In this post I’ll be covering my picks for the Top Tech Tools for Teachers in 2021. Each EdTech tool featured helps you accomplish teaching tasks that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do without technology.
For example, there are tools on this year’s list that help you make 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, as well as tools that both you and your students can use to explore your creativity when using technology.
#1: Nearpod
Nearpod is an extremely popular all-in-one tool for creating interactive lessons that allow you to see student responses in real time. It’s relatively easy for teachers and students to use, and is an ideal entry point 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 3rd 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 find social emotional lessons from Calm, digital citizenship lessons from CommonSense, 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 gamified learning.
Real-time reports during live Nearpod 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 of 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 entire customized lesson slides from scratch in Nearpod. By piecing together different combinations of content tools and activities tools, you could build loads of lessons in Nearpod without having them feel 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 annotate on what were 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.
#2 Whiteboard.chat
Whiteboard.chat is 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!
For example, 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, you can the 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. You can add voice recordings to give students audio instructions for assignments that will show up immediately on their boards, or directly embed websites that students can access without ever leaving the whiteboard.chat interface.
By clicking on grid view you can see all 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 support, or to tell you that they’ve finished an assignment.
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!
#3 Canva Education
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 as well.
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.
As a teacher, you can also design materials for your own classroom. 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.
There are also editable whiteboard templates that you can assign directly to individual students, groups of students, or to your whole class. Once students complete an assignment, they can submit it to you for review, and then you can leave them feedback on their work.
To learn how to download Canva templates and use them a Google Jamboard backgrounds, click here.
There are also interactive worksheets that span a wide range of subjects and grade levels and you can edit and assign to students to work on individually, as a whole class, or in small groups.
Some templates are specifically designed for group work, and once you’ve rostered students in Canva Education, they can work together on those templates without needing to leave Canva’s platform.
Of course Canva Education also features editable templates that students can use for creativity projects, such as videos and graphic design.
And if you’re looking to try other presentation tools to deliver lessons, Canva even has editable slide presentations that you can customize and present to students.
#4: Gimkit
Gimkit is a gamification tool that helps you turn regular, boring quizzes into engrossing, interactive games. You can try out Gimkit for free, and a monthly subscription cost $4.99, which I 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 to just manually add your own questions and answer choices. Or, you can set up questions so that students have to write in the correct answers 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 style of game play.
For example, in one of the games, Humans and Zombies, students work together to try to protect their team from the other team, and the last team standing wins.
As students answer the Kit questions correctly, they accrue money, and 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 powerup upgrades and students can use their money to purchase different themes as well.
#5: Actively Learn
Actively Learn is a powerful EdTech platform that 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. As students read, they are required to answer the questions in order to move forward in the article.
Actively Learn includes many 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, get the definition of that word, or to translate that word 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 to the article.
With the free version of Actively Learn, you’ll also be able to upload 3 pieces of your own content each month and make those interactive. For example, you can import YouTube videos and add interactive questions to those videos for students to answer as they proceed through the video.
In addition to videos, you can also bring in a .pdf and add interactive features to it.
Or you could bring in the url for a website and make web pages fully interactive as well!
To learn more about how to create interactive content with Actively Learn, see this other post.
#6: 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 and Loom because it builds tutorials for you based on the steps you take while recording your screen. If you need to show students the steps needed to send emails, use a new tech program, etc. this is the program you want to use.
The way iorad works is that you click on the extension, click Capture, and then start clicking on the actions needed to complete whatever action you want to teach.
Once you’ve finished, iorad uses AI to create a tutorial for you that breaks the tutorial 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, and will read those steps aloud using AI technology.
With a paid plan, you have additional options such as adding your own voiceover to further customize the tutorials you create.
#7: Wakelet
Wakelet is a free digital bulletin board tool with a wide range of uses, from teacher curated 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. It can also be used as a free alternative to Padlet.
Let’s say you wanted to build a lesson plan in Wakelet. You could start by adding a collection, and then giving it a name like “Biodiversity” and then adding a cover image and assignment description.
Within a single Wakelet collection, you can add different media types. For example, you can do things like directly embed a Flipgrid Short explaining what a lesson is about and how to complete the activities.
Then, you can copy and paste the link to a website about your topic or to an interactive video in a program like Edpuzzle.
You can also upload documents from your Google Drive such as a graphic organizer for students to complete, and then add the direct link to a Flipgrid assignment where students would record a video of themselves explaining what they learned.
Students can also work together to build collections of curated mixed-media resources for a research project and then share that back with the rest of the class.
Many people also 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 put together about a topic you are teaching.
Conclusion & Resources
I hope you’re as excited to try out some of these tech tools for teachers this year as I am!
If there are any programs you love that you think I might have missed, definitely let me know in the comments below.
For my take on how to take a strategic approach to remote teaching, click here.
For a comprehensive look at how to use technology to personalize learning, increase engagement, foster creativity, and more, click here.
To read more about why I believe technology must be a central part of public education today, click here.
Interested in the software I use to create my videos? Check out the links below! Many of these products offer a free trial to start and just clicking on the link helps to support The New EdTech Classroom!
Screenflow is a dynamic, intuitive video editing software that I use to create all of my YouTube videos. They’re currently offering a free trial! Get more details here.
I use Adobe Spark Post to design all of my YouTube thumbnails, as well as all my social media graphics. More information here.
If you’re interested in creating a website, these are a couple of programs I personally use and highly recommend: Bluehost is a web host that offers a professional platform for your website. You can check them out here.
Elementor is a powerful tool that helps with clean visual design for your website as well as marketing to further your website’s influence. More details here.
