The world is so full of edtech tools, it’s hard to know which ones to pick. So we dug up 10 of our community’s top digital resources, along with a few of our own personal favorites.
Have you tried any of these in your classroom?
Reading Rainbow
For over 20 years, Reading Rainbow got kids to fall in love with reading after school. Now the experience can extend to class hours.
Reading Rainbow’s Skybrary School gives K-3 educators access to books, educator-created lesson plans, student reports, and even video field trips with show host LeVar Burton.
Star Wars in the Classroom
If you teach middle or high school and your students talk about characters like Rey or Kylo Ren so often they might as well be members of your class, then you may want to consider bringing Star Wars into your lessons, too.
Star Wars in the Classroom offers resources for history, language, and science classes (and even mythology and robotics). It’s a great way to make your lessons more exciting … and keep kids away from the dark side.
PBS Math Club
Remember those School House Rock videos? Who didn’t love those? If your students aren’t a fan of the older animation, YouTube has plenty of newer videos with a modern spin to hook their interest.
Geared toward 7th grade math, PBS Math Club puts kids in front of the camera to teach math in a fun way … like this video below, which combines Star Wars and Mean Girls.
Each episode ends with an interactive quiz so students can practice what they learned, and the channel even includes 15-second “InstaCram” tip videos for the time-conscious.
GoNoodle
Brain breaks are a great way to give your students a time to de-stress, recharge, and have a little fun.
GoNoodle provides 5-minute activities that will get your class focused when you feel their attention waning. For example: “Clap Stomp and Jump” is a whole-body dance exercise to get their heartrate going again.
CrashCourse
Lots of teenagers are familiar with the brothers John and Hank Green—one’s a famous author who writes books that get made into teen crush movies like The Fault in Our Stars, and the other’s a musician (among other things) who writes songs about Harry Potter.
So it’s pretty cool that the two have teamed up again to contribute to CrashCourse, which delivers fun 10-15 minute lessons about history, literature, science, psychology, and other subjects.
Pear Deck
Nothing can make students zone out faster than a boring slideshow. Tools like Pear Deck can change that, turning presentations into an opportunity to interact and make kids a bigger part of the lesson.
By logging into your live session, you can ask for responses as you go through each slide using dots, multiple choice, and more. You can then display everyone’s answers on a projector or isolate answers to see each student’s thoughts.
SciShow
If you like the content offered through CrashCourse, then chances are you’ll love SciShow.
On this channel, Hank Green joins host Michael Aranda to discuss chemistry, physics, biology, and other topics and answer common questions about the world we live in.
Flocabulary
Educational videos don’t stop there. If you’re looking for fun activities for all grades and subjects combined with catchy rap lyrics, then Flocabulary is a good choice.
Teach kids about point of view, the scientific method, bullying, current world events, Macbeth, and so much more.
Number Gossip
This last find is a small but fascinating one. With Number Gossip, you can enter any number and learn something about it.
This makes Number Gossip both a great reference for math and a way to foster your students’ curiosity about numbers, no matter what age they are.
Share your ideas: What are your favorite edtech resources?
Classroom Management