This is Jennifer Gonzales welcoming you to episode 136 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode I am going to tell you about six Ed Tech Tools you should check out in 2020.

That time again as I do every January I am releasing an all new update of my teachers guide to tech.

If you are not familiar with the guide I will tell you about it really quickly.

This is basically an encyclopedia of technology. Years and years ago teachers were telling me that they wanted to use more tech in their classrooms but they were overwhelmed by how much was out there and they did not have the time to explore all the tools.

So a lot of them just kind of stayed away. So I decided to start cataloging them basically to make it quicker and easier for teachers to figure this out.

This eventually turned into a big PDF that breaks all of the different tech tools out there for teachers into categories.

So there is a category for special ed tools. There is a category for writing tools. There is a science section. There is a history section.

This year I have a bunch of new sections. I have got a section on infographics, a section on PE, physical education.

It is this massive PDF and basically for each tool that I feature I give you a paragraph explaining what it is.

There is a link to the website and then there is also a little button you can press that will take you to a video that shows the tool in use so that you can very quickly get a sense for what it does and whether or not you think it all works.

It will help you in your classroom. So I just yesterday put out the brand new tech guide for 2020. It has got over 350 tools broken into 50 different categories.

And every year when I put out a fresh one and updated one that always includes new tools and has updated all the old information I choose six tools that I sort of stumbled upon in the last year that I think are worth a look from you.

So I thought I would also answer the question what does it take to make this list? What criteria do I use to choose these six tools?

Sometimes I just sort of know it when I see it when I'm looking at new stuff and I think oh this one is probably going to go on the list.

But there are some general qualifications. The first thing is that I'm looking for tools that I just learned about in the past year.

These are things that may have actually been around longer but I'm just now hearing about them.

So that makes me think that a lot of other teachers haven't heard about them either and that this might be sort of news to you.

I'm also looking for tools that are doing something that I haven't seen before, something a little bit groundbreaking that will probably be copied by others down the line.

But as of right now, as far as I know, this is sort of the first tool that I've seen that does this thing.

This is the case with five of the six ones that I've chosen this time.

And another thing that I'm looking for are tools that I would like to see more students using.

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