Fresh Takes 4 Teachers
Beware of the Copycat Trap!
On Tuesday afternoon in Dickson, Tennessee I delivered a new version of my popular talk Ten Common Challenges Facing Educators (learn how to bring me
My Three Favorite Video Creation iPad Apps for Elementary School
Over the last month I have spoken at conferences all over the United States. Creating videos with students is was the topic of one of
Khan Academy Announces a Talent Search
Do you enjoy making instructional videos for your students or the general public? Can you break complex topics into small, digestible chunks for others to
7 Tools for Creating Classroom Blogs
After I published last night’s post on reasons to have a classroom blog, a handful of people contacted me for recommendations on which blogging platform
5 Reasons to Have a Classroom Blog
Earlier today someone wrote the following in response to my post featuring a good example of a teacher and student blog, “Franklly (sic) I don’t
5 Ways to Quickly Get Your Students On the Same Webpage
Getting all of your students on the same webpage at once is one of the small and annoying challenges of using websites and web tools
How to Create a Book Trailer Video
Creating a book trailer video can be a great alternative to writing a book report. To create a good book trailer video students will have
Connected Mind – A Mind Mapping App in Chrome
Connected Mind is a free mind mapping tool that you can find in the Google Chrome Web Store. Using Connected Mind you can create free-form
Three Geography Games Based on Google Maps and Google Earth
One of the things that I emphasize to students before they embark on any kind of research or problem-solving task is to take a good
The Week in Review – A Few Days at Home
Good morning from Maine where I have a few days at home with my dogs before going back on the road for the rest of
Three Ways for Students to Compare the Sizes of Countries and States
My students here in Maine always think of our state as being a big place and it is relative to the rest of New England.
A Good Example of a Student & Teacher Blog – And How to Make Your Own
On Monday afternoon I had the pleasure of seeing Elisabeth Alkier give a presentation about the book review blog that she developed with her students
Qualities of an Epic Hero – A Visual Character Guide
Qualities of an Epic Hero is a free classroom poster available from Storyboard That. The poster outlines the seven traits that make a character in
Homework Reminder Service What’s Due is Closing Down, Slowly
What’s Due is a free homework reminder service that I like a lot and have recommended a handful of times over the last couple of
A New Version of Google Sites is Coming
Google Sites is flexible tool for creating school websites, classroom blogs, wikis, and digital portfolios. For years it has remained unchanged except for the addition
A TED-Ed Lesson on the Bill of Rights
The latest lesson published by TED-Ed explains to students why the Bill of Rights was added to the US Constitution. In the lesson students learn
A Week of Presentations – A Slide of Slides
Over the last week I gave presentations and facilitated workshops Texas, Arizona, Kansas, and Missouri. Many people asked for copies of the slides that I
Recording History With Students – Tools & Ideas
Over the weekend at the Native Innovation Education conference I facilitated a short workshop titled Recording History With Students. The focus of the workshop was
300+ Ed Tech Tools Tutorials
Over the last couple of years I’ve made an effort to publish at least one new tutorial video every week. Most of those videos end
How to Upload a Video to YouTube from Your Android Device
Yesterday I had the privilege to speak at the Native Innovation Education conference in Flagstaff, Arizona. The conference offered Android tablets to attendees. Many people
How to Use the New Version of Padlet
Last week Padlet introduced a revamped version of their online corkboard tool. The core functions of Padlet are still the same, but the user interface
The Week in Review – On the Road
Sketch notes about my video workshop. Good evening from Arizona where I’m relaxing after a great week of speaking at conferences in Texas, Kansas, and
Triventy – Collaboratively Create Online Games and Save the Results
Triventy is a free online quiz game platform that is similar in concept to platforms like Kahoot and Socrative. Triventy differentiates itself from the crowd
Teach Your Monster to Read – Now on Android and iPad
Teach Your Monster to Read is a great series of online games designed to help students improve the speed and accuracy with which they recognize
Ten Good Video Channels for Science Students – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
Helpful Gmail Settings for Students & Teachers – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
A Guide to Google Books for Students & Teachers – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
10 Things Students Can Do With Google Keep – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
Good Tools for Learning to Type – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
10 Resources for Teaching With Primary Sources – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
An Illustrated Mathematics Glossary – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
Share to Classroom Gets Your Students on the Same Page – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
A Quick Way to Create Rubrics Online – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
Zing eBooks – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
Great Google Drive Add-ons & Chrome Extensions for Teachers – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
How to Create a Progress Chart in Google Sheets – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
An Easy Way to Quickly Create Vocabulary Lists from Documents – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
12 Resources for Teaching Digital Citizenship – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
How to Create a Jeopardy Game in Google Sheets – Best of 2015-16 School Year
All of this week I am on the road working with teachers in Texas, Kansas, and Arizona. Rather than scrambling to write blog posts at
The Week in Review – Collaborate2Create
Good evening from Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, Arizona. Today, I had the privilege to speak at the Collaborat2Create conference hosted by the Arizona Technology
5 Things We Can Do to Help Students Learn & Work Independently
This morning I gave the opening keynote for the Collaborate2Create conference in Glendale, Arizona. The title of my talk was Preparing Students to Work Independently.
