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If you have ever been the lead teacher, technologist, or administrator tasked with finding the right tech tool for your school or district, here are a few scenarios that might seem familiar: You walk through the flashy fun exhibit hall at an edtech conference. The vendors are friendly, helpful, and give you plenty of hands-on opportunities with their product. You leave with handouts, email addresses, and lots of hope. But when you get back to school, you feel overwhelmed as you flip through all of the information. What’s next? As you look for a solution to your school/district’s particular situation, it is easy to go with one of the big companies with a big reputation. They might be exactly what you need. But they might also have a big price tag, inattentive product support, and updates or interface design changes that come without warning. Well, it is what everyone else is doing, right? Vocal teachers have always been the beneficiaries of both budgetary and time considerat

In every school community there are a handful of great teachers – the teachers who are passionate about their students, experts in their content, and beloved by the families they have served – who are also kind of scared of technology. Either they have little experience using tech in their personal lives and therefore do not see how it applies to the classroom, or they have been burned by bad technology rollouts and learned to rely on their tried-and-true non-tech strategies. No matter the reason, they are great teachers and there is a way to change their experience with technology to benefit both them and their students. Often it is up to the instructional technology coaching staff to help facilitate the transition. Here are a few tools and strategies that I've seen work, and that might work for you. Traditional Teaching Strategy: Slide Decks Gateway Technology Tool: Pear Deck Especially at the secondary level, teachers have relied on slide decks to structure lesson instructio

The way we communicate is more instantaneous and media-rich today than ever before in history. But both history and modern times are peppered with testy relationships, varying personalities, and complicated politics. While we sometimes think that life is so different today from the start of U.S. history, we have more in common with the people who lived at the beginning of our nation's story than we think. This also means that we struggle with communication in many of the same ways. Using the lesson and materials below, you can help your students feel more connected with history by talking with them about the ways they connect with one another online. Earlier this week, Safer Internet Day was observed in over 100 countries all over the world including  the United States . This year's theme is Be the change: Unite for a better internet and the event was held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia  and was hosted by ConnectSafely . Throughout the event, the speaker

When we put powerful devices in the hands of adolescents and teenagers, they will make mistakes. There is no doubt about it. Recently, I've been pressed by fellow educators and parents, both in person and via digital communications, as to whether it is truly worthwhile to give children – children with brains that are not fully developed – these powerful tools when we know with confidence that they will make mistakes while using them. They will play games when they should be doing homework. They will get sucked into text messages during class time when they should be taking notes. For many adults, this is new territory. We did not grow up with these powerful devices and an endless internet at our fingertips. How can we possibly set limits to the limitless world that our children now live in? Over the past few years, some research has emerged that can help us explain to our children why they (and we) are so drawn to our screens and to technology. One reason is dopamine. It is a c