Favorite Tech Tools of 2017

As I reflect on 2017, I wanted to share the top 30 technology tools I've used, trained on, or recommended to teachers this year. 

1. Answer Garden: quickly gather data in the form of a word cloud
2. Canva: create images, posters, and presentations
3. Classroom Screen: all your must-have tools are located in one place online
4. Go Noodle: free brain breaks all in one spot
5. Google Chrome and its extensions: log in to save all your bookmarks and preferences (click here to see a list of my favorite extensions)
6. Google Custom Search: create a custom internet search with pre-approved websites
7. Google Drive and all its components: I cannot say enough good things about Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Forms...the possibilities are endless!
8. Google Earth Voyages: fantastic for virtual field trips or to just add a little extra "oomph" to your lesson
9. Google Hangouts: Conduct meetings even when you're not in the same room! I love the "share my screen" feature, which allows me to let teachers see what my screen looks like as I walk them through a project
10. Google Voice: gives you an extra phone number that connects to your existing mobile number. Great for making parent phone calls or texts without revealing your personal phone number. 
11. Instant Classroom: upload your class roster and generate seating charts, groups, and more. 
12. Kerem Erkan QR Code Generator: there is no shortage of QR code generators online, but this one is my favorite because you can create codes to plain text, maps, text messages, and more. 
13. Online Stopwatch: counts up or down, includes fun animations (if you want to use them), and gives your students a visual as to how much time is left 
14. Padlet: virtual corkboard that can be used for exit tickets, question parking lots, backchannel tool, and more. The addition of a column layout was HUGE this year
15. Pic Collage: create posters, collages, and other projects by layering images and text
16. Plickers: a digital assessment tool that only requires one device (the teacher's!)
17. Poll Everywhere: use the "clickable image" feature to assess very young students or those that struggle with reading 
18. Popplet: create online brainstorm webs that include pictures, drawings, and text
19. Quizizz: a fun game that provides practice for students and assessment data for teachers
20. Reflector Teacher: mirror your mobile device on your computer screen, record movements on your mobile device, and all students to project as well
21. Remind: communicate with a large group via text or email without revealing your personal information. I regularly recommend this just for the scheduling feature
22. SafeShare.tv: crop YouTube videos while filtering ads and video recommendations
23. Screencast-o-Matic: create videos of your computer screen
24. Seesaw: ePortfolio tool geared toward young learners. The Activities feature has been a game-changer this year
25. Shadow Puppet Edu: create slideshows with music or narration 
26. Sign Up Genius: I used this when I taught Science Lab to gather volunteers for stations during Science Night. Since then, I've seen it used for potluck lunches, field trip volunteers, and mystery reading guest sign-ups. 
27. Socrative: a digital assignment tool where any amount of planning will work
28. Symbaloo: Out of all the ways to share links with students, this one is probably the easiest and most universal. 
29. TweetDeck: schedule your tweets in advance and keep up with Twitter chats more easily
30. Wifi Mouse: an iOS app that works over Wifi to connect to your computer and act as a mouse, letting you control your computer screen from anywhere in the room

Are there any tools you'd add to my list? 

SafeShare for YouTube

Our district allowed YouTube access to our employees last spring -- hooray!

But with this new freedom comes great responsibility. We know that YouTube has all kinds of advertisements floating around their site. We also know that there is a list of "related videos" on the sidebar that may or may not be appropriate for the kids to see. 

The good news is, there is a website that allows you to block all the other junk on YouTube and just show the video you want to share. It's called SafeShare.

Features

• Free. No need to sign up for an account.
• Insert the link to any YouTube video into the box above the "generate safe link" button. Click the green button to view the video with a black box around it -- which blocks all the extra {and sometimes inappropriate} stuff that YouTube normally has next to and around the video. 
• Crop the video to whichever starting and stopping points you prefer. 
• Share the cropped/safe video via e-mail or on social media. 
• The link to your safe video never expires, so you can put it on assignments and class websites without worry.

Example:

Take this video, for instance: 

When we watch it on my blog, we get rid of all the weird links that are featured on the side. Here's how the video's page looks when you watch it on YouTube:

Er... video suggestions #5 and 6 don't look like anything I'd like to share with my students. So let's put the link into the SafeShare.tv website and see what happens.

First, I put the link into the box, and then I click the big, green button. 

The bottom half of the picture above appears underneath the green button after you click it. 

Clicking on "customize video" gives you these options:

You can change the name of the video by editing the words in the top text box.

To change the "theme" of the video -- the background color of the box around your video, basically -- click on the black box. You see these options:

Not a lot of theme options, but the black works just fine for my class, so I always just leave it there. 

If you need to crop the video, click the word "full" and see a pop-up screen similar to this:

To set a starting point, play the video, and click "beginning" whenever you're at the part of the video you want to show first. 

To set an end time, just play the video and click "end" whenever you want. If you click "OK," these settings will be saved, and the video will be cropped appropriately in the SafeShare.tv link. 

Once you're satisfied, click "take me to the safe view."

I did crop this picture a little bit so you could see the smaller words on the bottom more easily, but rest assured that the rest of the screen is that dark grey/light black color -- no inappropriately suggested videos on the side anymore! 

By utilizing the links right underneath the video, you can download the video to your computer (with the appropriate crops still applied), save the video by bookmarking it on your computer, or share it in a plethora or ways:

You can even scroll down on that page to view more share options; I haven't even heard of some of those websites! 

The good news, though, is that if you choose to save the link anywhere -- in your e-mail, on your Symbaloo account, bookmarked in your browser, whatever -- you can always go back to that exact video, as long as the original poster on YouTube doesn't remove their content. 

SafeShare even has an app available in the iTunes store. On the app's description page, it shows these two pictures to give you a glimpse of how SafeShare works:

This could come in handy if you use an iPad or two for stations; you could rest assured that students are seeing only the content you want them to see. 

Anyway. That's how I can confidently show YouTube videos in my classroom. It's so much easier than downloading a video at home and transferring it through my Dropbox account to school every time I want to show something!