App Review

Here are some apps I have been exploring lately in the teaching world. 

1. Pixton

To use Pixton, you must create an account online first. The good news is that it’s free. The app has different capabilities and settings depending on how you are planning to use it, so when you sign up, you choose to create an account that fits your needs. You can sign up as a teacher and do a free 30-day trial before you have to pay, although they have a “for fun” version as well that is always free. I signed up with a free “for fun” account, just so I could get a feel for how the app works. The app itself is free to download no matter what version you select. Here is the link to download Pixton in the Apple Store.

Essentially, Pixton is comic strip creating app that allows you to choose from hundreds of possible backgrounds and scenes and thousands of alterable details you can customize to create characters and scenes. If you think about “literacy” as kind of a broader concept, comic strips are a great tool. They offer another means of expression for students and also help widen the scope of accepted genres in the academic setting.

At first, using Pixton can almost be a little overwhelming, just because of the sheer number of options, to know where to begin. I would recommend giving students a tutorial of the app and its controls before setting them loose to work, and also making sure they have a pretty directional and focused plan of what they want to create before they get started, unless you are able to provide them with a lot of time to explore and play around and be creative.

2. Synonyms Quiz + Thesaurus & Dictionary

Synonyms Quiz is a free app that does not require you to sign up for an account. It seems pretty no-strings-attached. In some ways this is good, because it’s not complicated for students to just download and use the app, but the downside is that there is little to no personalization involved in using it. Here is the link to download it from the Apple Store.

Synonyms Quiz is exactly what it sounds like from the app’s title. It offers quizzes that students can take to practice identifying synonyms for different vocabulary words. Some are pretty easy (like identifying “clever” as a synonym of “smart”) but others are pretty advanced. There is also a version of the game that operates under a timer, and you can only answer as many questions as you can complete under the time constraint. The app keeps track of your stats as a player, which has some potential for some friendly classroom competition. It also has a button on the home screen that allows students to search for words and find definitions and synonyms, like an online dictionary/thesaurus.

Because it’s not possible to program your own vocabulary words and synonyms into the app, I think it would better serve as sort of an “extra” activity or a game that students can play when they finish their regular work, or maybe after they finish taking a test or quiz. It’s more for extra practice building vocabulary skills in general, but it would not be possible to focus it enough to really make it a part of the regular classroom curriculum.

3. Grammar Up

Grammar Up is also a free app, and its functions are pretty simple, but it is a little bit easier to predict in terms of what kinds of questions students will be asked, which makes it a little more practical I think than the previous app I wrote about (Synonyms Quiz). You do not need an account in order to use the app, so students could easily download the app and use it as needed. Follow the link here to download Grammar Up on the Apple Store.

This app has several grammar-related categories, such as adjectives, causative verbs, conjunctions, conditionals, and more, and it allows you to select a category and then take a 10-question multiple choice practice test. I think this is probably best used by the teacher as a recommendation to give students for an app they can use to practice studying before a grammar test, so they can quiz themselves or their friends.

It is convenient that the app is free and does not require any setup, and you could encourage students to keep track of categories they struggle with most to know what to study. Or, to kind of step away from the idea of test review, you could encourage students to use the quizzes on certain categories that they need to improve in for their narrative writing.