Tech Tools To Help You Run Your School
Here at TeacherLists, our main goal is to help schools—and those who lead them—work smarter. If you’re one of those amazing individuals who works tirelessly every day to ensure that your school and district is on the cutting edge of technology and brilliance, then this list of school tech tools is going to be a great resource. Save it, reference it, and share it with other dedicated school leaders.
Recommended School Tech Tools
No one had to remind us to include this one! Remind makes parent engagement easier than ever, and many parents are already familiar with it. This school tech tool allows teachers to text, send pictures and audio recordings to students, and stay in touch with their parents about learning that’s happening while it’s happening.
https://web.seesaw.me/seesaw-for-schools
The seesaw is no longer just for school playgrounds—it’s also a powerhouse tech tool for schools that allows teachers to keep a digital portfolio of student work, communicate with families about students’ projects and performance, and create and share assignments with individualized instruction. There are no downs with this tool—just ups!
Permission Click is there for you when you want to get the bus on the road! Its form builder lets you create easy-to-use forms, have them approved by the powers that be at your school, and distribute them to parents. Afterward, it also tracks comments and payments. Need the same form next year? Not a problem! Permission Click archives your past forms so you can reuse them when needed.
https://zoom.us/
No list of school tech tools is complete without a video conferencing platform. Zoom won points during the COVID-19 pandemic for lifting its time limit on free calls used for online teaching. It also has lots of resources for administrators, teachers, and students using the platform. Just don’t forget to unmute!
This system really is all about families, schools, and the community! It helps manage student data and maximize school-to-home communication. Their suite of offerings includes parent/student portals and mobile apps that tackle complex master scheduling, bring admissions online, and improve fundraising outreach.
This company is 100% about developing apps for school information. They build completely customized apps—iOS, Android, and web-based—for schools and districts across the country. These apps allow schools to easily share documents, maps, contacts, student assignments, weather updates, calendars, photos, and even videos of what’s going on in school. Every app is tailored to meet the individual school’s needs!
http://www.efundsforschools.com/k12-payment-solutions/
Have some e-Fun while using e-Funds! All joking aside, it really does make managing payments super-easy and fun. E-Funds allows schools to easily process cash, checks, and credit cards for fundraising, at family events, for spiritwear purchases, and really anytime you need to collect funds from your community!
Paper lists are so last year (or 5 years ago)! With TeacherLists, you can transform those old paper supply lists, teacher wish lists, and more into digital lists that are accessible 24/7 from any device. Simply upload your lists (in any format) to make them available on your school’s website, your parent portal, social media channels, and even at back-to-school retailers. TeacherLists even has a button to share right through Remind! Lists can be changed in real time, and updating them from year to year is simple and quick (just click!)—no need to reinvent the wheel.
They say a video is worth a million words! Show off what you’re up to at school with Animoto, a super cool school tech tool that allows you to visually tell your school’s story. Transform pictures from the pep rally, videos from the talent show, and clips from the school play into multimedia presentations with music and effects.
Tired of the backpack express? We are, too! Peachjar eliminates the need to print and send home flyer after flyer after flyer! It’s a digital flyer management system that makes it easy for school districts to post and send e-flyers to parents or display any school flyer as a thumbnail on a website.
https://www.smore.com/educators
Want your communications to families to look like a million bucks? Not a problem! You can use Smore to create event flyers and newsletters for students or parents. With custom backgrounds, automatic translation, and mobile viewing options, your newsletters can be exactly what you want them to be. We’ll take s’more of that!
PTO Today serves school parent groups, but we’re going to let you in on a secret—it also has tons of topic resources that will help increase parent engagement at your school. While PTOs and PTAs use this advice, so can schools. There’s tons of info on involvement, fundraising, school events, and more. Let’s face it, if you get parents interested and involved, that means you have their attention. And having their attention is quite possibly the key to success for any school.
https://www.blackboard.com/industries/k-12
If you like the all-in-one approach, then Blackboard is for you. One of the leaders in EdTech, Blackboard provides technology, tools, and support to meet the specific needs of each school partner to help engage and communicate with parents, students, and the community at large.
Bring the power to the people! Harnessing the power of technology, PowerSchool’s Student Information System helps schools manage instruction, assessment, attendance, registration, finance, and more. From the front office, back office, home, or classroom, they can help schools get the message across. Pretty powerful stuff!
More Highly-Rated Apps for Educators
Many teachers and administrators had a crash course in educational technology during the 2020-21 pandemic school year, learning the hard way which tools worked for them and which created more tech troubles. Because evaluating educational apps can be an overwhelming and time-consuming task, we gathered up these recommendations from experts.
15 Free Must Have iPad Apps for Teachers and School Administrators by eLearning Industry covers elementary education apps to reinforce what students have learned in class.
Digital Trends shares The Best Apps for Teachers and Educators, including tools for classroom management and grading.
Scholastic recommends 50 Fab Apps for Teachers. The list includes smartphone and tablet apps for PreK-8th grade teachers, with apps for language arts, math and science, lesson planning, and more.
This list of Best Apps for Schools 2021: For Teacher and Students by the Educational App Store includes apps for teachers and students, from educational games to tools that work with interactive whiteboards.
Is your school or district using a tech tool that you think should be on our list? Share it with us in the comments below!
Have questions for the TeacherLists team? Email us at tlsupport@teacherlists.com, call us at 800-644-3561, ext. 6, or chat with us during normal business hours!
