WHAT YOU TEACH WITH · MATH AND SCIENCE

STEM tools — what we pay for, what is free, and what the research says

The shelf in one place: the tools Regis Jesuit licenses and supports, the free ones most math and science teachers already use, the newest ones people ask about, and the one step that has to happen before a student signs in to any of them.

THE ONE-MINUTE VERSION

Paid for and supported here: DeltaMath, Gizmos, Gimkit, Canvas Studio and LockDown Browser. Free and supported here: Desmos, Pear Deck, Canva, Kahoot and Wayground — each has its own page in this course.

Free, no student sign-in, use today: PhET simulations, GeoGebra, CODAP, Polypad, the AP Statistics applets, BioInteractive, the ChemCollective virtual lab, the Physics Classroom interactives. Nothing to clear, because nothing about a student leaves the room.

The one rule. A tool that takes a student sign-in — even a free one, even a great one — gets one email to Educational Technology before a class uses it. Some are already cleared; many are not. That is the whole approval process, and it takes a day, not a month.

What the research says, in one line: simulations move learning when they are used with light guidance and beside real equipment, not instead of it. The studies, with their limits, are in a fold below.

DO THIS

1 · BEFORE ANY STUDENT SIGNS IN

One email, then the tool

If students will create an account, log in with their school account, or type anything about themselves into it, email Educational Technology first with the tool's name and what students would enter. A free tool with a click-through agreement is still a vendor holding student data. Booking it into a lesson before the check is the one thing this page asks you not to do.

2 · START WITH WHAT IS PAID FOR

The licensed shelf is already cleared and wired

DeltaMath posts grades to Canvas; Gizmos signs in through Canvas; Gimkit, Studio and LockDown Browser are in every course. Each page below says what the tool is for and the one thing that will bite you. If a free tool does the same job, the licensed one has support behind it and no privacy question.

3 · THE FREE SHELF, NO SIGN-IN

Open it in a tab and teach

A PhET sim, a GeoGebra construction, a CODAP data set or a Desmos graph runs in the browser with no account. Put the link on a Canvas page or in the quiz question, and students are in it in one click. The free tools that do want a student account — GeoGebra Classroom, Khan Academy assignments, Snorkl — go through tile 1 first.

THE SHELF

Tool	At Regis Jesuit	What it is for	Student sign-in
DeltaMath →	LICENSED · SUPPORTED	Math practice that grades itself and posts to the gradebook; test corrections built from each student's own test.	Through Canvas. Cleared.
Gizmos →	LICENSED · SUPPORTED	Science and math simulations with a heat map of what the class got wrong. No grade passback — scores are typed in by hand.	Through Canvas. Cleared.
Desmos →	FREE · SUPPORTED	The calculator inside every AP exam and the SAT; graphing, statistics, scientific, geometry, 3D. Works inside LockDown Browser with one setting.	None for the calculators.
PhET →	FREE · NO SIGN-IN	University of Colorado's simulations for physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math — on the EdTech Top 40 list of tools most launched in American schools, with twenty years of research behind how to use it.	None. Teachers may make a free account for the activity library.
GeoGebra →	FREE · NO SIGN-IN	Dynamic geometry, algebra, 3D and calculus in one engine; a million shared constructions. What Desmos is for graphing, GeoGebra is for geometry.	None for the apps. GeoGebra Classroom takes sign-ins — tile 1.
CODAP →	FREE · NO SIGN-IN	Drag-and-drop data analysis from the Concord Consortium: tables, plots, maps, sliders. Statistics, science labs, any class that collects data.	None.
Stapplet → · StatKey →	FREE · NO SIGN-IN	The AP Statistics applets: sampling distributions, simulation-based inference, every distribution, regression. Stapplet is by the authors of The Practice of Statistics; StatKey by the Lock family.	None.
Polypad →	FREE · NO SIGN-IN	Virtual manipulatives from Amplify: algebra tiles, fraction bars, polyhedra, dice and spinners, a balance scale. Runs on the room screen or on every laptop.	None.
BioInteractive →	FREE · NO SIGN-IN	Howard Hughes Medical Institute's films, interactives, virtual labs and data activities for high school and AP Biology.	None. A free teacher account adds playlists.
ChemCollective Virtual Lab →	FREE · NO SIGN-IN	Carnegie Mellon's browser lab: hundreds of reagents, stoichiometry, equilibrium, acid–base, thermochemistry, electrochemistry. Built to tie the computation to the bench.	None.
Physics Classroom Interactives →	FREE · NO SIGN-IN	Browser interactives across sixteen physics topics with activity sheets. The paid Task Tracker layer, which tracks students, is the part that would need clearing.	None for the interactives.
Khan Academy →	FREE · SIGN-IN · CHECK FIRST	Videos and practice for every course we teach; on the EdTech Top 40. Watching needs nothing; assigning and tracking needs student accounts. Khanmigo for Teachers → is free for US teachers and is teacher-side only.	For assignments, yes — tile 1.
Wayground → · Kahoot → · Gimkit →	FREE · SUPPORTED GIMKIT LICENSED	Retrieval practice as a game, with a report afterward. Each has a page here on the two settings that make it fair and the report that makes it worth it.	Gimkit through Canvas. Kahoot and Wayground live games: a code and a nickname, no account.
AP Classroom →	FREE WITH AP	Progress checks, the question bank, AP Daily and practice exams in the exam's own format. For an AP course, the first stop for exam-shaped practice.	College Board accounts students already have.
Pivot Interactives · Snorkl · GeoGebra Classroom · IXL	NOT LICENSED · ASK FIRST	The ones teachers ask about. Pivot (Discovery Education, about $10 a student a semester) is video-based lab work with real measurement; Snorkl is AI feedback on a student's recorded whiteboard explanation; GeoGebra Classroom is the live dashboard on top of the free apps. All take student accounts; none is cleared here yet. The fold below says what each does.	Yes — tile 1, and for the paid ones your chair.

