Welcome to the world in a new abnormal—a world filled with Zoom burn-out (Cauterucci 2020) and new struggles to engage students. Spring 2020 was, for most, a time of haphazard transition from in-person to remote instruction. This Teaching Tools series provides a series of online learning applications for anyone interested in learning more about different platforms, who needs to make an online class for summer or fall 2020, or who is looking for more ways to incorporate instructional technologies in a more deliberate and beneficial way.

While teaching with technology is not new, many educators found this way of instructing to be new and untamed territory. Previous posts from Teaching Tools have pulled together information on using technologies to direct reading and provide engagement opportunities in physical and virtual classrooms (e.g., Wesolowski 2013; Khalikova 2017; Khalikova and Russell 2017; Russell 2017). This current series brings together tools that are not in these previous posts, curated for specific tasks. Are you wondering how to make short videos for presenting materials to your students? Are you looking for platforms that allow you to see what students are annotating most in the texts you assign? Are you looking for platforms useful for visual group brainstorming and discussions? The series addresses tools that have been used by contributors, highlighting different ways to use each.