As a teacher or trainer, you often have a classroom full of students or trainees who you need to be ‘on the same page’ with. The problem is that many times, you’re on page 1, while some of the adventurous ones are already on page 3. Another time, you’re way ahead on page 7, while some people are lagging behind on #4.

You can fix this. It may sound strange at first, but computers can literally speak to each other. Yes, they use strange frequencies when they do, but it makes it that much more magical. Enter Google Tone – the equalizer between human click and computer sound waves.

Google Tone can literally ‘tell’ all other computers to be on the same page as you are. Web page, that is. And you have to use Chrome. OK, so there are a few limitations, but it’s still a cool piece of classroom tech that lets you integrate the wow-factor with useful functionality.

As soon as you need to gather responses from all of your students, you would be foolish to use pen and paper anymore. A standard in all modern classroom technology for the past decade, audience response systems (or classroom group response systems) are an essential tool to collect critical data from all participants in the room.

They also allow you to involve the students in the subject matter, which in turn increases their retention of the material you’re presenting to them. As a study from University of Virginia shows, “utilizing a nonthreatening and interactive device such as ARS software results in statistically significant retention of new material not only in the short term but even more so in the long term.” (Eva Ilse Rubio, M.D.; Matthew J. Bassignani, M.D.; William E. Brant, M.D.). The act of incorporating the motor functions (pushing a button) into reading the question and the answers triggers a better memory storage and recall.

Now, who wouldn’t want that in all of their classrooms?