Table of Contents
We’ve compiled an extensive list of free teaching tools that will take your classroom to the next level and transform passive learning into active exploration. For the sake of convenience, we have grouped the tools carefully. Check out this listicle and experiment with the tools for educators to find out which ones work best in your local context.
Best Free Teaching Tools For Teachers
Tools for Building Interactive Lessons
This is a category of dynamic and interactive educational tools that make learning engaging for the students. They give life to your lessons with sound, videos, infographics, assessments, quizzes, and animation.
1. iSpring Free
iSpring Free is a lightweight eLearning authoring tool for teachers that allows you to turn boring PowerPoint presentations into mobile-compatible online courses with quizzes. The main advantage of the tool is its simplicity. Its intuitive interface enables any novice course developer to create an unlimited number of courses quickly and easily.
2. Kahoot
Kahoot is a game-based learning platform that lets you create fun learning games. You can make quizzes on any topic and in any language, and customize those quizzes with videos, diagrams, and images. Students participate in “kahoots” (games) by logging the game codes on their device or application.
3. Edpuzzle
With Edpuzzle, you can create interactive video lessons with embedded audio notes, assessments, and quizzes. Its analytics tool enables you to track how students are watching your videos and if they understand the content.
4. Starfall
Starfall is an online service that was initially designed to teach children to read. Its phonics-based learning model supports online games and print series, which can be downloaded for use at home and in the classroom. Now, it also features animated songs, movies, and mathematics activities for Pre-K, Kindergarten, and Grades 1 to 3.
5. CommonLit
CommonLit is a database of literary instructional materials that you can use to develop lessons. You can choose a lesson from the digital library, share it with your students, assign them text-based questions, and analyze their performance.
6. Quill
Quill is a platform that has a set of tools for teaching writing, vocabulary, and grammar and includes over 400 exercises. You can guide your students to learn by reconstructing sentences, proofreading passages, writing new passages, and more.
7. Plickers
Plickers is a card activity that lets you poll your class, without the need for student devices. You just need to give each student a card (a “paper clicker”) and use your Android smartphone or tablet to scan them to do instant checks for understanding, exit tickets, and impromptu polls.
8. Powertalk
Powertalk is a presentation enhancement tool that automatically speaks your PowerPoint slides. When compared to other common ‘text-to-speech’ programs, Powertalk can speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.
9. JeopardyLabs
JeopardyLabs is an online service that enables you to build Jeopardy games without PowerPoint, by using a simple editor. You can also choose from ready-made games created by the platform users on such subjects as foods, cities, countries, books, and hygiene.
10. Edgames
Edgames is an edutainment tool that provides educational activities, including board games, scrambled word games, sports-based games, and cards. You can help your students learn and understand personal hygiene, nutrition, current affairs, and many other things through playing games.
Teaching Tools for Classroom Management
A teacher’s tasks include planning lessons, marking attendance, assigning homework, and grading. This is where you can benefit from classroom management tools – they can help you streamline all these processes and improve communication and the learning process.
11. Edmodo
Edmodo is software that enables you to bring your classroom online. It provides a number of online tools for teachers that allow the sharing of class materials, assigning homework, and displaying students’ grades. You can also join students into learning groups, exchange messages with students and parents, and manage calendar events.
12. ClassDojo
ClassDojo is a classroom management tool that enables schools to bring parents, teachers, school administrators, and students into classroom communities so they can track and enhance classroom behavior in real-time.
13. Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a free educational technology tool that allows you to create an online classroom, invite your students, and assign homework. You can also discuss assignments with your students online and track their progress.
14. Class123
Class123 is a classroom management platform that contains a chalkboard, seating chart, timer, random name picker, and many other tools necessary for efficient class management. You can also keep track of students’ attendance and behavior, share stories and photos on boards, and communicate via private messages.
15. Flubaroo
Flubaroo is a Google Spreadsheets Add-on designed for you to quickly create multiple-choice and fill-in assignments, grade and analyze online student performance, share scores with students, and assign stickers and badges on completed tasks.
