by
Imed Bouchrika, Phd
Education software comprises sundry software built for educational purposes. The term encompasses everything pertaining to educational solutions, from learning management systems and assessment software to reference software. Still, it remains that education software solutions have one goal: to make certain facets of education more productive and efficient.
Schools are known for being the last institutions to embrace technology. But as digital innovations have resulted in the large-scale remodeling and rearrangement of organizations, they are left with no option but to adapt accordingly. What makes this transformation even more interesting and challenging is the influx of AI software, plus, the private sector’s acknowledgment of the significant potential associated with creating software for education, broadening the range of solutions in the education industry.
In this article, we list the best education software in 2022 in various categories. We will further look into their product details, key features, and pricing plans for your easy reference.
Today, we are witnessing significant breakthroughs in the education industry that manifest in a massive wave of distance learning. With so much at stake for immediate family members and societies at large, it is imperative that we understand what is happening to help us cope with the coming years.
Source: NCES, 2020
Educational software streamlines complicated processes and delivers myriad benefits to teachers and students alike. Notable among these are the following:
Resources can be stored and organized in a concentrated, secure location. In this manner, you can keep all the essential information and easily build various courses. Learners can access them through a cloud-hosted LMS. An education software is a perfect option for professionals working together in one school or other academic institutions. Moreover, learners are provided with unlimited access to the resources to conduct vital tasks or gain new insights (eLearning Industry, n.d.).
An educational software grants teachers a way to track and report on their learners’ development. It can customize content depending on the experience and accomplishments of a particular learner. Additionally, it improves course or program content to make it more fitting to the skills and needs of learners, which is typically the design of special education software.
Reducing costs is a top priority for businesses, especially now that we are still recovering from the economic effects of COVID-19. Shifting to online learning is the most feasible way to do it in the education sector. Through technology, students can learn in the comfort of their own homes. At the same time, schools save on learning materials, room improvements and maintenance, and more.
Many processes can now be automated, helping teachers focus on more pressing teaching matters. For example, special tools give teachers easy access to student records, provide grades for tests, and check homework, all while overseeing other tedious tasks.
Source: EdWeek, 2020
AI, AR, and VR are sharply trending in the education industry. Mobile learning platforms are seen as solid solutions to meeting different learner needs and interests. While pre-school and primary school students tend to be causes of concern, gamification and a number of activities can be used to capture their interest. There are also unique assignments that can enhance creativity and keep them engaged for a much longer time. With these, we proceed to the best education software in 2022.
Instructure, the tech company behind the cloud-hosted educational advancement Canvas, developed it especially for K-5 to higher education centers. Within years, Canvas has become one of the best LMS for schools. Be it a small classroom or a big university with a hybrid or full distance learning arrangement, schools of all sizes and types can use Canvas.
Canvas is a highly functional, flexible, and reliable learning solution, which makes it the LMS for easy learning and productivity. Top features and credentials are the reason the LMS solution accounts for 21% of academies and 27% of enrollments. It also offers Bridge, its open-source and corporate counterpart.
Canvas offers a free trial period and a quote-based plan. Visit their website for more information.
Academes started using Blackboard Learn during the late 1990s. It has since transitioned to serve K-12 schools, higher education centers, government and military initiatives, and businesses. It can be used through SaaS implementations, self-hosting, or managed hosting. It has also since been updated to work well with mobile devices.
Blackboard Learn was created to bring effective online courses and learning to students with less or no personal meetings at all. This web-hosted software showcases a course management system, personalized open architecture, and extensive design that let users integrate it with student information systems and authentication procedures. You can integrate it with a number of business systems and applications, such as BrainHoney, Epsilen, and Moodle Learning Management System, among others.
Blackboard Learn is widely known as the LMS for assessment and content reporting. To back it up, one study reports that 28% of institutes and 37% of enrollments use it (Fenton, 2018).
Google Classroom belongs to Google Apps for Education, a notable space in the software juggernaut’s applications ecosystem. Many consider it the top LMS for schools engaged with the Google Space (Gerwitz, 2020).
Google Classroom merges robust educational management systems with outstanding communication solutions. The resulting technology allows academes to communicate with students and parents seamlessly. For many, it is enough to earn it the reputation of being the LMS for course creation.
