Tag: free technology for students

Five Free Tools That Help Students Format Bibliographies

When I was in high school we had to learn how to create bibliographies by working from a template that my history teacher, Mr. Diggs, provided to us. When I went to college, I referred to that template and an early version of The Student Writer to make bibliographies. Today, students have a wealth of […]

Bibcitation – Easily Create Citations in a Wide Variety of Styles

Last week I shared a tutorial on how to use the new citation generator that is built into Google Docs. One of the complaints I’ve already heard about it is that it only supports a few citation styles. If that’s your complaint about it, you might want to try Bibcitation instead.  Bibcitation is a free […]

Internet Archive Scholar – An Academic Version of the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive warehouses all kinds of fantastic materials (and some not-so-fantastic) that can be useful to teachers and students. The trouble with it is the organization is a little clunky for research purposes. Even if you limit the scope of your search to webpages and text you can still spend a lot of time […]

The Google Science Journal App is Now the Arduino Science Journal

  For the last few years the Google Science Journal app has been one of my favorite apps to incorporate into outdoor learning experiences. Earlier this week I got a notification that the Google Science Journal app is becoming the Arduino Science Journal app. On December 11, 2020 the Google Science Journal app will stop […]

The Week in Review – A Flashback to 2002!

Good morning from Maine where I’m up nearly two hours before sunrise. Yes, I wake up early. But it’s also a sign that summer is nearly over. Fall officially begins next week and soon I’ll be spending part of my weekends cleaning up the fallen leaves on my property. Today, though, I plan to play […]

Newspaper Navigator – A New Search Tool from the Library of Congress

This week the Library of Congress launched a new search tool called Newspaper Navigator. Newspaper Navigator is an index of 1.5 million images published in newspapers between 1900 and 1963. You can search Newspaper Navigator by keyword and then narrow your results by date and or the U.S. state in which the newspaper was published. […]

Ten Search Strategies Students Need to Know

Last week I hosted a Practical Ed Tech webinar titled Ten Search Strategies Students Need to Know. Afterwards I had many requests for accessing the recording of the webinar. The webinar is now available on demand. If you missed it, the webinar is available as an on-demand webinar right here on Practical Ed Tech. What’s […]

How to Create Online Whiteboards, Share Them, and Monitor Them

Earlier this week I wrote a review of a new collaborative whiteboard tool called Whiteboard Chat. One of the highlights of Whiteboard Chat is the ability to create whiteboards for your students and then remotely observe what your students put on the whiteboards. The best part is that you can see up to nine student […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it is a lovely morning filled with cool air just before sunrise. Sunrise is getting noticeably later these days as summer winds down. Red and orange leaves are starting to appear on the ground around my house. Earlier this week my youngest daughter brought me the red/ orange leaf in […]

How to Change Your Google Account Profile Picture

One of the ways that I can mark the start of the new school year is by the types of questions that get in my inbox. Like I do every year, this fall I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about customizing personal settings in G Suite. That includes how to change your profile picture. I […]

Google Updates and Simplifies Finding Creative Commons Licensed Images

When looking for public domain and Creative Commons licensed images to use in multimedia projects I generally recommend going to sites like Unsplash, Pixabay, and Photos for Class instead of Google Images (my full list of recommendations is available here). The reason for that recommendation is that in the past Google Images hasn’t been terribly […]

The Month in Review – Back to School

Greetings from the Free Technology for Teachers world headquarters in Maine. It’s a sunny day here in Maine and great afternoon to soak up the last rays of summer sunshine. Leaves are starting to change color on some of the trees around here. The first red leaves of the year provide a small sense of […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good evening from Maine where we had a cold and rainy late August day. It was a good day for making cookies (oatmeal chocolate chip) and watching Winnie the Pooh with my kids. After a long first week back at school, it was the kind of day that I needed. I didn’t have students in […]

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 […]

Back-to-School Email Tips & Reminders

Every year at this time I share some cute videos intended to help students understand proper email etiquette. This year those lessons are going to be more important than ever as we’re all likely to get more email from students than ever before. Here are some tips and reminders to make everyone’s use of email […]

Three Ways for Students to Join Google Classroom

A few weeks ago Google announced the addition of some new features to Google Classroom. One of the features teased in that announcement was an option to distribute a “join link” that can be used in place of sending an email invitation or having students use a “join code” to join your Google Classroom. The […]

ICYMI – Get Your Free Copy of the 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Last week I published the sixth edition of my free Practical Ed Tech Handbook. This year’s edition includes new sections on accessibility and remote instruction as well as updates to eleven other sections. I’m particularly happy with the updates that I made to the section on teaching search strategies. In total there are thirteen big […]

The Week in Review – Where Did the Time Go?

Good morning from Maine where the air feels cool and crisp this morning. We had a couple of similar mornings earlier this week. And I spotted my first red leaves this week! School starts on Monday. Where did the time go? I’m also asking myself, “where did the time go?” this weekend because my oldest […]

Five Zoom Features You Need to Know

As the new school year gets going there is going to be a lot more Zoom calls in our future. At my school students are going to be on Zoom or Google Meet for at least two days of every week to start the year. If that sounds like you, here is a handful of […]

Five Tips for Live Online Instruction

Whether you use Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams for online class meetings there are some universal things that you can do to make the experience better for you and your students. The following five tips for live online instruction are an excerpt from my recently published 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook. Elevate your camera […]

ICYMI – Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff

Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff is a weekly webinar series that I do with Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning. As the name implies, in the 30 minute webinar we answer your questions (you can email them in advance or ask them live) and we share a few cool or […]

Five Current Google Meet Features to Note

Last week Google announced a bunch of additional features that will be coming to Google Meet later this fall. Before those appear in your Google account, here are five other features of Google Meet that you should how to use. Meeting Nicknames: This feature allows you to choose a nickname for your meeting in place […]

DIY Smithsonian Mini Exhibits

The Smithsonian Learning Lab is an excellent resource for social studies and language arts teachers. I’ve been using and recommending it for years. One of its many features is an option to create and share collections of artifacts from the Smithsonian and external sources. And every month the Smithsonian Learning Lab sends out an email […]

New Google Classroom and Google Meet Updates to Note

This afternoon Google announced the launch of some helpful new Google Classroom features. Some of these were teased back in June. A couple of the new features will require some work by your domain administrator while others are available right now to all teachers. Here’s an overview of the new Google Classroom features that I […]

How to Make a Whiteboard Video in Flipgrid

Last week Flipgrid introduced a bunch of updates and changes. If you haven’t logged into your Flipgrid account since the end of the last school year, you might find some things have changed since you last used Flipgrid. The updates and changes made last week didn’t eliminate any features. The updates and changes did move […]

A Few Short Lessons About Sharks for Shark Week

This week is Discovery’s annual Shark Week. All week long the Discovery Channel and it’s affiliated channels will broadcast all kinds of shows about sharks. Those shows will range from serious and educational to ridiculous (Mike Tyson “fighting” a shark). If you find yourself looking from some short, educational videos about sharks to share with […]

Webinar Recording – Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff

Last week Rushton Hurley and I resumed our weekly webinar series called Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff. It was clear from the comments and questions that a lot of people missed our weekly series. A big thank you to everyone that joined us. If you missed it, you can watch […]

Zoom from Teacher and Student Perspectives

As the new school year gets closer I’m getting a lot of requests for help with Zoom. I have published a few video tutorials about Zoom including this one that covers the basics of setting up a meeting with students. I’ve also published this one about how students see Zoom meetings on Android phones. But […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the sun is yet to come up and the air feels cool. I hate to say it, but those are reminders that summer won’t last forever and fall will be here soon. I plan to soak up what’s left of summer before school starts in a couple of weeks. I […]

An Easy Way to Loop Videos in Google Slides

There are so many little “hidden” features in tools like Google Slides that even after more than a decade of using it I am still finding new things. One of those things that I stumbled upon earlier this week is an easy way to make videos play on a loop in a Google Slides presentation. […]

How to Improve Reverse Image Search Results

Reverse image search can be a good way to find more information about an object, animal, or person in a photograph. I use reverse image quite often when my daughters ask me about plants or animals that we see on our walks in the woods. To do that I take a picture and then upload […]

The Month in Review – The Most Popular Posts in July

It’s hard for me to believe that it’s the last day of July. It feels like just last week I was hosting end-of-year Google Meet sessions with my students. Now I’m starting to think about the first day of school that is less than a month away. That’s why I’m going to have a few […]

How to Check the Accessibility of Your Google Slides

Yesterday afternoon I saw someone on Twitter ask if there is a way to evaluate the accessibility of a slide presentation. My answer was to try Grackle Slides. Grackle Slides is a Google Slides add-on that will evaluate the accessibility of your presentation and give you suggestions on how to improve the accessibility of your […]

Five Things I’m Excited About for the New School Year

Yesterday morning I wrote about how I’m preparing for the worst for the new school year and my nervousness about the start of the school year. To balance that post, I think it’s a good idea to think about and share what I am looking forward to about the start of the new school year. […]

