11 Best Back to School Apps in 2025

Scriptation is the Emmy® award winning app for annotating scripts, transferring notes, utilizing Playback, and much, much more that you can download free in the App Store. But this isn’t just about a free app for reading scripts, marking up drafts, or collaborating with study partners at the click of a button. It’s about Scriptation On Campus.

Scriptation On Campus is a resource for film students who want to use the same tools as directors, producers, writers, actors… anyone on set for TV, Film, shorts, commercials… you get it. The same tools used by industry professionals. And this isn’t limited to just the undergrads; professors, faculty, and educators also get full access to Scriptation when participating as an On Campus partner.

Reach out to On Campus today to see how you can get Scriptation’s Industry Pro as an educational tool for your school at the big cost of ZERO dollars. That’s right, another student discount you need to take advantage of while you still can; but this one will pay dividends well into your professional career.

Try Scriptation’s free script annotation app and take the next steps in your film school education!

Who busts out the legal pads anymore? With all the innovations in learning software, you’d be hard-pressed not to look into new education app alternatives for your latest study tools.

Digital note-taking is here and GoodNotes is a back to school app that allows you to write, annotate PDFs, and keep organized notes across all of your devices and classes. Handwriting is helpful for a student’s memorization and recall, and there’s something to be said for writing VS typing out your latest source of inspiration. Especially if that pesky final goes in those god-forsaken blue books (talk about an area that could use an education app).

While Scriptation is good for script and story doc PDFs (and can create pages for notes as well), Goodnotes is more of a ‘hey let me jot down these gems from the Professor‘ educational tool that keeps your hands and mind working.

Think of Goodnotes (Apple’s 2022 iPad App of the Year), as your digital notebook — ideal for lectures, study groups, and collaborative student projects where you need to get your thoughts down quickly and efficiently. Available for web, iOS, Mac, Windows and Android!

No, not the Kings of Leon song; this back to school app is the unbelievable AI workspace that puts everything you want, need, or could imagine in a study tool into one convenient place. Notion is the student resource that can break up your major, minor, and side projects into folders, sections, sub-sections, whatever you need. Manage assignments, track group projects, and keep your study calendar… keep your study calendar.

Notion’s versatility makes it equally useful for class notes, research outlines, and even personal habit tracking (just don’t share access with your parents). Collaborate with study partners as much or as little as you need, getting better ideas on how to use the workspace and do better work (if you need it).

Notion also, after much, much requesting, has also added an OFFLINE mode~! This makes Notion an education tool you can use no matter what wireless oasis part of campus you find yourself. Let Austin explain it to you:

The slogan may be “Let Speechify read to you” , but that omits the calvacade of celebrity readers lending their voices to this popular text-to-speech app that’s also a great student resource. From Gwyneth Paltrow reciting your Shakespeare to Snoop Dogg reading your biology brief, Speechify has partnered with many a known voice to make one of the best back to school apps available.

Founder Cliff Weitzman lists his battle with dyslexia as an inspiration for making Speechify a leader in text-to-speech tech, so those who struggle with the written word can still enjoy the power of it. With over 50 million listeners worldwide, it’s safe to say Cliff has taken some mighty steps to achieve that outcome with a education tool that doubles as a special education app.

Speechify’s ability to scan anything to be read back helps a busy student listen to the required reading during a commute, or review their own study notes while folding the laundry (please, kids, do your laundry). Speechify offers a wide variety of voices, languages, and playback speeds as well as the ability to clone your own voice; so if you want a preview of what your guest lecture will sound like, you know where to turn. Now that’s an educational tool any student can benefit from.

Whether you struggle with typing out essays or banging out e-mails, Grammarly can be your on-demand study tool. From catching grammar mistakes to suggesting stronger word choices and scanning for the sources you forgot to cite, Grammarly is an educational aid akin to having a perfect study partner; especially since you never have to buy this one pizza.

Not sure your essay will make the grade? Then run it by Grammarly’s grading AI (complete with levels of education adjusting) to see where you can strengthen your argument. You also have the ability to ensure the tone of your material fits your intended audience – a must-have for both students and teachers.

Most important, Grammarly is the best kind of AI assistant – the responsible kind. They guarantee they’ll never sells your material or allows 3rd parties to train their models. All that’s left to you is, you know, the actual writing. Available as both a free option (for an excellent student aid) and upgraded subscription plans.

So, yes, Google… hmmm… how do we put this? If you’re not using it for a study tool, organizational help, or education help, whether for docs, drive, slides, Cloud speech… how’d you even get this far? It wasn’t with Google Maps, that’s for sure. Jokes aside, the Google Workspace suite (FKA G-Suite) is a back to school app essential. From notes to drafts, schedules to spreadsheets, Google Workspace may not be designed to be solely an educational tool, but it certainly helps give a where & how to pair with your what & why.

