Scott Davis
ed tech consultant
Table of Contents
I've gathered some of my favorite #EdTech resources here.
If you think there are additional ones I should include just let me know!
Concepts
It is important to be clear about what is expected from the learner. Using Bloom's taxonomy can help you state what the intended outcome of the learning process.
Jean Piaget was on the forefront of childhood cognitive development. His model of four stages of development is still popular today.
Here is my take on three popular Educational Psychology theories. Educators need to be mindful of how the mind works if they hope to reach their students.
Scaffolding is important when designing the learning process. What concepts do learners need to know to get to the end goal? Understanding this helps you build out and pace the learning.
Gagne's 9 Steps of Instruction starts with grabbing the learner's attention and ends with the learner being able to transfer their knowledge to other concepts. If you're building curriculum, this is a great place to begin.
Audio / Video
VLC is free video playing software for both Windows and Mac. It is as simple as it is powerful and my top choice over quicktime or Windows Media Player.
Need to cut a video clip to just have the part you want your students to see? This free program allows you to easily and quickly cut and encode video.
Sometimes you want to show students a video but can't rely on a stable internet connection. Other times you want to avoid having your class sit through ads. It's always a good idea to have a backup plan.
If you need to easily concert a video format and don't want to install software, Cloud Convert is the website for you. I've used it to convert an .avi to a .mov to be able to upload to Insta on my iPhone. You never know when this site might be useful.
Collaboration
This one may be obvious, but perhaps the best way to collaborate with others on shared documents and spreadsheets, create forms, and store and share your files is the GSuite.
Make collaboration easy and simple with Padlet. Add text, images, or video and have students submit their comments and feedback. Think of it as a gigantic whiteboard, only interactive and digital.
Graphic Organizers
A nice, easy to use mind mapping site with no login required. Creating a free account allows you to save and share your maps.
Education Place is a free website from Houghton Mifflin that has over 30 different graphic organizers in pdf format ready for download.
Mac Tips & Tricks
These 50 tips teach you some of the ins and outs of the Mac OS Yosemite. These tips can save you time and make your life a lot easier.
Normally taking shortcuts is frowned upon, but not always. Dan Rodney will teach you everything you need to know to get the most out of your mac. Whether you are new to a mac or have been using one for years there is plenty of tips for you to get more out of your apple computer.
Here is a list of some of my favorite technology tips. These are not limited to just mac users. Hopefully you find these helpful, and remember, if you have more ideas please share them!
Professional Development Organizations
Quality Matters is a professional organization that ensures quality assurance in online education. I first became aware of QM, and their well known rubric, through the Distance Learning office at my job. Their rubric is free with a basic subscription.
MACUL is the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning. They host a yearly conference and have great information for teachers using technology in their lessons.
The U.S. Department of Educations provides leadership for maximizing technology's contribution to improving education at all levels.
This site has a ton for teachers. From digital literacy resources for all ages to thousands of reviews of websites and resources. Definitely worth checking out!
ISTE is the International Society for Technology in Education, a professional organization encouraging the integration of technology into (and outside of) the classroom.
Images
Pexels is a great source for creative commons images and videos. In fact, many of the graphics on this site came from Pexels. If you're looking for free, high quality images, start here.
PixaBay has millions of high quality images, illustrations, gifs, videos, and even music for you to download and use as you see fit.
Image Splitter does exactly what it says, helps you split an image into smaller pieces. Resize, covert, split, and crop images for Instagram or your website.
Paintbrush is a simple, free software that allows Mac users to easily edit a host of different image types. Many of the graphics on this site were edited in this program.
Lesson Plans
Saylor Academy is a great resource for lesson plans. Explore hundreds of well organized, self paced lessons on a wide variety of topics. These free, open courses are truly making knowledge accessible to everyone.
TEDEd has nearly 200,000 free lesson plans, or create your own using any YouTube video. Share a video with your students, have them answer questions, participate in discussion or dive deeper into any topic.
