Teaching Tools:
Specific to the teaching profession, educators at all levels have basic needs when it comes to planning, organizing, grading, and keeping track of the job itself. Below you’ll find a list that should help educators with some of these issues, as well as some creative uses of tech in the classroom for engagement or integration purposes.
Engrade:
Engrade is a marking program, with the simplest layout and interface I’ve found to date. It can implement several different calculation methods and has the ability to edit things on the fly. However, the one caveat is that it’s an American website, so Canadian educators should avoid putting anything more than a student’s name on this resource in following with FIPA laws. (Which bar Canadian Educators from hosting identifiable student information on foreign servers.) This resource has free and paid versions, and I’ve gotten along great with the free version for over a year now.
PlanbookEDU
Planbookedu.com is another great resource with free and paid versions. This is a calendar and day planner for your classes, with 4 blocks a day available to write out your lesson plans in. Personally I’ve used the free version with no huge downsides, however the paid version gives the ability to embed and upload files from your own computer including slideshow formats and the like. The best part of this site is the ability to actively move calendar days around and bump other days forward in the event that an activity or lesson takes longer than anticipated. If you have two sections of the same course you’re lock-stepping, you can also copy dates with a simple click and drag, reducing clerical time significantly.
Rubistar:
Rubistar is a website specifically for the creation of Rubrics, which can be catered either to pre-created disciplines and projects, or individually created and printed or downloaded. While I tend to have a personal streak that drives me to create my own rubrics by hand, it’s an incredibly helpful website when short on time or needing a project to start from when editing.
Rubricbuilder.com:
A teacher-targeted rubric builder.
Quizlet:
Quizlet is a quiz making and memory testing resource, to help make tests and other tools for summative assessment or review work. It’s fairly simple to use, and above all it’s a free resource.
UnboringLearning.com:
A site styled on spicing up Education in the Arts and Humanities, and making topics interesting to a modern audience.
Khan Academy:
A science, math, and education website in which students can explore various topics via a style of gamification, watching videos and improving their skills as they improve.
Code Academy:
A gamified coding website that has users complete simple yet functional coding tasks one step at a time to learn and improve coding in a variety of languages from HTML to Javascript.
Edutopia:
A website dedicated to modernizing education and pushing concepts like Project Based Learning, Social Emotional Learning, and Technology Integration.
TED and TEDX:
A forum for innovative thinkers, entrepreneurs, public speakers, and major figures in industry and society to give presentations on their respective fields of interest. Talks range from success stories to scientific discoveries and elaborations.
RSA Animate:
Talks by academics or figures of note with a cartoonist animating the content of the talk in a humorous fashion. Works well to present higher intellectual working concepts to teenagers.
Teachertube:
A Youtube-like tool for videos that is teacher specific, so helps to clear out non-specific videos.
Youtube:
Now owned by Google, Youtube is the premiere video service for sharing and viewing videos. Videos can also be downloaded for offline viewing later.
TurnItIn:
Turn It In is a website dedicated to helping teachers collect student work which functions as an additional check for plagiarism.
Other Resources:
Tuxpi
SuperTeacherTools.net
Flickr
Vyclone
Google Earth
Google Translate
LiveBinders
Pearltree
StudyBlue
WeVideo
School Town
Big Huge Labs
Evernote
Pic Lit
Gamification
GoAnimate
Timeglider
Dipity
Re.Vu
Thinglink
Smore
Wix
Weebly
Ease.ly
Inklewriter
myHistro
Flipsnack
LitPick
Edcanvas
Google Books
Ngram
Haikudeck
Snapchat
Wordpress
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