With so many back to school software options for how the work gets done, Google Workspace is a trusted interface that saves you from downloading another niche education app. That saves more time for you and your team to get working together faster. The industry standard? Maybe. The universally understood? Absolutely.

Free (with upgrade plans available), incredibly collaborative, and conveniently cloud-based, it lets classmates (or study partners) work together seamlessly, no matter where they are – or for how new they are to using Google. It’s Google!

Talk about a whole new kind of study tool. Procrastinators, meet your new best friend. Or worst enemy, depending on how you deal with grudges. Forest is a back to school app that helps students stay focused by gamifying productivity — the longer you stay off your phone (and keep studying/working/writing/reviewing), the more virtual trees you grow. Hop off the study train? Your trees wither and die. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere but we’ll stick to “increase productivity” for now.

Wish those virtual trees were, I don’t know, real? Well they thought of that too over at Forest by partnering with a real tree-planting organization, Trees for the Future, to plant real trees on real Earth. That separates Forest from just an education tool or study app to a real world helper. They’ve already helped plant over 2 MILLION trees – yep, no typo – and if you pair that with Scriptation your environmental impact is wayyy better than the average bear. That makes them an environment and student resource worth supporting.

Celtx has long been praised as the free screenwriting tool for aspiring screenwriters, but it’s also an amazing student aid. They also support script-to-text playback with their Read Through model, an excellent educational tool for film students in the middle of a scene who want to hear if their dialogue can make the grade. While there are other screenwriting programs, Celtx’s free option is a great way for film students to save some cash with an education app perfect for new users.

With your Celtx account you can autosync all your scripts so they can be backed up to your online studio hub, perfect for working at the dorm, back at home, or on Spring Break. So no matter where you’re writing, you can be writing your Senior Thesis Screenplay with full confidence it’ll be there when you get back to campus.

If you love the gamifying of productivity, dial up your study hacks with the gamifying of foreign language! With its quick daily lessons and fun approach, Duolingo makes picking up Spanish, French, or Japanese less of a struggle and more of an fun time with your new best friend: The Duolingo Owl, Duo. They’re a study tool we don’t mind spending some extra time with.

Taking a foreign language is a great way to prepare yourself for wherever your film and writing career might take you. Los Angeles is a heavy Spanish-speaking area, Toronto and Vancouver have their share of French, and you never know when you’ll need to find the library in China. When breaking down the Best Back to School Apps, Duolingo may not appear to be an obvious choice; but it’s here for two huge reasons. One, it’s one of the best educational tools on the market. Two? By signing up for Duolingo, you’re taking steps to stay creative, productive, and versatile.

Have trouble staying on task? Then turn to Trello and get your own task board started today! Trello turns project management into something visual, easy, and for the Type A folks, super fun. Its card-based boards are perfect for tracking tasks, group assignments, long-term research projects, and broader student organizing needs. They also have an impressive series of integrations you can tie into, automation helping your board stay on track, and card mirroring to easily move tasks and progress from student project to student project.

Plus, Trello is an excellent educational tool that also serves as an intro to the same workflow production teams use on projects around the globe. Nothing impresses a potential employer more than an interviewee who works for free- well, other than that, than an interviewee who knows how to use the systems their office is already using. The more of the entries on our Best Back to School Apps list you can know how to use before entering the workforce? The better prepared you’ll be. Get started with the free version (perfect for students and small groups) today!

Nope, not an acronym, study app, or cutting edge AI tool, some of the best advice for students is to remember to REST. Eyes off a screen, head out of a book, rest can come in many forms; a nap, a run, a walk across the quad to check your mail. With the amount of work an average college student has, it’s important to remember what quality of work you can deliver when you’re burnt out (Hint: usually not the A+ kind). Building breaks into your routine is a great way to make sure that when you’re using one of the best back to school apps, you’re using it with fresh eyes and a quick mind.

Oh, and here’s an absolutely free educational resource: call home; and don’t only do so when you need money.

Whether you’re a first year, post grad, or returning after a sabbatical, there’s plenty of educational tools and study aids waiting to help you reach the head of the class. The best education apps find ways to help you learn and grow with easy onboarding, since your biggest hurdle should never be how to use learning tools.

These 11 Best Back to School Apps provide a start of where to look for your next best study hack, and a great launching point for when you actually sit down to work.

Follow the Scriptation blog for more on the best educational apps, student software, and study advice for all your back to school tech needs.