Open Source Software Explained by @CommonCraft
Open source software powers many of things that we see and do on the Internet and on our computers every day. In fact, if you’re
A Great Journal for History Teachers
The Library of Congress has quite a number of great resources for teachers and students. The Student Discovery Sets are favorite amongst my favorite resources that
A Good Place to Find OneNote Tutorials
Yesterday morning I woke up to an email from a reader who told me that it was “ridonkulous” that I don’t write about OneNote. (Side
When a Spreadsheet is Better Than a Form
Earlier this week a participant in one of my online courses asked a good question about using Google Forms as an assessment tool. Here’s the
Classroom Heroes Looks Like a New Tool for Recording Classroom Activities
Classroom Heroes is a new service that seems similar in concept to ClassDojo. Classroom Heroes lets you make a record of your students’ behaviors in
15 Tools for Teaching History With Technology – A Handout
One of the things that teachers often ask me for is a set of tools to get them started on using technology in their classrooms.
A Great Video Explanation of Onomatopoeia
Next Vista for Learning recently wrapped-up a student video contest. One of the winning videos was Demonstrating Onomatopoeia. The video does a fantastic job of
How to Browse a Facebook Page Without Logging Into an Account
Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was concerned that Facebook was requiring her to log into an account in order
Free Annotated Science Research Papers Accompanied by Teaching Resources
Science in the Classroom is a free resource for teachers from Science Magazine. On Science in the Classroom you will find research papers containing interactive
How to Password Protect Blog Posts
On Monday night I received an email from a reader who was looking for a way to have his students blog and share pictures without
Kiddom – Another Online Classroom Service
There isn’t any shortage of online classroom services available today. From Google Classroom to Otus to Edmodo, every service offers something a little bit different
Global Forest Change Explorer – Trends in Deforestation
The Global Forest Change Explorer is a new Google Maps product that provides visualizations of patterns in global deforestation. The Global Forest Change Explorer was
The Month in Review – The Most Popular Posts
It’s the end of the month and as I do every month I have compiled a list of the most frequently read posts of the
The Three Most Common Searches on Free Technology for Teachers
Every month I take a look at the most popular posts of the month. At the same time I look at the search terms that
How to Save Space and Time When Using Images in Your Blog
Whenever I publish a new blog post, I include an image in the post. Including an image helps draw readers in and it helps grab
A Large Collection of Free eTextbooks for High School & College Students
Bookboon is a service that offers free etextbooks to high school and college students. The textbook section of Bookboon offers more than 500 digital textbooks. On Bookboon there
Rubrics for Assessing Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, and Digital Portfolios
The University of Wisconsin, Stout has organized a nice collection of rubrics for assessing digital projects. In the collection you will find rubrics for assessing
A Fun Tool for Making Word Clouds in Fun Shapes
Although their popularity seems to have fallen a bit since their peak a few years ago, word cloud generators still provide students with a nice
What Connects These Things? – A Search Lesson
Dan Russell has provided the inspiration for many of the web research lessons that I have conducted with students over the years. Every week he
How to Customize Background Scenes in Storyboard That Frames
Earlier this week Storyboard That introduced customizable background scenes for all users. I’ve had a few emails this week about how to change the colors
Summer Online PD Opportunities With Me
The Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps have sold out, but there are other ways to learn with me this summer. This summer I’m offering three
The Week in Review – A Leisurely Breakfast at Home
Good morning from the Byrne Instructional Media, LLC headquarters in Woodstock, Maine. As I sit on my deck I can tell that it is going
10 Sites and Apps for Vocabulary and Spelling Practice
Last night I watched the conclusion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. A recap of the finals is available on the Associated Press YouTube channel. Like
How to Use Flippity and Flickr to Create Sets of Image-based Writing Prompts
Flippity is a great service that offers a handful of templates for creating flashcards, random name selectors, Jeopardy games, and progress trackers in Google Sheets.
