11 amazing productivity apps for teachers that will keep you organized

A day in the life of a teacher can be really chaotic. Then, that day turns into a week and that week turns into a month. If you don’t organize yourself, things will pile up, or even worse, be forgotten.

You all know that being a teacher isn’t just about teaching. It’s also about paperwork, feedback, reporting, planning, organizing and school meetings. In order to do all those things, you’ll need some help from technology.

In this blog post I’ll show you 11 top productivity apps that can help you stay organized. Some of these teacher tools will help you manage your time as well. You’ll find productivity apps for iPhone, Mac, Android, as well as free productivity apps that go on all platforms.

The best productivity apps for teachers

1. FocusMe

Focus helps you, take a guess, focus. It’s a browser add-on for Mac, Windows and Android that blocks distracting apps like Facebook or other fun things that can keep you from your teacher work. With this app, you can finally get your work done.

2. Trello

Trello gives you a view over all the projects, assignments, and other work that needs to be done. It’s actually an app used a lot in the business world, but I am convinced it can work in education too: a lot of teachers are using it already.

Trello lets you create boards with lists. You can name the lists, add different “cards” to the lists, and in turn add documents, links, comments, checklists, etc., to the cards. You can invite your co-teachers to the boards with the lists, such that they can also add cards.

3. Google Drive

Need a place to store your files and get access to it anywhere anytime? Then you should definitely check out Google drive. It helps you stay organized and it saves you time. You don’t have to put anything on a USB stick anymore and drag it with you to school. If you have a Google account and an internet connection, you can get to your lesson materials anytime.

4. Evernote scannable

This great app allows you to use your iPhone as a document scanner. It automatically detects documents or notes of any size and offers enhancement options.

As a teacher, you have to keep a lot of paperwork for a long time. Papers and administration begin to pile up, and you don’t have the space anymore. You could just scan the papers with Evernote Scannable and store them in your Google Drive.

5. Slack

You probably send a lot of emails back and forth to your teacher colleagues. And it often takes a long time to get an answer back. With Slack, the communication is much easier. You’re chatting live with your colleague, which gets everything done quicker. You can make groups with a few teachers, when working on school projects, or you can talk directly to one single teacher.

6. Strides

This app helps you track your goals. Stay motivated with helpful charts, and achieve your goals. If you are setting up a classroom project or organizing a fundraising for your school, you can track it. This app has 4 different goal meters: a habit meter, a goal tracker, an average meter and a project tracker.

7. BookWidgets

This one helps you keep up with your grading. You can make digital exercises and tests in BookWidgets that get automatically graded. So, by the time you get home, your grading work is done. Of course, BookWidgets can’t grade open answers, but it’s still so much faster to grade with BookWidgets than on paper. Besides that, you can give feedback in just a few minutes. With one click on the button, your students receive their grades and feedback, which makes the learning process much better.

8. Pocket

“Put knowledge in your pocket”, that’s what pocket is all about. This app lets you save articles, videos and stories from any online publication, page or app. If you see an article that gives you some great lesson ideas, and you want to read it later on, you can save it in “Pocket” and read it whenever you want. Now, you don’t need to look back for that article in Google. You might not find it back. Just open “Pocket” and look for it.

9. Remind

Remind is a real-time messaging app for your school, group, or just a single person. It also lets you schedule reminders ahead of time.

With this app, you can keep communication in one place. You can use it to send important school updates to parents, or simply use it to alert your students about homework or other classroom related things.

10. Peak

Whenever you have a moment of rest, you can open this app. It’s fun, and you’re training your brain as well. The brain games in this app are designed to push you hard with short, intense workouts designed around your life. Challenge the skills that matter to you most with games that test your Focus, Memory, Problem Solving, Mental Agility and more. A lot of these games will eventually let you grow as a teacher.

11. Forest

The last app that gets a place in this list is Forest. The app is intended to motivate you to keep your focus. Whenever the app is open, you grow a tree. The tree will keep growing the time you keep on working without any smartphone distraction. Whenever you want to check your Instagram or something else, and leave the app, the tree will be killed. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?

So these were my top picks! There are many more productivity tools for teachers that do the same things as the apps mentioned in this list, but I think you get the idea. These apps represent everything you need to get a good teacher workflow and that boost your productivity. Even if it means to go digital once in a while ;) If these apps aren’t enough, check out this post with even more productivity apps.

Don’t forget to share this post with your teacher colleagues. A lot of these apps are also focused on working together, especially the teacher productivity apps like Trello, Google Drive, Slack and Remind. Or, you can immediately try out Pocket for the first time, and save this post in “Pocket”.