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10 Best Arts Tools for High School

From performing arts to visual arts, high school art students learn to be critics, designers, producers, and performers who advance their skills and refine their craft. High school is also a perfect time for arts students to explore different mediums and modes of expression while learning to communicate concepts and meaning. To inspire your students and fuel their creative drive, we've handpicked this collection of best-in-class tools that will provide project ideas and inspiration, peer communities for critique and feedback, and creative tools for everything from music to industrial design.

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ArtsEdge

Impressive cross-curricular resource helps put the A in STEAM

Bottom line: A useful and engaging resource for integrating the arts into a variety of other subject areas.

Grades: K–12 Price: Free

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GarageBand

Amazingly powerful audio workstation unleashes creativity

Bottom line: There's exceptional functionality in this solid, all-inclusive audio workstation that's fantastic for high-quality, anytime, and anywhere audio recording and sharing.

Grades: 3–12 Price: Free 32 GB or larger iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 10 or later, or recently purchased Mac laptops/desktops, already have installed installed.

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Canva - Photo Editor & Design

Create snazzy designs in seconds with flexible, cloud-based tool

Bottom line: A flexible, accessible way to get kids -- especially design novices -- creating digitally in your classroom if you have stable internet and time to get students set up to be successful.

Grades: 4–12 Price: Free

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Autodesk Design Academy

Outstanding project-based tutorials for popular engineering software

Bottom line: The projects found here are a great way to teach and learn digital design; all are truly fantastic (and free!), with everything you need ready to go.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free Free with .edu email account

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Google Arts & Culture

Excellent curation and an unmatched art collection invite exploration

Bottom line: A one-stop shop for a vast amount of compellingly curated and contextualized art, but it's lacking educator supports.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free

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Autodesk Sketchbook

Impressive creation tool for teens serious about art

Bottom line: Gives students easy access to professional tools for creating digital art.

Grades: 7–12 Price: Free to try While the app is free to try, the full Pro version is $4.99. This version adds a host of creative options from brush types to colors to more layers. There's also a $29.99 per year Sketchbook subscription that unlocks the Pro version across all platforms.

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Adobe Spark

Super-flexible design tool for crafting fab images, videos, and sites

Bottom line: This free, one-stop shop for creating sleek graphics, web stories, and animated videos is incredibly easy to use and challenges students to think critically about visual presentation.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free

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Flat

Terrific composition tool empowers budding musicians to create, share

Bottom line: An excellent tool for writing and sharing musical creations.

Grades: 7–12 Price: Free to try, Paid The regular version is $4.90 per month, but educators can buy licenses for $1.50 each (whether the license is for a student or teacher). License packs begin at 10 for $15.

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Vidcode

Cool coding tool tuned to teen girls' passions aids creativity

Bottom line: Learn-to-code programs for youths often too narrowly define what can be done with code; Vidcode expands the options, helping girls see code's value in culture and express themselves.

Grades: 8–12 Price: Free, Paid Free introductory projects; contact for pricing for intermediate and advanced projects/lessons as well as training and support resources.

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Snapseed

Extremely powerful photo editor will equally delight pros, amateurs

Bottom line: It successfully walks the fine line of photo-editing features, offering satisfying experiences for those making quick edits and those crafting perfect images.

Grades: 9–12 Price: Free

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10 Best Arts Tools for High School

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