A Summer of Android

93 Apps for Teachers to Try This Summer

Richard Byrne Android4Schools.com

Image Credit: James Rickwood http://www.flickr.com/photos/jams_123/955698710/

Table of Contents
Page 4 - Pre-K apps Page 16 - Elementary School Apps Page 27 - Middle School Apps Page 45 - High School Apps Page 68 - Apps for Everyone

Apps for Pre-K

iStoryBooks is a free Android app that offers two dozen free digital storybooks for kids ages two through eight. Most of the stories in the app are adaptations of classic children's tales like The Ugly Duckling. The iStoryBooks app gives you the option to read each story or to read along with each story while listening to the narrator. Children can practice reading and recognizing words by going through the stories with the narration turned on. There are stories available in English and Spanish. In all there are more than 20 free books available through the iStoryBooks Android app.

123s ABCs is a free Android app for handwriting practice. The app allows students to practice drawing uppercase and lowercase letters by tracing the template on the screen. The 123 aspect of the app has templates for tracing numbers. The app also has basic shape templates to trace. Students can practice on each template as many times as they like. If the first attempt isn't to a student's liking, she can simply shake the phone or tablet to erase and try again. 123s ABCs also has an audio option that students can activate to hear each letter, number, or shape read to them.

Kido'z TV is a free Android app that organizes fun and educational videos for children. The videos are arranged in thirteen categories some of which are learning, animals, how-to, science, and cartoons. The videos come from YouTube but are displayed in a player that removes "related" content and sidebar advertising. Kido'z TV offers privacy settings that parents and teachers can customize. Parents, teachers, and students can create custom playlists on Kido'z TV too. If you're looking for a safe way for children to watch educational videos on Android tablets or phones, give Kido'z TV a try.

The Ant and the Grasshopper, one of Aesop's Fables, has been turned into an interactive 3D pop-up book that you can view on Android tablets. CluePoint, LTD has made an interactive, 3D version of the story available through Google Play. CluePoint's version of The Ant and the Grasshopper allows children to read along with a narrator or read the story on their own. Between each section of the story there is a 3D pop-up activity in which students have to help the ant and the grasshopper gather objects by dragging and dropping them into place. My only complaint is the background music that I found annoying. Fortunately, the background music can be turned off.

Scripto Schola is an Android app (free and paid versions available) that students can use to practice recognizing and drawing the letters of the alphabet. There are two ways that the app can be used. Students can draw lowercase and uppercase letters of the alphabet on their Android tablets. The other way the app can be used is to have students record themselves saying the letters of the alphabet when they see them on the app. Scripto Schola's free version has ads and limited font styles. The paid version does not have ads and has additional font styles.

Tracing ABC is an app, optimized for phones and tablets, that guides children through drawing letters. The app provides guidance for tracing through a simple star system. If the child using the app traces in the correct direction, stars are "checked off" as the child traces. If the child using the app doesn't trace in the correct direction the stars aren't checked off. After correctly tracing each letter a word starting with that letter appears and is read to the child.

What's Different is a simple game of identifying patterns and picking out the object that doesn't fit the pattern. Children using the app are shown four objects and have to identify the one that doesn't fit the pattern. When the correct object is selected, a ladybug moves across the screen. The object is to get the ladybug to move all the way across the screen in a Mario Brothers-like manner.

Mix and Match is a simple puzzle game. Students put together simple images by swiping through parts of an image until they find one that matches the other parts of the image.

Teachers Paradise offer a mix of flashcardstyle apps, problem-solving apps, and tracing/ coloring apps.

ASL Sign Language is a set of flashcards featuring hands modeling the correct hand position for the ASL alphabet. My sister has been teaching my two-year old niece sign language since she was quite small so this app grabbed my attention. Kids ABC Jigsaw Puzzles is a set of simple jigsaw puzzles that when constructed correctly show a letter of the alphabet with an animal whose name starts with that letter.

If your school is using Android devices and you're looking for a way to keep young students from leaving the set of apps you've selected for them, Famigo Sandbox is an app that you should check out. Famigo Sandbox is an Android app that allows you to create a "kids-only" section on your Android phone or tablet. With Famigo Sandbox installed and activated when you hand your phone to your child your child cannot accidentally access your contacts, dial the phone, or access apps that are not in the Famigo Sandbox. Famigo Sandbox also provides you with recommendations for new apps for your child to try.

Apps 4 Kids is a free app that helps you and your children find new apps to use on your Android phone or Android tablet. You can browse Apps 4 Kids according to age of the child or the purpose of the app. For example, you can search for apps appropriate for children under four years old and for learning the alphabet. The apps in Apps 4 Kids are targeted to children under twelve years old.

Elementary School Apps

MeeGenius is a nice source of free and paid ebooks for kids. When children open the ebooks online, on an Android tablet, or on an iPad they can choose to have the story read to them or to read the story on their own. When the story is read to them each word in the story is highlighted on the page. This should help children follow along with the story.