"Most used" comes from the EdTech Top 40, LearnPlatform's annual count of the tools actually launched in American schools; the most recent list readable in full (2023) has Desmos, Khan Academy, Kahoot, Quizizz (now Wayground), PhET and IXL on it. Cleared means a privacy check is on file with Educational Technology. Every link and price on this page was opened on September 11, 2026.

The tools are checked. What to do with them in your subject is yours — you are right and I am not, and if a tool belongs on this shelf and is not here, say so and it goes on. None of this is an expectation; the licensed shelf is paid for whether or not anyone opens it.

OPEN WHAT YOU NEED

The approval step — what needs clearing, what does not, and what to send

Needs nothing: a tool students use with no account and no personal information — a simulation, a calculator, a data set, a manipulative opened from a link. Use it today.

Needs the check: anything a student signs into, creates an account on, joins with a code that ties to their name, or types work into that the vendor keeps. Free does not change this; a click-through agreement is still a contract about student data, and the school's privacy notice lists every vendor students touch. The check is the difference between a tool being on that list and not.

What to send: one email to Educational Technology with the tool's name and address, what students would enter (name, school email, work, nothing), and when you would like to start. Already-cleared tools come back the same day; new ones need the vendor's privacy terms read and sometimes a signed agreement, which is where the time goes. Ask a week out, not the night before.

Paying for something: a license is a department conversation with your chair first, then Educational Technology for the privacy side. A tool a whole level would use is a stronger case than one section, and the licensed shelf above is the comparison to beat.

Mathematics — the free shelf and where each one runs

Tool	What it does that the others do not	Where it runs
Desmos →	Graphing, regression, statistics, sliders, tables; the exam calculator. Geometry and 3D tools alongside.	Browser; inside LockDown Browser with the allowed-domain setting; its page →
GeoGebra Geometry → · 3D →	Constructions that stay true when dragged; transformations; solids and cross-sections; a CAS. The shared library has a construction for almost every theorem in Geometry.	Browser, no account. Any shared construction opens from its link, so a Canvas page can carry the exact figure.
Polypad →	Algebra tiles, fraction bars, number lines, polyhedra, probability spinners, a balance scale, on a shared canvas.	Browser, no account. Vivi puts it on the room screen; students open the same link on their laptops.
Wolfram\|Alpha →	A computation engine that is right about computation in a way a chatbot is not — the check for an AI-written key. Step-by-step solutions are the paid tier.	Browser, no account for the free answers.
DeltaMath →	Randomized skill practice with grade passback, timed fluency, and test corrections built from a student's own test. Licensed, so the support is here.	Canvas, as an External Tool assignment chosen through Find — never a pasted link.
Canvas New Quizzes →	Numeric with tolerance, Formula with different numbers per student, Stimulus, a regular-expression blank for algebraic answers, and LockDown Browser. Its page has every setting with its click, a model quiz to take, and a brief that teaches your AI what Canvas can grade.	Canvas.

