Common Sense Education's 50 Favorite Tools

Purpose & objective

-Participants will learn about 50 tools they can use in their classrooms in the new school year.
-Participants will better understand re-definitional use of technology that moves away from using tech to replicate traditional approaches.
-Participants will be able to more effectively and efficiently search for useful tools on their own.

Outline

Introduction
- Background on Common Sense Education and our editorial process (5 mins.)

Session (45 mins.)
-We'll go over our 50 favorite tool selections via rapid-fire, highly-visual (PechaKucha-inspired) presentation. Each tool will be accompanied by a use-case focused on re-definitional use of technology that pushes past traditional practice.)
-Tools will be grouped in categories like "totally," "weird and wonderful," "best for privacy."

Wrap-Up (10 mins.)
-Audience members will submit their favorites for discussion (8 mins.)
- How to find and evaluate tools on your own (2 minutes)

Supporting research

I published this article on EdSurge which offers some of the key things we've learned at Common Sense Education about learning design and the edtech market: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-07-21-what-makes-a-good-edtech-tool-great

We also have a forthcoming research study tentatively titled the Common Sense Educator Census. It'll be released in late 2018 or early 2019 at https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research. Many of the findings in that study, which I can share at the presentation, relate to the challenges teachers have finding and using tools effectively.