In this video I'm going to cover my picks for the top tech tools for teachers
in 2021. Specifically, I'll be looking at tools that help you do things with your teaching
that would be much more challenging, if not impossible, without technology. For example, I'll
show you tools that turn any activity or piece of content into an interactive learning experience,
tools that turn boring quizzes into engrossing games, tools that help you
make faster, more effective video tutorials with the help of artificial intelligence,
tools that both you and your students can use to explore your creativity using technology,
and much more. My name is Sam Kary and this is my YouTube channel for The New EdTech Classroom.
If you like the tips I share in this video, you can show your support by hitting the like button,
leaving a comment, and subscribing to my channel and hitting that notification bell so you don't
miss any of my weekly video updates. Okay my first top tech tool in 2021 is my top pick for creating
whole-group interactive lessons, Nearpod. Nearpod is an extremely popular all-in-one tool for creating
interactive lessons that allow you to see student responses in real time. Nearpod is relatively easy
for teachers and students to get the hang of and is an ideal entry-level tool for teachers looking
to increase active learning in their classrooms. There are several things that set Nearpod apart.
One is the extensive quantity of pre-created lessons in the Nearpod library. Nearpod has their
own content, but also incorporates high-quality third-party content across all grade levels
and most subject areas. If you teach math or science, there are lessons built around PhET
simulations to have students apply skills in an interactive environment. In the Nearpod library
you'll also find social-emotional lessons from Calm, digital citizenship lessons from Common Sense,
world language lessons from Breaking the Barrier, pre-built ELA lessons from ReadWorks, the list
goes on. In addition to high quality content integrations, the pre-created lessons also include
an ever expanding list of interactive features to help facilitate active learning. For example,
most videos are already set up with interactive questions that students have to answer in order
to proceed through the video, the Draw It tool allows students to annotate directly on top of pdf files,
and Time to Climb quiz games review key ideas through gamifying learning.
The pre-made lessons are also editable, so you can delete slides or add new ones to ensure each
lesson fits your students' needs. Real-time reports during live lessons allow you to see exactly what
your students know and don't know, and you can even push student answers out to other student
devices as a way to facilitate discussion and show exemplary work. You have all these features without
having to worry about the link management involved with sending students around to numerous websites.
Once you've gotten the hang of the basics, you can also build entirely customized lessons from
scratch in Nearpod. By piecing together different combinations of content tools and activity tools,
you could build loads of lessons in Nearpod without having them feel too repetitive.
Nearpod is also responsive to the teacher community and constantly upgrades their program to
include new features. For example, with a school or district account, teachers can now annotate on what
used to be static slides and those annotations will show up on student screens as well.
And everyone can also now access a whiteboard tool that can be pulled up at any point during
a Nearpod lesson. Second on my list is Whiteboard.chat, the most feature-rich digital whiteboard
available right now, and best of all, it's 100% free. Whiteboard.chat was designed by teachers
who continually make upgrades to their program. If you can think of an issue that annoys you about
other online whiteboards, you can pretty much guarantee that Whiteboard.chat has addressed
that problem and then some. Let's look here at a couple of examples. You can see here that in
addition to uploading your own background images, you also have a large variety of different types
of grids to add to the background. Similarly, you can add an almost dizzying array of media types.
For example, there's an option to add things like dice that you can roll to pick who goes next,
or even a calculator that students can use to solve math problems directly on their whiteboards.
You can add audio recordings to give students audio instructions for assignments, or directly
embed websites that students can access without ever having to leave the Whiteboard.chat interface.
By clicking on "Grid view," you can see all of your students' boards at the same time
and when students write on their boards, you'll see that work show up in real time. When you click on
an individual board, you'll also have the option to join that board, and once you're in you can leave
students with immediate feedback or help them on their work. Students can also raise a digital hand
to let you know that they need extra help or to tell you that they finished with their work.
Whiteboard.chat also has an embedded polling and Q&A feature and you can do things like
freeze boards temporarily if you need to get students' attention, as well as add timers to
boards and lock the images on the background so students can't move them on their end.
You can even save boards and reuse them again at a later time, and once again it's 100% free to use.
Next on my list is Canva Education, my top pick for both teacher and student creativity, though
it's also highly functional for creating interactive activities for students too.
Educators can get a Canva Education account for free and once you do, you'll have access
to loads of education-specific creativity tools and templates you can use to create lessons, assign
interactive worksheets, collaborative whiteboards, as well as graphic design and video templates
students can use for their own creativity projects. Canva also integrates with Google Classroom, so
you can sync your class roster to bring students directly in from your learning management system.
As a teacher you can also design material for your own classroom in Canva. For example,
in the Classroom Decor Kits, you'll find editable templates that you can easily add your Bitmoji to,
in order to create a Bitmoji classroom scene. Then there are editable whiteboard templates that you
can assign directly to individual students, groups of students, or to your whole class.
And once students submit an assignment, they can submit it to you for review,
and then you can leave them feedback on their work. There are also interactive worksheets you
can edit and assign to students that span a wide range of subjects, such as this ELA worksheet,
or this other science experiment one. If you assign templates to groups, such as this group brainstorm,
students can collaborate on work together, without ever needing to leave Canva's platform.
Canva also has editable video templates that students can use for creativity projects, such as
this "About Me" video, and if you're looking to try other presentation tools to mix up how you deliver
lessons, Canva has editable slide presentations that you can customize and present to students.
All right, next up on my list is my top tech tool for gamifying learning,
and that tool is Gimkit. You can try out Gimkit for free, and a monthly subscription costs $4.99,
which I do think is worth it, given how engaging you can make learning with Gimkit.