Statistics and data — the applets AP Statistics runs on

Tool	What it does	Where it runs
Stapplet →	One-variable and two-variable data, every named distribution, sampling distributions, simulation-based and traditional inference, and activities like the correlation guessing game. By Daren Starnes and Josh Tabor, the authors of The Practice of Statistics.	Browser, no account.
StatKey →	Bootstrap intervals and randomization tests, built to be watched: students see the resamples pile up.	Browser, no account.
CODAP →	Real data sets, dragged into plots; a class survey becomes a data set in a minute; maps for anything with a location. Grades five to 14, any subject that collects data.	Browser, no account; a document can be shared by link.
Desmos →	Lists, regressions with residuals, the distribution functions, random sampling — and it is the calculator on the exam from 2027. The Statistics fold on its page is a build table for the Canvas questions.	Browser; LockDown Browser with the setting.
Stats Medic → · Skew The Script →	Lessons and Desmos activities written by AP Statistics teachers; Skew The Script's are real-data lessons from a nonprofit.	Browser. Teacher accounts; student-facing activities run through Amplify Classroom, which takes sign-ins — the approval fold.

Physics, chemistry, biology and environmental science — simulations and virtual labs

Tool	What it does	Where it runs
PhET →	Simulations across all four sciences and math, open source, with an activity library teachers have filled for twenty years. Their own research is the clearest statement of how to use a simulation, and it is in the research fold.	Browser, no account; each sim has a link and an embed code that works on a Canvas page.
Gizmos →	Licensed simulations with student exploration sheets, assessment questions and a class heat map. No grade passback; the page says what to do about that.	Through Canvas. Cleared.
Physics Classroom Interactives →	Sixteen topic areas of browser interactives with activity sheets, from kinematics to light. The site's Task Tracker (tracking, paid) is the part that would need clearing.	Browser, no account for the interactives.
ChemCollective Virtual Lab →	Hundreds of reagents in a browser lab, with problem sets by topic. Built at Carnegie Mellon to make the computation and the bench the same activity.	Browser, no account.
BioInteractive →	HHMI's films, click-and-learn interactives, virtual labs and data activities; the standard free shelf for AP Biology and environmental science.	Browser, no student account; a free teacher account adds playlists.
Vernier Graphical Analysis →	The free app that collects and fits sensor data; the sensors are the paid part. If your lab has Vernier probes, this is the software; the Pro tier adds video sync and shared data.	Windows, Mac, iPad, browser. No student account.
Pivot Interactives →	Video of real experiments with on-screen measurement tools, so students design and measure rather than watch; physics, chemistry, biology, earth science. Discovery Education; about $10 a student a semester.	Not licensed here. Student accounts — chair, then the approval fold.

The research, with its limits — how simulations and virtual labs earn their place

Five studies that hold up, each with the limit its own authors name. None of them is about a brand; they are about what a simulation does when it is used a certain way.

The study	What it found, in plain words	Where it stops
SRI, Simulations for STEM Learning (2014) →	Fifty-nine controlled studies. Students taught with simulations scored a little over half a standard deviation higher than students taught without (g = 0.62) — roughly the difference between the 50th and the 73rd percentile. Simulations with something added, a guiding question or a structured task, beat the plain sim by another 0.49.	Almost all science; the authors found few qualifying studies in mathematics. Funded by the Gates Foundation.
de Jong, Linn and Zacharia, Science (2013) →	A review in Science of physical against virtual labs: each does something the other cannot, and the recommendation is to combine them — the sim before or beside the bench, not in place of it.	A review, not a trial; the full text is behind Science's paywall, the university page carries the abstract.
Brinson, Computers & Education (2015) →	Fifty-six studies comparing virtual or remote labs with hands-on ones: in 89 percent, students learned as much or more from the non-traditional lab.	The author's own caution: 95 percent of those studies measured content knowledge and only seven percent measured inquiry skill. It says nothing about whether students can run a titration.
Adams, Paulson and Wieman, PhET (2008) →	Students working a simulation from a step-by-step worksheet did what the sheet said and stopped: “there is no engaged exploration.” Given a driving question and left to explore, they built the framework the sim was designed to build. The PhET research page puts the same finding in one line: minimal text, a good question, and the sim does the rest.	Interview studies with small numbers of students, in physics, by the people who built the sims. Twenty years of follow-up on their research page →.
Juandi and colleagues, GeoGebra meta-analysis, Heliyon (2021) →	Twenty-nine studies of GeoGebra-assisted lessons, 2010 to 2020: a large effect on mathematics achievement (g = 0.96), larger with more than four weeks of use.	Every study is from Indonesia and most are small. Read it as encouraging for dynamic geometry, not as a number to quote for a Colorado classroom.