The Week in Review – So Many Webinars

Good morning from Maine where I’m sitting on my back porch drinking coffee and watching the fog clear out of the valley below me. The scene reminds me of the old saying, “fog in the hollow, good weather to follow.” This week I wrapped up the third session of the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer […]

Searching the National Register of Historic Places

This morning I went down an Internet rabbit hole of looking for lesser-known historic places in Maine. That process started because I was looking for some geocaching activities to do in a coastal community about 60 miles from where I live. Before I knew it I was on the National Register of Historic Places hosted […]

Scribble Maps – Create Multimedia Maps – No Account Required

Earlier this week I presented a webinar about using Google Maps and Earth for more than just social studies lessons. A follow-up email that I received came from a teacher who wanted to know if there was a way for her students to create multimedia maps without needing to sign into a Google account. My […]

5 Alternatives to Traditional Book Report Projects

I’ve been revisiting some of my favorite books this summer. Doing that has reminded me of some ideas that I’ve shared in the past and also sparked some new ideas. One of those ideas is using multimedia creation tools to create alternatives to traditional book reports. Here’s a handful of ideas for alternatives to traditional […]

How to Use Canva for Online Brainstorming Activities

Last week I wrote a post about the real-time collaboration option that Canva has started to roll out. This morning I got a question from a reader who was having a little trouble using that feature. The trouble is that the real-time collaboration option in Canva isn’t available to use with all templates, yet. That […]

Convert Handwritten Notes Into Google Documents

This week my Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week newsletter was about tools for digitizing physical notes. There are tools like CamScanner and Office Lens specifically made for that task. There are also tools that have the “hidden” capability to digitize physical notes. One of those tools is Google Drive. When you snap a […]

Create Talking Pictures of Famous People

This morning the power was out at my house so I sat on my porch drinking coffee (brewed before the power went out) and brainstormed a list of ways to use video tools in elementary school classrooms. One of the ideas that I came up with was using ChatterPix Kids to create talking pictures of […]

How OneNote Can Help Students Solve Math Problems

As I mentioned last week, I’m trying to make more videos about the excellent products that Microsoft offers to teachers and students for free. One of those products is OneNote. Within OneNote there is a great feature that can help students solve math problems. In the video that I’ve embedded below you can see how […]

How to Create Labeling Activities With Google Drawings and Classroom

Last week I hosted a webinar for a group that I’m working this  summer. One part of that webinar included making online activities for students. I included some of the typical things like Kahoot and Wizer but I also included a demonstration on how to use Google Drawings to make online labeling activities. In the […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the temperature only reached 62F yesterday, but today is supposed to reach 90! These wild fluctuations in summer weather is something I’m just putting into a mental category labeled, “well…that’s 2020 for you!” I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend and I hope that you are too. Next week I […]

Three Lessons on the Chemistry of Coffee

One of the things that I’ve missed the most over the last few months is going to my local coffee shop (Cafe Nomad) and having some of the excellent coffee that they brew. Try as I might, the coffee I brew at home just isn’t the same quality of what they make at the cafe. […]

Book Creator Adds New Options for Copying and Re-using Pages

Book Creator is one of my go-to tools for making ebooks and digital portfolios. In fact, I like it so much that it’s one of the featured tools in my Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. And now there is a new feature that makes Book Creator better than ever. That new feature is the […]

Doozy – Create and Play Fun and Educational Quiz Games

Doozy is a neat service for creating online quiz games that you can share with anyone and they can play without having to register for an account. The quiz games that you create on Doozy can be multiple choice or short answer questions. The games that you make can, and probably should, include pictures as […]

Canva Introduces Real-time Collaboration Options

This year Canva has become my preferred tool for designing audio slideshow presentations. Now, thanks to a tip from Larry Ferlazzo, it’s now one of my favorite tools for collaborative brainstorming sessions. Canva recently started rolling-out real-time collaboration options similar to what you might experience with Google Docs or Drawings. Your collaborators can work on […]

How to Collaborate on Word Documents Online

Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who wanted to know how her students could see and comment on Google Docs if they only had Microsoft 365 accounts. While that could be done with a couple of clever workarounds, the simpler solution is to just use Word online. Just like with Google […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it is pouring rain. It was a busy week here as I hosted the second session of the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. Today, I’m going to relax a bit by splashing in puddles and doing some arts and crafts with my daughters. I hope that you’re also planning […]

How to Embed Padlet Walls Into Google Sites

This morning I responded to a Tweet from a follower who was having a little trouble embedding Padlet walls into her Google Site. To help her out I recorded a short screencast video. This is an update to a video that I made on the same topic a few years ago. The key thing to […]

Three Alternatives to Smore

Over the weekend I answered an email from a reader who was looking for an alternative to using Smore to create online posters and newsletters to share with teachers and parents. Smore is great for some people, but it can get a little too pricey for some people. Here are a few alternatives to using […]

How to Create Your Own Online Board Game

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while probably know that Flippity is one of my go-to recommendations for anyone looking to make games, flashcards, and timelines with Google Sheets. Recently, Flippity introduced a new template for making your own online board game through Google Sheets. With Flippity’s new board game template […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it is a cool and overcast start to the Fourth of July. It has rained almost all week and that’s okay because we needed the rain. I also didn’t mind the rain because I was inside all week working on a big project. Now that the weekend is here, I […]

An Easy Way to Overlay Historical Maps on Google Earth

Last fall I published a video about how to find historical maps and overlay them on Google Earth. That method works for any historical map that you have the rights to re-use whether because it’s in the public domain or because of Creative Commons licensing. There is another method that you can use. That method […]

7 New Google Meet Features for Teachers

In a move that clearly is an attempt to match the functionality of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, Google has announced some new features that will soon be coming to Google Meet for G Suite for Education users. All of the new features that were announced address the many concerns about Google Meet that teachers have […]

TechSmith Capture Replaces Jing

TechSmith’s Jing was the first tool that I used to make screencast videos more than a decade ago. It was amazing to be able to quickly record a short video to explain things to colleagues and students. Since then other and better tools have come along including tools like Snagit made by TechSmith. Last spring […]

Jamboard + Screencastify = Whiteboard Video

Yesterday morning someone on Twitter asked me for a recommendation for making a whiteboard video in a web browser without using Seesaw. (By the way, here’s how to do it Seesaw). My suggestion was to try using Screencastify to record over the free drawing space provided by Google’s online version of Jamboard. The online version […]

How to Use Pictures in Google Forms

After last week’s post on five overlooked features of Google Forms quizzes I received a few questions about using pictures in quizzes. Specifically, folks were having trouble with pictures not matching to questions when they enabled the shuffle question order option. The solution to that problem is to insert the image into the question itself rather […]

Updated – How to Create Virtual Class Pictures With Pixton EDU

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about using Pixton EDU to create a virtual class photograph for the end of the school year. When I originally set out to write that post, I had planned to include a video tutorial. The first video that I made wasn’t great so last week I recorded a […]

NASA Selfies – Put Yourself in Space and Learn a Bit About It

NASA Selfies is a fun and free app for “taking a selfie in space.” What it really does is just put your face into the helmet of a space suit that is floating in space. You can pick the background for your space selfie. Backgrounds are provided from NASA’s huge library of images. When you […]

Five Overlooked Features of Google Forms Quizzes

Google Forms has been my go-to tool for making quizzes and surveys for at least a decade. Over the years Google has added lots of handy little features that have made my job easier when it’s time to make a quiz. Unfortunately, not all of those features are obvious when you start using Google Forms. […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it is already hot and the sun has only been up for an hour. My daughters have been enjoying their water table and wading pool all week. I see a lot more of that happening today. I hope that you also get outside for some fun this weekend. This week […]

5 Things Students Can Do in Google Earth Without Google Accounts

Google Earth has many handy little features that your students can use even if they don’t have Google accounts. Without a Google account your students can customize the appearance of Google Earth, measure distances and areas, change the units of measurement, and share locations and Street Views with you. Of course, they can also use […]

Sodaphonic – A Quick and Easy Way to Create MP3s

Sodaphonic is a free online audio recording and editing tool. It’s easy to use and can be used without creating an account on the site. To create a recording on Sodaphonic simply head to the site and click on “start new project.” As soon as you do that you’ll be in the Sodaphonic audio editor […]

Five Tools for Creating Storyboards to Plan Videos and Presentations

Creating a storyboard is an excellent way to outline and plan videos, presentations, and written stories. In the old days this was done with paper and pencil. Today, storyboards can be created with a variety of digital tools. Here are five ways to create storyboards with digital tools. Canva, which recently launched a new desktop […]

How to Create Your First Google Sites & 5 Ways to Customize It

Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere) and after a break from school you might start thinking about next year and what you need to do to be ready for it. Many people have been asking me questions like, “what can I do to be ready in case we have to switch back to online […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and the air has that perfect early summer feel to it. It’s going to be a great day for riding bikes and doing all kinds of fun things outside. And it’s also a good day for mowing the lawn (something I don’t consider to be fun). […]

