How to Create an Online Course With Three Simple Tools
Summer is coming (in the northern hemisphere) and for many of us that means spending some time participating in professional development activities as a leader, learner, or both. If you find yourself trying to create some online professional development courses for the summer, I have a new video just for you. In this video I […]
Understanding Negative Temperatures
It is a very cold day here in Maine. It’s not the coldest that I’ve experienced in Maine, but it’s still not a pleasant day outside. When I let my dogs out at 5am it was -9F and when I took my daughters to school it was -1F. It was on the way to school […]
Three Tools for Adding Must-Answer Questions to Videos
This post was inspired by an old colleague who sent me a note on a couple of days ago seeking some advice about getting his students to watch the videos he shares with them. It’s a topic that I’m asked about fairly regularly so I was happy to suggest a few tools. These are the […]
What is a Default Gateway? – A Concise Explanation
PowerCert Animated Videos is a great YouTube channel that publishes clear and concise explanations of big concepts in computer hardware and networking. Over the last couple of years I regularly used the videos in EDpuzzle to create short introductory assignments for my students. Default Gateway Explained is the latest video published by PowerCert Animated Videos. […]
How Seashells Are Made – A Lesson for Beachcombers
If your summer plans, like ours, include going to the ocean, you may be interested in this video from Reactions about how seashells are made. In How Seashells Are Made viewers learn that seashells are made of 95% calcium carbonate and 5% protein and sugar. The video doesn’t stop with just listing the components of seashells. […]
Short Lessons About Memorial Day
Next Monday is Memorial Day. Students often confuse the origin and purpose of Memorial Day with those of Veterans Day. The following videos can help students understand the origins and meanings of Memorial Day and Veterans Day. The Meaning of Memorial Day is a two minute video covering the origins of the holiday in the […]
Strange Borders – A Geography Lesson
Yesterday afternoon I read an interesting article titled Belgian Farmer Accidentally Moves French Border. The whole story is almost exactly what the title says. A farmer moved a stone that was in his way when plowing a field. It just happened that the stone he moved is a marker for the border between two small […]
Create Video Lessons Without Making Your Own Recordings
As I do every year, I’m taking this week off from writing new blog posts. This week I’ll be re-running a few of the most popular posts in 2020. In the latest episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I mentioned that EDpuzzle recently updated their user interface and that I was going to make a […]
A Crash Course in Computer Science
Try as I might, as an old history teacher turned computer science teacher, I can’t help sprinkling in a few history lessons now and then. We talked about the Y2K bug (history to my students all born around 2004/5) a couple of weeks ago. And this week I had some of my students watch Crash […]
MoocNote – Add Quizzes to Existing Videos
MoocNote is a free service that I’ve written about a few times in the past as a tool for collaborative note-taking while watching a video. It is a good service for doing that. Recently, MoocNote expanded to offer tools for adding quiz questions to videos. You can now use MoocNote to add multiple choice, true/false, […]
How to Increase the Chances of Your Students Actually Watching Your Instructional Videos
On Friday I gave a couple of presentations at my school about ways to improve the chances that students actually watch the entirety of the videos that we share with them. Some of the ideas that I shared apply to videos that you make and some of the ideas apply to videos that you find […]
Updated – How to Use EDpuzzle to Create Video Lessons
In my previous post I wrote about and included a video about adding timestamps to longer videos that you post on your YouTube channel. Rather than just talk about it, I took my own advice and added timestamps to one of my longest and most popular videos of the last few months. That video is […]
A Handful of Video Lessons About Memorial Day
This is Memorial Day weekend here in the United States. Monday is actually Memorial Day. Students often confuse the origin and purpose of Memorial Day with those of Veterans Day. The following videos can help students understand the origins and meanings of Memorial Day and Veterans Day. The Meaning of Memorial Day is a two […]
How to Add Answer Feedback to Quizzes in Google Forms & How Students See It
Over the weekend I received an email from a reader who wanted to know what his students saw when feedback was added to quizzes created with Google Forms. That is exactly what I demonstrate in the following new video. In the following video you will see: How to create a quiz in Google Forms. How […]