Electric Box 2 is a free Android app through which you can learn how electrical circuits work. Electric Box 2 is a game in which you design circuits to connect power supplies to an output such as a light bulb or fan. On the first level you are walked through the basic principles of how electrical circuits work. As you progress through the levels the complexity of the circuits increases. Playing Electric Box 2 could be a good way for students to learn how circuits work without actually playing with electricity. If not every student in your classroom has an Android device, Electric Box 2 can also be played online on Candystand.

There are plenty of calculator apps in Google Play, but IDEAL WebMath is different because it shows students how to solve a problem. IDEAL WebMath can help students with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, comparing fractions, ratios, proportions, place values, and rounding. To use IDEAL WebMath students select the type of problem they need help solving. After selecting the type of problem, students enter the numbers that they are working with then press the solve button. Students will get the answer to the problem, but they also get an explanation of how to solve the problem.

Piano Lesson Tutor is a free app offering video lessons for students. The lessons are designed for beginner to intermediate level piano students. The videos are hosted on YouTube so you could just find them there. Piano Lesson Tutor organizes the videos into lessons for you. Piano Pro is a free app that puts a virtual piano keyboard on your tablet or phone. The keys are labeled to help beginners. Piano Pro has a series of play-along songs to help you learn to play the piano. The play-along activities are completed by playing the keys above which notes are appearing.

Mobile Drummer is a free Android app for playing the drums to recorded rhythms. You can play along with the default tracks that Mobile Drummer provides or you can play along with music that you have stored on your Android device. Mobile Drummer has a recording option that you can use to hear yourself after you've played the drums. Each drum's and cymbal's sounds can be adjusted by the user. Drums HD is a free Android app that offers five virtual drumsets to play. Drums HD has animations that show when each drum is hit. The animations can be turned off for tablets and phones that don't have enough processing power to handle the animations and sounds at the same time.

PicSay is a fun little photo editing app that allows you to add speech bubbles, text, and some special effects to your images. To start using PicSay select pictures stored on your device or in your Google Picasa albums. When you've finished editing your pictures you can save them to your SD card or send them to a number of online storage sites including Evernote, Dropbox, and Google Drive. PicSay could be used by students to create short stories by adding speech bubbles and text to some of their favorite pictures. Your students could take pictures of their pets, like I did, and create conversations between them.

Math Mate is a free game for testing your mathematics skills. The game has two modes; "practice" and "challenge." The challenge mode times you and gives you a rank compared to other players. There are three levels for each mode; easy, medium, and hard. The easy level is mostly addition and subtraction. The medium level is primarily multiplication. The hard level has more difficult multiplication and division problems. Math Mate is simple and straight-forward. Unfortunately, it is not optimized for tablets. While it works on tablets, it doesn't expand to full screen.

Oregon Trail American Settler is an updated version of the classic Oregon Trail game. The game is optimized for play on tablets, but it also worked on my phone. In Oregon Trail American Settler you've made it west and now need to establish your home. Just like in the original game you need to complete tasks to earn food and money. And just like in the original game you will have to deal with some challenges like illness and weather.

Animal Life is a nice Android app that puts an encyclopedia of animals on your Android tablet or phone. The app features pictures and sounds of hundreds of animals. Animal Life divides the animals basic categories; mammals, birds, and reptiles. Along with each picture Animal Life provides some basic information about each animal's habitat, range, size, color, and family. You can click through each animal's page to read more on Wikipedia. Animal Life is mostly free, but accessing some animals on the app requires that you upgrade to the "pro" version of the app for one dollar (USD). In testing Animal Life I noticed that roughly 10% of the animals were locked in the free version of the app.

How to Draw Cartoons Animals is a free Android app that offers seventy simple stepby-step directions for drawing cartoon animals. Despite the name, the app also offers directions for drawing objects like cups and houses and directions for drawing people. To be clear, you don't draw the cartoons on the app. The app only provides the directions for you to follow while you draw on paper.

Animal Book is an app designed to help young children learn to recognize animals. Children can go through the book to see and hear the names of the animals. There is also an option to hear the animals' sounds although some of the sounds were less than perfect when I went through the app. There is a simple quiz mode on Animal Book that present four pictures that the child has to pick from when an animal's name is read by the narrator.

Middle School Apps

QR-GPS Plugin works with the free QR Droid app to allow you to quickly create QR codes for the GPS coordinates for wherever you are standing. You ca also manually input coordinates or manually input a location by entering an address. Whichever way you choose to input locations, the QR code that is generated for you can be shared via text message, email, Twitter, or Facebook. You can also save the code to your SD card and print it. (Of course, if you emailed the QR code to yourself you could print it from there too). When you scan the QR code generated by QR-GPS Plugin you can open it within a number of different Android apps including Google Earth, Google Maps, and GPS Essentials. The QR Droid blog has detailed directions on how to use the QR-GPS Plugin.