16. Show My Homework
Show My Homework is free technology software for teachers that helps them make the setting, administering, and monitoring of homework much easier. Teachers can quickly assign homework and record student submissions and grades on the go with its mobile app.
Lesson Planning Tools
Planning lessons is one of the core parts of a teacher’s work. And it’s not easy. However, there are some tools and resources that can make lesson planning a bit more convenient and effective. Check out the best examples of teaching tools that let you plan lessons for free.
17. Planboard
Planboard is a teaching tool for lesson planning. Teachers can write their lesson plans into the app on their iPhone, iPad, or Android, and can add files, photos, and videos, and view them during class. Plans can be edited, archived, and shared with colleagues.
18. PlanbookEdu
PlanbookEdu is one of the best free online teaching tools that lets you plan your lessons. It functions like a printed book but can be filled in with texts online. With this tool, teachers can create, share, and print their lesson plans. The free version doesn’t let you attach images and files to your plans.
19. Evernote
Evernote wasn’t designed specifically for teachers, yet its free version is one of the best tools for daily lesson planning. You can collect ideas, articles, images, to-do lists, and more in a single place and access them anytime. Teachers can also use this tool for personal development and organizing their life.
20. LearnZillion
LearnZillion doesn’t let teachers create their own lesson plans, it’s a website that offers teachers a free library of interactive math and language arts lessons, as well as some other educational resources, like videos, quizzes, and assignments. There is learning content for different grade levels. All lessons are Common Core aligned.
21. ReadWriteThink
ReadWriteThink also isn’t software but a collection of free lessons and resources developed by the International Reading Association and The National Council of Teachers of English. A great advantage of this website is that all lesson plans are engaging, research based, and align with standards. You can browse lessons by grade level (K-2, 3-5, 6-8) and by areas of literacy practice: learning through language, learning language, and learning about language.
Tests and Exams Makers
Assessing students’ knowledge in online learning seems to be more difficult than during in-person sessions of traditional education. But with the right tool, you’ll see that it is actually even easier and even much more engaging for students and teachers.
22. Free Quiz Maker
Free Quiz Maker is an educational tool that lets teachers build interactive tests and exams from 3 question types: multiple-choice, multiple response, and short answer questions. You can also set scoring parameters, the number of attempts allowed, and time limits. The ready-made quizzes can be uploaded to any LMS, including Moodle and Blackboard. The tool also lets you create surveys.
23. SpellQuiz
SpellQuiz is another online service that is mainly focused on helping kids and adults to learn phonics. The platform contains English spelling lessons for individuals from Grade 1 to Adult, as well as fun quizzes and word games.
24. Quizzizz
Quizzizz is a web-based assessment tool that allows you to present quizzes on science, social sciences, computer science, technical education, and art to students as a timed test or homework with a specified deadline.
25. FreeOnlineSurveys
FreeOnlineSurveys is a tool for building online tests, surveys, and forms. You can create quizzes using the drag-and-drop builder and 22 question types and fields, share them with your students and staff members, and analyze responses with its data reporting tool right from your mobile devices.
Plagiarism Checkers
If you need to check your students’ essays and theses for plagiarism, you can do this online for free using one of the tools listed below.
26. Check Plagiarism
Check Plagiarism is an easy-to-use plagiarism checking website utilized by teachers and students. You just need to paste text or upload text files to check them for plagiarism. With a free account, you can get detailed reports that include exact matches and sources. However, there’s a limit of 200 free plagiarism queries – if you’re going to use the tool for a long time, you might need a paid subscription.
27. Dupli Checker
Dupli Checker is one of the educational tools that let you check texts for plagiarism. Without a free account, you can check only one text a day. And if you create one, you still have a limit of 1,000 words per search. To check larger texts, you’ll need a paid account. The website supports many formats, including Microsoft Word and PDF documents.
28. PapersOwl
PapersOwl is primarily a website that offers services, such as essay writing and thesis writing, that some students use to cheat. However, this platform also has a free tool for checking texts for plagiarism that teachers can use for free. You can either paste texts in or upload files.
