New Sites Aim to Help Pick Best Ed-Tech Tools

Educators struggling to choose the best technology products face a mind-boggling array of decisions, a challenge that is spawning a growing number of education technology product-review sites.

Such sites -- sometimes compared to Consumer Reports, Angie's List, or CNET in how they use ratings and recommendations to evaluate educational technology -- are now operating or are launching soon, with educators themselves assigning the grades. The effectiveness of such review sites is still a big question mark. But their existence comes at a critical time, as schools face a multitude of decisions about laptops, tablets, smartphones, digital curricula, video, apps, and other technologies.