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ClassDojo for classroom management. I first used it when I taught elementary school but the high school juniors I currently teach for ESL are unashamedly in touch with their inner children. If it ain't broke...Its available on iOS and Google play.

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Filter 319 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how ClassDojo works for a business like yours.

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I stumbled across Epic school while doing some research for this assignment. It is free for educators and geared toward elementary school students, (perfect for my actual kids not my students). I plan to use it for reading comprehension.  Available on iOS and Android.

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Parent reviews for Epic! - Kids' Books and Videos | Common Sense Media

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Read Epic! - Kids' Books and Videos reviews from parents on Common Sense Media. Become a member to write your own review.

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I particularly dig Kahoot as a formative assessment tool in online classes. The app works across multiple platforms.

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Kahoot!, a student-response tool for all platforms, allows teachers to run game-like quizzes and build presentations with embedded quizzes. Teachers can either create their own quizzes or find, use, and/or remix public quizzes. Kahoots can be presented live or assigned for self-paced learning. During live Kahoots, questions with answer choices get projected onto a classroom screen while students submit responses using an internet-connected device (computer, tablet, or phone). Questions and polls can contain images and video to help further appeal to all learners. For live Kahoots, teachers can choose between Classic mode and Team mode. The Team mode allows groups of students to cooperate with each other and compete against other teams. Assigned Challenges can be completed asynchronously, but students still earn points for their quick responses and compete against their classmates; the leaderboard appears after all participants have responded. Playing a game of Kahoot! doesn't involve student accounts, only a game PIN from the main screen and a gameplay name for each participant.

With a free account, created quizzes can be multiple choice or true and false, and creators can adjust the time limit and point value for each question. Premium accounts add more options, including multi-select options for quizzes.
Full Disclosure: Common Sense Education is a Kahoot! Academy partner; however, our initial rating and review of Kahoot! was completed prior to this partnership. We also maintain our editorial independence, and don't allow this relationship to impact any updates to this rating or review.

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Kahoot! Review for Teachers | Common Sense Education

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Kahoot!, a student-response tool for all platforms, allows teachers to run game-like quizzes and build presentations with embedded quizzes. Teachers can either create their own quizzes or find, use, and/or remix public quizzes. Kahoots can be presented live or assigned for self-paced learning.

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Subject Specific Tools - Languages/All Grades Subjects

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Subject Specific Tools - Languages/All Grades Subjects

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Our school periodically enforces social distancing/teach from home requirements. When such things happen we use Zoom to conduct lessons. It is available across platforms as a standalone app or in browser. It can be used to facilitate online learning. The user interface can be a little fiddly at times but I have escaped Zoom-bombing so far.

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With an enormous number of people social distancing as the world tries to curb the spread of COVID-19, Zoom Meetings (free, with paid plans starting at $14.99 per month per host) has zoomed into focus as a top choice among video conferencing tools. You can make video calls while working from home and use it for other kinds of virtual get-togethers. I have a weekly Zoom happy hour with friends, for example. My niece had a show-and-tell call with her classmates not long ago. On Twitter, some have even mentioned attending funerals remotely using Zoom. The app has certainly caught on. A representative for Zoom said via email that in December 2019, Zoom saw an average of 10 million daily meeting participants. In March 2020, that number was 200 million.

PCMag believes that Zoom is among the best video calling apps, provided new users take a few moments to acquaint themselves with the tool's features. It remains an Editors' Choice, although we have bumped the score down by a half point since we last updated this review in light of recent privacy and security concerns. Zoom Meetings is a go-to choice for work-related meetings due to its stability and reliability. It can be a great option for personal use. For government and healthcare use, be sure to look closely at Zoom's offerings for those specific sectors.

Recent Concerns

With increased use comes increased scrutiny on security, as well as increased attempts at exploitation. Under these conditions, some flaws and gaffes have come to light, though the company has been quick to issue clarifications and fixes, to its credit.

The company had said it used end-to-end encryption, but had to clarify that claim. End-to-end encryption is used for calls between people using Zoom apps or Zoom Room, provided no one is recording the call (there is an option to record). End-to-end encryption is not available for Zoom via other devices, such as dialing into the audio of a Zoom call using a telephone. It would be impossible for Zoom to encrypt the audio through every leg of such a journey, as the company has now explained.