Gimkit allows you to create kits, which are essentially banks of questions and answers
that you can turn into different games. One option is just to manually add your own
questions and answer choices. So you can create multiple-choice questions with a related image,
and you can also bring in things like an audio recording, and then add your own answer choices.
Instead of multiple-choice, you can also opt to have students write in the correct answer
by choosing the "Text input" option. You can also create flashcards with questions and answers and
this will auto-generate incorrect answer choices for you. Another option would be to search for
pre-made questions and answers by searching in the question banks. Here you just need to look for key
terms and then if relevant questions and answers show up, you can click to add them to your kit. Once
you've created a kit, you'll be able to choose from several different games that each have their own
sets of rules and styles of game play. Let's look at this Humans vs Zombies game as an example.
In this game, the class is separated into two teams, Humans and Zombies. In this game, students
are trying to protect their team from the other team and the last team standing wins. As students
correctly answer questions in your kit, they accrue money and then they can choose to use that money
to execute actions in the game, like sabotaging the other team or repairing their own health.
They can also purchase upgrades that will do things like increase the amount of money
earned per question or purchase insurance for questions they answer incorrectly. This game
also has power up upgrades and students can use their money to purchase different themes as well.
All right next up on my list of top tech tools for teachers in 2021 is Actively Learn. Actively Learn
allows teachers to easily make web pages, articles, and videos into interactive learning experiences.
The free version of Actively Learn gives you access to a large archive of articles, which
already include editable, interactive questions that students answer as they are reading, and
students have to answer those questions in order to proceed through the article. There are also lots
of additional helpful features to support students with their reading. For example, teachers can add
interactive notes with definitions or contextual information. The entire text is interactive as well,
so students can click on any word and choose to have that word read aloud to them,
or they could get a definition of the word, or have it translated into another language.
As a teacher, you can use or edit the pre-made interactive questions that come along with each
article. You can also click on any part of the text to add your own custom interactive questions
instead. In addition to interactive articles, Actively Learn also has an interactive video
feature that allows you to add questions that students answer as they are watching it.
With the free version of Actively Learn, you'll also be able to upload three pieces of your own
content each month and make those interactive. For example, you can bring in a pdf and add
interactive features to it, or you could also bring in the url for a website to make web pages fully
interactive too. My next top tech tool for teachers in 2021 is a tool for creating tutorials, iorad.
iorad is an intuitive tutorial builder that uses artificial intelligence to help you build
quick, easy to follow tutorials. Although iorad records your screen, it's significantly different
from other screen recorders like Screencastify, Loom, or Screencast-o-Matic, because it builds
tutorials for you based on the steps you take while recording your screen. If you need to show
students the steps to send emails, use a new tech program, etc., this is the program you'll want to use.
Let's say you're trying to show students how to do something like share a Google Doc with a classmate
and give them commenting access only. Rather than trying to explain that in your own tutorial, you
can have the artificial intelligence tool in iorad make that for you. So the way it works is that
you'll click on the extension, then click "Capture," and then start clicking on the actions needed in
order to share a Google Doc with a peer, change the share settings to Commenter, and then leave them
a personal note. Once you're finished, iorad uses A.I. to create a tutorial that breaks down what you did
into single-click actionable steps. Each step of the tutorial automatically highlights the part of
the screen where a student would need to click and it even auto-populates editable instructions based
on the steps you took on the screen. It will also read those steps aloud using A.I. technology that's
similar to Alexa. With a paid plan, you'll have additional options, such as adding your own voiceover
to further customize the tutorials you create. The last top tech tool in 2021 that I want to show
you is Wakelet, a free digital bulletin board. Wakelet is a highly versatile tool with a wide
range of uses, from teacher-created collections of mixed media content for lesson plans
or professional development, to student digital portfolios or collaborative research projects.
Think of Wakelet as the educational version of Pinterest. I'll show you here what it would
look like to build a lesson in Wakelet, so you can get a sense of how it works.
Let's say you wanted to build a lesson plan for students about biodiversity. You could start by
adding a collection and then giving it the name of your lesson, "Biodiversity." Then you can add a
cover image, as well as an assignment description. Next you can add different types of media to build
your lesson. You can do things like directly embed a Flipgrid video that you made explaining what the
lesson is about and how to complete the activities, and then you could copy and paste the link to a
website about your topic, as well as copy and paste the link out to an interactive Edpuzzle video
for your students to watch. Then you can upload documents from your Google Drive, such as a graphic
organizer for students to complete after they've watched the video, and you could close out this
lesson by adding the direct link to a Flipgrid assignment where students would record a video
of themselves explaining what they learned. In addition to teacher-made content, students
can also work together to build collections of curated mixed media resources, and something like
this would work really well for a research project where students had to go pull together different
resources, and then they could share their entire collections back with the entire class. Many people
choose to make their Wakelet collections public, so you can also use the search tool to hunt around
and see what collections others have already made that relate to a topic you're teaching.
I hope you're as excited as I am to try out some of these tech tools in your classroom
in 2021. If there are any programs you love, that you think I might have missed, definitely let
me know in the comments below. Thanks so much for watching my video to the end. If you're interested
in learning all about how to use instructional technology to increase student engagement, personalize
instruction, provide authentic learning experiences, improve communication with families, optimize your
organization systems, and so much more, then check out my online course, The 21st Century Classroom.
In the video description, you'll find a link to 21centuryclass.com
where you can learn more about the course, as well as sign up for the latest enrollment updates. In
the video description you'll also find the link to my website, where you can find additional
resources for teaching with technology, as well as links to my social media accounts on Twitter,
Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok, where I post 60 second quick tips
about teaching with technology. Thanks again for watching and have a great week!