Tech Tools for Teachers

First, there’s an elephant in a yellow polka dot bikini can-canning its way through classrooms right now, and you all know what I mean: ChatGPT. Are you even a teacher if you haven’t had “that” conversation with a student who feigns ignorance of plagiarism, even though you spent a week teaching them to never use the Grammarly “make it better button” because it will turn their own writing into an AI version, stripped of personality, but heavy with bolded sections and transition words that real people don’t use? This Share My Lesson 2023 webinar, No. 3 for the year, is an excellent place to start, and delivers information about what exactly ChatGPT and generative AI are while also sharing ways to make assignments more original and authentic. Emily Horn’s blog about using ChatGPT to create rubrics is perfect for beginning teachers and veterans alike. If you are a new teacher, one of the most important pieces of advice I can give regarding grading is to understand how to set criteria, how to ensure students are getting the number or letter grades that make sense and, importantly, how to create a rubric. If you are ever questioned on a grade (and you will be), it really helps to have a clear rubric. In my own experience creating rubrics with ChatGPT, the better you know what you are looking to measure, the closer the rubric that you’ll get will work for your purposes. There are experts out there and lots of good advice about writing the best prompts (This PDF from a prompt writing course by Dave Birss taught me all I’ll probably need to know.)

Jennifer Gonzalez, aka diva of Cult of Pedagogy fame, puts out a great resource each year on the best tech tools for teachers. The 2025 blog can also be listened to as a podcast, which incidentally is one of the great “tech tools” we can all embrace. This blog also has several very helpful videos embedded as well. A note to the new teachers out there: When you are keeping track of your professional development, I’d recommend keeping a log of some sort (something as easy as a Google sheet) so that you can reference it later. I recently heard from a new teacher who at her last interview—the one that landed her the job—had been asked to share her best professional development. When she explained that she thought the best PD was at the intersection of curiosity and need, then shared her list from the phone, she wowed the interview committee with her initiative. For veteran teachers like myself, I find that following an established pro like Jennifer Gonzalez, Alice Keeler, or even me (shameless plug to follow me on Share My Lesson), it can be more manageable than sorting through the dozens and dozens of gurus out there.

Free. That’s my current budget for ed tech. Luckily, this video has 90 free tools for teachers and is curated by the amazing “integratED Teacher,” a collection of educators who “get it” because most of them are still “in it.” If you are looking for a broader list, and I love the personal productivity included, then this Forbes article will help you decide if you want to pay (a little) for ease and effectiveness. Personally, the most important tool I use is Edpuzzle, which isn’t new, but is being updated to include quizzes and slides. I pay $13.95 a month for my own personal account and use it for my online college classes. The classes are asynchronous, so the videos I post are crucial; I feel confident that the information is delivered and scaffolded because I make most of them myself, and it is user friendly.

Hopefully, this was a little light reading for summer vacation that will inspire you to check out these resources, as well as share some of your own. As I said, if you are already a whiz, you probably are in the wrong space, but these are tried-and-true resources. What would you add to the list?