In addition to the expected features of showing your current latitude and longitude coordinates, GPS Essentials offers a bunch of other useful features. Using GPS Essentials you can measure your current altitude, measure distances, and record your tracks. You can export your tracks and waypoints as KML files to use in Google Earth and Google Maps. You can also import KML and GPX files to use in GPS Essentials to navigate to various locations. Combine the use of QR-GPS Plugin with GPS Essentials to create and carry-out scavenger hunts. Use the combination to record and plan walking tours for your next field trip. Or use GPS Essentials to teach students basic lessons on navigation (if you're taking students on actual hikes, long bike rides, or paddling trips, don't use GPS Essentials as a replacement for a real GPS unit and maps).

Photo Grid is a free Android app for creating collages of photos that you capture with your phone. You can mix and match from a variety of image sizes, border decorations, templates, and image arrangements. If you need to touch-up a picture you can do that on Photo Grid too. And just for fun, if you want to shake-up your collage, shake your tablet or camera. Your finished collage can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, or email. Photo Grid could be a good tool for students to use to share images that they capture on field trips or during other school events.

Studious is a free Android app for keeping track of important assignment due dates. You can set alarms to remind yourself of impending due dates. The app also gives you the option to take notes and pictures to save on your Android phone or Android tablet. And a nifty feature of Studious is that you can set it to automatically silence your phone at the start of a class. Studious is not the fanciest reminder app that I've seen, but it will definitely get the job done. The option to automatically silence your device at the start of class helps students and instructors alike.

PaceRecorder is a great app for students to use when practicing giving presentations to an audience. PaceRecorder is a simple app that records your voice and gives you instant feedback about the pace with which you are speaking. The feedback comes in the form of three simple symbols; a turtle, a rabbit, and a thumbs-up. If the turtle appears while you're speaking it indicates that you're relaxed or perhaps a bit too slow. The rabbit indicates excitement and perhaps that you're speaking a bit too quickly. And, of course, the thumbs-up means you're right on track.

Countries of the World from Socratica is a free Android app that students can use to study world geography. The app has two main parts; a study section and a quiz section. The study section includes basics facts about the location of each country and basic statistics about the government, people, and economy of the country. The study section also includes audio pronunciations of each country's name and, in some cases, videos about the country. Countries of the World isn't going to win any prizes for style or innovation, but it is a nice app that students could use to learn basic world geography.

Art Academy is a free Android app that may be of interest to teachers and students of art history. Art Academy is a catalog of more than 4000 paintings. Each painting is linked to some basic information about the artist who created it. Art Academy also provides links to the museum in which each artwork can be found. Through those links you can learn more about the museum, the artist, and the painting. Art Academy allows you to send the images to your favorite online storage service like Dropbox or Evernote. You can also download images from Art Academy to store on your Android tablet.

iNaturalist is a community website for sharing pictures and observations of plants and animals. To enable easy sharing of observations, iNaturalist offers a free Android app and a free iOS app. Using the apps you can take a picture, geo-locate it, write your observations, and upload to the iNaturalist community. If your observation is incomplete, for example if you're not sure of a scientific name, you can ask the community to add comments to improve the recording of your observation.

Barron's Educational Apps offers seven free Android apps for practicing mathematics, science, grammar, and spelling skills. These apps are designed to correspond to Barron's series of Painless books like Painless PreAlgebra. While Barron's would love for you to buy their books, you can use these apps without buying the books. I tried two of Barron's Educational Android apps; Painless Grammar and Painless Pre-Algebra. Both of the apps offer three games and three quizzes. In order to access the games students have to score 80% or better on the practice quiz.

At first glance Power Vocab appears to be just a set of vocabulary words that you have to select the correct definitions for, but there is more to it. You can also work on spelling of the words that appear and play word search games. In my testing of the free version of the app featured words that were appropriate for middle school and high school students. The paid version of the app offers more difficult vocabulary.

Google Sky is a free Android app for your phone or tablet. Using the app you can point find out what star, constellation, or planet you're looking at any moment. In the automatic mode, the Google Sky app uses GPS data, compass data, date, and time to determine where you are and what you're looking at. In the manual mode you can explore the night sky almost as if you were using Google Earth to find a place on Earth.

X Construction is an Android app that allows you to design railroad bridges and test whether or not they could support a train crossing. The app offers a series of progressively more difficult challenges to try. In each challenge level you are given a limited number of construction pieces to use in order to span an expanse that your virtual train needs to cross. When you think you've designed a suitable bridge press the play button to send the train over the bridge. If the bridge collapses you will see and hear a crash (warning, the crash sounds are bit annoying after the fourth or fifth try). If the train crosses your bridge, you can move on to the next level. X Construction could be a neat app for students to use to test out and see the benefits of various design concepts. For example, they can see why a triangle design might be superior t0 a square bridge design.

