Wayfinder is a tool designed for use in schools but with a focus on the world outside of that space that aims to build foundational skills for young people, to help them achieve lifelong success. It is a research-backed and educator-designed curriculum that is made to fit into a teacher's setup already, to help build soft skills from self-awareness and adaptability to collaboration and empathy.

In his work across the district, Andy Fekete, the Director for Innovation and Technology for Community Consolidated School District 93 in Bloomingdale and Carol Stream, Illinois, stresses the necessity of being intentional about connecting tool investments to meaningful teaching and learning. “There's a lot of great tools out there,” Fekete says. “But everything is an investment, even if it's a free tool, right? So we focus on how do we ensure that what we're doing really is having an impact on teaching and learning.”

A few recent T&L overviews of digital teaching tools:

• Movavi Academic (screen recording/editing)
• AhaSlides (AI-powered slides)
• Struggly (math support)
• Quizplus (quiz/study support)
• Pangram (AI detection tool)
• Taskade (IEP support)

Stock up!

Since 2013, Hour of Code activities have been helping educators worldwide to teach coding and computer science principles to K-12 students during Computer Science Education Week every December (this year December 8-14). Now, with the rapid penetration of AI into technology, communications, industry, and education, it’s time to build on the success of Hour of Code. The Hour of AI is upon us.

According to the report from Common Sense Media, nearly 3 in 4 teens have used AI companions. This raises critical questions for educators and families: What are the developmental implications of these relationships, and how can we guide students to use this technology in safe, meaningful ways?

Before a teacher implements AI tools in their classroom, here are some questions that they should consider.

Whether you use Google Slides or something else, you can promote deep thinking during presentations by tweaking the slides you already have.

It's still not obvious how the models work through multistep math and coding tasks.

When a book is compelling enough, children will not shy away from novels of 300 pages or more.