Create Video-based Lessons a Little Faster With This Chrome Extension
A couple of weeks ago when I got the notice that my school would be closing I made a video about how to use EDpuzzle to create video-based lessons without having to create your own recordings. I first shared it with my colleagues and then included it in my Practical Ed Tech newsletter. One thing […]
A Great Series for Introducing or Reviewing Arduino Programming Concepts
Arduino programming was one of the things that we were really starting to get rolling on just before school closed. Now that my school is closed and we’re doing remote teaching and learning, I’m using EDpuzzle to create review activities for my students. This week I used EDpuzzle to create lessons based on a great […]
Webinar Recording – Three Things We Can Do To Quickly Transition to Teaching Online
Last night I hosted a free webinar in which I shared what I’m doing to transition to quickly transition to teaching my high school classes online. I also shared some advice from my colleague Dr. Wendy Robichaud on how to prepare students for online learning and what to focus on in the first week or […]
How to Create Video Lessons Without Making Your Own Recordings
In the latest episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I mentioned that EDpuzzle recently updated their user interface and that I was going to make a video about it. Well I started to make a video just about the updated UI then realized that I could help more teachers right now by making a complete […]
Volcanoes 101 – Updated
A few years ago National Geographic published a video titled Volcanoes 101. Last month they published a new video with the same name. The new Volcanoes 101 explains the types of volcanoes, their shapes, common locations, and what causes volcanoes to erupt. On a related note, The BBC has a series of interactive guides that explain how […]
A Great Set of Videos for Teaching Networking and Computer Hardware Concepts
As some of you know, I took over a computer science program at my local vocational/ technical high school this year. It has been fun and, at times, has made me feel like a brand new teacher again. When I took the job I told my director that I’d be fine with the programming side […]
Thanksgiving Chemistry
The Thanksgiving Turkey Compilation from the Reactions YouTube channel explains two concepts related to the traditional Thanksgiving turkey. First, it explains how the deep-frying process works and how it helps to make a turkey more flavorful. Second, the video explains why turkey isn’t the primary culprit in making you drowsy after devouring your Thanksgiving meal. Applications for Education This […]
My Top 5 Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students (Non-Google Edition)
Earlier this week I published my top five Google tools for social studies teachers and students. Recognizing that not everyone wants to use or has access to G Suite for Education accounts, here are my top five non-Google tools for social studies teachers and students. I didn’t include my all-time favorite timeline tool, Timeline JS […]
EDpuzzle Live Mode – Turn Video Lessons Into Group Activities
EDpuzzle has been my go-to tool for making video-based lessons and quizzes for many years. Just in time for the new school year EDpuzzle has released a new feature called Live Mode. EDpuzzle’s Live Mode lets you take your existing EDpuzzle lessons or any new lessons that you create and turn them into group activities. […]
27 Birds, 27 States – A Good Nat Geo Series for Kids
A few years ago National Geographic Kids started publishing a series of videos called 50 Birds, 50 States. For some reason they never got beyond 27 states. The 27 videos that were released do present a fun way for students to learn some basic facts about each state. The videos are presented as animated rap […]
Deserts 101 – A Nice Nat Geo Lesson
National Geographic offers a good series of more than one hundred YouTube videos designed to provide viewers with concise explanations of the big concepts of a variety of topics in science. The series includes videos about volcanoes, plastics creation and recycling, the solar system, and invasive species. The latest video added to the National Geographic […]
66 Lessons on the Chemistry of Food and Beverages
Reactions is a YouTube channel that I’ve mentioned in a handful of posts in the past. The channel is produced by PBS Digital Studios and the American Chemical Society. All of the videos on the channel include chemistry lessons based on ordinary, everyday parts of life like food and beverages. In fact, Reactions has a […]
How to Create Video-based Lessons
Earlier today I answering a question about uploading videos to EDpuzzle when I realized that I haven’t made a complete tutorial video on how to use EDpuzzle since its design was updated. My previous videos about the service are all a few years old and while the functions are largely the same, the layout has […]