The American Civil War Gazette could be a handy Android app for US History teachers and students. The app serves up newspaper reports and dispatches from each day of the US Civil War. The stories that are displayed on the app each day are stories that appeared in print on that day during the Civil War. The American Civil War Gazette features stores from publications like The New York Times, The London Times, and the Richmond Dispatch. Each day new articles appear on The American Civil War Gazette. The current day's articles are free, but previous editions require a subscription. If you're teaching lessons about the Civil War and want to inject a little "on this day in history" element, The American Civil War Gazette could be useful for quickly finding that information.

StudyBlue, a free service for creating flashcards and sharing them, offers a free Android app for creating flashcards on the go. The StudyBlue Android app allows students to not only study their flashcards on the go, but create new ones as well. Flashcards created on a phone can be synced to and accessed from a computer too. Even if an Internet connection isn't available, students can still study preexisting flashcards on their phones. Study Blue account holders also have the option of setting reminders to prompt them to review their flashcards at regular intervals.

Everstudent is a student planner that integrates with Evernote. Using Everstudent, students can keep track of assignments and due dates for all of their courses. To use Everstudent, a student must have an Evernote account. Once they have signed into their accounts students can use Everstudent to create a semester or year schedule of their courses. Then whenever they receive an assignment they can enter that assignment into Everstudent.

Lemberg Solutions offers one dozen Android apps designed to help students practice their spelling skills. The app functions the same way in all twelve languages offered. The app shows students a series of images from which to choose. Once they select an image, they jump into a spelling puzzle. To spell the name of the object in the image, students drag letters into their proper arrangement. The app pronounces the letters and the word when the word is spelled correctly. The Lemberg Solutions Smart Speller app is available in English, Russian, Dutch, Polish, French, Swedish, German, Spanish, Ukrainian, Italian, Finnish, and Danish.

SnaPanda is a free Android app that could help students expand their vocabulary. With SnaPanda installed on your phone you can point it at any clearly printed word on a page in a book, in a magazine, or on a sign and get the definition of that word. To do this just activate the app, point your phone's camera at a word, and touch the word. SnaPanda then provides you with definitions for that word and examples of the word in use. SnaPanda users can save scanned words to a list for later review. Your lists can be shared via email, Twitter, and Facebook.

High School Apps

Google Books is a great place to find free books and books for sale to read on your Android phone or tablet. Google claims that they have more than three million books and periodicals available for free. I haven't counted so I'll take their word for it. The free books tend to be titles whose copyright protections have expired. The Red Badge of Courage is one such example of that.

Snag Films hosts more than 2000 documentary films available for free viewing. The Snag Films Android App allows you to watch those films on your Android tablet or Android phone. The only flaw with this app is that most of the films are only licensed for viewing in the United State.

Listen & Speak is a free Android app for learning and practicing the pronunciations words and phrases in English, Spanish, and French. With Listen & Speak installed on your Android phone or on your Android tablet you can hear the proper pronunciations of hundreds of words and phrases. After hearing a word or phrase read to you, you can speak it back into your device and have your pronunciations graded for you. If you're not happy with your grade, you can repeat the word or phrase as many times as you like until you get it right. Listen & Speak could be a good, free Android app for students learning English, Spanish, or French to use for independent practice. The feedback feature will help students recognize errors in their pronunciations and correct them before moving on to more difficult words and phrases.

Music Theory Lessons offers 16 multiple part lessons on the basics of music theory. The app is best described as a digital textbook. Each lesson is a static page containing a text explanation and visuals of music theory concepts. It's not an app for advanced students, but it's not bad as a primer on music theory.

The MIT App Inventor allows anyone to build an Android app by dragging and dropping pieces of information into the proper sequence. Detailed step-by-step directions are available for first time users. You do not need to have an Android device in order to build an app with the MIT App Inventor. The MIT App Inventor has an emulator built in for you to use to test your app before pushing it out to your phone or to the Google Play store. You do have to have a Google Account in order to use the MIT App Inventor. If your school is using Google Apps for Education you may need to talk to your network administrator about granting access for students. Teachers interested in having students build their own apps would do well to visit the App Inventor Edu pages to learn about some successful uses of the MIT App Inventor in educational settings.

Whether we like it or not, students use SparkNotes. SparkNotes for Android puts many of the same content guides found on SparkNotes.com available in a mobilefriendly format. The app makes content guides available online and offline through download options. You can search for content guides according to subject and topic. SparkNotes for Android has a social check-in option that students can use to find people near them that are also using the app. SparkNotes suggests that students could use the check-in option to create study groups at the spur of the moment.

BoardTabla is a free Android app designed to help you quickly capture presentation slides on your phone or tablet. The app is basically a camera with some handy extras. To capture a slide just snap a picture with BoardTabla. BoardTabla will automatically crop sections like borders that aren't needed. Once the image is captured you can write free-hand notes on the slides. BoardTabla could be a handy Android app for students to quickly capture slides and annotate them in a way that makes them meaningful to them. BoardTabla allows for sharing of slides through email, text messaging, and Facebook. The sharing function could be helpful for students to send notes to classmates who are absent from class.

