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"The new school year has ushered in some exciting new features in some of my favorite tools! Here are some of the fresh new features offered this year…"

"I was approached by a teacher who had never redesigned her lessons to take advantage of edtech's potential to transform learning. She was still stuck in the $1,000 pencil phase of using new tools to do traditional work. When I showed examples of how teachers around the country were challenging students to design and find solutions to their own problems, she immediately saw the benefit of shifting her thinking. The good news was that she was reconsidering her beliefs and was now convinced that she had been underestimating her students. The bad news is, she was afraid of appearing vulnerable in front of her students if something went wrong." It is okay to not know everything about technology. Many times your students know more than you do...and that is okay!

"AllSides uses its media bias ratings to provide a breadth of perspectives on today's news, issues and opinions - so you can decide. The AllSides Mission: Free people from filter bubbles so they can better understand the world - and each other."

"Recap provides teachers with new, creative ways to gather evidence of student thinking using video. It helps create new learning connections between students, parents and teachers, and foster more transformative dialogue by everyone."

"The new Add-ons feature for Docs and Sheets makes it really easy to bring some advanced functionality, or just some missing features, to your most important Drive files."

"The New Google Sites now delivers the simplest way to show Google Drive files in context on the web. Every page is now an easy-to-read single column of content. Every page works well on a desktop, tablet, or phone. And the elements of every site work together, thanks to themes, fonts, and color choices that help you create a coherent design."

Mosa Mack Science is devoted to helping you move towards NGSS inquiry-based instruction with reliable, entertaining, and rigorous resources. What is Mosa Mack Science? Mosa Mack Science is a library of NGSS-aligned, inquiry units containing three lessons: The Solve: An animated science mystery and vocabulary manipulative The Make: A hands-on lab The Engineer: An engineering challenge that allows students to apply what they've learned to solve real world scenarios. The lessons focus on teacher support and include assessment rubrics, graphic organizers for students and prepared PowerPoint presentations. Where did Mosa Mack Science come from? Mosa Mack Science was born out of one teacher's frustration with the existing resources for middle school science educators. While teaching science in New York City, founder Lissa Johnson realized that the online resources were ineffective: they lectured her students and failed to make science relevant. Johnson wanted to fix this problem and created Mosa Mack Science to inspire a new generation of scientists. The Mosa Mack team now includes writers from This American Life, artists from Nickelodeon and expert curriculum creators out of the Stanford Scale program. Through this team, Mosa Mack Science breathes life into inquiry science.

"a former Chicago Public Schools teacher who is now the chief technology officer for School District 62 in Des Plaines, Ill., said there are three types of people whom ed-tech leaders will encounter when they encourage their staff to innovate: "hoorays, hmms, and hell nos." The "hoorays" are those who are eager to try new tools and techniques in their classroom, she said. The "hmms" are those who watch with interest but aren't ready to dive in right away, and the "hell nos" are those who actively resist."

FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases.

"Incorporate live polling directly into your Google Slides. Create new Poll Everywhere polls or insert one of your old favorites, all without leaving Google Slides. It's all there in a free Chrome extension."

"Incorporate live polling directly into your Google Slides. Create new Poll Everywhere polls or insert one of your old favorites, all without leaving Google Slides. It's all there in a free Chrome extension."

A fun quiz site where the user must discover whether a published news article is fake or real. A great site for older students when teaching about vitality of sources.

"Edtech is making is easier and more efficient to help students at every level, and to bring even the most timid of learners out of their shells. Dr. Kenneth Shore, a psychologist and Chair of a child study team for the Hamilton, New Jersey Public Schools, explains that "Low self-esteem can lessen a student's desire to learn, his or her ability to focus, and his or her willingness to take risks. Positive self-esteem, on the other hand, is one of the building blocks of school success; it provides a firm foundation for learning."

Meograph helps easily create, watch, and share interactive stories. Our first product combines maps, timeline, links, and multimedia to tell stories in context of where and when. Authoring is structured into a few simple prompts on an intuitive interface. Viewers get a new form of media that they can watch in two minutes or explore for an hour. Sharing is easy: the two most viral types of media are videos and infographics ... Meograph is both.

PingPong is a new student response system for checking for understanding, surveying, and quizzing. Watch the YouTube video on the bottom of the page to learn more about PingPong.

"A new type of video content: Ask questions, multi-choice quizzes, and collect feedback through your videos. Increase engagement: Turn passive viewers into active participants. Improve your content from feedback. Grow your audience: Generate leads from your videos and make them even more shareable."

Browse our free collection of news articles, poems, short stories, and historical documents for grades 5-12. Assign text-dependent questions to hold students accountable for high-level reading and writing. Analyze student performance and compare class reports on key reading and writing skills."

We noticed users have used HSTRY to tell other stories - from travel logs to a blossoming romance. Businesses have also adopted the tool and have created product roadmaps, onboarded clients and shared their team strategies. A change in product philosophy could therefore help a broad swath of teachers, their students and learners of all kinds. We've been working hard over the last couple of months to introduce you to our new identity: Sutori. Sutori is the easiest and best way to create and share your story. In a few clicks you can add any type of media to your story and create with your friends and colleagues in real-time. All stories can be shared and embedded onto any website or blog.

Toontastic 3D is a playful storytelling app that scaffolds the creative writing process and empowers kids to create their own animated cartoons. While Toontastic was not specifically designed for schools, we have heard from a lot of educators over the years that they love how the app sparks their students' imaginations and uses the Story Arc to help frame their writing. Their students use the app for creating everything from book reports to news broadcasts and foreign language skills.

BackStory is a public radio program & podcast that brings historical perspective to the events happening around us today. On each show, renowned U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh tear a topic from the headlines and plumb its historical depths. Over the course of the hour, they are joined by fellow historians, people in the news, and callers interested in exploring the roots of what's going on today.