29. Plagiarism Detector
Plagiarism Detector is a great tool for educators who need to check texts written not only in English, but also in French, Italian, German, and other languages. A free account lets you paste texts of up to 1,000 words and there’s no need to create a free account for that.
30. QueText
QueText has one of the most intuitive and clean interfaces, which makes it much more pleasant and convenient to use when checking texts for plagiarism. The tool generates pretty insightful reports, thus making sure you know exactly what parts of texts students copied and from where. However, a free account allows only up to 2,500 words a month, so to use the tool often, you’ll need a paid plan.
Content Sources for Teachers
With the enormous amount of educational digital content on the web, teachers can make their lessons even more useful and engaging. However, it is crucial to find trustworthy websites that provide valuable content. Here are a few sources of digital content you might find helpful in your teaching practice.
31. Ted-Ed
Ted-Ed is a platform that enables you to create educational lessons. You can build a lesson around video content and create assignments to assess how well students understand the material. You can also use ready-made videos from the specially curated “TED-Ed Originals” section that features lessons made by educators around the world.
32. YouTube Teachers
YouTube Teachers is a YouTube channel that allows you to leverage educational videos to inspire and engage your students. It contains over 400 video playlists created by leading organizations and industry experts such as the Khan Academy, Ted-Ed, and PBS.
33. YouTube Edu
YouTube Edu is another educational YouTube channel that provides extensive playlists on various subjects, from physics and chemistry to filmmaking and public speaking.
34. Ted Talks
Ted Talks are videos from industry experts and innovators on science, tech, business, and education subtitled in over 100 languages. You can integrate Ted Talks into your lessons to spark creativity and innovation in the minds of your students.
35. TeacherTube
TeacherTube is a free resource for teachers where they can share instructional videos and materials. You can upload your video tutorials and attach learning activities, assessments, and lesson notes to your videos. You can also browse other teachers’ content and connect with educators with similar interests.
36. SchoolTube
SchoolTube is a K-12 free video hosting platform that helps you integrate video content relating to subjects or concepts into your lessons without YouTube. The Free plan provides you with unlimited video hosting, video and audio creation apps, unlimited shareable playlists, automatic closed captioning, and a video quiz app.
37. Google Books
Google Books is a service from Google Inc. that provides access to unlimited books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text, and stored in its digital database. You can save, bookmark, or download books relating to the concepts you want to teach in class.
38. Readworks
Readworks helps students from elementary school to high school build their background knowledge and enhance their literacy skills. As a teacher, you can create reading groups based on their abilities and interests, monitor reading comprehension, and assign extra-credit tasks for students as they complete reading assignments.
39. Bibsonomy
Bibsonomy is an easy-to-use tool that helps you manage your publications and bookmarks, collaborate with your colleagues, and find new interesting materials for your research. You can tag publication entries and bookmarks to facilitate information searches.
40. Project Gutenberg
Gutenberg is a digital library with over 60,000 free e-books that you can download or read online. Here you’ll find the world’s great literature, with a focus on older works in the public domain.
41. Gapminder
Gapminder is a fact tank of animated statistics. The platform provides posters, interactive presentations, graphs, and handouts on global facts that can supplement instructional classroom materials.
Also read: → Best Interactive Tools for Presentations
Audio-Visual Design Tools
Audio-visual content is an effective asset for achieving your teaching-learning objectives. If you want to save time creating graphics, animation, or videos, or don’t have the requisite skills to work on advanced photo and video editing platforms like CorelDRAW and Photoshop, leverage easy-to-use tools from the list. The exciting thing is you can access them all for free.
42. Pixlr
Pixlr is a browser photo-editing tool that provides you with full control over your images. You can add filters, borders, and perform basic image editing by using over 3000 overlays, 5,000 decorative texts, and 7,000 icons.
43. Animoto
Animoto is an online video editor that enables you to convert photos and videos into slideshows. You just need to drag and drop your images and video clips into pre-built templates to create stunning slideshows that can be used as visual aids for classroom learning.
44. Pic-Lits
Pic-Lits is an eLearning literacy website that uses writing and photography to inspire and spark creative writing. You can create so-called “pic-lits” that are combinations of words placed on a photograph to render some story or the meaning of the picture and share them on your interactive whiteboard during a grammar or writing lesson.