WeVideo is a collaborative, online video creation and editing tool. The WeVideo Android app will allow you to capture images and videos then quickly add them to collaborative video projects in WeVideo. Before you upload your videos with the app you can trim them to save editing time when you're using WeVideo on the web. And just like when you use the web version of WeVideo, you can invite other WeVideo users to view your media and contribute to your projects. While using the WeVideo online editor you can upload your own media clips or use stock media clips to produce your video. The video editor provides tools for trimming the length of display and or sound of each element you add to your video project. What makes WeVideo collaborative is that you can invite other people to create and edit with you.

The App People is a developer of Android apps that offers a mix of academic and nonacademic apps. The academic apps include biology lectures, chemistry lectures, computer science lectures, as well as lectures in geometry, algebra, and calculus. The lecture apps aren't anything groundbreaking. They're simply organized playlists of videos that are mostly from MIT and Khan Academy. The apps could be helpful for students who need a little refresher course on a topic that you have previously taught a lesson about.

Whenever I try to record a video on my phone or tablet there is always a few moments at the beginning that don't go the way that I want. There is a way to remove that wasted footage and that way is by using VidTrim. VidTrim is an Android app that enables users to quickly trim those wasted moments at the beginning and end of the videos captured on their Android devices. The free version of VidTrim allows you to just trim the end and beginning of your videos. The paid version allows you to save still images from your videos and allows you to compress your videos.

Sync Space is a whiteboard app available for Android devices and iOS devices. You can use Sync Space to create drawings and documents on your tablet. You can create using free-hand drawing tools, using typing tools, or a combination of the two tool sets. Your drawings and documents can be sent to and synced with other users so that they can comment and edit your drawings and documents. If you have installed an app like Evernote or Dropbox you can upload your drawings to either of those accounts too.

GradeDroid is a free app that is one part flashcard generator and one part GPA calculator. The flashcard aspect of GradeDroid allows you to create and study flashcards directly on your phone or tablet without the need to sync your device to an external website. You can easily add or delete flashcards from the menu. When you study your cards you can specify which cards you want to appear more or less frequently than others in your set. The GPA calculator in GradeDroid gives students tools to keep track of their course grades and calculate their rolling grade point averages. The GPA calculator isn't anything fancy, but it could be handy for some students.

Mindjet for Android is a free app for creating mind maps on your Android phone or Android tablet. At the most basic level you can use Mindjet for Android to create a simple diagram using boxes and text. You can connect the boxes in a number of ways, change the colors of anything in your mind map, and quickly undo any mistakes that you make. Your Mindjet mind maps can include images that you upload from your device or from an online gallery like Picassa. You can also include links to external references in each aspect of your Mindjet mind maps. When you've completed your mind map you can export it as an image to save on your device or send it to any number of online storage services like Dropbox and Evernote. Mindjet for Android could be a good tool for middle school, high school, and college students to use to create outlines of topics they're studying and or writing about. Mindjet for Android is probably a bit too complicated for elementary school students.

The US National Archives is an all-around good resource for history teachers to have bookmarked. The Today's Document mobile app from the US National Archives is an interactive gallery of 365 documents and images from the National Archives. These are the same documents and images that are included in the Today's Document RSS feed. With the mobile app you can select any day of the year to find out what significant things happened in US History on that day. You can also select "random" to have a random document or image appear. The mobile app provides the same background information that you can find online.

iCell, produced by the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, is a free Android app that biology teachers and students should check out. iCell gives users a three dimensional look inside plant, animal, and bacterial cells. You can click on the parts of the cells to reveal the names of those parts and their functions within the cells. iCell offers three levels of complexity of information; basic, intermediate, and advanced. The basic level is appropriate for middle school while the intermediate and advanced levels are appropriate for high school.

EasyBib, the popular bibliography creation tool for students, offers a handy Android app. One of the excellent features of the new EasyBib Android app is the option to scan a book's or magazine's ISBN barcode to record the information necessary to create a proper citation. Users can add citations on the app and email those citations to themselves from the app. Just as if you were using the EasyBib website to create properly formatted citations, the app will generate MLA format citations for free. If you want to generate citations in APA or Chicago style you will have to pay for a subscription to the service.

Google Goggles is an Android app that Google released a couple of years ago. The app allows you to point your phone at an object to find information about the object(s) captured by your camera. For example, if I take a picture of a Boston Red Sox pennant, Google Goggles will return related images and web links. You can also use Google Goggles to scan and decode QR codes.

Wikitude is a free Android app that allows you to use your phone's camera as a web browser. Point your camera at buildings and other objects to discover web content related to what you're seeing and where you're standing. With your phone's GPS enabled you can use Wikitude to browse Tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook updates, Flickr images, and Wikipedia entries connected to your current location. Optionally, you can share your location and content discoveries with other Wikitude users.