Sun, Moon, and Planets 101
National Geographic’s YouTube channel has an excellent playlist that is titled National Geographic 101. As you might guess, the playlist is full of short overviews of the basics of a wide variety of topics in science and geography. In National Geographic 101 you will find short videos about Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Earth, Mercury, Mars, Pluto, […]
Soft Fruit, Mold, and Sour Milk – A Lesson on Food Safety
At one time or another we’ve all opened a milk container and noticed that something wasn’t quite right or picked up a piece of fruit that was just a little too soft. Reactions, one of my favorite YouTube channels, has a video that answers whether or not you can eat that soft fruit, moldy bread, […]
A Lesson for Beachcombers – How Seashells Are Made
If your summer plans include going to the beach, you may be interested in a new video from Reactions about how seashells are made. In How Seashells Are Made viewers learn that seashells are made of 95% calcium carbonate and 5% protein and sugar. The video doesn’t stop with just listing the components of seashells. […]
Three Ways to Use Video in End-of-Year Review Activities
The end of the school year is rapidly approaching. If you’re a high school teacher you probably planning for final exams and final exam review session. You might have in-classroom review sessions planned. But you probably have some students asking for review activities that can be done outside of classroom hours. That’s when video is […]
A Crash Course in Taxes
The deadline to file income tax returns here in the U.S. is less than one week away. If you have high school students, some of them may be filing taxes (or having parents do it on their behalf) for the first time. That may lead to all kinds of questions about why we have taxes, […]
5 Ed Tech Tools Social Studies Teachers Should Try This Year
On a regular basis I receive emails from teachers that go something like this, “we recently got new (insert hardware here) for our students and I was hoping you could tell me which tools I should try in my (academic area X) class.” To answer that request for social studies teachers I put together the […]
What is a Grand Jury?
One of the topics that some of my civics students struggled with was understanding the court system in the United States. Keith Hughes recently published a video that I wish he had made about 10 years ago because some of those students would have benefited from watching What is a Grand Jury? In What is […]
How to Share a Portion of a YouTube Video
Over the years I have used videos to recap a lesson, to introduce a new concept, and to spark discussion amongst my students. When sharing videos with students I will often share just a portion of it. Usually, this means that I have them skip the first twenty or thirty seconds that has intro or […]
7 Great Tools for Creating Flipped Lessons from Existing Videos
When they are used in the right context flipped lessons can be a good complement to classroom instruction. Not everyone has the time or skill to make effective instructional videos for their students. In those cases you can take advantage of the millions of hours of instructional videos found on YouTube and other video sharing […]
EDpuzzle – Readers’ Favorite App
At the end of December I asked you to submit your nominations for favorite educational apps. The nomination form was divided into three sections. Those sections were iOS, Android, and Web/Chrome apps. In all three sections EDpuzzle was nominated more than any other app. If you are not familiar with EDPuzzle is a neat tool […]
4 Fun Facts About Reindeer
Thanks in part to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer some children don’t believe that reindeer (caribou) are real animals. SciShow Kids seeks to remedy that in their latest video 4 Facts to Know About Reindeer. Through the video kids can learn why reindeer are called caribou in North America. The lesson also teaches students how reindeer […]
EDpuzzle Offers an Android App for Students
Thanks to David Kapuler I have just learned that EDpuzzle now offers an Android app for students. The EDpuzzle Android app lets students join your EDpuzzle classroom, find assignments, watch videos, and answer the questions that you have added into videos in your EDpuzzle classroom. Students who have more than one teacher using EDpuzzle can […]
How to Move from Zaption to EDpuzzle In Three Steps (Zaption is closing)
A couple of weeks ago when I shared the news that Zaption is closing I also shared some suggestions for alternatives to using Zaption. One of those suggestions was to try EDpuzzle. The folks at EDpuzzle saw that post and created a video for followers of this blog who would like to switch from Zaption […]