Following Ed Tech

If you have been embedding educational technologies into your classroom over the last year or so, you may have noticed that the most current ways to find out about new innovations is by reading various blogs.  The technology teaching and learning is moving so fast that it hardly has time to be written up let alone published.

The outcome is not carefully controlled research by a team of experts but instead it features easy ways to integrate educational technologies into your classroom.  Experts who blog are those classroom teachers that find a few minutes in their day to contribute through social media to the moving target of technology integration.

I am going to recommend two different types of blogs that are helpful in getting a handle on new ideas to feature in your teaching and learning.

Firstly, I would like to recommend EdTechTeacher.  This blog features 17 teachers in various positions in schools who voice what works for them and how to do it.  Having a variety of voices keeps this blog fresh and current and allows you to zero in on those technologies that are unique to your school.  This site also has some free resources including webinars for a busy teacher to watch in order to add something new or use some technology that is currently underused in your classroom.

Secondly, I will recommend FreeTech4Teachers.  This extensive and detailed blog has only one author, Richard Byrne (who I suspect is passionate about educational technologies).  He sometimes updates his blog several times a day – yes you read that right, several times a day!  In pretty short order he gives a tip or trick or website or app or way to use technology in a way that has you saying, “Of course, that will work in my ….class.”

Following a couple of blogs makes it easy to learn new technologies and to apply current technologies in different ways.  These are two examples of great blogs to follow.  Keep in mind Ed Tech Magazine had 50 top blogs on their 2016 honour roll.