Canva Now Has a Desktop App for Windows and Mac

Canva is a tool that I use almost daily for everything from creating YouTube thumbnails to designing full presentations like the one that I’m giving this afternoon. And as I wrote earlier this year, there are at least ten good ways to use Canva in your classroom. That’s why I was excited this morning when […]

Five Tools for Telling Stories With Maps

One of my favorite alternatives to traditional book report assignments is having students create multimedia maps based on books they’ve read. Google Lit Trips first made that idea popular more than a decade ago. Of course, creating a multimedia map is also an excellent way for students to summarize and geo-locate a series of related […]

Sharing vs. Publishing Google Docs

I have published more than 1,000 tutorials on my YouTube channel over the last ten years. Some of those videos feature older versions of tools that many of us every day. This was pointed out to me this week when I was asked if I had a current video covering the differences between publishing and […]

Three Free Webinars You Can Join This Week

If you’re looking for some new ideas to try with your classes next fall or you’re looking for answers to ed tech questions, consider joining one of the following free webinars this week. Recordings of all of these webinars will be available to those who register in advance. A Framework for Using Educational Technology Thursday […]

How to Create an Online Game of Connect Four

Twice this weekend I had readers email me to ask about creating an online Connect Four game for students to play to review key vocabulary and concepts. There are a couple of tools that I recommend for creating that type of review activity. First, Flippity.net offers a virtual manipulatives template that will let students drag […]

Create Virtual Class Pictures With Pixton EDU

Disclosure: Pixton EDU is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com As the school year winds down those of us who still have classes in June may be looking for some ways to replicate our typical end-of-year activities. One of those activities could be a class photograph. While you probably can’t get your students together for a […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and my lawn is taller than it should it be. Before I head out to deal with that and about a dozen other home maintenance tasks I have this week’s list of the most popular posts to share with you. I hope that you have a […]

Easy Ways to Remove Image Backgrounds

This morning I answered an email from someone who had watched my video about using PowerPoint to remove image backgrounds and wanted to know if the same can be done in Google Slides. While you can change the transparency of an image in Google Slides, there isn’t a built-in tool for completely removing image backgrounds. […]

Two New Google Docs Features in G Suite for Education

Back in February Google added Smart Compose and Autocorrect as new features in Google Docs. However, those features were only available in Google Docs in G Suite for Business accounts. Google has now announced that Smart Compose and Autocorrect will be available in Google Docs in G Suite for Education domains. I’ve been using Smart […]

Three Ways to Make Short Audio Recordings – No Accounts Required

Since late last year when Google finally added native support for audio in Google Slides I’ve fielded a steady stream of questions from readers looking for suggestions on the quickest and easiest ways for kids to record audio on their Chromebooks. There are three tools that I typically recommend to those who are looking to […]

How to Collaborate on a YouTube Channel

Like many other schools, this spring my school held our awards ceremonies virtually. A colleague and I managed the distribution of the recordings of those ceremonies. We did this by collaborating on one YouTube channel. You can enable collaboration on a YouTube channel through the permissions settings in YouTube Studio. In the permissions you’ll find […]

How to Make Whiteboard Videos on Your Chromebook – Updated

About two months ago I published a post featuring three ways to make a whiteboard video on a Chromebook. Since then I’ve created a couple more tutorials on that same topic. Here’s an updated set of tutorials on how to make whiteboard videos with browser-based tools that work on Chromebooks. #1 – Make a Whiteboard […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and it’s going to be a great day for bike rides, dog walks, and playing outside with my kids. And I also have the lawn to mow 🙁 But I’ll focus on the fun stuff first because it is the weekend after all. I hope that […]

Great Sets of Primary Source Documents for U.S. History Lessons

The Digital Public Library of America is a great place to find all kinds of neat digitized historical artifacts. I recently went down a rabbit hole looking at photographs in the baseball collection and the DPLA’s Boston Sports Temples exhibit. That happened because I was revisiting the DPLA’s Primary Source Sets for teachers and students. […]

How to Create Whiteboard Videos in Seesaw

Seesaw is my go-to tool for making digital portfolios. I like it because it’s a versatile platform that can be used for more than just portfolio creation. You can use it as a blog, use it to share announcements with parents, use it to distribute assignments, and you can use it to create whiteboard videos. […]

How to Create an Audio Slideshow Video in Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool that I’ve used for years to create blog post and social media graphics. In the last year I’ve started to use it more and more for developing presentations and creating short videos. Canva offers a library of music that you can easily incorporate into your presentations. Those presentations can […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and it feels like summer! It’s going to be a great weekend to ride my bike, play outside with my kids, and generally unwind after a long week. I hope that this weekend you get some time to unwind too. This week I hosted or co-hosted […]

Another Whiteboard Option for Google Meet Users

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to use a whiteboard in Google Meet without screensharing. That method featured using a neat tool called Whiteboard Fi. Some people have had great success using that method and others have asked me for other options. That’s what this post will address. Google’s Jamboard is available […]

Tactiq – Record the Captions in Google Meet

Tactiq is a new Google Chrome extension that lets you record the captions generated by the automatic captioning tool in Google Meet. You can use it to record and save all captions or select just some captions to save. When the conversation in Google Meet is over, you can save the captions as a text […]

How to Quickly Create a Slideshow With Google Photos and Slides

Earlier this week someone sent me a question on Twitter seeking information about an add-on that lets you import batches of photos into Google Slides and have those photos automatically placed onto individual slides. The add-on that I’ve used for this in the past is called Photos to Slides. Photos to Slides lets you import […]

Make Mini Books and More With Help from the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has a great collection of activities suggestions and resources for parents who are looking for educational activities they can do at home with their kids. The collection is called Resources for Family Engagement. Within this collection you will find activity kits that offer directions and ideas for making mini books at home, designing […]

The Week in Review – A Bunch of Turkeys

Good evening from Maine where today it finally felt like spring. At this time last week the ground was covered in fresh snow. This evening, it was 60F and sunny. We had a fun day playing outside here and I hope that wherever you are this weekend, you got to enjoy some fresh air too. […]

Ten Ways to Use Wakelet

One of the reasons that Wakelet has become popular in schools in the last couple of years is that it can be used for a wide range of activities. It’s also popular because it can be used in a wide range of grade levels and subject areas. I mentioned this in a webinar that I […]

How to Share Audio and Video in Google Classroom Without YouTube or SoundCloud

Earlier this week I had a reader ask me for advice on sharing videos in Google Classroom with her students without having to use YouTube. My suggestion was to simply upload the videos to Google Classroom as either announcements or as assignments. When you do that the video is automatically added to your Google Drive. […]

Two Great Sets of Historic Maps to Use and Reuse

The Library of Congress offers a collection of images that are free to use and reuse. The LOC blog recently featured a subset of that collection called Maps of Cities. Maps of Cities is one of two sets of historic maps available through the Free to Use and Reuse collection. The other set of maps […]

An Easy Way to Manage Tasks in Gmail

Raise your hand if you battle this same task management problem that I battle. I read and reply to an email then forget to do the follow-up task that is associated with email. Here’s an example of what I struggled with for years.A parent emails you on a Friday afternoon to request a meeting with […]

Seven Ideas for Flipgrid Activities

One of the reasons that Flipgrid became popular and continues to grow in popularity is that it can be used across grade levels. Another reason for its popularity is that it new features are added to it on a regular basis. With every new feature comes a new way to think about how Flipgrid can […]

How to Deploy G Suite Add-ons Across a Domain

From time to time a reader will ask me if there is a way to install a Google Docs or Google Sheets add-on for his or her students. This is possible if you are a G Suite domain administrator. Otherwise, ask your G Suite domain administrator to do it for you. In the following video […]

How to Add Background Music to Screencastify Videos

Last week I published an article about how to extract the audio from your videos. A related question that I got from a reader was about how to add background music to Screencastify videos. There are a few ways that you can add audio to videos that you make with Screencastify including uploading your video […]

The Week in Review – It’s Snowing!

Good morning from Paris Hill, Maine where it is snowing! Yes, on May 9th I woke up to snow covering everything. And the best part is that when the snow ends it’s supposed to be followed by a day of winter-like temperatures and winds. My three-year-old summarized how most of us feel this morning when […]

Use Whiteboards in Google Meet Without Screensharing

On Monday I published a blog post about a new online whiteboard tool called Whiteboard Fi. At the end of that post I mentioned that it could be used in conjunction with Google Meet to give your students a prompt then have them reply on a whiteboard without having to fumble around with screensharing. In […]

How to Quickly Map and Connect Spreadsheet Data

Earlier today a reader emailed me with a great question about Google Maps. She wanted to map a set of addresses and then quickly determine the shortest route between all of those places. My suggestion was to put all of the addresses into a Google Sheet, import that Google Sheet into Google’s My Maps tool, […]

Three Search Refinement Tools Every Student Should Know How to Use

Search is something that everyone knows how to do as an act of typing or speaking a query. Unfortunately, too many students never get beyond the first few pages of Google search results before changing their search terms or giving up and declaring “Google has nothing on this!” Oftentimes just using a couple of search […]

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Videos

Many of us are making more videos than ever before as a way to deliver instruction and or to simply keep our students updated about school. With time and practice you might become adept at using the editing functions in your favorite video software. You can also improve your videos without having to learn a […]

How to Create a Green Screen Video Without a Green Screen

If you have ever wanted to make a green video but didn’t have access to iMovie and couldn’t make the investment in other video editing software, this new video is for you. In the following video I demonstrate how you can use Zoom and Adobe Spark together to create a green screen video. Zoom’s desktop […]

The Week in Review – Could This Be Spring?