45. Gickr
Gickr is a free online tool that lets you instantly create animated GIFs. You just need to upload your pictures or grab images from Flickr to make flashy slideshows, cartoons, or banners.
46. Smilebox
Smilebox is a web app that enables you to create slideshows, collages, greetings, invitations, photo albums, and scrapbooks. For example, as a teacher, you can make newsletters for your students, parent letters, certificates, and school photo albums and share them online.
47. Pixton
Pixton is a cartoon creation platform that can help you guide your students on creating comic strips to represent their understanding of concepts. It has numerous characters, different sets of comic strip layouts, and background options your students can use to design comics and storyboards.
48. Chartsbin
Chartsbin is a data visualization app used by teachers to introduce various topics with infographics. You can also leverage the tool to guide your students on creating infographics from the materials they have learned to show their mastery of the subject.
49. Tableau Public
Tableau Public is a free data visualization platform that enables you to create interactive graphs, stunning maps, and live dashboards in minutes. You can use it to manage in-class exercises and homework assignments and connect with a vibrant community of data enthusiasts.
50. Roxio Photoshow Maker
Roxio Photoshow Maker is an online tool that allows you to combine images, video clips, and soundtracks to create slideshow stories. You can make them look even more professional and engaging by adding captions, effects, and transitions.
51. Ezvid Wikimaker
Ezvid Wikimaker is a free video creator powered by voice synthesis. It was initially designed to allow researchers and journalists to turn text into video wikis. But you can create video tutorials with images and video clips. You don’t even need to record a voiceover – when you add text, it will be automatically transformed into narration.
52. Free Cam
Free Cam provides a full set of features for creating professional video lessons and eLearning presentations. You can easily record screencasts, edit recorded videos, and upload to YouTube or email them to your students.
53. MakeBeliefsComix
MakeBeliefsComix is an in-browser comic creator that provides you with multiple ways to use it in a classroom environment. For example, you can have your students create comic strips to practice new vocabulary, develop conversation skills, or inspire creative writing.
54. Vocaroo
Vocaroo is an online tool that helps record, send, and download your voice notes. You can use it for podcasting, broadcasting, digital storytelling, or giving feedback. Recordings are available for a few months (usually three months).
Communication and Collaboration Tools
Communication and collaboration are important aspects of both teaching and learning. We’ve compiled a list of tools that will help you make these processes even easier and more efficient. Here you’ll find teaching communities, tools for sharing educational resources and tips, and apps for conducting online discussions.
55. Flipgrid
Flipgrid is an online service that provides a simple, free, and accessible video discussion experience for Pre-K to PhD educators, learners, and families. You can create a discussion topic and share it with your learning community. In response, learners will record and share their videos with you and your team.
56. Goboard
Goboard is an online collaborative tool that combines video conferencing with an interactive canvas. It is designed to help students collaborate one-on-one on virtually any topic. Goboard features a digital blackboard, so users can share their notes, pictures, and calculations.
57. Teacheroo
Teacheroo is the only global social network designed specifically for teachers. You can post your resources and educational tips, comment, like, repost other teachers’ materials, and build professional connections.
58. Loop
Loop enables you to gather feedback from your students in real-time. You can type in your questions or pick ones from a library of best practice questions. Students will receive notifications and can reply instantly.
59. Teach Learn Lead
Teach Learn Lead is a community dedicated to supporting, encouraging, and connecting new teachers as they navigate their early careers in the classroom. It includes the global education library that is a curated epicenter of K-20 research and professional development resources.
60. Google Docs
Google Docs is a free word processor included as part of a Google Docs suite within the Google Drive service. It enables you to create and edit your own documents, check your students’ writings, and add comments to provide them with feedback.
61. Bloomz
Bloomz is an interactive app that enables teachers and schools to share classroom updates, events, and photos with parents securely. You can send an alert notification of the next parent-teacher meeting to emails and smartphones with a single click.
Conclusion
We hope you found this helpful. If you can think of other free teaching tools that can help improve the learning experience in the classroom, please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
