Apps for Education: Where do they belong?

Since mid-last year, we’ve been meeting monthly in a group we called “The Application Committee”. Here, we review requests for new apps from teachers, instructional coaches, and other school personnel.

We’ve been using a Google Form to collect this data, but found the Google Sheet was limited when it came to keeping track of next steps. So, now we’re trying Zendesk.

We’ve called it our “Application Station”. Employees head here to submit their requests for new apps. With all that Zendesk offers, we didn’t want to stop there, though. We decided it would be a great place to house Quick Start Guides, Implementation Guides, videos of teachers using technology in their classrooms, etc.

When placing articles in Zendesk, the following hierarchy is required:

• Categories
  • Sections
    • Articles

IT suggested the categories be: Early Childhood, Elementary, and Middle School. However, most of our apps span two to three of these categories and Zendesk doesn’t allow an article to be houses in multiple categories. This sent me on a search for someone who has already categorized educational apps.

Either Google failed me or no one has done it and published their list. So here’s what I came up with:

• Creativity
  • Google
  • Miscellaneous
• Productivity
  • Assessment
  • Management
• Content Support
  • All Content Support
  • Social Studies
  • Science
  • Mathematics
  • English Language Arts & Reading

I’m not thrilled about my sections in the Creativity category. I can do some work there. Although, I’m sure once I get more articles written, commonalities will emerge and I will have better Section names.

Here are the Apps I have written articles for and categorized:

• Creativity
  • Google
    • Protect Pages in a Google Sheet
  • Miscellaneous
    • Chatterpix (featuring video of a district teacher)
    • Flocabulary
    • GoNoodle
    • Kiddle
    • Novel Effects (featuring video of a district teacher)
• Productivity
  • Assessment
    • Eduphoria
    • MimioStudio Gradebook
    • Kahoot!
  • Management
    • Class Dojo
    • Quick Cards (QR Codes) for Students
    • Skyward: Adding Assignments & Posting Grades
• Content Support
  • All Content Support
    • Discovery Education
  • Social Studies
    • Newsela
  • Science
    • STEMscopes
  • Mathematics
    • IStation Math
    • Imagine Math
  • English Language Arts & Reading
    • AR (Renaissance)
    • IStation Reading
    • No Red Ink

Currently, there are multiple articles for each app that include quick start guides, Google Classroom integration, and there’s an additional category for regularly requested technical support regarding passwords and sound issues. The pictures below show some of the types of articles included.