Good morning from Maine where the birds are chirping as the sun begins to rise. The forecast calls for temperatures in the 50’s (F) for the second day in row! Could this be the beginning of consistent spring weather? I hope so. We’re all getting a little tired of boots and snowsuits (wrestling toddlers into […]

How to Collect Voicemail Through Your Website with SpeakPipe

In a couple episodes of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff Rushton and I have mentioned using SpeakPipe. SpeakPipe is a tool that allows you to collect voicemail messages through your website or blog. With SpeakPipe installed on your blog anyone can click on the “send voicemail” button and leave a message […]

USGS Offers Online and Hands-on Learning from Home Resources

Since I was in elementary school I have enjoyed looking at maps and day dreaming about the places those maps depict. I like maps so much I have a couple of USGS topographical maps on the wall in my office. So whenever the USGS emails me with something new, I immediately investigate it. The latest […]

Google Classroom Assignments from Teacher and Student Perspectives – Nine Lessons

A frequent occurrence in my inbox these days is requests for help understanding how students see assignments and feedback in Google Classroom. Additionally, I’ve had requests for clarification on how students should submit their work for grading in Google Classroom. To address those questions I made a new video that shows three ways to give […]

Five Elementary Lessons You Can Do With Pixton EDU

Disclosure: Pixton is currently an advertiser on this blog.  For many years I’ve promoted the idea of using comics as a way to get students to develop fiction and nonfiction stories. In fact, I’ve hosted webinars in which I explained how I’ve used comics as the basis for getting students interested in telling history stories. […]

The Week in Review – Might as Well Eat Cake

Good morning from Maine where the sun is soon to be shining and the snow is gone. At this time last week we were still recovering from the effects of a big spring snowstorm. In the middle of last week’s power outage my friend and colleague Dr. Wendy Robichaud and her husband sent us a […]

Facts v. Opinions – A New Common Craft Lesson

Now more than ever our students are getting bombarded with information and opinions in all forms of media. Therefore, it’s more important than ever that we help them recognize the differences between facts and opinions. Common Craft recently released a new video that can help students understand the differences between facts and opinions. Facts and […]

The Student View of Comments on Google Classroom Assignments

One of the things that I’ve always recommended doing when using a new-to-you web tool in your classroom is to look at the students’ perspective as well as your own. Unfortunately, that’s not always easy to do. In the case of Google Classroom this can be hard to do if you only have a teacher […]

Three Ways to Use Audio With Google Slides

“How can I use audio in Google Slides?” is one of the perennial FAQs that I receive. In fact, just yesterday I had two people send me emails with variations on that question. There are three methods that I typically recommend to people who want to use audio with Google Slides. All three of those […]

How to Quickly Incorporate Google Meet Into Google Classroom

Thanks to a Tweet from Chris Pirkl yesterday evening I learned that Google has now made it easier to post Google Meet links in Google Classroom. In fact, now you can now have a Google Meet link permanently assigned to each of your classrooms with Google Classroom. This means that you can have the same […]

How to Create a Tech Help Site With Google Forms

This afternoon I hosted a free webinar titled Strategies for Remote Instructional Technology Support (the recording will be available later this evening). One of the strategies that I talked about and demonstrated in the webinar was using Google Forms to create a tech help resource to share with your colleagues. This can be done by […]

Save Time With This Google Calendar Scheduling Tip

Here’s a little tip that I passed along to a colleague yesterday morning that might help some of you too. When you’re scheduling meetings that are going to happen on a consistent schedule you can go into the “more options” for the event on your calendar and set a custom, repeating schedule. This saves you […]

How to Use Google Forms With Students Who Don’t Have Email Addresses

This afternoon someone Tweeted at me at to ask how elementary school students who don’t have active email addresses can view the results of quizzes that they take in Google Forms. There are three ways that that can be accomplished. I made a new video to demonstrate how those methods work. In the following video […]

Three Ways to Make Whiteboard Videos on Your Chromebook

Last week I published a video on how to make a simple video on a Chromebook without installing any extensions or apps. That video was fairly popular and it prompted some follow-up questions from readers and viewers who wanted my recommendations for making whiteboard videos on a Chromebook. Besides just recording in front of an […]

Five Search Tools Students Often Overlook

In our new remote teaching and learning environments students may find themselves having to look things up online more than ever before. Even if you’re hosting online class meetings in Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams there will still be lots of time when students need to do some research on their own. This is […]

The Arduino Design Project I’m Doing With Students Who Don’t Have Materials at Home

Like a lot of other schools, mine closed without much more than a few hours notice. We went home on a Friday afternoon and Sunday evening we were told that we were not going back. My 9th grade computer science principles students were really starting to hit their stride with the various Arduino projects they […]

Now You Can Use Flipgrid to Make Screencast Videos

On Wednesday afternoon Flipgrid announced the launch of a new recording feature for teachers and students. You can now create screencast videos within Flipgrid. The feature is kind of hidden so I made a screencast video to show you where Flipgrid’s screen recording tool is found and how it works. As I demonstrate in the […]

Use Read Receipts to Make Sure Students Know They Have Google Classroom Assignments

Last week I published a post in which I explained that you can use read receipts in your G Suite for Education email to make sure that students have at least seen your messages even if they don’t reply to your messages. I do that when I email students to remind them that they have […]

The Month in Review – What a March It Was!

Good morning from Maine where I’m sitting in my home office waiting for students to join into a Google Hangouts Meet for virtual office hours. It’s hard to believe that at the beginning of the month COVID-19 was something that was affecting people “somewhere else” and now has nearly all of us working and teaching […]

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 […]

The Week in Review – Online Meetings, Baseball Cards, and Forts

Good morning from Maine where the birds are chirping and it feels like spring as I sip my coffee. We’re going to spend the day playing in the yard. Spring has come a little earlier than normal here in Maine otherwise we might be going crazy isolating in the house. Rain is in the forecast […]

Anchor Offers a New Way to Remotely Record Podcasts With a Group

Anchor is the service that I have been using since last August to produce my weekly Practical Ed Tech Podcast. I use Anchor because Anchor makes it incredibly easier to record, edit, and publish my podcast to all of the major podcast networks at once. In other words, with just a couple of clicks my […]

How to Quickly Turn Any Document or Webpage Into a Practice Quiz

On Tuesday I wrote about the new version of Knowt that will let you import any of your Google Docs, Word docs, or any public webpage into a notebook. Once in your notebook it just takes one more click to have a practice quiz created for you. As I demonstrate in the following video, Knowt […]

Quick Tip – Apply Custom Colors to Google Slides

Regular users of Google Slides are probably familiar with the process of adding images to the backgrounds of their slides and changing the background color. There is one little background color option that is easily overlooked. That option is applying a custom color that isn’t listed in the default color menu in Google Slides. In […]

WriteReader Templates Can Help Students Start the Writing Process

WriteReader is a great tool for creating multimedia stories that I’ve featured a half dozen times or more over the years. The last time I wrote about it they had just added some new page styles. Last week WriteReader unveiled a new feature that I think a lot elementary school teachers will like. WriteReader now […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where school is closed until April 27th and I’m practicing social distancing. On a brighter note, the sun is shining and I’ll be playing outside with my kids today. I’m betting that, like me, many of you had a busy week of trying to quickly adjust to teaching your classes in […]

Live Weather Lessons for Kids Hosted by a Meteorologist

Mallory Brooke is a meteorologist who lives in and is an active part of my local community. In addition to giving weather forecasts on a couple of our local television news stations, she runs a firm called Nor’Easter Weather Consulting. Last night she announced that starting next week she’ll be giving live weather lessons to […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast – Episode 39 – We’re All Online

In this week’s episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I share some new resources for teaching online, some upcoming free PD opportunities, and some cool activities to pass along to parents who are looking for educational activities to do at home with their kids. I also shared my thoughts about teaching online and what […]

Create a Simple Website With Canva and Use It as a Digital Portfolio

Canva has been my graphic design tool of choice for the last five years. Lately, I’ve been using it to create slideshow presentations and videos in addition to simple graphics like the featured image in this blog post. In fact, the last two free webinars that I hosted featured slideshows designed in Canva. One of […]

Create a Consistent Communication Schedule by Using Gmail’s Scheduling Feature – Here’s How To Use It

In my webinar about quickly transitioning to teaching online (recording available here) I mentioned that I would using the scheduling feature in Gmail to send messages to students and parents on a consistent schedule. Here’s a demonstration of how to use the scheduling feature in Gmail. Applications for Education You might be wondering why I […]

