Best-in-Category Winners for 2017

Ask a Tech Teacher routinely shares favorite websites and apps that make a difference in the classroom. Over the last month, readers voted on which tools had the greatest impact on readers. To award this Best in Category badge, we asked them to look for the uncommon resources (meaning: not the ones everyone knows about), the ones that made them say Wow and rush to share with colleagues everywhere.

Then we looked for the following qualities:

• how dependable is it
• how versatile is it for time-strapped teachers
• does it differentiate for the varied needs of students and teacher
• do educators like it (fairly subjective, but there you have it)
• how did it work when exposed to your students
• was it easy to use and intuitive to learn
• did it fulfill promises and expectations
• has it become a beloved tool in your classes or a failed experiment

Here are the 2017 Best-in-Category and Honorable Mentions for the following Categories:

Winners: Please grab your award from this page.

Assessment

Winner: Kahoot

Honorable Mention:  Socrative

Classroom Management Tool

Winner: Class Dojo

Honorable Mention: Sown to Grow

Coding

Winner: Wolfram Alpha

Honorable Mention: IFTTT

Collaborative Learning

Winner: Edmodo

Honorable Mention: PearDeck

Digital Notetaking

Winner:  OneNote

Honorable Mention: Notability

Digital Storytelling Tool

Winner: Buncee

Honorable Mention: Adobe Spark

Keyboarding 

Winner:  TypeDojo

Honorable Mention: KidzType

Learning Management System

Winner: Seesaw

Honorable Mention: Canvas

Lesson Planning

Winner: TesTeach (Blendspace)

Honorable Mention: Sway

Math Tool

Winner: Stepping Stones

Honorable Mention: SumDog

Professional Development

Winner: AmplifiEDucation

Honorable Mention:  Adobe Education

Reading

Winner: Flocabulary

Honorable Mention:  Teach Your Monster to Read

Resource Aggregator

Winner: Larry Ferlazzo

Honorable Mention: Mentoring Minds

Special Needs Tools:

Winner:  Open Dyslexic

Honorable Mention:  News2You (N2Y)

Tech Ed Tool

Winner:  CommonSense Media

Honorable Mention:  Empatico

Tech Tips

Winner: Eric Curts (Control Alt Achieve)

Honorable Mention: LearnZillion

Video Creation Tools:

Winner:  mysimpleshow

Honorable Mention: EdPuzzle

Visual Presentations

Winner: Canva

Honorable Mention: Smore

Writing

Winner: NoRedInk

Honorable Mention: Revision Assistant 

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Hearty congratulations to all of our winners! Please grab your image from this page.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 25 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and a weekly contributor to TeachHUB. You can find her resources at Structured Learning. Read Jacqui’s tech thriller series, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days.