My Favourite EdTech Tools 2015

I try to use as many edtech tools as possible in the Library, it's a great way to interact with the students, get them interested in the Library and find out what fits their style of learning. 

Here's a few free ones that I've used successfully in the past year. You can click on the products' logo to visit their site. 

Socrative is a formative assessment tool that you can access in real time. It's fun and easy to use. I've been making quizzes with it for book clubs and our popular Manga Club.
Click here for an example on how I used it.

Another quiz-based tool, FlipQuiz lets you create gameshow-style quizzes fun and easily. I used it recently as a way to educate the students on Banned Books. You can access this post here. 


Storybird

Storybird lets you make visual stories and can be adapted to almost any age level. I used this in a book club, the students loved it. They did spend most of their time fretting over just the right design but once they started writing, they really enjoyed it. You can access my post here. 

Animoto is an awesome tool to make videos, book trailers and more. To find out how we used it at Glenthorne, click here. 

I've used Skype a few times for virtual author visits, which I love doing. You can see my post on it here. I'm also interested in trying out the Mystery Skype program. 

ThingLink lets you take images and add interactive content to them. I used it to make book covers in our book club come to life which you can access here. 

Tagxedo is a word-cloud generator that is fun and easy to use. I used it with our Manga Club but it could be used with reluctant readers for book reviews, recommendations and more. I also used it to promote an upcoming author visit with author Darren Shan. The students were intrigued by the mysterious word clouds that were posted around the school! You can check out my post on Tagxedo here. 

I've used ReadWriteThink several times over the past year. The number of resources on their site are vast.The program I've used the most is its Trading Card Generator, which allows you to create in-depth, printable trading cards. I had success having students make cards for their favourite manga & book characters & using it as a partnership with the Art Department, which you can access here. 

I'd love to hear what other EdTech Tools teachers & librarians have used!