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"As a teacher, delving into the world of education technology can be daunting. There is SO MUCH out there. How is a busy teacher to know where to begin? Fortunately, Glenda Stewart-Smith of Surrey School District #36 in Canada has put together this collection of essential teaching tools. Each has been shown to be effective in the classroom. There is no need to dive in head-first. If you are drowning in a sea of edtech, wade in this proven pool first."

"Regardless of the subject, good teaching is good teaching. One new piece of tech does not change all that we know about instruction. As we develop curriculum and practices in technology we use strategies and tools we know work for students. We scaffold their learning and provide support when needed. Just like we do in reading, writing, math and content we make anchor charts for technology that guide students along the way."

"Are you looking for a fun, hands-on activity to teach basic programming and maker skills at home or in the classroom? Arduino, and specifically, Arduino UNO are an excellent tool to teach and apply basic electronics and robotics skills."

"In an age of creators, makers, and innovators, we hear of the concept design thinking too often. What is design thinking? More importantly, can design thinking help you as an educator in your classroom? Design thinking is a concept that centers around applying creativity and innovation to our actions, decision making, and problem solving as human beings. More significantly, it focuses on the impact that this creative and innovative thinking has on individuals. As a concept, design thinking can be used pedagogically to enhance our teaching practices. As a tool, it can be used to foster and teach empathy in the classroom."

"Rachel Langenhorst helps teachers in her district find solutions for those issues. She used to teach social studies, but is now the K-12 Technology Integrationist and Instructional Coach at Rock Valley Community Schools in Iowa. "Really be cognizant of the digital tools you're picking and why you are picking them." She put together a list of favorite digital tools for the social studies classroom and shared them during an edWeb webinar. She emphasizes that, as with any classroom technology, teachers need to be careful not to just substitute a tech tool for an analog one. Instead, technology should be used to enhance classroom learning in ways that wouldn't be possible otherwise, including expanding learning beyond the classroom walls."

"Padlet is a versatile, easy to use tool for every teacher's toolkit. Let's learn the basics. At the bottom of this post, I have a Padlet that is temporarily open for you to post and share your favorite edtech tools."

"By now, saying that "the iPad is a great tool for customizing the classroom" wouldn't exactly be breaking news. But while this holds true for every student, each of whom learns in their own way, iPads are truly a lifeline for students with learning disabilities and the people who work hand-in-hand with them. For these students, iPads act as a translation, communication, and individualization tool with unrivaled effectiveness. In so doing, these devices reduce frustration, build confidence, and, well, just work in teaching students the skills they need to learn to thrive. Let's take a look at a few more ways iPads are altering the classroom landscape for students with learning disabilities."

"English grammar is a topic that actually frustrates a number of people. Irrespective of learning level or nationality, spelling and grammar error seems to confuse a lot of individuals. And in case anyone has a learning debility such as dyslexia, using accurate grammar looks like a terrible task. Using grammar correctly could be challenging may be not for those who are English native speaker, but surely for those who learn English from scratch. English language and its difficulties can be very much puzzling. Although, a dictionary or software can assist learners but it cannot give accurate answer. In fact, word processing programs are not very much effective in correcting grammar errors completely. Now, the question is how one can improve or nourish their English grammar skill? With the advancement in the technology, there are a number of tools that might help those struggling to improve their grammar. Web technology has actually contributed a lot in this through the ease of access. Today, you can find a number of tools, apps and websites available over the web that helps in learning and improving grammar from scratch. Here is a list of top ten websites for teaching or learning grammar lessons."

"Starting from next week, EdTech and mLearning will be featuring a series of posts on the best educational web tools and mobile apps we have covered during this year. Today as we were working on some literacy and language arts' tools we thought to give a quick shout-out to two of the best resources to help you with the teaching of reading. These websites provide a wide range of materials (lessons plans, interactives, printables, graphic organizers...etc) all of which are designed specifically to help students develop their reading skills and become better readers."

"As the world economy shifts away from manufacturing jobs and towards service industry and creative jobs, there's a consensus among parents, educators, politicians and business leaders that it is crucial students graduate into university or the workforce with the ability to identify and solve complex problems, think critically about information, work effectively in teams and communicate clearly about their thinking. While many teachers agree with this premise, they don't often know exactly how to teach these skills explicitly, especially because many of the mandates and required curriculum seem to push in the opposite direction. Process-oriented skills are hard to pin down; teachers can see them in certain students, but developing these competencies in students who aren't already demonstrating them can be tricky. A few teachers in Ontario, Canada have been experimenting with tools they think could make the difference."

"Is there a better way to start the week than by spending all day talking and learning about more effective ways to do social studies? You're right. There isn't. I had the sweet chance to spend yesterday with a small group of social studies teachers as we discussed ways to use five under-appreciated Google tools to teach social studies."

"Teaching in a digital world, while essential, can be a difficult task. The digital world is constantly evolving, and it can be hard to keep up with new trends. And while students often enter the classroom with a high degree of digital awareness, it is often confined to the world of social media. How then, do educators learn about digital literacy, so they can model and teach it to their students?  Thankfully, there are tons of apps, tools, and resources that can help. We decided to profile the best ones."

"Last year at this time, I was trying not to think about kindergarteners. I was still teaching ninth grade English and had just accepted a job teaching technology to K-5. I was excited about the challenge, and I knew that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Developing the tech curriculum challenged me to teach programming or at least computational thinking at each elementary grade level. Our school is mid-pivot in technology -- we're in our second year of a middle school 1:2 iPad program, our first year of having a cart of iPads available for elementary, and our last year of two PC labs for the students to use (next year we'll have only one lab). Knowing this, I wanted to design a program that mostly used tablet-based tools."

