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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 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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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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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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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 Free plans include unlimited creations and views as well as access to free graphic resources and templates. Student plans are priced at $15/year and add offline viewing, PDF and JPEG downloads, and 10 premium templates per year. Edu Pro plans are $59.90/year and add PowerPoint imports, unlimited premium templates, folders, privacy controls, and more. Master plans are $249.90/year and add training as well as personalization, monitoring, and transfers of creations.

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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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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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