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 […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the wind is howling outside. Spring seems to be coming a little early this year as almost all of the snow in my yard has melted and the stream behind my house is running high. As COVID-19 continues to spread and more schools close, I hope that all of can […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where I’m up before the sun to get a little work done before starting a day of play with my kids and dogs. Much of the snow that covered our yard just last week melted away in the spring-like temperatures that we had twice this week. In other words, mud season […]

How to Schedule, Host, and Customize Google Hangouts Meet Events

Last night I published Tips and Tools for Teaching Remotely. This morning I had an email from someone who read that and wanted to know if I had any tutorials on using Google Hangouts Meet. I didn’t so I quickly made the following set of screenshots before my own class starts today. I’ll try to […]

Tips and Tools for Teaching Remotely

Over the last week I’ve received a bunch of emails and Tweets from people looking for my suggestions on tools and tactics for teaching online if schools are closed due to COVID-19. I’m going to start this post with some tips for giving online instruction then get into some recommended tools. Tips for Giving Live […]

Unscreen – Remove and Replace Video Backgrounds With Just a Click

In the last few months I’ve shared a some good tools for quickly removing the background from images. I even made a video about how to use Canva to remove and replace the background in your images. But until this morning when I read this Tweet from Greg Kulowiec I didn’t know of any tools […]

Gribrouillon – Freehand Drawing on Online Maps

For many years I’ve recommended Scribble Maps as a no-account-required alternative to Google’s My Maps. Scribble Maps lets create freehand drawings on digital maps. Today, thanks to Maps Mania, I learned about another tool for making freehand drawings on digital maps. That tool is called Gribroullion. Using Gribroullion is a straight-forward process. Simply go to […]

Quillionz – Quiz and Discussion Questions Automatically Generated from Documents

Quillionz is a neat service that uses AI to automatically generate questions from documents that you provide. Enter a block of text of at least 300 words up to 3,000 words and Quillionz will create quiz questions based on the key elements of that text. When I first tried Quillionz last summer it only generated […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where I’m up before most reasonable are awake on a weekend. Getting a few minutes alone to think and write requires me to get up before 5am. Having two toddlers will do that to a person. Before everyone starts stirring, I have this week’s list of the most popular posts to […]

How to Use Mixkit to Find Free Audio and Video Clips for Your Projects

Mixkit is a good place to find free video clips and audio clips to use in your multimedia projects. I wrote about it earlier this week and mentioned it on my podcast. For those who would prefer a visual overview of how to use Mixkit to find free audio an video clips, I offer the […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast – Episode 35 – Snow Day!

School was cancelled yesterday (our 98th snow day, or so it felt) so I recorded my weekly installment of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast a day early. In this episode I highlighted a couple of new resources for pictures, videos, and audio files to use in your multimedia projects. The first part of the podcast […]

Three Good Ways to Create Rubrics – Tutorials Included

In my previous post I highlighted the University of Wisconsin Stout’s collection of rubrics for multimedia projects. At the end of that post I mentioned that while the rubrics might not match exactly what you need, they can be a great starting point for developing your own rubrics. If you’re looking for a good way […]

Rubrics for Videos, Podcasts, Blogs, and More

Over the years I’ve referenced the University of Wisconsin Stout’s collection of rubrics for multimedia projects. It has been a few years since I last featured it so I think it’s time to highlight it again. UW Stout’s collection of rubrics is organized by task or project type. There are sections in the collection for […]

Mixkit – Hundreds of Free Music and Video Clips for Multimedia Presentations

Mixkit is a website that offers hundreds of free music files and videos that you can download to use in your multimedia projects. The licensing terms for assets on Mixkit are clear. You can download videos and audio files from Mixkit to re-use and remix. You don’t have to credit Mixkit, but they will appreciate […]

Ten Fun and Challenging Geography Games for Students of All Ages

Over the years I’ve tried dozens of online geography games for students of all ages. Many have come and gone over the years but the following geography games are still going strong. WikiWhere is a neat map-based trivia game. The goal of the game is to identify cities based on their descriptions. The descriptions come from […]

How to Quickly Turn a Blog Post Into a Video

Last week I published 5 Ways to Create Social Videos. In that post I included a neat tool called Lumen5 that can be used to turn blog posts or any other written text that you own into a video. In the video below you’ll see that Lumen5 takes the text of your article and breaks […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising and it’s a balmy 10F outside. This is the last weekend of my school vacation week so I’m planning to get outside to play for a bit more. I spent part of the week working on some long-term projects. But it wasn’t all work all week […]

How to Annotate Videos With Timelinely

Timelinely is a free service for adding annotations to YouTube videos. You can use Timelinely to add text, image, and video annotations to any public YouTube video. After you have added your annotations to a video you can share the annotated version with anyone much like you would share any other video. You can share […]

5 Ways to Create Social Videos

Yesterday, I wrote about a new video creation tool called InVideo. InVideo is one of many tools to emerge in the last couple years that is designed to help users create eye-catching videos to post on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. These videos use a mix of images and text to grab your […]

Quickly Turn Articles Into Videos With InVideo

This morning I was browsing Product Hunt when I saw a new product that was promoting itself as a way to create “insanely good social videos.” The service is called InVideo. While it is fairly easy to use to make audio slideshow-style videos, that’s not why I’m mentioning it today. The reason I’m mentioning it […]

Convert PDF to Word and More

I don’t get nearly as many requests for help with file conversion as I did 5-10 years ago, but I still do get them from time to time. Last week I was asked for help converting a PDF into Word for editing. My immediate suggestion was to try the conversion tool available from Online Convert. […]

5 Google Slides Features New Users Should Know – Updated

One of the things that I’ve been reminded of a few times in the last month is to revisit the basics even if you’re working with people who have had access to G Suite for a long time. On that note, here are five Google Slides features that all users should know how to use. […]

Write Faster With These Two New Google Docs Features

Two new Google Docs features are rolling out to all G Suite users beginning today. Today, Google announced the addition of Smart Compose in Google Docs for G Suite users. Earlier today, Google also announced that autocorrect is being added to Google Docs for all users. Smart Compose in Google Docs works much like Smart […]

Animate Anything With Cloud Stop Motion

Cloud Stop Motion by ZU3D is a new stop motion animation tool that I recently learned about from Danny Nicholson’s The Whiteboard Blog. Cloud Stop Motion is a browser-based tool for creating short stop motion videos. I gave it a try this afternoon and found it quite easy to use. You can try Cloud Stop […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it is a crisp -9F! Unfortunately, the forecast indicates that it’s not going to get much warmer than 0F and it will be windy. In other words, it might be a day for bowling instead of playing outside. My youngest daughter recently discovered that she loves bowling! Well as much […]

Local vs. Online Documents

I’ve been a Google Docs user longer than most middle schoolers have been alive. I don’t need convincing that online documents are great. But not everyone is convinced. In fact, just last week I had a conversation with a teacher in my school who wasn’t convinced that there could be any benefit to moving away […]

How to Get Reminders Based On Your Location

Without using reminders in Google Keep, I’d forget half of the things that I’m told asked to do every day. I use time-based reminders and location-based reminders in Google Keep. The location-based reminders are particularly useful to me when running errands around town. In the following video I demonstrate how to use Google Keep’s location-based […]

Three Easy Steps to Encourage Technology Integration

This afternoon I hosted a short webinar titled Three Easy Steps to Encourage Technology Integration. I recorded the webinar for those who couldn’t attend the live broadcast. The recording is now available to view on my YouTube channel. The slides that I used during the webinar can be seen as embedded below.

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from cold and dreary Maine. It seems like forever since we’ve seen the sun. To add insult to injury what was supposed to be snow turned out to be two days of sleet. I hope that wherever you are this weekend, the weather is a bit cheerier than it is here. This week […]

ClassDojo Adds an Events Feature

This week ClassDojo introduced a new feature that, according to Twitter responses, seems to be exciting for many teachers who use ClassDojo. The new feature is called Events and it lets teachers post event notices for parents to see in the ClassDojo app and website. ClassDojo even handles sending automated reminders of the events that […]

Adobe Spark Adds a New Way to Manage Your Projects

Last year Adobe finally added a collaboration option to Adobe Spark. That enabled students to remotely work together on video projects and graphic design projects. Today, Adobe added a new feature that students who are working on group projects may benefit from using. Today, Adobe announced the option to create and manage multiple brands within […]

Google Publishes 15 Favorite Street View Images

Google Maps turned 15 today. To celebrate, Paddy Flynn (Vice President of Geo Data Operations at Google), published Street View’s 15 Favorite Street Views. Notably, only one of the fifteen actually has a street in it! The rest are images of interesting places around the world and one is from space. My favorite of the […]

What’s the Difference Between a Caucus and a Primary

When I turned on the news this morning I was greeted with the news that the results of the Iowa caucuses would be delayed. That made me realize that I haven’t posted any resources that can be used to help students understand how a president is chosen in the United States. The first step in […]

PayGrade – A Classroom Economy Simulation You Can Use All Year

PayGrade is a great program that at its core teaches students money management lessons, but can be used for much more than that. In fact, even though I’m teaching computer science this year I plan to try using PayGrade in one of my classes. To get started on PayGrade you set up a classroom in […]

