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The 21st century teacher is in the critical spot-of mastering constantly evolving technology and digital learning tools-the same tools their students use every day. In this post 9 such tools are discussed. The list is not meant to be exhaustive or even authoritative and is subjective. As this is the 21st century, things will change but, here and now, the authors suggest that this is a fairly accurate litmus test of what the kinds of tools the average 21st century teacher can be expected to use and master."

By Kelsey Allen. "Gone are the days of children sneaking comics past diligent parents and teachers watching out for sub-par literature. The comics of today not only have plenty to offer, they are gaining well-deserved recognition and awards. Take advantage of the natural affinity children have for comics and use them as a powerful teaching tool in your classroom. The post contains links to tips, tools, and resources.

"Formative assessment is useful tool assist teachers assess the learning needs of their students. Such knowledge allows teachers to modify their teaching to meet the needs of their students. The digital formative assessment tools listed here offer a range of approaches to help teachers undertake this task. "

Recording what is happening on your screen can be a pretty useful tool for teachers who want to create video tutorials or presentations for their classrooms. Many teachers are using screencasting tools but before you delve into what you're going to do with your screencast, you need to take a few moments to learn about the tools that are available to do the actual recording. They range from free to fairly expensive ($299) and offer a variety of functionality from simple recording to quite complex video editing. $ are examined here

"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."

The Google Educast, hosted by the Google Certified Teachers, features a weekly roundup of the newest Ed tools from Google, highlighting best practices using Google tools, and further highlighting the impact that these tools have on the classroom, schools, and school districts.

The Google Educast, hosted by the Google Certified Teachers, features a weekly roundup of the newest Ed tools from Google, highlighting best practices using Google tools, and further highlighting the impact that these tools have on the classroom, schools, and school districts.

Joyce Seitzinger has created this great poster size guide for teachers, allowing them to compare the functionality and pedagogical advantages of some standard Moodle tools, adding a column to indicate how tricky the tool is to set up.

"Formative assessment is vital to teachers in any classroom environment. Teachers have been formatively assessing students for years, because they need to know what students know in order to help them understand what they do not know. Many classrooms are moving to 21st century with technology initiatives. Suggested here are three tech tools will help teachers engage students while simultaneously gauging their understanding of concepts: Kahoot!, Formative and Padlet"

Critical thinking is a difficult concept to define in clear, objective terms. This can make it a challenging objective for teachers to implement and assess. The aim of this resource is to provide teachers with some tools to help clarify and communicate what critical thinking is and how it might be implemented as a teaching method.  This resource includes materials that can help teachers to engage their classes in critical thinking. The materials have been written with year 9 and year 10 students in mind, yet can easily be differentiated for students in years 8 and 11. The critical thinking introduction addresses what critical thinking is, where is applies in the curriculum and how to teach it. The teachers guide provides an overview of this resource in relation to the accompanying PowerPoint presentation.

"Google Drive is one of the fundamental tools in our digital toolkits as teachers and educators. Whether you want to compose a document, create a presentation,  design a sheet, or share a beautiful drawing you made, Google Drive provides you with the tools to do that on any device and anywhere you are with an internet connection . Given this huge importance of Google Drive for teachers, I have created an entire section here packed full of tips, tricks, ideas, and third party tools to enable you to better tap into the full educational potential of this platform."

The post offers information about some engaging presentation tools available for teachers who could start using them in the classroom to better engage students. The teachers are then challenged to find ways for their students to create projects using these tools. 

Richard Byrne has compiled a list of search tools and tactics that every teacher and student should know

Social media tools can help break the barriers set by the walls of schools. Learning and communicating outside the school hours with technology aid is a modern adaptation of education that has showed great results. This post looks at some web tools that provide school-specific tools that are just as powerful in facilitating the communication inside the student-teacher-parent triangle as the more famous popular social networking sites..

"CommonSense Media blog post introducing Lesson Flows, Darri Stephens shares that the framework redefines the traditional lesson plan by integrating digital learning tools and content with pedagogical intent. Quite simply, you can discover tools on Graphite and then align them to each part of your lesson -- the hook, direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, and wrap-up -- thinking with purpose about your lesson redesign. Lesson Flows are excellent tools for teacher librarians to use as they design technology-rich collaborative projects with classroom teachers."