Another issue was related to encryption keys. Zoom owns many servers, some of which are located in China. The China-based servers had been generating encryption keys that were given to users in other countries, which is considered a security risk. Again, the company quickly addressed the issue and gave a nuanced account of what was happening and how the company had fixed the problem. Additionally, users can now control which countries their video conferences routed through.

In California and New York, Zoom may face legal challenges after sharing data about user activity with Facebook without the user's consent. As with the other issues, the company was quick to acknowledge the problem and make appropriate changes.

Finally, there were cases of people hijacking in-progress meetings with inappropriate content. This Zoom-bombing, as it's now called, seems to have occurred mostly due to meeting hosts not knowing that they would have to enable certain features to better protect their calls. Again, Zoom addressed the problem, quickly making changes to its default settings.

Background on Zoom

Zoom Meetings' story began in 2011 when the market for video conferencing software was crowded. It still is. There was no shortage of choices for how you could make a video call to your friends or colleagues, but the problem was that none of the services held up well. Not a one! Glitchy video, stalling audio, and calls that wouldn't connect left people frustrated. Into this mucked-up space waltzed Zoom Video Communications (hereafter referred to as simply "Zoom"), a new company focused on making video calls smoother and more reliable.

Flash forward to today: San Jose, California-based Zoom has become a darling in the tech industry-with a successful initial public offering (IPO) announced in April 2019 to match-because it has made good on its promise: to solve video calls. The rest of the world has gotten wind of its strong reputation, albeit with more mixed results as of late.

Zoom Meetings, Zoom's core product, impresses for other reasons, too. It has a fantastic feature set that includes, for example, high definition (HD) video and audio and the ability to get typed transcripts of calls that you record as videos (that last one is reserved for paying members only). It considers the needs of people who join calls only occasionally as well as remote teams who connect daily.

Anyone can use Zoom Meetings for free. Small businesses can buy reasonably priced plans that beef up the features (which, as stated earlier, start from $14.99 per month per host). Enterprises get plenty of components they can add, too, including a full Voice-over-IP (VoIP) service called Zoom Phone. In the breadth of what it offers, Zoom Meetings is similar to VoIP Editors' Choices Intermedia Unite and RingCentral Meetings. Still, Zoom's greatest hook remains its stability. Stability is tough to quantify and compare in video conferencing systems, but it's the foundation of Zoom Meetings, and it shows.

Getting Started With Zoom Meetings

If you're invited to a meeting in Zoom Meetings, you don't need to create an account. However, you will see a prompt to download the Zoom Meetings application. Downloading the app is optional as you can connect via a web app if you prefer, but the installed app does give you the optimized experience. Zoom Meetings has apps for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, and macOS.

If you want to use Zoom Meetings to host a meeting and invite others to join, then you need to create an account. You can authenticate with Facebook or Google, or sign up the old-fashioned way using an email address and password. When you create an account, you get a Personal Meeting ID (PMI), which you can use at any time to start a meeting. It's handy because you can send your PMI to participants without advance notice and get on the call quickly. You also have the ability to generate a unique meeting ID for each new meeting, which is preferable for security reasons, although there are times when using the PMI is much more convenient, especially among small groups that meet regularly.

You and the participants have the option to use the audio from your computer or mobile device for the call or dial in by using a standard rate or toll-free number where supported. There is not a toll-free number for the US or the UK, although there are toll-free numbers for dozens of other countries. Depending on your settings, participants may be able to join the audio portion of the call via Microsoft Skype for Business. It's also possible to set up a third-party audio system of your choosing and include instructions for dialing in the meeting invitation.

Zoom Meetings' free account is generous. You can host up to 100 people on a call for free and you can see as many as 49 people on an active call in a gallery-style view. Group calls for free users are limited to 40 minutes, but one-on-one calls can be as long as you need. There's no limit on how many meetings you can host. You get all of the most important features and tools, but you don't get reports, user management, or administrator controls. This tier also does not include any cloud space to store recorded calls. You can still record calls and store the final videos locally, however.

Settings differ between the locally installed app and the web app, and it's in your best interest to explore both. The settings are plentiful and worth revisiting from time to time as you become more acquainted with Zoom Meetings. For example, some options let you put attendees on hold, give remote control to another person while sharing content, and even have co-hosts on a call. That last one is limited to paying subscribers.

