths with more than 850 lessons across 10 levels. It has Tickets and Rewards System to motivate the child to do well on every level and go to the following one with excitement.
It has over 9,000 individual learning activities designed to build a strong foundation of knowledge for early learners. For example, its games for preschoolers ages three years old and above teach sounds, numbers, and shapes with preschool alphabet games, art games, number games, and shapes games.
The games come with voice instructions, so it is very kid-friendly and engaging for early learners known to have a short attention span.
Mimo: Learn to Code
Mimo is considered as one of the best coding apps around as it allows kids to learn coding on the go via bite-sized exercises, offering genuine coding experience. The exercises give immediate feedback, so kids learn how to adjust mistakes to perfect the code.
Its ‘Code Playground’ is popular with kids because they can experiment with sample coding projects, write their own code, run it, and save their projects for later.
Duolingo
Duolingo makes language learning easy and fun.
It is a free app with more than 30 languages to learn.
Gamification is integrated into every lesson, which delivers personalised learning, immediate grading, and rewarding system.
Each lesson takes just about five minutes each day and it is completely free.
If you upgrade to Duolingo plus, you get uninterrupted, ad-free learning. Duolingo is also now available for schools for classroom use.
LingoKids
LingoKids is a language mobile app for children 2 to 8 years old which provides learning through play via game-based and interactive activities.
LingoKids aims to bring families together while learning and having fun because the more kids have fun, the more they learn. This Lingo Ludic Method brings the power of fun into this app.
The LingoKids app has a vocabulary-based curriculum that helps kids develop modern-day skills like creativity by imagination, environment-friendly practices, critical thinking, collaboration, and diversity and equality.
Final Word
There are a plethora of educational mobile apps available for families that can help with homeschooling. You just need to choose the app that corresponds to your needs and it can increase the quality of your children’s educational journey.
Even if kids are under lockdown, they do not have to feel stuck while homeschooling – find the apps that can help your children have fun and learn despite the unusual times we may be in.
There is no limit to what the children can learn, if we teach them how to keep an open mind and eagerness to learn more.