How to address violence in the news with your kids.
TOP PICKS | 35 TOOLS
Best Student-Collaboration Tools
Top Picks
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Drawp for School
Collaboration tool makes digital sharing easy
Bottom line: This handy tool encourages collaboration and creative expression, and it makes sharing assignments and giving feedback a snap for teachers.

Makers Empire
Stellar 3D design hub promotes innovation, collaboration, and creation
Bottom line: This is a great design and creation tool that teachers and students can use to be innovative and share ideas with a vibrant community of makers.

Breakout EDU
Physical and digital puzzle games epitomize collaborative learning
Bottom line: Students will reap multiple benefits if teachers invest the time in preparing Breakout EDU games.

Minecraft: Education Edition
Stellar collaboration tools, controls make Minecraft classroom-ready
Bottom line: An excellent tool to engage students in learning, collaboration, and critical thinking is now more accessible than ever to teachers.

MURAL
Multifaceted interactive whiteboard promotes collaboration
Bottom line: MURAL facilitates lesson presentation and group project collaboration from anywhere by making idea sharing a simple, visual process.

Popplet
Minimalist mind mapping to organize ideas
Bottom line: Easy-to-use idea organizer can help with simple mind mapping.

School Friendzy
Differentiate and collaborate with math-focused organizational tool
Bottom line: An effective way to organize and differentiate assignments, particularly for math.

Skype
Live video communication has potential to open lots of doors
Bottom line: With a bit of work and a measure of patience, Skype can be an excellent classroom tool to expand students' horizons.

Actively Learn
Empowering reader invites students to read with purpose
Bottom line: Far beyond the average e-reader, this tool helps students connect with texts and each other while giving teachers useful insight into student thinking.

Google Drive
Nifty tool to create, collaborate, and sync files across devices
Bottom line: With its wide range of free productivity tools and slick file syncing, it's a level-setting tool.

Padlet
Create and collaborate via interactive, multimedia bulletin boards
Bottom line: Flexible interface gives kids opportunities to share content and knowledge in ways most comfortable for them.

GooseChase EDU
Digital scavenger hunts provide dynamic, fresh learning experiences
Bottom line: Students and teachers will enjoy the powerful learning of a modern scavenger hunt.

Minecraft
Spiraling sandbox of adventure and creation gets kids to dig deep
Bottom line: An irresistible and seemingly limitless incubator for 21st-century skills that, with a little guidance, can chart new courses for learning.

PenPal Schools
Give students global perspective with pen pal projects in any subject
Bottom line: This is a thoughtful, ready-to-go platform that facilitates authentic and safe cross-cultural collaboration.

StoriumEdu
Collaborative writing game inspires purposeful storytelling
Bottom line: With some planning and customization, this unique card game can motivate thoughtful and sustained creative writing in your classroom.

ePals
Kids learn together in well-rounded, collaborative global classroom
Bottom line: A safe communication system and excellent learning materials help create a global youth community.

Classcraft
Motivate students and monitor behavior with clever gamified platform
Bottom line: When used thoughtfully, this classroom gamification can encourage positive behavior and develop essential collaboration skills.

NowComment
Rich collaboration and close-reading tool invites deep, easy-to-assess discussions
Bottom line: Versatile, free discussion platform for teaching, peer review, assessment, and fostering active reading.

Project Pals
Unique project-based learning tool focuses on collaboration
Bottom line: Once teachers get their bearings, they'll find this to be a uniquely useful workflow and project management tool that can guide students through collaborative work.

Bit.ai
Collaborate in real time with media-rich, dynamic documents
Bottom line: Core collaboration gets cooler with add-ons, integrations, and slick design.

CueThink
Social approach to problem-solving promotes deep math learning
Bottom line: An innovative, community-based platform that helps students plan, strategize, and collaborate.

Microsoft Teams
Collaborative LMS platform helps manage classes, groups, and projects
Bottom line: Educators will likely find that the wide variety of features Teams offers is worth the time it takes to learn how to use it.

Parlay
Comprehensive discussion platform develops critical-thinking skills
Bottom line: A great tool in any subject or topic for teachers looking to make discussion a central part of their classroom.

Google Hangouts
Communication, learning, and fun converge nicely in Google's slick platform
Bottom line: It runs like a dream, works on all devices, and can be used in so many ways to enhance interactive learning.

Grapevine
Asynchronous videos allow users to quickly share and comment on ideas
Bottom line: This is a simple platform with a useful premise, and with some further development, it has a promising future.

Peergrade
Feedback tool with great rubrics might work best for older students
Bottom line: With appropriate teacher support, this could be a powerful way to help teach your students about giving and receiving critical feedback.

YO Teach!
Backchannel tool offers interactive polls, drawing, messages, and more
Bottom line: Quick setup and multimodal features make this a great fit for a variety of carefully monitored classroom discussions.

Diigo
Social bookmarking encourages discovery, collaboration, and sharing
Bottom line: With a Diigo educator account, teachers and students have a safe space to organize, customize, and share Web content while learning about a variety of subjects.

Scratchwork
Intelligent collaborative whiteboard opens up new ways to create math
Bottom line: This flexible tool is great for student groups to upload, manipulate, and share math projects.

Tricider
Ask questions, brainstorm ideas with responsive voting tool
Bottom line: Used creatively and wisely, Tricider can set the stage for some great classroom conversations.

Genius
Collaborative tool lets users annotate songs, literature, web content
Bottom line: Students can collaboratively engage in the process of annotation and analysis with various texts -- both within the forum and on the web.

Wakelet
Tell stories, organize or remix content via digital curation platform
Bottom line: Offers an intuitive way to curate media and make sense of topics by drawing from different sources, but teachers will want to carefully monitor classroom use.

Notion
Cool, customizable tool turns notebooks into workspaces
Bottom line: With some scaffolding, this could be a great way to capture, organize, and share info without juggling a class site, notebook, to-do list, and more.

Siftr
Collect images in the field with simple, collaborative app
Bottom line: An easy way to crowdsource location-based data.

Piazza
Advanced Q&A tool compels collaboration, higher-order thinking
Bottom line: Encourage collaborative, student-centered learning with this useful platform, but make sure it's the right fit for your students.