Google Classroom can only be used in educational spaces.
Wisenet has over 20 years of extensive experience in providing cloud-hosted applications to education and training providers. The connected learner management application is geared towards higher education centers, short course providers, corporate training, and more. It enables academes to generate effective learning outcomes, amplify stakeholder engagement, boost productivity, and achieve business growth.
Workday Student is a web-hosted campus management tool that is capable of uniting a whole school under one easy-to-use and configurable application to be delivered over the cloud. It merges student recruiting, admissions, student financials, and curriculum management. It also aids in configuring applications, kicking off campaigns, improving recruitment processes, and computing enrollment status.
Workday Student was developed to support academic institutions. It works smoothly with Workday Human Capital Management, Workday Payroll, Workday Financial Management, and Workday Grants Management.
By quote only. Contact the vendor to learn about their pricing packages.
Nearpod grants academic institutions the capability to launch interactive lessons with collaborative tasks, including quizzes, simulations, virtual reality, and more. The classroom management software permits teachers to host classroom sessions live and in online settings.
Nearpod features an activity dashboard that allows teachers to upload Google slides, videos, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, and more for holding interactive lessons. With this software, academes can submit audio responses, real-time checks on the student portal, and formative assessments to study student performance. It also lets teachers launch game-based lessons and analyze students’ works by evaluating post-seminar accounts.
ClassDojo helps academic institutions engage students and parents through customized messages, images, and videos. It authorizes teachers to make and share online portfolios, letting students and parents log in by scanning a QR code and write journal entries, record videos, and submit work via images.
It provides stories to help teachers share photos, links, files or announcements, and videos using private imagery. ClassDojo further hosts useful features like classroom music, project activity directions, noise meter, feedback, event sharing, and more. A random student generator allows teachers to pick volunteers during lessons or activities.
Dyknow monitors students’ iPads, Chromebooks, PCs, and MacBooks to gather useful insights into their classroom attitudes. It helps educators see their students’ internet usage during class to guide them in enhancing classroom performance. It gives teachers the option to block specific content or websites that they perceive as distracting or unpleasant.
Dyknow helps teachers prepare tests and assessments. With its software database, teachers can choose questions for the test. The database also provides diverse sets of questions with various difficulty levels for every subject. It gives teachers the option to reveal answer keys or conduct Q&A sessions after the assessment as they see fit. Further on, it hosts online tutorials for several subjects so that students can review them for their yearly assessments.
Contact Dyknow to find out about their pricing plans.
The quiz-based, formative assessment software Socrative delivers several features to enrich teaching and learning environments. With it, teachers can create quizzes, exit tickets, and more to gather and review student data on the fly and make real-time changes and revamp student learning. Students do not need to create accounts to be able to use Socrative; teachers can simply invite them by giving them a URL to let them access a quiz, question, and more.
Socrative can be accessed via Chrome, Windows, and Apple. Users do not have to download anything. It is also functional on smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
Schoology specializes in course teaching, curriculum administration, and materials sharing and collaboration. It delivers the most comprehensive blended classroom platform by providing teachers with personalized learning roles and augmenting the entire results for students. For many institutions, the top-notch features make it the best LMS for K-12 and third-party integrations.
For nearly 10 years now, Schoology has been supporting all instruction types like distance programs and blended learning arrangements. It is part of Powerschool Unified Classroom™ and has 20 million users in 50 U.S. states.
The cloud-based video assessment software GoReact offers dynamic, flexible, and convenient features for analyzing skills development and improving such skills. It provides feedback, grading, and analysis of student performances. It streamlines and humanizes skill-based learning with the help of an attested fusion of video plus, feedback.
Educational establishments and training centers worldwide rely on GoReact to manage extensible video observation, assessment, and coaching. It is affordable and can be used by students and educators across disciplines.
Kahoot! LMS is founded on bettering educator interaction with students by delivering games and virtual sessions, simplifying virtual learning processes, and tracking student performance through formative assessments. It holds live games with different types of questions, like true or false, multiple-choice, and more. You can view the number of questions or players, check student performance, and produce reports as they happen to determine hard questions.
