Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 201 called Tech or Treat: 8 Edtech Tools for the Classroom Teacher (Part 1). In this episode, we will go edtech trick or treating with a new list of edtech tools that can enhance, engage, and save time. This is another episode you don’t want to miss, check it out.

Happy halloween

What’s New?

Tech or Treat game

Johnson’s

1. Study Fetch- create accurate games from your course materials in seconds. This platform uses AI to transform your existing class content, like notes and lectures, into customized and educational games for quick, fun review.
2. Teachershare AI: This tool is an AI Resource Creator designed for educators to quickly generate high-quality, curriculum-aligned materials such as worksheets, quizzes, and other resources. You can import existing content like PDFs or Google Slides or start from a template to produce customized teaching materials in seconds.
3. DeckToys: Digital Game Boards. Deck.Toys is a lesson planning platform that lets teachers create engaging, interactive learning paths that feel like a video game. It works with existing materials and is designed to simplify lesson planning while providing a fun, self-paced exploration experience for students.
4. loorex.com: This website is an online test engine and exam-related tool that allows users to create, publish, and manage their own exams, tests, or quizzes. It is a modern, web-based application suitable for both academic and professional settings to manage assessments, track results, and secure knowledge verification.

Guise’s

1. Gynzy Whiteboard Tool: Gynzy offers a suite of teaching resources for interactive whiteboards, including a digital whiteboard, lesson-building tools, and a content library of ready-to-teach lessons. It's designed to bring the interactive whiteboard to life with tools, templates, quizzes, and games to engage students.

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 200 called Is Google Gemini the Ultimate Educational AI? In this episode, we will discuss the good and the bad of Google Gemini as we try to answer the question - is this the ultimate educational AI tool? This is another episode you don’t want to miss, check it out.

Congrats on episode 200 - we had a plan but scheduling conflicts and a busy schedule pushes us back.

We’ve been presenting like crazy and Google Gemini keeps popping up. It does what school ai does. It does what magic school does. It’s “safe”. This raises the question … is it the ultimate tool?

100 Ways to Use Google Gemini

Where is it?

• Find it by clicking the waffle icon of any Chrome account, it is sitting there amongst your other google apps

Why use it?

• Easy to find part of the google platform your school is already used to
• Follows the same privacy and security guidelines as other google products. This means that if your school is already a google school, they can turn it on for both staff and students with less concern about how info is shared
• Exports directly into Google Docs

General features as of 2025

• Flash vs. Pro
• Guided Learning Mode
• Canvas Mode
• Image Generation
• Adding files, documents and pictures
• Gems!
• Combats some downsides of AI withLearnLM

Downsides:

• AI just became easier to access and use - the downsides are many (brain health, environmental concerns, cheating, the loss of struggle, etc)
• Not all students are ready and Gemini makes it so easy

Edtech Throwdown

Episode 199: Edtech Smorgasboard: 8 Cool Websites for Teachers

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 199 called Edtech Smorgasboard: 8 Cool Websites for Teachers. In this episode, we have collected a grab-bag of intriguing websites for educators of all kinds. Will one of these be your next digital rabbit hole? Probably! But there is only one way to find out though, listen in now. This is another episode you don’t want to miss, check it out.

Approaching 200 episodes

Kiddo worksheet

• The term refers to educational printables designed for children, helping younger students practice basic skills like letters and numbers, and older kids with subjects like math and science. These online resources often offer free, customizable templates for parents and teachers to quickly create engaging learning materials.

Radio.garden

• Travel around the world AND through time, listening to various radio station recordings. Super fascinating and could be used in a variety of history, geography, sociology projects.

• Tv.gardenis a free streaming platform that grants users access to thousands of live television channels from across the globe without requiring a subscription. You can browse streams by country or content category, making it a great tool for watching international news, sports, and entertainment.

NASA’s Solar System Treks

• Virtual reality treks using real time data returned from nasa’s fleet of spacecraft. You can Trek in the browser on a computer OR scan a QR and use virtual reality and your phone. Choose a trek, scan a qr code, and explore right on your phone.

