Tools for learning

This page shares direct links to the free tools that I have used extensively to support the learning or research process - there are so many apps and companies out there trying to push their tech on us that it can be overwhelming. I’ve always tried to find a free alternative, as I know that educators don’t always have the budget to pay for monthly subscriptions, and I’m sure many of their students don’t either. I hope others find the growing list helpful in cutting through the hype - I’ll aim to keep this updated as it is what people seem to be asking for. Please let me know if there are other tools or apps that you have tested extensively that I should add.

Lumen5:

I’ve used this text-to-video tool to summarise research and big chunks of text for students. Here is an example of a research summary I created with the free version.

Riffbot.ai

This is a critical reflection tool developed by Stanford to guide people through a reflection. The main benefit I see is that the conversation is emailed through to the teacher and the student. I’ve used to to support reflection on units of learning.

Wiseone

While this isn’t a tool I use often, it is something that I have shown my own children how to use, and it has really helped them with schoolwork. It is an extension that works with Chrome and can help decipher web pages and provide more context on words they might not understand. It’s been helpful for them when they have been assigned research tasks.

Goblin tools

Again, this has been a great one for my 15-year-old son, who has used it to break down complex tasks and stay on track. It is a magic ‘to-do-list’ that can go down to the finest detail and keep you moving in the right direction with ‘micro-steps’!

NotebookLM:

An excellent tool from Google that helps you synthesise up to 20 documents for research or reference.

Research Rabbit & Lateral.io:

I’ve used Research Rabbit to add to the literature search that I’ll usually do through a library database, and Lateral is great for analysing themes across documents and aligning them in a table.

Substack:

I’ve of course used Substack to support me in hosting and sharing the resources that I’ve been creating, I think it’s a great way to build up a community and could be used as a class blog or a way to network with other educators if you are scared of LinkedIn and ‘X’ like me!