The NASA App for Android is a free app that gives you access to thousands of NASA videos and images. Not surprisingly, the videos are found in the "video" section of the app. The images, however, are not nearly as well organized. To view the images you need to sort through the "missions" section of the app. You will also find images in the "featured" section and the "news & features" section of the NASA App. The NASA App also provides you with access to all of official NASA Tweets, NASA's public mission schedules, and the NASA TV schedule.

The Historypin Android App allows you to view historical imagery layered over the current map for where you are standing (provided imagery is available). You can also use the app to add imagery to the map. The app gives you access to stories about the imagery you're viewing on your phone or tablet. This could be great app for students to use when they're on a walking tour of city with a rich history.

Periodic Droid is a free Android app for studying and learning the elements on the Periodic Table. Unlike similar apps in the Android Marketplace, Periodic Droid is more than just a set of flashcards to put on a phone. Periodic Droid allows students to click through each element to discover information like the boiling point, crystal structure, and ionization potential of that element. Students can also click through to Wikipedia entries about each element. Periodic Droid offers a practice quiz mode for students. Students can select from six different quiz modes. Each quiz can be based on recognizing elements' names, atomic numbers, symbols, atomic weight, crystal structure, and boiling point.

50 Languages is an Android app for learning a new language. Through the app you can hear words pronounced in your native language and the language that you're trying to learn. To you can also read translations in your native language and the language you're attempting to learn. The 50 Languages Android app has three basic modes. The Word List mode is just that, a list of words that you can read and hear pronounced for you. Some words are pronounced in male and female voices while others are only pronounced in one voice. As you go through the word list you can select words to send to the Flash Card mode. Flash Card mode is a simple self-quiz option. Take Test is the third mode available in the app. The Take Test mode gives you a choice of multiple choice, word order, bubble game, and fill in the blank. Each of the four tests has ten questions based on the original word list you studied.

Apps for Everyone

Color Note is a simple note-taking app that I've been using on all of my Android phones for the last year (yes, it's been a rough year for phones in my life). Color Note offers a sticky note environment, a calendar option, to do list options, and the option to share your notes via email and sms. Color Note isn't the fanciest app you'll find in the Android Market. That simplicity is actually what I like about it. And if you like simplicity too, give Color Note a try.

Pixlr offers a great set of image creation and editing tools. Pixlr offers web-based image editing tools as well as image editing tools to use on Android phones and on iPhones. Pixlr-o-Matic is the Pixlr's mobile app for Android and iOS. With the app installed you can take a picture and apply a variety of neat effects to the image. I tested it out by adding some raindrops and a "retro" border to a picture of my dog that I then sent to my friend Beth Still. You can also use Pixlr-o-Matic for simple cropping and resizing before sending your picture to a friend or to an online album.

Catch is a service that allows you to create bookmarks, text notes, voice notes, and images anytime you're on the web. You can use Catch on Android and iOS devices. And now if you have an Android device running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) you can create and capture free-hand drawings on your tablet. Catch also offers browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Regardless of whether you capture your notes on your desktop, on your phone, or on your tablet you can access your notes from the same account.

If lesson planning around the Common Core standards is something that you have to do, the Mastery Connect Common Core app could be helpful to you. The app is designed to help educators quickly locate the common core standards for mathematics and language arts. To locate standards through the app just select the content you teach and the grade level you teach. The app will pull up the standards based on your selections. (Disclosure: Mastery Connect is an advertiser on my blog Free Technology for Teachers).

Skitch for Android is one of my favorite apps on my tablet and phone. You can use Skitch for Android to create drawings from scratch. You can use the app to take a picture and mark it up. Or you can also use the app to edit and draw on images that you have saved on your tablet, in a Picassa album, or in an Evernote account. There are three ways that you can use Skitch for Android. You can create a drawing from scratch. Capture and image with your Android tablet or Android phone. Or you can use alter an image that you have saved in an Evernote or Picassa album. Whichever method you choose to start with the set of drawing tools is the same. You can drawing free-hand, type text, crop images, draw arrows, and highlight and move elements that you have drawn. The saving and sharing options are the same regardless of which method you employ to create your images.

If you're not in the habit of backing-up your important files on a regular basis, you should be. There are so many good services that make it easy to back-up your files that there really is no excuse not to back them up to a cloudbased service. One of the services that I like for backing-up files is Sugar Sync. Sugar Sync offers a free plan that allows you to store up to 5GB worth of files. You can sync multiple computers and mobile devices to your Sugar Sync account. Sugar Sync can be used on your computer and or Android phone, iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phone. With Sugar Sync you can access your files anytime you can get online. You can also send and share files from any device you use to get online.

Evernote is a fantastic app for bookmarking your finds on the web. Whether you're browsing the web on your Android device or browsing on your computer, Evernote is equally awesome for saving your favorite finds. Evernote gives you the option to bookmark just the url of your new favorite website or you can add notes and tags to your bookmark. Your bookmarks can be viewed from any device that you sync with your Evernote account. Beyond bookmarks you can save images and other files that you need to access from multiple devices. Sharing is caring and Evernote allows you to share the notes in your account with others if you so choose.

