It began with a styrofoam coffee cup; you could call it the first koostik. I was curious to see if fitting a little megaphone to the bottom of my iPhone would passively amplify the volume of the external speaker. It did, but it wasn't much to look at. For a year after that first experiment, I made dozens of prototypes in wood in my home workshop. With each new piece I was getting a little closer to the goal of a balance between aesthetics and functionality.

What latest gadgets and gizmos are going to change your classroom in 2013? It's hard to know exactly what will catch on and what won't, but the following list showcases some of the emerging new technologies, software, and platforms available. With their innovation and practicality, many of these are poised to enter the classroom and change the way students and teachers learn permanently.

Ramven has released Mobile Web Apps for informative and productivity. Our Mobile Web Apps include financial calculators, unit converters and many more categories. These Mobile Web Apps are light weight and support all major mobile, tablet, smart phone and desktop web browsers.

Kevin Honeycutt's iPad site

"Footsteps2Brilliance, Inc.™'s Academic Language Program for Students (ALPS) delivers a robust library of stimulating ebooks and educational games to parents, children and teachers anywhere/anytime through innovative mobile gaming technology. Developed by educational experts usingthe latest research on cognitive development, ALPS provides young learners with 1,000 essential vocabulary words through interactive eBooks that are sure to engage today's digital students whether at school or home."

Apple made mention of a standalone podcast app earlier this month, but most figured it would arrive with iOS 6 this fall. Not so. Earlier this week, Apple released Podcasts. It's free and universal, designed for both the iPhone and iPad.

AirPrint is definitely one of the more convenient features of iOS 4.2.1 and thanks to a new tool you can turn any printer connected to your Mac or Windows PC into an AirPrint compatible printer. The utility is called AirPrint Hacktivator and it's very easy to use, this is a much simpler method than using the prior hack to manually enable AirPrint in Mac OS X 10.6.5.