Over the course of the last few weeks, I have been asking educators to tell me which new technology tool they were most looking forward to bringing with them back-to-school this fall.
These didn't have to be new tools per se; just new to the survey respondent for this school year. And these didn't have to be tools that they were teaching with or that they were using with students. They could be tools for administrative purposes or for professional development, for example.
A couple of notes here about my methodology before I dive into the results: I created a survey as a Google Form and tweeted the link a couple of times. I also posted the link to Google Plus. So that makes this a highly un-scientific survey as you had to be connected to my social networks -- either through retweets or shares -- to have the chance to participate. I didn't restrict this to a particular grade level, and I invited all educators, regardless of job title, to participate.
Also of interest, each time I tweeted the link to the survey, I had 2 or 3 retweets. When I posted the survey to Google Plus as opposed to Twitter, the link was more than twice as likely to be re-shared. No one on Twitter @-replied with their tech tool of choice. But my post on Google Plus did elicit 14 some-odd comments with people discussing various technologies they'd be bringing back-to-school with them (including, of course, a couple of wry comments from those educators who worked all summer.)