Using DropBox in conjunction with DropItToMe is one of the ways that I try to avoid inbox overload. The DropBox Android App allows me to access all of my DropBox files from my tablet and phone. I can also use the app to add new content to my DropBox account.

Feedly is my favorite app for reading RSS feeds. I'm using it on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet and now on my laptop too. Feedly takes your RSS feeds and turns them into an easy-to-read magazine-like format. You can sync your Google Reader account to Feedly and it will retain all of the categories that you may have created in Google Reader. You can also sync Feedly to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Read It Later, and Instapaper. I can share from Feedly to all of my favorite social networks like Twitter and Google+ as well as bookmark things in my Evernote account from Feedly.

If you use Edmodo to keep your students and their parents informed about your class and your school, check out the Edmodo Android app. The Edmodo Android app allows you to manage the essential aspects of your Edmodo account. The app gives you access to your gradebook, groups, profile, and file library. You can use the app to post new messages to your group(s). My file library was accessible through the app and I was able to add new content to my file library. Students can use the Edmodo Android app to read notifications from their teachers.

Any.DO is a free Android App for creating to-do lists and sharing them with your friends and colleagues. On Any.DO you can type out a list of tasks or enter tasks by speaking into your phone. Once you've entered your task you can assign it to a day and time for completion. After assigning a completion deadline you can share that task with anyone in your contacts list even if that person doesn't have the Any.DO app installed on his or her phone. Any.DO also gives you the option to attach notes to your tasks, set reminders for your tasks, and put notes into folders that you've created. For example, if I have notes of a personal nature like my grocery shopping list I can put that list into my "personal" folder instead of my "work" folder. And unlike some free Android apps, in my testing of the app Any.DO didn't appear to insert ads into my notes.

Audioboo is a free tool for creating audio messages to share on the web. Using Audioboo you can record messages on your mobile device using Audioboo's free Android or iPhone apps. You can also record messages directly on the Audioboo website. Messages that you create can be shared by embedding your recording into a blog or website. You can also share messages by posting them to Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, and Tumblr.

Posterous is one of my favorite blogging platforms for classroom use because it is very easy for teachers to create a blog and it is very easy for students to contribute to that blog. (For step by step directions on creating a Posterous blog please read this tutorial on Free Technology for Teachers). Creating new posts using the Posterous Android app is a cinch. After signing into your Posterous account just select from your dashboard the Posterous blog (or Space as they call them) to which you want to post. Then write your post and publish it. If you have images you want to add to your post you can choose from those stored on your tablet or those stored in your Google account. You can also choose to turn on your devices's camera and instantly take a picture or video to include in your blog post.

Juice Defender is an Android App (free and premium versions are available) that manages and monitors power consumption on your phone. The app monitors data consumption and WiFi settings. To save power the app will enable or disable settings to conserve power.

World Newspapers is a free Android app designed to enable you to find and read newspapers from all over the world. You can use the app to browse for newspapers by continent, country, and state. The app also provides the option to browse according to content type such as videos, magazines, and websites. By default, World Newspapers is set for you to browse for newspapers within your country. I used the app to browse newspapers in Maine and Arizona. I was surprised and slightly impressed to see that even small, local, weekly publications were indexed and available through the World Newspapers Android app. The app includes tools for quickly sharing stories with others, bookmarking articles, and translating newspapers.

The Dolphin web browser for Android devices is a much better browser than the default Android browser. Dolphin has some great features built-in and many more features that you can add to it in the form of Dolphin addons. One of the most outstanding features of the Dolphin web browser is gesture enabled navigation. Using Dolphin you can draw an symbol or letter to make the browser page up, page down, open a new tab, refresh, or go to a specific website. You can use the default gestures or create and assign your own gestures. For example, I set my Dolphin browser to go to my Free Technology for Teachers email account whenever I draw a capital "F" on the screen.

Mantano Reader is an Android app that you can use to read PDF and EPUB documents on your Android tablet or on your Android phone. With Mantano Reader installed you can highlight and annotate text in the documents that you're reading. The notes that you make can be shared via email and various social networks. Mantano Reader provides a text to speech capability. Highlight any text in a document and hear it read to you through the Mantano Reader. (Your device does have to have text to speech capabilities for that feature to work). If you come across a word that you don't recognize while reading or listening to a document, just highlight that word and use Mantano Reader's dictionary function to look the definition.

Cloud Print is a free Android app that allows you to wirelessly print from your Android devices. Cloud Print works by syncing your devices to the Google Cloud Print service. You will have to set up Google Cloud Printing on at least one computer in order to take advantage of the Cloud Print app. Once you have Cloud Print installed and configured you can print documents, your contacts list, and pictures from your Android device. You can also manage print jobs and share printers using the Cloud Print Android app.

