🗑 Our very, very best stuff of 2025

✨ Your students will LOVE these creative challenges

An ugly sweater? Transforming into an elf? Trapped in a snow globe?!?

If you’re looking for a creative spark for your students during these final, festive weeks before break, the 12 Days of Creativity Challenges by Adobe Express are PERFECT.

(Plus: They reinforce essential digital literacy, digital design, and creativity skills.)

The best part for you? Every challenge comes with a ready-to-use template.

Students just click the template link you provide them and start creating immediately. It’s a no-prep, high-engagements dose of creativity!

PS: Adobe Express is FREE for teachers and students — and can be deployed across your whole school or district for free.

🗄 TEMPLATE 🗄️

🎉 💛 Share Ditch Summit and win prizes!

We are giving away three Ditch That Textbook swag packs! Each swag pack includes a $25 Amazon gift card AND your choice of: TWO of my books, an item from the DTT merch store, and some DTT stickers!

🎉 Here’s how to win:

1. 🗄️ Make a copy of the template (Google Slides / Canva)

2. 💛 Share your excitement (and image) on social media. You can use/edit this sample text or write your own:

I’m going to Ditch Summit, a FREE online conference for educators from Dec 15 to Jan 10.

Topics include student curiosity, AI, student voice, PBL, practical teaching ideas, and much more!

➡️ Register at ditchsummit.com

3. 📝 Enter to win!

Fill out this form to share your post with us. You may enter multiple times if you post on different platforms. Please fill out the form for each post.

We'll draw 3 winners on Sunday, December 14 and notify them via the email address provided.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🎉 The best of the best: Our top 10 newsletters of 2025

It’s a constant question in our work at Ditch That Textbook …

• What is top-of mind for YOU?

• What piques YOUR interest?

• What would help move the needle in YOUR work?

In 2025, that was our big emphasis. (Aaaaaaand, to be honest, it’s been our big emphasis since I started Ditch That Textbook in 2012.)

We have lots of ways of measuring it. One is email newsletter statistics! We can see which emails have been opened the most and which resources clicked on the most.

So today, I’m going to pull back the curtain a bit and share our top posts of 2025 … you know, so you can go check out anything you might have missed!

Our top 10 most-opened emails of 2025

I get statistics on open rate — the percentage of my subscribers that open any given email. I use it to measure interest in a topic — and how well I can craft a subject line to pique your interest.

(Nerdy note: The data is a bit messy and imperfect. For example, most of the top-opened emails came after what my blog editor Karly and I call “the purge.” That’s when we removed about 17,000 inactive subscribers from our list in September. When you take out all the people who never open your emails, guess what … your open rate goes up!)

Below are our top 10 most opened emails from 2025 (click the title to read the web version of the newsletter):

🥇 1. AI image generators: tools, tips, teaching ideas

AI image generators have been one of my favorite AI tools to use for instruction! I use them to make images my students can describe in my Spanish class. In this email, I talk about tools to try and ways to use them.

READ MORE: 10 AI image generators for classroom uses

🥈 2. How much I use paper in class

There’s a bit of a stigma sometimes with having students use paper — even though they have digital devices. My students don’t use their school-issued Chromebooks all the time! In fact, I use paper quite a bit. In this email, I talk about how we use paper — and how I justify it.

READ MORE: How much I use paper in class

🥉 3. My messy thoughts on cheating

After a day of class, I reflected on all of the steps I was taking to try to mitigate students from cheating on tests and quizzes. Eventually, I thought: “Is this even necessary? Is there harm that comes from this perceived lack of trust?” In this email, I spill my messy thoughts on cheating.

READ MORE: My messy thoughts on cheating

🏅 4. The perfect template for digital citizenship week

The template? It was our “social media reply” template, which mimics Facebook text and image posts (with the ability to reply) in Google Slides and PowerPoint. In this email, we share ideas and activities to promote digital citizenship.

READ MORE: A social media reply Google Slides template for digital citizenship

🏅 5. 20 ways to gamify your class

Board games. Yearlong games. Online review games. Badges. There are SO many ways to bring game elements to learning to increase students’ extrinsic motivation (and hopefully, in turn, their intrinsic motivation!). In this email, we share 20 ways to gamify class.

READ MORE: 20 ways to gamify your class

Rounding out the top 10 …

• Finally, teach with heart not hustle — These digital tools help you put more time toward what matters most.

• Our best resources from '24-'25 — And “end of the school year” recap like this one!

• What struggling students really want you to know — Takeaways from a student’s keynote speech about learning with dyslexia.

• You might never need Teachers Pay Teachers again — This digital tool creates custom teaching resources for you right away.

• Wow, that new Google Slides feature?!? — In May, we got Google Slides building blocks: mini templates for students AND teachers.

Our most-clicked resources of 2025

1. 40 brilliant teacher hacks for the classroom (blog post) — Teachers shared their best ways to save time, save money, and make learning smoother.

2. Google Gemini 101 for teachers: Getting started with Google’s AI assistant (blog post) — Gemini can be your personal teaching assistant. These are the top features for teachers.

3. Our free Family Feud template (Google Slides template) — Copy this Google Slides file to make a Family Feud-style review game.

4. Free virtual field trip: Norman Rockwell Museum (webpage) — This immersive virtual trip is a fun classroom experience for students.

5. Our reader appreciation gifts to you! (virtual gift basket) — Click the yellow gift box to get lots of freebies … our way of thanking you for subscribing!

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!