Setting Up a Zoom Meeting

To set up or start a meeting using Zoom, you have many options. As mentioned earlier, you can snag your Personal Meeting ID or unique link and send it to participants. They either click the link, or launch Zoom and enter the PMI, and you're off to the races.

Alternatively, you can schedule a meeting in advance from the Zoom app, which you can connect to your calendar so that all of your appointments end up on Google Calendar, iCal, or Microsoft Outlook. Choose a date, start time, end time, and time zone, then select a few other preferences, such as whether you'd like your video stream to activate automatically when you begin the call. If you give your participants the option to join by phone, you can choose which country dial-in numbers to display. A link to all the dial-in options appears on the invitation, too.

You can also password-protect your meetings. Since Zoom enhanced its security features, the unique meeting ID and password options are more prominent and selected by default. If you want to set a password for your PMI, you can do that, too.

With a Pro account, you can also require that attendees register; that is, fill out a short survey before they join so that you can collect information about them. It's a great option when you use Zoom Meeting for webinars. Zoom lets you enable a waiting room if you need one as well, which is a way to let participants join a meeting when they're ready, but only show an information screen if the host hasn't officially started yet. It's also a way for the host to control who can join the meeting, and when. I wish an agenda field were included when creating the invitation, but it isn't. You have to send your agenda to participants separately.

When you use the Schedule function in the Zoom app to arrange a call, the invited participants receive a calendar invite that includes the relevant information.

The Zoom Meetings Experience

I've used Zoom as both a participant and host frequently, starting around 2017, including for weekly meetings with a remotely distributed team. Joining a meeting takes little effort. It takes a few seconds if you already have the app installed and only about two extra clicks if you choose the web app instead.

When you connect as a guest, you either see a waiting room notice or you go directly to the meeting. If there's no waiting room, attendees can connect and chat with one another before the host arrives. Everyone can choose to enable or disable their video at any time. The host can disable any participant's microphone or camera at any time as well. If you join using your device audio, then you can mute and unmute by using buttons on the screen, or by using a shortcut if you enable it from your account preferences.

Hosts now see a new Security button on their toolbar during active calls. This button gives hosts quick access to important security features, such as locking the meeting, enabling a waiting room for any additional guests who try to join, and giving participants permission to share their screens, chat, and so forth.

Another helpful aspect of the interface is that you can see information about the connectivity of everyone on the call. For example, I was once on a call with a participant who was connecting over 4G. When her connection was stable, I saw a white set of bars indicating the strength of connectivity on her video. When the connection waned, the bars turned yellow and then red. I had instant and recognizable information that helped me know why her video was degrading.

As a participant, you can configure your screen to see relevant information panels and a chat box or not. You can also toggle a setting that puts your Zoom window into full-screen mode automatically when you join a call. Zoom lets you add more participants ad hoc. For example, if you're already on a call and realize that you need to invite more people, then you can send the Personal Meeting ID or unique link to them and they can pop in.

Two features I mentioned earlier are Virtual Backgrounds and Touch Up My Appearance. With the first one, you can make it look like you're in front of the San Francisco Bay's Golden Gate Bridge instead of in your messy living room. You can choose one of the backgrounds that Zoom provides or upload a custom image or video, such as a company logo. If you care less about your background and more about whether your face is camera-ready, then the face filter is probably more apt (for iOS, Windows, and Mac OS). When I use it, my wrinkles are all but gone, although so are my freckles.

Host controls in Zoom give you complete control over how you run your meeting. As mentioned earlier, you can have a co-host for meetings, which is a fantastic option for businesses that work in tandem with a PR firm. Desktop sharing works well and supports multiple monitors. The host can hand over desktop sharing controls to another participant, too. You can also set up a side-by-side screenshare of your desktop and someone else's, which is a handy way to literally compare notes. During any screen-sharing session, whether everyone's looking at an image or video, participants and the host can annotate and mark up whatever is on the screen. Zoom Meetings also has a collaborative whiteboard you can use to brainstorm or map out ideas.

One feature that's well suited to remote teams is breakout rooms. From a single call, you can divide participants into groups, send them into their own private video chat, and then bring everyone back together when you're ready. If you need to record a meeting so you can share it with people who couldn't attend, then you can save the file locally or use Zoom Meetings' included cloud storage (with its paid plans).