Kahoot! allows schools to ask for feedback from students through polls and change the times of sessions. It also allows higher education centers to communicate with students through video conferences and study learning content to facilitate exam preparation.
Embrace is a proficient and extensive platform built to streamline IEP processes and minimize staff frustration. It offers state and core learning benchmarks, timeline monitoring and notification, an information tracking form, and parental contract data logs, among others.
Contact Embrace to discover pricing details.
Frontline Special Education Management Software can meet every breakthrough and requirement deadline within the special education field. It ameliorates the quality and execution of IEP. It also generates on-time student progress reports. Further on, it safely teams up with parents, third-party providers, and general education.
Contact Frontline Special Education Management Software for their pricing packages.
SEIS delivers centralized virtual access for IEPs, special education records, CALPADS reporting, and service monitoring. The platform boasts references and a comments library if more papers are called for aside from the IEP itself. Recently, it has launched its new e-signature feature.
SEIS can be accessed from any device as long as it is connected to the internet. Plus, the IEP forms are already filled with the necessary information from the Student Record.
Contact SEIS to get pricing details.
Quizizz is a learning solution that delivers engaging and immersive content via gamification. With it, learners can participate in live and asynchronous learning using a device whether remotely or in person. At the same time, trainers and teachers receive instant data and feedback.
Quizizz offers various pricing plans that are billed per month or per year. Contact the vendor for more information.
Quizlet is an easy-to-use and intuitive LMS for language learning. It is mostly used by students and language teachers for taking notes, memorizing, and other studying purposes. The effective simplicity of quizzes and flashcards accounts for why Quizlet is used by half of all secondary school students across the U.S. (Fenton, 2018).
Pocket Study is a remote learning tool that helps academic establishments host distance classes and create digital study institutes. Learners can listen to certain lessons and filter topics based on tags for easy access. Simultaneously, teachers can disseminate study resources among learners, make a channel with training videos, and record particular images or topics during lectures. Institutes can also monitor ongoing classes and interact with students during the live sessions.
Pocket Study has an intuitive YouTube video player and integrates with Vimeo. It offers Android and iOS mobile applications, as well as email and phone support.
Pocket Study pricing plans starts at $2 annually.
Using flashcards, Brainscape helps students and employees learn faster. It’s fully designed for accessibility, so that anyone can simply make, find, and share flashcards and study them using the most advanced techniques in cognitive science. Its marketplace delivers millions of flashcard collections for almost every subject in the world.
Contact Brainscape to learn more about its subscription plans.
Alta is a flexible learning tool that fully supports higher educational centers in managing customized learning processes. Through the platform, learners simply select an approach based on their needs. They can access it anywhere they find convenient.
Contact Alta for more information about its pricing plans.
Mendeley was designed and purposely built to aid researchers in organizing and sharing research papers and discovering research data. The prolific reference management software allows them to keep, write down, and cite references, view articles, and import documents straight from their desktop on the spot. Its features a content library, collaboration, file sharing, document storage, an activity dashboard, and more. It enables users to configure workflows and generate references, citations, and bibliographies in different journal styles.
Mendeley provides a notebook module, letting publishers arrange highlighted notes from various PDF files and keep them in a unified location.
Contact Mendeley to find out about its pricing packages.
RedCube Papers is an award-winning reference software that caters to researchers, publishers, and educational and commercial firms. It showcases a dynamic suite of reference management and discovery solutions, helping researchers search, view, arrange, read, share, and cite research literature.
Article Galaxy gives researchers one-click access to journal articles and book chapters at the most reasonable prices. The platform delivers easy and quick access to 86% of articles. It has been helping researchers save up to 28% on their article spending.
Contact Article Galaxy to discover its pricing plans.
While we have compiled this list of the best education software you will find in the market, online learning continues to build its credentials worldwide, supported by the emergence of new technologies and widespread access to the internet.
For that, you can check how the developments are impacting the education sector through this leading online education trends.
Parents want nothing but the best for their children’s education, so they would pick a school that keeps up with technology and the latest trends. Distance learning has been here for quite a while, but technological developments and advancements will absolutely take the education sector to a whole new level (Khanna, 2022).
References:
by Imed Bouchrika, Phd
by Imed Bouchrika, Phd