The Origin and Meaning of Memorial Day
Memorial Day is on Monday. Here are a couple of quick resources that you may want to include in a lesson about Memorial Day. The Meaning
Mentimeter Adds a Quiz Option to Their Polling Service
Mentimeter is a nice service that allows you to pose a question to your audience and get instant feedback on that question through cell phones, tablets,
Storyboard That Now Offers Customizable Scenes
Storyboard That has become a popular digital storytelling tool over the last few years. That popularity is due in large part to their response to
Listening Effectively – Tips from a Student
The head tilt says, “I’m listening.” Last week I stumbled upon an older Life Hacker article about how to improve your listening skills. It’s a
How to Use ReadWorks Digital – Create, Share, & Grade Reading Assignments
A few weeks ago ReadWorks teased the launch of a new platform called ReadWorks Digital. Yesterday, ReadWorks Digital finally launched to general public. ReadWorks Digital
Neat Resources for Learning About Yellowstone
This month’s issue of National Geographic Magazine is all about Yellowstone National Park. The magazine’s website has some excellent articles, videos, and interactive graphics about
10 Ways to Use Adobe Spark in School
On Tuesday morning I published a video about how to use Adobe’s new creative suite called Adobe Spark. That video was focused on how to
Thousands of Free eBooks for Summer Reading
A couple of weeks ago I featured the summer reading packs offered by ReadWorks. Those reading packs are a great option for those teachers and
Stackup – Create & Track Reading Goals in Chrome
Stackup is a free service that aims to help you give students credit for time spent reading quality articles online. On Stackup you can create
How to Create Images, Videos, and Web Pages With Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is a new suite of free tools for creating images, videos, and simple web pages. The blog-o-sphere was all abuzz about Adobe Spark
12 Tools for Creating End-of-Year Review Activities
This is the time of year that we think about activities that we can do to help students review the school year. At this time
Why We Make Irrational Decisions
The Psychology Behind Irrational Decisions is the title of a relatively new TED-Ed lesson that I watched over the weekend. The lesson focuses on the
5 Good Options for Creating End-of-Year Audio Slideshow Videos
Over the last week I have had at least five people ask me for suggestions for a tool to create an audio slideshow video for
Compare & Contrast Map – A Writing Template for Elementary School Students
Read Write Think is a great place to find story starters and interactive writing templates. A good example of that is found on Read Write Think’s
Interactive Maps of Travel Through the Roman Empire
If you teach any lessons about the Roman Empire, take a look at ORBIS from Stanford University. ORBIS is Stanford University’s Geospatial Network Model of
4 Google Apps Updates You Might Have Missed Last Week
Last week Google released a new product and updated some existing products that are of interest to teachers and students. Last Monday at the Google
The Week in Review – The Lilacs Have Arrived
Good morning from the temporary Byrne Instructional Media, LLC office in Connecticut. I’m working in Connecticut this morning because I’m down here to see the
FreshGrade Helps You Quickly Create Video Slideshows of Your Students’ Best Work
While I was preparing my handout on digital portfolios I noticed a cool feature in FreshGrade that is perfect for the end of the school
10 Good Options for Creating Digital Portfolios – A PDF Handout
For the majority of readers of this blog the end of the school year is already here or will be here within a month. This
Interview With Colleague 2 Colleague
In August I am keynoting the Colleague 2 Colleague conference in Missouri. As a promotion for the conference, yesterday I was interviewed by the conference
theLearnia Offers a Good Way to Create Video Lessons
theLearnia is a free service that I reviewed about four years ago when it was primarily a social network built around video lessons. This week
A Crash Course in Physics
On the last day of March Crash Course launched a new series of videos about physics. The series now contains seven videos on friction, integrals,
Why You and I Should Care About Updates to the Google Classroom API
This week the Google for Education blog published a post that most teachers probably scrolled right past because the first sentence referenced the Google Classroom
How to Insert & Modify Charts in Google Slides
On Wednesday afternoon Google announced the release of a new feature in Google Slides. The new feature is the option to insert charts and graphs
Get Inspiration for Video Projects and Help a Non-profit at the Same Time
Over the weekend I featured a new video submission to Next Vista for Learning. That video was a submission for the latest Next Vista video
More Than 100 Sets of Primary Source Documents for Students
A few years ago I wrote a post about searching through the Digital Public Library of America to locate primary source documents to use with
Places We Can Connect
Over the weekend I received an email from a reader who requested more pictures of my dogs. The email simply read, “more dog pictures, please!
How to Download Your Remind Message History
This morning I received an email from Remind (formerly Remind 101) that reminded that I can download my message history. The history option lets me
Create an Interactive Video Summary of the School Year
As the end of the school year approaches you might find yourself looking for a way to create an audio slideshow of highlights of the
How to Make a Good Explanatory Video – Research, Planning, Editing
MinuteEarth is a popular YouTube channel whose videos I’ve featured a handful of times on this blog. Their short videos provide explanations of interesting science
How to Create a Google Spaces Community
On Monday morning Google introduced their latest attempt at building a social network. The new product is called Spaces. Google Spaces is a platform on
How to Use JoeZoo Express – A Google Docs Add-on for Grading Writing
JoeZoo Express is a powerful Google Docs Add-on that can help you more efficiently comment on your students’ writing in Google Documents. JoeZoo enables you to
Great Tools for Creating Screencasts – A PDF Handout
Over the last few weeks I have shared my favorite tools for creating screencast videos on Chromebooks, on Windows and Mac computers, on iPads, and
Access LitCharts on Your iPhone or Android Phone
Last week I published a blog post about LitCharts. Shortly after that post went live my friend Denise texted me to say how much she