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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.

Top Picks

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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

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Adobe Spark

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

Bottom line: This 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, Free to try

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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

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Film It

A well-rounded, entertaining, hands-on intro to filmmaking

Bottom line: Chock-full of useful advice and hands-on activities that give students a realistic (and really fun!) overview of the movie-making process.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free

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Genially

Create professional-looking media with an abundant library of templates

Bottom line: It's a treasure trove of well-designed templates and features that encourage creativity and collaboration, but expect some growing pains.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Paid

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Google Arts & Culture

Well-curated art and history site inspires curious learning

Bottom line: A beautifully presented one-stop shop for compellingly curated and contextualized art, history, and culture resources, 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

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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

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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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