The research on Desmos itself, and on the practices Canvas quizzes run — retrieval, spacing, feedback with information in it — sits on the Desmos page → and the quizzes page →, each with its limits named the same way.

The newest ones, and the paid ones people ask about

NEW, AND WORTH KNOWING WHAT THEY ARE

Snorkl → — a student records a whiteboard explanation, out loud, and an AI gives feedback on the reasoning; the teacher gets the misconceptions across the class. Free tier; student accounts, so the approval fold. The interesting part for math is that the artifact is the explanation, not the answer.
Khanmigo for Teachers → — Khan Academy's AI planning tools, free to US teachers and teacher-side only, so no student data question. The student-side Khanmigo is a paid product and would need clearing.
Amplify Classroom → — the Desmos activities (Marbleslides, Polygraph, card sorts) under their new name, with a dashboard that shows every student's screen. Sign-ins, so the approval fold; the Desmos page has the teacher collections.
Canvas's own Generate with AI → — inside every New Quiz now: multiple choice from a reading, five at a time. Already cleared, because it is Canvas.

PAID, NOT LICENSED HERE — WHAT EACH ONE IS

Pivot Interactives → — video of real experiments with measurement tools; about $10 a student a semester; 500-plus activities across the sciences.
GeoGebra Classroom — free, but it is the live-dashboard layer on top of the free apps and takes student sign-ins.
IXL, Albert, Mathspace, Labster — skill practice, AP question banks, an adaptive math course and simulated labs, in that order. Each does a job something on the licensed shelf already does; the case for one is a department case.
The question that decides it: what does it do that DeltaMath, Gizmos, Desmos and a PhET sim do not, for how many sections, and who supports it when it breaks in third period.

Learning Services — the accessibility already built into these tools

For a student with a plan, the free tools above carry more than most people know, and none of it needs a purchase. Learning Services decides what a student needs; this is what the tools can do once that is decided.

Desmos → reads expressions aloud with a screen reader, plays a graph as sound (audio trace, Alt+T), runs entirely from the keyboard, enlarges text and curves, reverses contrast, and works with refreshable Braille displays in Nemeth and UEB. The same calculator is on the exam, so the accommodation practiced in class is the one used in May.

PhET → has an inclusive-design program: a growing set of sims with keyboard control, screen-reader descriptions and sound. Look for the accessibility badge on a sim before assigning it to a student who needs one.

OneNote Math Assistant → is in the Microsoft 365 every student here already has: handwritten math becomes typed math, an equation can be solved with the steps shown, graphed, or turned into a practice set. For a student who cannot yet hold the steps in their head, the steps are on the page.

Wayground → carries twenty accommodations on the free tier — read-aloud, extended time, reduced choices — and its page here says how to turn them on for everyone rather than for one student in front of the class.

During a locked exam: a calculator or a reader as an accommodation inside LockDown Browser is a setting, not a workaround, and it is set up a week out — Learning Services first, then Educational Technology. The outside-sites recipe →

Who to ask, and every link

Clearing a tool, a license question, Canvas, LockDown Browser	Jason Beyer · jbeyer@regisjesuit.com · Teams is fastest. Send the tool's name and what students would enter.
Paying for something	Your department chair first; then Educational Technology for the privacy side.
A student who needs an accommodation in one of these	Learning Services first, then Educational Technology, a week out for anything inside a locked exam.
How to teach with any of it	Your department, and for Desmos the Math IGC. They will get you further than this page.

Tool reference — everything we support → · Desmos → · Math and science quizzes in Canvas → · Gizmos → · DeltaMath → · Outside sites inside LockDown Browser → · EdTech Top 40, the most-used list →

LAST VERIFIED — SEPTEMBER 11, 2026. Every tool page, price and study above was opened that day.