Remote Web Desktop is an Android app that allows you to control your devices from your desktop. Install the app on your Android devices and sync the app to your computer to control your Android devices remotely. Remote Web Desktop has a long list of features and uses. One of the features that stands-out for me is the option to remotely capture a screen image of your Android device without having to root your Android device (rooting a device generally voids its warranty). Another feature of Remote Web Desktop that I think is quite useful is remote management of the files on your Android device.

Zoolz is a service for sharing and accessing the files on your Windows PC from your Android devices and or from your iOS devices. Zoolz allows you to sync folders on your Windows PC with mobile device. You can also sync files from your mobile device to your PC. To use Zoolz you do have install the clients on your PC and all of the mobile devices that you want to use to access your files. If you want to try Zoolz before you start using it on all of your devices, Zoolz has a demo mode. With Zoolz installed on their phones and PCs, students can say goodbye flashdrives. To access important files all you need is an Internet connection for your phone or tablet.

If you teach a world language you have probably had a frustrating experience or two while trying to type a character that is not native to your device. MultiLing Keyboard is a free Android app designed to resolve that problem for you. With MultiLing Keyboard you can type in dozens of languages. To take full advantage of all of MultiLing Keyboard's options like auto-correct and predictive text you do have to install the plug-ins for each language that you want to use. The plug-ins are available for free.

Three Ring is a free service offering free Android and iPhone apps for digitizing and organizing student work. Using the app teachers can take a picture of a student's work and upload it to a free Three Ring account. Three Ring offers teachers a lot of organizational flexibility. You could organize artifacts by student name, class, date, or just about any other tagging system that works for you. Three Ring could be a great way to collect handwritten work without actually collecting pieces of paper. Just go around the room snapping images of your students' work. You can add notes to each image before and after the upload so it is possible to grade work using the notes field next to each image.

CamScanner is an Android app that you can use to scan documents, business cards, receipts, or any other pieces of paper that you have. To use CamScanner just center your phone or your tablet camera over a document and take a picture. CamScanner then converts your image to a PDF that you can send to DropBox, Evernote, Google Docs, and many other online storage services. CamScanner provides options for trimming the edges of your scanned documents before converting to PDF. You can scan documents and save them as individual files or combine scans into one file. CamScanner could be useful for teachers and students alike. If as a teacher you have an old document that want save in digital format without re-typing it, take a picture of it with CamScanner and save it.

Minus is a free app and service for sharing files between your Android devices and your computers. You can share files through Minus by uploading them from your device to your account or by capturing images and videos with your device. Minus does offer some basic image editing tools. With a Minus account (free for up to 50mb of storage) you can share and access your files from an Android device, an iOS device, and through your desktop/ laptop computer. In fact, adding files to Minus on a desktop is a very simple drag and drop procedure. When you upload a file to Minus, you are provided an HTML code that you can use to embed your file into a blog post or website.

Diigo is a very popular social bookmarking service because it offers excellent features for bookmarking, annotating, and sharing. With Diigo's Power Note app installed on your Android device you can enjoy many of the things that you like about the web-based version of Diigo on your phone or tablet. Power Note is a free Android app that you can use to add bookmarks, text notes, and pictures to your Diigo account. The app syncs with your Diigo account so that you can access all of your notes and bookmarks from your computer, phone, or tablet.

AirDroid is an Android app that you can use to control your Android device(s) from your computer. Once you have the app configured on your Android device and on your computer you will be able to wirelessly transfer files between your desktop and your Android device. You can also access all of the contacts stored on your Android device. Just about any other file or function that you would like access on your tablet or phone from your computer, you can. AirDroid could be a good tool for wirelessly managing Android devices in your school. Using the app you could install or uninstall apps remotely.

The official TED Talks app for Android has some handy features. The most notable feature of the TED Talks app for Android is the option to download talks to your Android device. You can bookmark and download talks in "my talks" section of the app. Another nice feature is the "radio" feature. The radio feature allows you to listen to talks without playing the video. More than 1200 TED Talks are available through the app. The app automatically updates whenever new TED Talks are published. You can search the archive of videos according to theme, tag, rating, popularity, and recency.

If you're a fan of using Microsoft's OneNote to take notes, you'll want to try OneNote for Android. You can create notes, including notes with pictures using the OneNote Android app and sync them to your desktop or laptop through Microsoft's SkyDrive service. If you're already using OneNote and SkyDrive on your desktop or laptop, you should already have a Microsoft Live ID. If this is your first try with OneNote, you will need to create a Microsoft Live ID to sync your notes. If you work in a school that is using Microsoft SkyDrive services and Android devices, using OneNote for Android should be a natural fit.

Antivirus from AVG Mobilation is available in a free and paid version. Both versions scan the apps and files on your device in real-time. The paid version ($0.99) not only alerts you if something bad is on your device, it automatically wipes it for you.

Norton Security and Antivirus is an app that performs scans of your Android devices on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule of your choosing. The paid version of the Norton app ($30.00/year) offers anti-theft protection and web protection when you're browsing the web on your tablet or phone.

Please visit Android4Schools.com for daily reviews of Android apps for students and educators.