"Last year at this time, I was trying not to think about kindergarteners. I was still teaching ninth grade English and had just accepted a job teaching technology to K-5. I was excited about the challenge, and I knew that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Developing the tech curriculum challenged me to teach programming or at least computational thinking at each elementary grade level. Our school is mid-pivot in technology -- we're in our second year of a middle school 1:2 iPad program, our first year of having a cart of iPads available for elementary, and our last year of two PC labs for the students to use (next year we'll have only one lab). Knowing this, I wanted to design a program that mostly used tablet-based tools."

"In my teaching career as an educator, no change in curriculum, program or teaching philosophy (and believe me, there have been a lot) has had the impact on my teaching that connecting my classroom has.  Using social media tools to connect my students with people and classrooms from across North America and far beyond has helped my children to achieve curriculum outcomes, to learn how to act safely and appropriately online and to learn an appreciation for the similarities and differences between people. Not only do we learn from and with these other people, the students have a chance to become teachers themselves."

"At first, I have to admit I was not the greatest fan of the iPad. Aside from its obvious advantages, like the battery life and the time gained from not having to get the class to 'log on', it seemed like an expensive gimmick. However, after experimenting with iMovie, I began to see some of its potential and I was hooked. I soon found that many of the content-free apps, such as iMovie, Keynote and PuppetPals provided me with a medium through which I could teach in an inspiring and innovative way. Three years on, the school now has one iPad between two children and the opportunities to use the technology in a creative way have multiplied. The iPad is a valuable and powerful resource which has changed my approach to teaching and learning. My lessons are now more dynamic, with greater opportunities for the children to make decisions and choices for themselves. The pupils are often scattered around the school working in small groups to develop creative ways to record, present, evaluate and explain. My role as a teacher has also changed as I have become a facilitator and guide, providing quality control and advice. I have been able to introduce longer integrated projects combining different subjects and skills where the iPad is a key tool in the process. The iPad has been invaluable in enabling me to make the curriculum change I wanted. I can now say the skills of curiosity, collaboration, critical thinking, reflectiveness and creativity are being practised on a daily basis through this technology. However, it is the ease with which you can create on the iPad that has had the most impact in my classroom. The controls are so intuitive that very little time, if any once an app has been introduced, is spent teaching the children how to use the technology. This means that tasks that would have seemed too complicated or time consuming in the past are now possible."

"About two decades ago The MIT Media lab introduced the concept of block-based programming. The idea was to develop an interface that allowed computer programs to be built by simply dragging and dropping puzzle blocks to represent complex programming constructs and commands. With this new method for teaching and learning computer science, the hugely popular Scratch platform was born. This approach lowered the bar for experimenting with programmatic thinking, making it possible for students to create interactive animations and small games without writing a single line of code. This simple concept removed the need to learn the syntax of a formal programming language, and made teaching and learning the basics of computer science accessible to younger learners and to teachers with no formal coding background. Outside of the classroom though, coding has always been, and still remains, a process of typing letters, numbers and symbols. This text-based programming, used in programming language such as C, Javascript and Python, requires coders to obey and conform to formal syntax. Despite the pain of dealing with typos in names of variables and inevitable syntax errors, no other coding method designed to be more "user friendly" has really caught on. Tools have been offered for managers to define business logic through a graphical user interface without writing lines of codes. Or for web developers to add interactive behaviors to their websites without learning Javascript. But in reality, neither of those substitute the power and flexibility of text-based programming. And with neither winning significant adoption, the demand for the classic skill of text-based coding continues to grow and grow."

"Rather than the maker experiences being an after school program, an add on activity, or an activity that is implemented when students have done their regular lessons work, it should be part of the regular, day-to-day curriculum. As noted in USC Rossier Online, "In order for your school and students to be fully invested in maker education, it has to be integrated into your curriculum, not squeezed in" (https://rossieronline.usc.edu/maker-education/sync-with-curriculum/).  Ayah Bdeir, who invented and runs littleBits, had this to say about integrating maker education into the curriculum: It's time for maker ed to move into the mainstream. Making should not be relegated to the times spent outside of class, e.g. lunch or after school. Nor should it only flourish in private schools, which don't have to teach to standards. We need to work to show how making is a rigorous process that leads to valuable new technologies, products and experiences. Specifically, we need to tie maker projects to standards-based curriculum and show clearly the kinds of knowledge, skills and practices students learn as part of making (https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-09-24-building-connections-between-maker-ed-and-standards) Albemarle County Public School District is very intentional in their implementation of maker projects: Maker projects can be created to support just about any subject area, from science to history to language arts. Maker education can be a tool for teaching the curriculum that you already have, At a glance, maker projects may appear disconnected from the curriculum. What may look like an arts and crafts activity, or just a bunch of kids playing with Legos, is actually a way to teach about ancient Rome or how to write a persuasive essay. (https://www.edutopia.org/practice/maker-education-reaching-all-learners) "

"As teachers, the pull of social media on your students attention will already be well known to you. The online world exerts a magnetic lure on the attention of young people today, offering community and information sharing, entertainment and gossip in ways that often pull students away from the blackboard. Understanding this dynamic, some educators are now bringing social media into the classroom in surprising ways. By working with something your students already enjoy and don't, perhaps, associate with learning, there are opportunities for creative teaching, as well as making genuine connection with your students."

"The possibilities for the use of timeline tools in the class are endless. Whether you want to teach salient historical incidents, chronological order of events, or explain a developmental process in biology or simply outline the major learning curves for the year, timeline creation tools are the ideal platforms to implement."