While Zoom has plentiful features, I've heard of some nice-to-have options in other apps that aren't in Zoom Meetings. For example, ClickMeeting, another Editors' Choice in our video conferencing software review roundup, lets you send automatic "thank you" emails to participants. You could do this same thing with Zoom Meetings but it would require a third-party automation app, such as IFTTTor Zapier, to carry it out. Zoom Meetings integrates with both those services.

Additional Zoom Meetings Features

Speaking of integration options, Zoom lets you connect to a fair, though not extensive, number of apps and online services. They include general business apps, such as Google Calendar and Workplace by Facebook, as well as apps for more specific business cases, such as the Salesforce Einstein Analytics Platform.

Zoom does offer Enterprise plans for $19.99 per month per host with a minimum of 50. For this type of account, you can have up to 1,000 people on any call. There's also a plan for small and medium businesses that also costs $19.99 per month per host, with a minimum of 10. This plan supports up to 300 participants per call.

If your organization is large, then you might consider some of Zoom's offerings beyond Zoom Meetings (which has so far been the focal point of this review). Zoom Room, for example, is another deployment of the Zoom software that lets organizations use it with cameras, microphones, projectors, and other hardware they may already have in place in conference rooms or other locations. Zoom also supports webinars, for when you want to broadcast a video live but you don't want attendees to be able to interrupt the host.

On the back end, admins for Zoom Room get reports of not only who joined various calls, but the status of all the hardware being used across all the locations.

I mentioned early that Zoom has faced scrutiny over its loose definition of end-to-end encryption, but that it has better clarified exactly how encryption works since then. I would encourage any organization that's considering using Zoom to read its PDF Security Guide thoroughly.

For use in the health sector, Zoom Meetings offers compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but you must sign up for a Zoom for Healthcare account, with plans starting at $200 per month per host. Similarly, government agencies interested in Zoom should look more closely at its Zoom for Government plan.

Help and support varies based on what type of plan you have. Free users can fill out an online form and await a reply. Pro plan subscribers can either submit an online form or text-chat live with a support team member. Zoom members with a Business, Education, or API plan have those same two options plus toll-free numbers for phone support in eight countries: Australia, France, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, and the US.

Helpful Pointers for New Zoom Users

With remote work and schooling suddenly way up due to efforts to stop the spread of novel coronavirus, new users are flocking to Zoom. The company knows this and has a page of resources for getting started, including links to training webinars. The app's strong reputation is certainly a draw. If you're new to Zoom but don't need a full webinar to learn to use it, a few quick facts may be helpful.

1. If you use Zoom for free, you can have one-on-one calls that last as long as you like. For calls with three or more people, you're limited to 40 minutes.

2. While demand for Zoom is exceptionally high due to coronavirus, the option to dial in by phone audio may be temporarily removed from free Basic accounts. You can still use computer audio to join. If you need to support dial-in by phone for your attendees, you may have to upgrade to a paid option.

3. There was a feature in Zoom, which is now gone, that allowed the host to see when an attendee navigated away from the Zoom window. It was sometimes framed as "your boss can spy on you." If you read other articles about Zoom and see a reference to this feature, don't worry because it is no longer relevant.

4. Default start times for meetings are usually on the hour or half hour, making traffic to video conferencing sites spike then. Starting a call at another time, like 10 after the hour, may help if you have any trouble getting your calls up and running.

5. Two features that people love in Zoom, especially when working from home, are 1) a face filter called Touch Up My Appearance that smooths skin tones and 2) Virtual Backgrounds that let you hide your actual background with an image or video. To learn how to use these features and others, see our list of Zoom tips.

Easily Recommended

It's undeniably easy to start using Zoom for video calls and it's just as easy to get hooked on it. In light of recent conditions, we recommend new users take a few minutes to explore the app and its settings before creating their first meeting. Putting in even 10 minutes to look over the app before using it is to your benefit. The service has much to explore regardless of whether you use it every so often to meet with clients or regularly to host all-hands meetings with a large team.

Zoom Meetings fully deserves consideration as a video conferencing app, and is a PCMag Editors' Choice for video conferencing along with Cisco Webex Meetings, Intermedia Unite, and Ringcentral Office.

Best Video Conferencing Software Picks

Further Reading

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With an enormous number of people social distancing as the world tries to curb the spread of COVID-19, Zoom Meetings (free, with paid plans starting at $14.99 per month per host) has zoomed into focus as a top choice among video conferencing tools.