Word Webs – Quickly Create Webs of Related Words

Word Webs is a free site that generates connected webs based on the words you enter and select. Generate a web simply head to the site and enter a word. A web of six related words will be generated on the screen. Click on any of those six words to have another connected web created. […]

Designing & Sending Certificates With Google Slides and Forms

At the end of every professional development course that I teach I offer an option to get a certificate of completion. The certificate is designed with Google Slides. The certificate is distributed through Google Forms with the help of the Certify’em add-on. This combination of tools makes it easy to create a custom certificate and […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good evening from Maine where it was a good day for being outside skiing and playing. It was a great way to spend the first half of the weekend. I hope that you also had a great start to your weekend. This week I opened registration for the 2020 Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. Summer […]

New Unsplash for Education Collections – Library of Congress, NYPL, NOAA, and More

Unsplash is one of my top recommendations for places to find images that are in the public domain. Last August Unsplash introduced collections intended for educational uses. This week Unsplash added more collections that have great potential for classroom uses. Earlier this week Unsplash announced the addition of collections of images from the Library of […]

Gmail, Screencasts, and Summer Plans – The Month in Review

The first month of 2020 is at its end. I hope the first month of the year has gone well for you. Did you make a New Year’s Resolution? How’s going? Mine was to cut-out junk food and except for three slip-ups I’ve kept to it. This month I had the honor of speaking at […]

Three Interesting Ways to Use Google Slides Besides Making Presentations

Google Slides was once a bare-bones alternative to PowerPoint and Keynote. I can still remember when the option to add a video was big news. Fast forward to today and there are lots of things that you can do with Google Slides besides make basic slideshow presentations. Here are three of my favorite ways to […]

How to Remove Image Backgrounds in PowerPoint

A few weeks ago I published Three Ways to Remove Image Backgrounds With Just a Click or Two. I got a handful of Tweets and emails from folks who kindly reminded me that I didn’t include using PowerPoint in that list. That was because I hadn’t made a video about how to use PowerPoint to […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it’s nearly forty degrees warmer than last week. It almost felt like March weather when I went out with my dogs this morning. It’s going to be a great day for taking my toddlers skiing. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope that you get to do something fun too. […]

Quickly Create Collaborative Maps With Ethermap

Google’s My Maps tool is great for students to use to collaborate on the creation of custom maps. The problem with it is that students must have Google accounts in order to use it. Ethermap solves that problem by not requiring users to have any kind of email account. Ethermap is a new tool that […]

How to Use Microsoft Forms to Collect Files

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week I featured three ways to create online forms to collect files from students. One of those options is to use Microsoft Forms. With Microsoft Forms you can specify the type and size of files that you’ll accept in response to a question or prompt. You […]

How to Create an Online Sorting Activity Using Google Sheets

Flippity is a great source of templates for making online games, flashcards, and quizzes. Recently, Flippity added a new template that makes it easy to create an online sorting activity based on information you provide in a Google Sheet. Flippity’s newest template is called Manipulatives. The template lets you create an online activity in which […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it’s a balmy -7F outside. My dogs went outside for about thirty seconds before coming right back to the house this morning. Most mornings I have to call them back in. Needless to say, we’ll be waiting for it warm up a little bit before going to ski this morning. […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast – Episode 29 – Video & Standardized Chargers

There were a bunch of neat things related to ed tech that were released this week. And a bunch more will be out next week in conjunction with the BETT Show in London. In this week’s episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I shared a new video tool, an awesome update to a popular […]

How to Publish a Google Calendar Without Showing All Event Details

Yesterday, I received a question on an old YouTube video of mine in which I demonstrated how to embed a Google Calendar into Blogger. The video is seven years old and Google Calendar has changed a bit since then, but the question was still a good one. The question was, “instead of showing all the […]

Do You Know What’s On Your Phone?

When was the last time you looked at your phone? According to my site analytics there’s at least a 30% chance that the answer to that question is “right now.” But when was the last time you looked at all the stuff that’s on your phone? How many files do have you that downloaded (knowingly […]

A Great Update to Screencastify

Screencastify is a tremendously popular screencast recording tool. A large part of its popularity comes from being easy to use on Chromebooks. In fact, last fall I helped eighth grade students use Screencastify in conjunction with Brush Ninja on their Chromebooks to make simple animated videos. As great as it was Screencastify wasn’t without limitations. […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where we’re anticipating a winter ice storm. I’m trying to get a lot done before the inevitable power outage. One of those things is writing up this week’s list of the most popular posts of the week. This week I hosted the first session of Teaching History With Technology. 31 people […]

Reverb Record – Quickly Create Voice Recordings

Reverb is a relatively new service (still in beta) that is designed to let people create short voice recordings to share with others. The concept is similar to Voxer and Synth in that you can record a message for a group to listen to and then members of that group can reply with voice messages […]

Tips on Using Voice Typing in Google Documents

A couple of weeks ago I published an article and video about accessibility settings and tools that are available in Google Documents. One of those tools is voice typing. What I forgot to mention in that piece, as a few people have pointed out, is that you have to speak very clearly when using voice […]

A Comparison of Multimedia Timeline Creation Tools – Updated

Making a timeline is a “classic” history class assignment. When I started my teaching career my students made timelines on big sheets of paper. Later I had them use some online programs that let them include some pictures and links. Eventually, we got to a place where true multimedia timeline creation tools were readily available. […]

How to Combine Multiple Google Forms Into One

Import questions is one of the many useful, yet often overlooked functions in Google Forms. The import questions function lets you draw questions from your existing forms to use in a new form. In the following video I demonstrate how you can use the import questions function to combine questions from multiple Google Forms to […]

A Comparison of 6 Blogging Services for Teachers and Students – Updated

About five years ago I assembled a series charts that compared the features of ed tech tools that served similar purposes. Some of the charts I made were about video tools, animation tools, timeline tools, digital portfolios, and blogs. To start 2020 I’m revisiting those charts and updating them to better reflect the current features […]

How to Create and Publish Multimedia Collages

Now that Canva offers an education version that provides all of the pro features for free to teachers and students, there is a ton of neat things that students and teachers can make. One example of that is designing and publishing multimedia collages. Along with pictures, text, and hyperlinks you can add video and audio […]

Learn How to Use These 5 Time-saving Gmail Features in 2020

Some days it feels like I’m playing the world’s longest game of whack-a-mole in my inbox. If this sounds familiar to you and you’re a Gmail/ G Suite user, there are some things that you can do to tilt the odds of winning that game of email whack-a-mole in your favor. Those things include creating […]

How to Make an Interactive Graphic With Canva

One of the many neat things that you can do with Canva is create interactive infographics. In fact, you can use nearly any design template in Canva to create interactive graphics. In the following video I demonstrate how you can make interactive graphics in Canva and then publish those graphics on your blog. Applications for […]

The Twelve Most Popular Posts on Free Tech for Teachers in 2019

It’s the end of the year. For me it’s the end of my twelfth year of blogging about educational technology. Do I have twelve more years in me? We’ll find out… In the meantime here are the twelve most popular posts that I published in 2019. 1. How to Add Audio to Google Slides – […]

My Ten Most Watched Ed Tech Tutorial Videos in 2019

In 2019 I created and added more than one hundred new ed tech tools tutorial videos to my YouTube channel. That brought the total for my channel to more 1,000 videos. This morning I sat down and looked at the analytics for my channel. According to the YouTube analytics these were the ten most watched […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it’s cold and dark at the moment. Fortunately, sunshine is in the forecast and we’re going to play outside in some fresh air after a day of being stuck inside because of sleet and rain. There’s nothing worse than a sleeting, raining day during school vacation week. But I probably […]

Practical Ed Tech Podcast Episode 25 – The Last Podcast of the Decade!

