Date post: | 14-Jan-2017 |
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Top 10 Tech Tools Every 21st Century
Educator Should Use
© Alex Noudelman
Technology and education are pretty much intertwined. Nearly every school
board in the world requires their teachers to implement some sort of
technology in their classroom. For some teachers, educational tech tools
seem foreign and they thereby feel hesitant and uncertain about using them
and how to tie them to the curriculum they are teaching. Here are 10
Educational Tech Tools you may want to research about and implement in
time for first day of school.
1. Skype An app that provides video chat and voice call services.
Skype can be a great tool for keeping in touch with other educators or even attending meetings
and field trips virtually. Even cooler, it can help teachers to connect with other classrooms, even
those in other countries.
Is your school on a budget? Invite a guest lecturer to speak to your
students via Skype at a fraction of the cost.
2. Wordle A tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.
Wordles can be used in all curricular areas and are great for promoting critical thinking skills in
your students. Specifically, they can be used for studying, summarizing texts, creating student
profiles, highlighting key skills, learning new concepts and much more.
3. Twitter Twitter is a social networking service tools enables users to send
and read short 140-character messages.
There are so many ways Twitter can be used in education. Teachers can connect with other
educators, take part in chats, share their ideas, or even use it in the classroom to reach out to
students and parents.
Top 10 Education Chats to Join
Hashtag Date/Time
#edchat Tuesdays at 12pm ET and 7pm ET
#engchat Mondays at 7pm ET
#mathchat Thursdays at 8 pm and Mondays at 8:30pm ET
#kinderchat Mondays at 9 pm ET
#edtech Tuesdays at 12 pm and 7 pm ET
#Flipclass Mondays at 8 pm ET
#sschat Mondays at 7 pm ET
#DENchat Thursdays at 8 pm ET
#DigCit Wednesdays at 7 pm ET
#Tededchat Tuesdays at 6 pm ET
Top 10 Education Experts to Follow
on Twitter
EXPERT’S NAME/TITLE TWITTER HANDLE
Vicki Davis (Co-Founder of Flat Classroom Project) @coolcatteacher
Fran Simon (Host of #ECETechChat) @FSSimon
Joanne Babalis (Educator) @Joannebabalis
Larry Ferlazzo (Educator) @LarryFerlazzo
TED Ed @TED_ED
Sir Ken Robinson (Scholar) @SirKenRobinson
Steven W. Anderson (Co-Creator of #edchat) @web20classroom
Richard Byrne (Speaker, Writer & Teacher) @rmbryne
Sue Beckingham (Education Developer) @suebecks
Edutopia @edutopia
TED isn’t just a great place to find inspiration anymore, the site also contains numerous videos
that are organized by subject and can help you to teach everything from how pain relievers work
to Shakespearean insults.
4. TED ED TED's education initiative — makes short video lessons worth
sharing, aimed at educators and students.
Click here to Apply to Become a
TED Ed Innovative Educator
Bring TED to your classroom with TED-Ed Clubs!
ClassDojo is a communication platform (Virtual Classroom) that encourages students to learn
and gets parents involved too. Classrooms become positive learning environments - which
means there's no more 'classroom management'.
5. ClassDojo Build wonderful classroom communities with parents and
students.
From Google Drive to Hangouts to Google Docs, these are the tools that let users collaborate,
communicate, and share your knowledge with others. Make your classroom a virtual and
paperless one by encouraging students to do everything on Google Apps.
6. Google Apps for Education A suite of free productivity tools for classroom
collaboration.
• Create a Google Doc for a lesson plan to be shared with other teachers.
• Try translating a document in Google Docs to give to non-English speaking parents.
• Invite a guest lecturer into your class through video chat (Google Hangouts).
• Create a parent volunteer survey with forms in Google Docs to collect contact and availability information.
• Set-up a spreadsheet in Google Docs with timing and availability for parents to sign-up for parent-teacher conferences.
• Schedule and invite parents for interviews and collaboration. Google will send you a reminder in case you forget.
• Create a grade level folder in Google Docs that is shared with your team so anyone can add and utilize your classroom files.
Some Ways to Use Google Apps for Education
• Create a site for your classroom with embedded Docs, Calendars, Forms, and gadgets.
• Create a new site in Google Sites that can be a template for a student e-portfolio to showcase student work and progress during student-led parent conferences.
• Set-up pen pals with students in another country or city.
• Set-up a resource calendar for a laptop cart (or a projector, library room, gymnasium etc)
Some Ways to Use Google Apps for Education
Both teachers and students have become numb to conventional classroom presentations, where
they're confronted with slide after slide containing too much info. Prezis defies conventions and
make presentations all the more interesting to look at.
7. Prezi A presentation tool that can be used as an alternative to traditional
slide presentations.
Share videos, photos, documents easily. Connect a DropBox account to your iPad and have
images, and video automatically synced between devices. Utilize the website, iOS app, or
Desktop APP to manage files where-ever you are.
8. Dropbox
A tool that brings your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and keep
your files safe.
1. Share Stored files
2. Overcome Email Limitations
3. Turn in Homework
4. Easy Saves from Popular Apps like Evernote
5. Declutters your desk.
5 Great Uses of
You've heard of YouTube and TeacherTube, now check out SchoolTube, endorsed by leading
education associations. It's a safe, moderated environment where students can post self-produced
videos for classroom use.
9. SchoolTube
The child-friendly version of YouTube.
Click here to Create your Own
School Channel.
SlideShare is still the most popular place to find and host out-of-this-world presentations as well
as documents and infographics. Teachers and students alike can spend hours learning from what
others share.
10. SlideShare
A Web 2.0 Based Slide Hosting Service
Click here to check out some
“Educational” Decks on
SlideShare.