• Drivelisten.comis a popular web app that offers a unique virtual travel experience, allowing users to take a simulated drive, walk, or cycle through major cities worldwide. While cruising the streets, you can listen to a synchronized stream of the city's actual local radio stations, with the option to turn on road noise for a fully immersive feel.

Gem...

Edtech Throwdown

Episode 198: Educators as AI Guides: Crafting Resources for Families and Communities

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 198 called Educators as AI Guides: Crafting Resources for Families and Communities. In this episode, we will walk through a step by step process that educators can follow for creating AI resources that are not just for staff and students, but the community as a whole. This is another episode you don’t want to miss, check it out.

We are concluding a 3 year journey that has attempted to establish AI policy, share the ai policy with staff and students, teach staff about ai, teach students about ai, and the final phase … teaching the community.

One thing that still surprises me is the number of people (usually adults) who don’t use AI. Maybe they disagree with it, maybe they don’t know where to go or what to do, or maybe they just don’t care. But everyone has a stake in at least knowing what these tools are capable of.

A local library reached out to the school district and asked if we would collaborate on creating, sharing and presenting resources from the school so that the community could learn from them AND be aware of what schools are doing with AI.

This is our journey, laid out in a step-by-step manner so that it might help others trying to accomplish the same thing.

1. Establish policy at the highest levels possible (board, superintendent, etc).
2. Must start here so you have a legally backed document to fall back on
3. This can be slow and painful
4. Start identifying the stakeholder’s opinions
5. Teachers,
6. Students
7. Administrators
8. Parents
9. Have a focus group to help with wordsmithing
10. Identify proper use/misuse
11. Establish an “AI director” for the district
12. Not a new position, someone who already has a tech role
13. This person is responsible for maintaining and updating the resources and plan that follows
14. This person may also want to recruit a small team to help them build out and present the materials (tech coaches, media specialists, etc)
15. Create a...

Edtech Throwdown

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 197 called 10 Low-Tech Ways to Refocus Students. In this episode, we will talk about 10 low-tech or no-tech ideas for brain breaks, mindful moments, whatever you call them, you’ll learn some cool ways to refocus students in your classroom. This is another episode you don’t want to miss, check it out.

Our school opening PD days focused on the importance of getting kids off screens.

Funny because I’ve been hearing students for years say they still prefer pieces of paper for many things in class and that they get tired of looking at their tiny chromebook screen.

This also makes sense because there are strong links to learning and handwriting. Also, have you ever tried staring at a screen for your job all day? It’s not fun.

In that spirit, we collected some ideas for brain breaks / mindful moments, with a focus on low tech or no tech solutions.

Bingo Bongo Splat

You write down a secret number on a piece of paper so you don’t forget it yourself. Can be as many digits as you want. Students take turns guessing the number. As they make a guess, you record it for all of them to see, along with the word, bingo, bongo, or splat. Check out the Tik Tok video from LifeofSteph on this

Bingo=1 digit in the right place

Bongo=1 digit but in the wrong place

Splat=nothing matches

Reverse Simon Says

Same rules as Simon Says—but if you don’t hear “Simon says,” you should do the action. Flips their brains into focus mode.

Slow Reveal Graphs

Series of images of graphs, beginning with almost no labels or information, then slowly adding more. Students share out what they think the graph is about. Their responses get more detailed and specific with each new reveal. Teaches graph skills and is fun!

• Bandle Phone App

Wordle

Remember that craze! It’s still around. Play the real NYT version or make your own at flippty

Which doesn’t belong?

4 images are shown and students must argue for which one doesn’t belong. There should be a possible reason that could be argued for each image. Start with a dessert example (chocolate layer cake, choco chip cookies, berry pie, ice cream), and then make one that fits your content. Close by having students design one. Extend this by having them present it.

Story Tag

One student starts a silly story with one sentence, and it goes around the room quickly. Each adds just one sentence—short and energizing.