This afternoon I recorded my last podcast of the decade! I resisted the urge to use REM’s End of the World as bumper music for the episode. Instead, I just went with the usual bumper music then jumped into some news and notes from the week followed by answers to questions from readers and listeners. […]

How to Find, View, and Download Thousands of Historical Maps

There are some good historical map collections available in Google Earth. But you can also import your own historical maps into Google Earth. topoView is a good place to find historical maps that you can import into Google Earth. topoView is a USGS website that provides historical maps dating back to 1880. You can download […]

My Favorite New & Updated Tools in 2019

The end of the year is just five days away so I’ve put together a short list of my favorite new and updated tools in 2019. You can watch my video overview of these tools, take a look at the slides, or read more about them below. This is a highly subjective list not subject […]

Now You Can Customize Anchor Podcast Pages

Anchor is the service that I am using and have been recommending to anyone who wants to quickly start a podcast. Anchor does all of the work of submitting your podcast’s feed to all of the major podcast distribution networks including Google Play and Apple Podcasts. My simple method of producing a podcast with Anchor […]

How to Add Alt Text to Images in Google Documents

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I included a seven page handout containing tips and tutorials for improving the accessibility of documents, slides, websites, and videos. In that handout was a note about adding alt text to images in Google Documents. It’s an easy thing to do that can make your documents more accessible […]

Two Easy Ways to Share Google Forms Without Google Classroom

The school that I am teaching in this year draws students from multiple school districts who come to us for technical/ vocational classes, but take their traditional academic classes in their home school districts. It is because of that arrangement that I have one class in which I can’t use Google Classroom because not all […]

Word Game – A Simple Game Vocabulary Game

Word Game is a simply named simple vocabulary and trivia game that you can play in your web browser. To play the game simply go to wordgame.betafactory.tech and you’re into the game. The game consists of single questions that test your vocabulary and trivia knowledge. Only one question appears on the screen at a time. […]

Spend July in Washington DC as a C-SPAN Fellow

Every year C-SPAN hosts an educators’ conference and hosts a summer fellowship program. A friend of mine was selected for the conference a couple of years ago and he said it was an amazing experience! Both the fellowship program and the conference are held at C-SPAN’s headquarters in Washington D.C. C-SPAN’s Summer Fellowship program is […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Found on the vending machine in the teachers’ room at my school. Good morning from rainy Maine. Rain in December in Maine is always a bummer because it washes away the know which means we can’t ski, sled, or make a snowman. But we’ll find something else fun to do today. I hope that you […]

How to Create Interactive Images With Classtools

A couple of days ago I wrote about a new tool from Classtools called Image Annotator. It does exactly what it says on the tin. I made the following short video to demonstrate how easy it is to use the Classtools Image Annotator. In the video I demonstrate annotating an image of a map, but […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from snowy Maine where it is going to be a great weekend for playing outside. When the sun comes up I plan to do some sledding with my kids. Later, we might do a little skiing too. But first I have this week’s list of the most popular posts of the week. Before […]

Tools to Improve the Accessibility of Websites, Videos, and Slides

We all have different needs and preferences when it comes to consuming the media in our lives. Our students are the same. Some need webpages read aloud, some need different color schemes or fonts, and others need captions enabled on videos. Those are just a few of the things that can be done to improve […]

Google Sites as Digital Portfolios

The computer science courses that I’m teaching this year are almost entirely project-based courses. I’m having them do two things to keep track of their progress throughout their projects. One of those things is use Google Sheets to keep track of materials and keep track of their trials. The other thing that they’re doing is […]

Multi.link – A Convenient Way to Share All Your Profiles

Multi.link is a new service that makes it easy to share all of your social media profiles, websites you own, videos you produce, and pictures on one simple page. To use Multi.link just head to the site, sign-up in a minute, then start adding links. You can link to just about anything that you want […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast – Episode 21 – 12 Years of Reflections and Questions

This afternoon I recorded the twenty-first episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast. In this episode I share some reflections on 12 years of blogging about educational technology, share some news from the world of ed tech, and answer a few questions from readers and viewers like you. Get the full show notes in this […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it feels like winter! It’s 4F outside, a lot of snow is in the forecast, and we’re going to get our Christmas tree later today. I hope that all of you had a great week. I spent a lot of the week in Connecticut visiting family and friends for Thanksgiving. […]

7 Google Product Updates to Note from November

The end of November is here. During the last month Google announced a bunch of updates to many of the products frequently used by teachers and students. I covered many of them during the month, but there were a few that I missed. And there are few updates to the original updates from earlier this […]

12 Quick Thoughts After 12 Years of Free Technology for Teachers

Yesterday marked twelve years since I started this blog. I didn’t have much of clue about what I was doing. I chose the name Free Technology for Teachers because it was the height of the Web 2.0 boom and everything new seemed to be free. I wanted to try it all out. Writing blog posts […]

The History of Corn – A TED-Ed Lesson

Pictures of corn like the one in this blog post have become symbols of fall harvest and Thanksgiving. Corn and many products made with it are a staple of the diets of many of us today. How did corn become a staple of our diets? What has enabled it to become one of the most […]

Twelve Good Tools for Creating Mind Maps & Flowcharts – Updated

Earlier this week I published a video about a neat new service called Transo that lets you turn your notes into a mind map with just one click. Creating that video and writing the corresponding blog post got me to revisit a list of mind mapping tools that I published a couple of months ago. […]

Three Ways to Collaboratively Create Multimedia Maps

With Padlet’s new multimedia mapping tool and the recent update to the web version of Google Earth there are more ways than ever for students to collaborate on creating multimedia maps. The three collaborative multimedia mapping tools that I’m going to recommend to most people for the foreseeable future are Google’s My Maps, Padlet, and […]

Transno – Quickly Turn Outlines and Notes into Mind Maps

Transno is a new service that lets you write notes and outlines that can then be turned into mind maps and flowcharts with just one click. It reminds me a lot of the old Text2MindMap service that I used to use. Transno is better because it offers a variety of mind map and flowchart styles […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the sun is still below the horizon and the wind is making it feel colder than the thermometer’s reading of 22F. Before the sun comes up and my kids wake up, I have this week’s list of the most popular posts of the week to share with you. Thanksgiving is […]

A Quick & Easy Way to Combine Audio Tracks

Last week I published a video that outlines how I produce my podcast. Within that video I included some tips about using Garage Band to extract audio from a video and how to combine audio clips in Anchor.fm. This morning I had an email from a reader who wanted to know what her students could […]

Collaboratively Create Maps on Padlet

Padlet has been in my list of top collaboration tools for nearly a decade. I started using it with my students back when it was still known as Wallwisher. There are many ways to use Padlet from simply providing a place to share text notes to using it as a place to collect video samples […]

5 Wakelet Tutorial Videos

Over the last year and a half or so Wakelet has become quite popular with teachers. Part of that popularity is due to the versatility of Wakelet which continues to increase every time a new feature is added. Some of the things that teachers, myself included, are doing with Wakelet include using to for collaborative […]

My Three Step Method for Producing a Podcast

One of my new projects for this school year is producing The Practical Ed Tech Podcast every week. I’m now up to nineteen published episode (not twenty-one as I thought earlier this week). I’ve had a handful of people ask me about the process and the tools that I’m using to record and publish the […]

How to Create Image Overlays in Google Earth

Google Earth is one of my favorite tools to use in history and geography lessons. Google Earth enables students to see and explore places in ways that printed maps and images never could. One of the features of Google Earth that I love to use in history lessons is the image overlay function. In the […]

Now You Can Use Vocaroo Without Flash

For more than a decade I’ve used Vocaroo.com whenever I’ve needed to quickly create an audio recording. The one complaint it about was that it required the use of Flash. And with Flash being deprecated in 2020 it looked like Vocaroo wouldn’t be in my toolbox any longer. That changed when I noticed that Vocaroo […]

How to Add Audio to Google Slides – Updated

Earlier this evening I Tweeted that another of my Google Slides accounts now has access to the native audio feature that Google teased us with earlier this year. I now have it in one of my G Suite Edu domains and in one of my personal accounts. I’m taking this as a sign that Google […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good afternoon from Maine where all the leaves have turned brown and the air has turned cold. We had our first snowfall of the year this week and the local ski mountain opened this morning. Winter isn’t far away. Staying indoors all day just because it’s cold is a recipe disaster in our house so […]

A Classic Geography Tool – Overlap Maps

As I mentioned on the latest episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast, last week I was reminded of a great little geography site called Overlap Maps. I hadn’t used it in a long time so I went to see if it was still functioning as it did when I was regularly using it seven […]

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 […]

The History of Thermometers and Barometers

Many moons ago when I was an undergrad I took a meteorology course. It was my favorite course outside of my major. I’m still fascinated by weather and weather forecasting. In fact, for my next career I might become a meteorologist. All that to say, I was naturally interested when I came across a Met […]

Get Instant Feedback on Your Presentations With Presenter Coach

Presenter Coach is one of best features to be added to PowerPoint in a long time. Presenter Coach is found in the online version of PowerPoint that anyone can use with a free Microsoft account. Presenter Coach will give you feedback on the pacing of your presentations, your use of filler words, and your use […]

My Updated Five Favorite Google Slides Add-ons

Earlier this year I published a rundown of my five favorite Google Slides add-ons. Since then a couple of those add-ons have gone the way of the 5.25″ floppy disk. Fortunately, I’ve recently discovered a couple of new Google Slides add-ons that I really like. Here’s the updated list of my five favorite Google Slides […]

Formative Assessment, Search, and Listening – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on the first Saturday in November. Tomorrow the sun will set an hour earlier after we turn our clocks back tonight for the end of Daylight Saving Time. On that note, here are three short lessons about Daylight Saving Time. My kids, dogs, and I had […]

Slide Tricks, Candy, and Maps – The Month in Review

October has come and gone. As I do at the end of every month I have looked through my Google Analytics account to find the most read posts of the last month. The most popular posts in October centered around Google Slides tricks and tips, making educational games, and a source of historical maps. Take […]

An Easier Way to Add Images to Blogger Posts

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve received a few emails from people who were having trouble with images not loading on Blogger blog posts. I’ve also had a couple of little issue with image uploads. The trouble appears to be that the default image uploader in Blogger doesn’t fully load. The work-around for the […]