"CommonSense Media blog post introducing Lesson Flows, Darri Stephens shares that the framework redefines the traditional lesson plan by integrating digital learning tools and content with pedagogical intent. Quite simply, you can discover tools on Graphite and then align them to each part of your lesson -- the hook, direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, and wrap-up -- thinking with purpose about your lesson redesign. Lesson Flows are excellent tools for teacher librarians to use as they design technology-rich collaborative projects with classroom teachers."

iTALC is a use- and powerful didactical tool for teachers. It lets you view and control other computers in your network in several ways. It supports Linux and Windows 2000/XP (Vista support will come) and it even can be used transparently in mixed environments! In contrast to widely used commercial equivalent software, iTALC is free! This means you do not have to pay for expensive licenses or things like that. Furthermore the source-code is freely available and you're free in changing the software to fit your needs as long as you respect the terms of iTALC's license (GPL). Freedom in two ways! Features iTALC has been designed for usage in school. Therefore it offers a lot of possibilities to teachers, such as * see what's going on in computer-labs by using overview mode and make snapshots * remote-control computers to support and help other people * show a demo (either in fullscreen or in a window) - the teacher's screen is shown on all student's computers in realtime * lock workstations for moving undivided attention to teacher * send text-messages to students * powering on/off and rebooting computers per remote * remote logon and logoff and remote execution of arbitrary commands/scripts * home-schooling - iTALC's network-technology is not restricted to a subnet and therefore students at home can join lessons via VPN-connections just by installing iTALC client Furthermore iTALC is optimized for usage on multi-core systems (by making heavy use of threads). No matter how many cores you have, iTALC can make use of all of them.

Microsoft has some great Teacher Guides available. The guides have teaching tips and step-by-step instructions on a variety of topics and tools and technologies. The guides are all free and downloadable in PDF form. Topics include: Critical Thinking in web searches, Windows Movie Maker, Free tools from Microsoft, Digital Storytelling, Microsoft Office, web apps, OneNote, Bing and Mathematics, and Accessibility in the Classroom. The guides are easy to use and read and a great resource

"Most of what we do is for the students. The focus of this and many other blogs and websites is about learning, and rightly so, but there are also apps that will make our jobs easier too. I am talking about that catergory of apps that are designed specifically for the classroom teacher. There are plenty and I am sure as more and more teachers gain the confidence to design their own apps, there will be more suitable one to come. Here is a list of apps that you can use to make your job easier."

In late November I wrote a blog post outlining five resources for free spelling games. That blog post was among the top twenty most read posts of 2008 therefore I am sharing some more online spelling games for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. 1. Spelling Wizard from Scholastic.com lets students, parents, and teachers create their own word search and word scramble games to play online. Each game can have up to ten words. To use Spelling Wizard simply enter ten words into the list field then select word search or word scramble. Spelling Wizard is probably best suited for students in Kindergarten through second grade. Scholastic also offers a free tool for creating online spelling flashcards. 2. Read Write Think has an online activity for young (K-2) students based on four childrens' books. Read Write Think's Word Wizard asks students to select one of four books that they have read or have had read to them. After selecting a book the Word Wizard creates a simple online spelling exercise based on the words in the book chosen by the child. 3. Spell Bee was developed at Brandeis University with funding from the National Science Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Spell Bee allows students to play spelling games in a head-to-head format. Spell Bee allows teachers to create accounts for students so that teachers can track student progress. 4. MSNBC has an interactive spelling bee based on the words from the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. There are three games to play and the words get progressively more difficult the longer you play. The words are read to students who then type the word into the spelling box. Just like in a real spelling bee, students can get the definition and or hear it used in a sentence. The difficulty of the words in the game make it best suited for middle school and high school students. 5. Spelling Bee The Game is an online spelling bee similar in style to the MSNBC game mentioned above. Aft

"There is no single way to effectively organize a classroom. The big idea behind organization is systematic accessibility. When there is a clear system that allows the parts of that system to be accessible to those who need it, that's organization. Organization is a subjective idea, what works for one teacher may not work for another. The variety of apps here allow teachers to store files, manage class rosters, share student work, and consolidate everything into a single, synced calendar for all parents."