Today is World Teachers’ Day. For those of you who follow my blogs here on Telstra Exchange, you’d know my passion for education and technology. Today I thought I’d put together my top five technology tools for teachers in their honour. Thank you to you all.

According to the website, World Teachers’ Day held annually on October 5th since 1994 – when it was created by UNESCO – celebrates teachers worldwide. Its aim is to mobilise support for teachers and to ensure that the needs of future generations will continue to be met by teachers. You can download the poster here.

Telstra has many connections to education through the products and services we provide to schools, and we also aim to demonstrate our leadership via Telstra Education Roundtable discussions and our Telstra in Education White Paper series. Check out the Personalised Learning whitepaper here.

My list is relevant to all kinds of teachers not just those who work in traditional school settings.

My Top 5 technology tools for teachers

1. Edmodo

In my view, Edmodo really is the best of the private social networking platforms for educators. According to their website, “Edmodo provides teachers and students a secure place to connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussions and notifications. Our goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner.”

There are a ton of features, many like those on Facebook and Twitter and I like their efforts to add reward and recognition (gamification) into the platform. I’ve used the Edmodo app as well and it’s for both teachers and students.

2. MentorMob

I’ve been playing with Mentormob for a few months now and really like their approach. They have built a platform that enables educators to create playlists of learning content. You can simply organize any video, article, or website into a single playlist, and you can insert quizzes into the mix and build Google docs amongst all your multimedia content.  Also love their slogan, “Learn What You Want, Teach What You Love”.

3. ClassDojo

I’m not a fan of their description “Behaviour Management Software”, but do like the idea of ClassDojo especially for younger students. Here’s what you can do according to their website. “Improve Behaviour – Improve specific student behaviours and engagement by awarding and recording real-time feedback. Share Data – Print or email beautiful behaviour reports to easily engage parents and staff. Save Time – Save time by recording behaviours and accomplishments right in class, with just one click: NO extra data entry required.” They have an app which is also awesome.

4. Udemy

I love this teaching platform. Udemy has a beautiful user interface. It’s simple to use, feature rich and let’s anyone create and even sell a course. I’ve made one called Reinventing School – A Design Thinking Challenge, and I’m currently working on another two in my spare time. Check it out and you’ll see right away why I love it. Here is one of many free courses that can be applied to school pages. Introduction to Facebook Pages for Businesses and Orgs. Learn how to setup and manage a Facebook Page for your business or organization.

5. Mindmiester

Besides being brilliant to use, Mindmeister is also so well designed it lends itself to idea generation and information organisation beautifully. I’ve been using it for years and the apps are great. I’m used to sitting in front of the TV at night on my tablet and adding branches of information to my maps. All up, it’s a great visual tool for both teaching and learning.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the best technologies for teaching.