Another option: You will tell a story one word at a time. Ideally you’re in a circle on arranged in a way that’s clear which order you’ll go in. The first student starts with one word (One), then the next student comes up with another word (morning), then the next student continues (a)…

Another option: You will tell a story using only questions. Ideally you’re in a circle on arranged in a way that’s clear which order you’ll go in.

The first student starts: “Where did the dog go?”

The next continues with: “I’m not sure, should we go look for him?”

The next continues with: “Do you know where his leash is?”

Upside-Down Artist

Students have 30 seconds to doodle...

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 196: Classroom Activities for the Beginning of School. In this episode, we will share 8 new and improved ideas for starting off the school year in the most fun, positive and student centered way possible. This is another episode you don’t want to miss, check it out.

Guise:

1. Team Challenges
2. Design, Build, Retrieve, Complete
3. Class Relay
4. QR Scavenger Hunt
5. Minute to Win it Puzzles
6. Successful completion in under a minute gets their team a piece of the puzzle
7. Escape Room
8. Survey the class before the start of the year
9. Animated Avatar Design with Canva and https://sketch.metademolab.com/
10. Silent line-up (extreme): Students have to line up by birth date, ABC order etc, but with built in challenges unique to your classroom like half of the people are blindfolded or an extremely short time limit
11. Survival Scenario: choose ten items from a large list

Edtech Throwdown:

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Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 195 called Rethinking Research: Teaching Inquiry and Integrity in the Age of AI. In this episode, we will explore how the role of a teacher must change now that AI is becoming integrated in all aspects of our lives. Specifically, we’ll share 8 changes you can make to your classroom and assignments that will help encourage students to think creatively and critically in an age where it’s more important than ever. This is another episode you don’t want to miss, check it out.

As my students completed their final projects, I started noticing something this year … all their work was very technically sound and met my project expectations almost perfectly. Was it too perfect?

Specific example: One of the elements of my rubric references a creative title. Usually everyone does “Chemistry of __”, but this year, they were all things like “9 Volts, 2 Electrodes, 1 Reaction: The Chemistry Behind the Charge and the Connection”. So what suddenly happened this year for me to get such great titles?

Also - When students came to me with questions about content, like the girl who needed help understanding the chemistry of Na/K pumps in cells, I found myself going to ChatGPT for the fastest resolution. Clearly they are doing the same.

Two questions arose:

1. Is this research?
2. Is this type of research good or bad?

1. Redefine Research as Inquiry, Not Just Information Gathering

AI makes facts and summaries instantly accessible, so teachers should shift the focus from finding information to asking meaningful questions. Students should be taught that good research begins with curiosity and that AI is just one of many tools in that process.

Teacher Tip: Require students to submit a “research question development log” showing how their question evolved through discussion, feedback, and exploration.

2. Teach AI Literacy as Part of Research Instruction

Students need to understand how AI tools work, their limitations, and the potential for bias or misinformation. This helps them critically evaluate what AI produces instead of blindly trusting it.

Teacher Tip: Have students compare AI-generated content with academic sources and reflect on differences in depth, credibility, and tone.

3. Require Research Process Documentation

Rather...

Edtech Throwdown

Episode 194: Tech That Teaches: Hardware We Actually Love

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 194 called Tech That Teaches: Hardware We Actually Love. In this episode, we will go over the hardware that allows our classrooms and offices to run smoothly and efficiently. Save time, headaches, and hopefully some money! This is another episode you don’t want to miss, check it out.

Who doesn’t like gadgets?

Nick’s Gadgets

• Workstation Set-Up: Use a USB splitter connected to an external monitor. That splitter has all my “stuff” to facilitate quick connection. Connect my laptop to the monitor and then I’m also auto-connected to all my gadgets. I use the Anker Hub 4 Ports and love it, but there are many options that are all pretty good.
• Second monitor! Dell 27 inch Monitor, P2725H Full HD 1080p Computer Monitor. If you haven’t started using a second monitor, get on it!
• Wacom Tablet - I like this better than a touch screen stylus because it feels more like writing on a piece of paper. When I use the stylus, I find that it my hand accidentally clicks things on the screen, zooming in by mistake,...