MERLOT stands for the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. It is a massive collection of free lesson plans on a wide variety of topics and levels of education.
Kindergarden / Elementary
Starfall is excellent for K - 5 students. The site has been around for over 20 years as a free public service to teach children to read. It is very user friendly and there is plenty of free content
Many Elementary students are already familiar with ABCYa. This site is full of fun activities for kids. Some of the more popular activities teach typing skills, math and spelling.
Storyline hosts several books read by famous celebrities. This website is entirely free and each story contains a pdf of activities that go along with the book.
MobyMax is a free K-8 Curriculum. Teachers set up their student accounts and then can create math, reading and writing lessons that adjust to the students level and track their progress. The site aims to fix childrens' learning gaps.
Mr. Donn hosts many lesson plans with a focus on Social Studies. There are lessons plans, links, and power points geared mostly towards Upper Elementary/Middle School students.
A visitor to my site suggested this resource. From her email, "It is a list of free printable books for children or people who are learning to read English." Thanks for sharing this resource, Dana!
Middle School
Zearn is a great resource for teaching Middle School aged children Math. It includes both interactive lessons and video instruction. It is free for teachers, parents, and caregivers.
Glose is a digital reading platform. It earned the Common Sense Education Selection, meaning it is a high quality, trusted resource for educators.
High School
"CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing access to high quality educational materials for K-12 students all over the world."
Developed by educators at the University of Michigan, Read.Inquire.Write is "a Process that Structures Inquiry and Argument Writing Through a Set of Disciplinary Literacy Tools."
Higher Education
Scrible is an amazingly powerful tool to help you annotate webpages, save and tag articles and share resources with your students. Scrible is free to use and includes a helpful browser plug in so you can quickly highlight text on a web page, add sticky notes and tag articles. You can easily search and share using Scrible.com
Kahn Academy is one of the best known free educational resources. While there is something for students at all levels, I find it to be one of the best resources for college students or dual enrolled / Advanced Placement students.
Study Tools
Quizlet is a popular tool for creating flash cards for students. There are plenty of free study sets, or create your own and share with your students.
Schooltraq is an academic planner for students. Think of it as a dashboard for all tasks. This free program also works with students mobile phones to make sure they never miss a deadline again.
Presentation Tools
Formerly Screencast-O-Matic, ScreenPal allows you to record you screen and edit the video. While not as robust as some of the paid alternatives, this program
An alternative to Google Slides, you can build your presentations and easily share them with your audience. SlideShare is also a great resource to find presentations, just click Explore.
Social Studies
"iCivics prepares young Americans to become knowledgeable, engaged 21st century citizens by creating free and innovative educational materials."
This resource is a list of short, upbeat lectures on the Social Studies. There are more than 200 videos on all types of Social Studies related topics.
This resource is a list of short, upbeat lectures on the Social Studies. There are more than 200 videos on all types of Social Studies related topics.
English as a Second Langauge
I've used this resource with my ESL students are they really enjoyed it. One especially popular game was ESL Wordle. The word search was also popular.
This site has some great ESL resources including handouts, games (obviously), and teacher resources. The matching game PPT was one of my (and the kids) favorite.
Language and education specialist Sarah Perowne shared this one with me. It is a curated collection of ESL games, activities and other online learning resources designed to make learning English grammar and vocabulary fun and easy!
This site is great for anyone who wants to learn or teach English, but especially for German speakers as you can toggle between Deutsch and English. There is lot of helpful information about grammar, vocabulary, and plenty of helpful explanations.
Coding
If your students love Pixar movies (who doesn't?) then they will love these interactive lessons on the computer science behind Pixar.
W3 Schools offers free and paid lessons on coding. You can use their site to live test your HTML, Java, CSS, Java, or other code. There are also great lessons.
Brought to you by MIT, Scratch is an amazing resource that lets students do practical coding exercises. They can see the results immediately using blocks of code. They can even record their own sounds and build their own games!