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I am a newbie when it comes to FlipGrid but I come to it with the conviction of a convert. It is so intuitive & user friendly even a digital immigrant such as myself is comfortable using it. I have introduced it to my students and they seem keen. It works on most mobile platforms.

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The Flipgrid blog and Twitter feed are full of great ideas for using Flipgrid in your classroom. Or search the topic library, aka the Disco Library, to discover topics in any subject shared by teachers around the world. Use Flipgrid to further classroom conversations by assigning questions as homework assignments and then continue the conversation in class the next day. Ask students to weigh in on a critical current event for a social studies or civics class; use it in a math class to ask students to describe the process they used to solve a complex problem. You might also use Flipgrid as an opportunity for students to post reviews of books, movies, or television shows. Consider using a "grid" as a way to collect a range of students' responses on a single topic: Perhaps ask students at the end of a unit to reflect on what they've learned and what they'd recommend to other students.

Before you get started, don't forget to collect the consent form, available for download on the Flipgrid website.

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Flipgrid Review for Teachers | Common Sense Education

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The Flipgrid blog and Twitter feed are full of great ideas for using Flipgrid in your classroom. Or search the topic library, aka the Disco Library, to discover topics in any subject shared by teachers around the world. Use Flipgrid to further classroom conversations by assigning questions as homework assignments and then continue the conversation in class the next day.

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Wheel of names is a randomized name selector it saves me time and emotional energy in choosing which of my recalcitrant students to call on. It works with most browsers but is not a stand alone application.

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Managebac is used for assessment and feedback of IB students. It is available on multiple platforms including Mac OS , Windows & Mobile. In a virtual classroom it is helpful for assigning grading work and communicating with students.

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ManageBac | IB Curriculum Management Software for the Modern IB School

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I am so impressed that you followed up with this. I think it speaks very highly of the attention to detail everyone at ManageBac seems to have.

Thanks again for following up. I've been a Director of Technology for many years and this is a first. I've never had a company work so proactively.

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Reviews from IB Continuum Schools - ManageBac | IB Curriculum Management Software for the Modern IB School

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I am so impressed that you followed up with this. I think it speaks very highly of the attention to detail everyone at ManageBac seems to have. Thanks again for following up. I've been a Director of Technology for many years and this is a first. I've never had a company work so proactively.

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Timer tab. Simple uncomplicated and effective. One of my personal favorite apps. Not a standalone application it runs on a browser e.g. Chrome. In a VC it is helpful for keeping everyone on task. couldn't find any reviews unfortunately.

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One of the most powerful productivity boosters I know isn't even a matter of technology; it's only a matter of time. By using your awareness of time in a few creative ways, you can prioritize better, solidify your focus, and dominate your deadlines. Timer Tab--a cool little Web app that works with any modern browser--gives you three useful tools for putting time to better use.

Point your browser to timer-tab.com and you'll find three simple time trackers: a countdown timer, an alarm, and a stopwatch. Created by coder Romuald Brillout, their basic uses should be pretty obvious to anyone with a third-grade education. The timer and alarm give you simple fields that you can use to customize the time settings, while the stopwatch simply lets you start, pause, resume, or restart the count. Only one of the three clocks can run at any given time.

One obvious use of the timer is the Pomodoro Technique, in which you set the timer for 25 minutes and work single-mindedly until either the task is done or the alarm sounds. This little trick is amazingly effective at forcing the mind into a state of focus, because it gives you enough time to make significant progress on a task, while leaving a light at the end of the tunnel, as it were, so you can return your attention to other things (you know, like Facebook and e-mail) at reasonable intervals.

Likewise, the alarm function can sit in the background and tell you when it's 12:30, so you don't forget to go to lunch or that staff meeting or whatever it is you're not supposed to miss. The stopwatch, meanwhile, can help you track the time you spend on a given task, either for later reference, or for your billing system.

I've tried my share of timer apps over the years, and they all have one Achilles heel: installation. If you don't have them on the machine you're using right now, they can't help you. Timer Tab overcomes that problem nicely, as long as you have an Internet connection.

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Timer Tab Turns Your Browser Into a Multifunction Clock

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One of the most powerful productivity boosters I know isn't even a matter of technology; it's only a matter of time. By using your awareness of time in a few creative ways, you can prioritize better, solidify your focus, and dominate your deadlines.