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.

Connect with Other Classrooms Around the World

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.

for Creating

Student Profiles

for Learning

Key Concepts

for Studying for Tests

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.

Let’s Take a Look at a Few Good

TED Ed Lessons

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.

Watch the following video to

learn more about how to use

ClassDojo.

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.

Thank you for reading! Please share this deck and subscribe to my channel.

© Alex Noudelman