One Last Round-up of Educational Halloween Resources

Halloween is less than 48 hours away as I write this. My daughters are excited about their Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck costumes. Some of my high school students seemed pretty excited about Halloween too. If you find yourself looking for some last-minute Halloween-themed activities here some items that I featured earlier this month. Those […]

Robocompass – A Robotic Geometry Box

Robocompass is described by its developer as robotic geometry box on 3D. Not being a math teacher and not having taken a math course since the Clinton administration, I wasn’t exactly sure what “robotic geometry box” meant at first. So I gave it try and quickly realized that it is an online tool for graphing […]

How to Create and Run Polls in Google Slides

Slido is a polling service that recently released a free Google Slides add-on and companion Chrome extension. The combination of the two tools makes it easy for anyone who uses Google Slides to quickly create and launch polls directly within the Google Slides editor. The thing that I like about Slido is that you can […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast – Episode #15 Featuring Mike Tholfsen

This afternoon I had the opportunity to talk with Mike Tholfsen from Microsoft. Mike is a Product Manager on the Microsoft EDU team. In the podcast we talked about Immersive Reader, digital ink in OneNote, Microsoft Translator, and some of the ways that those tools can be used by teachers and students. You can find […]

Kami – Annotate PDFs in Google Drive

Thanks to an email from a reader named John I was alerted to a video missing from an older blog post that I published about Kami. So that prompted me to publish this updated post about Kami. Kami is a service that enables users to annotate and comment on PDFs. You can do this directly […]

Maps, Games, and SumoBots – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it’s cold outside and quiet in my house. In other words, I’m up early before anyone else. It’s a perfect time to drink coffee (black, dark roast) and write. This week some of computer science students worked on programming SumoBots to do battle. While SumoBot kits provide a lot of […]

Google Arts & Culture Presents “From a Picture to 1000 Stories”

Google Books turned 15 this week. To mark the occasion Google released an interactive book titled From a Picture to 1000 Stories. The interactive book is a part of the Google Arts & Culture Institute. In From a Picture to 1000 Stories readers learn some fun facts about famous authors and their works. On the […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast – Episode #14

This afternoon I recorded the fourteenth episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast. The episode follows the same format as all of the other non-interview episodes. I shared some news and notes from the world of ed tech including a new Google Slides add-on and a fun game for physical education. The middle of the […]

What Causes a Recession?

The U.S. stock market has been on a historic bull run over the last decade. That has a lot of people asking and a lot of talking heads on CNBC speculating about when the next recession will hit. Fittingly, TED-Ed has a new lesson titled What Causes an Economic Recession? By watching What Causes an […]

How to Add Folders to Wakelet Collections

Over the weekend a reader emailed me asking about the possibility of creating folders in Wakelet collections. Wakelet doesn’t have a native folders feature. However, it is possible to added folders to Wakelet collections through Google Drive and OneDrive. To add a folder to your Wakelet collection use the sharing option in Google Drive or […]

Slides, Forms, and Mountains – The Week in Review

Good evening from Oregon where I had a great day traveling from Portland to Bend for the Oregon SHAPE conference. It was my first time presenting at a conference dedicated to health and physical education. It was great! And the views on the drive from Portland to Bend were extraordinary! These were the week’s most […]

VidReader – Create Searchable Transcripts of YouTube Videos

A couple of weeks ago I published a blog post and a video about a neat service called SnackVids. SnackVids has since been rebranded as VidReader. With its new name VidReader does the same thing that SnackVids did. That thing is create a searchable transcript of any YouTube video that is narrated in English. As you’ll […]

5 Handy Google Slides Features You Might Be Overlooking

Like any good presentation tool Google Slides has lots of little features that often go overlooked even by students who have used it for a long time. I was reminded of this today while helping students in one of my classes put some finishing touches on presentations that they’re going to give later this week. […]

The Week in Review – It’s Pumpkin Season!

Good morning from Maine where it is looking and feeling like fall a little more every day. Last Sunday afternoon I did my first round of leaf removal and I’ll be doing another one this weekend. You have to stay on top of these things when you live in a place where a foot of […]

Book Review Videos Made in the Common Craft Style

Years ago I came across a video in which someone reviewed The Art of Explanation by making a video in the Common Craft style. The Art of Explanation is a book that was written by Lee LeFever who is the voice behind all of the Common Craft videos. The producer of the video, Bruce Herwig, wrote a blog […]

WriteReader Adds New Page Styles for Students to Create eBooks

WriteReader is one of go-to tools for elementary school and middle school students to use to create multimedia ebooks. I’ve been using it since its launch a few years ago and it has only gotten better since then. Along the way it has added read-aloud features, introduced more options for comic and speech bubbles, and added […]

Creative Bridge – A Next Vista for Learning Video Contest

I have been a fan and supporter of Next Vista for Learning for the last decade. Next Vista is a video site for students and teachers to share video lessons with other students and teachers. Videos submitted to Next Vista are reviewed for accuracy before they appear on the site. Speaking of videos on the […]

Google Forms Features You Should Know How to Use – Video

After Google Earth, Google Forms is the Google product that I get the most excited about helping other teachers use. From gathering survey data to organizing event registration to creating online quizzes there are lots of things that can be done efficiently if you know how to use Google Forms. That said, Google Forms has […]

Mind Maps, Rubrics, and Cats – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun is setting on a busy month of September. Between webinars, working on a book, and taking over a computer science program the posting here was a little less frequent than usual. I still managed to publish more than 60 new posts. It will get back up to my […]

The Week in Review – The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the the air is cool and crisp, the leaves are colorful, and everyone is dressed in their favorite flannel. These are the days that everyone pictures when they think about New England in the fall. I can’t wait to get outside! I hope that wherever you are this weekend that […]

Get Your Copy of the Free Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Last Sunday I published the updated 2019-20 version of my popular Practical Ed Tech Handbook. I started publishing one every school year in the fall of 2015. Each fall since then I’ve published an updated version. All together they’ve been downloaded more than 100,000 times. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can download […]

Common Craft Explains Incognito or Private Browser Windows

Common Craft has been producing unique explanatory videos for more than a decade. I’ve been using them in my classroom and workshops for nearly as long. Common Craft videos provide clear and concise explanations of nuanced topics ranging from the Electoral College to copyright to digital citizenship. Their latest video explains incognito or “private” mode […]

How to Create Whiteboard Videos in Wakelet Collections

A couple of months ago Flipgrid introduced a new feature that enables you to create whiteboard-style instructional videos to share with your students. That feature is called Flipgrid Shorts. Wakelet has integrated the Flipgrid camera into their service so that now you can create whiteboard-style instructional videos directly within your Wakelet collections. Watch my video below […]

Loop – A Nice System for Gathering Feedback from Students

There is no shortage of online tools for gathering feedback from students. I featured a selection of them in the latest version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. Loop is the latest one to come across my desk.  Loop lets you create an online classroom to post questions for your students to respond to with […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast Episode #10 Featuring Adam Bellow

Last week I had the chance to catch up with my old friend, Adam Bellow. Adam Bellow is the co-founder of the massively popular Breakout EDU game platform. Prior to Breakout EDU he started EduClipper and EduTecher. He’s also been a keynote speaker at ISTE and many other conferences around the world. In this episode […]

How to Find and Create Primary Source Lessons With DocsTeach

DocsTeach has been one of my go-to tools for social studies teachers for many years. Despite that recommendation I’ve never made a video on how it works, until now. DocsTeach is a free service offered by the National Archives through which you can find primary source lesson activities and create your own activities by using […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast Episode #9

On Friday afternoon I recorded the latest episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast. In the episode I shared some news about the future of Free Technology for Teachers, gave a shout-out to Dr. Scott McLeod for this thought-provoking blog post about mobile devices in schools, shared a neat tool for distributing and collecting permission […]

SnackVids – Automatic Creation of Searchable Video Transcripts

Update January 2021: The tool mentioned in this article is no longer available. However, you can accomplish the same goal of making a transcript of YouTube videos by following the directions I’ve outlined in this video.  SnackVids is a new service that will generate a searchable transcript for any YouTube video of your choosing. To […]

5 Features of Google’s Advanced Search Menu

My last two blog posts (here and here) have been about creating search practice activities for students. One of the Google search tools that students often overlook or have never been taught to use is the advanced search menu found on the search results page. Using the tools within the advanced search menu can help […]

Another Approach to Creating Search Challenges for Students

Yesterday afternoon I shared one of my approaches to creating search practice activities for students. That strategy involves using pictures to tell as story and have students answer some questions based on the story and picture. Another approach that I use is to have students ask the questions that they want to know the answers […]

Rubrics, Mind Maps, and Foliage – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is a perfect early autumn morning. It’s ideal for going fishing with my loyal dog, Mason. We did that on Thursday afternoon and it was perfect. I’m looking forward to doing that again this weekend. I hope that you also have something fun that you’re looking forward to doing […]

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 […]

Now You Can Share a Link to Jump to a Scene in Google Expeditions

In a Tweet yesterday afternoon Google announced a neat little addition to Google Expeditions. You can now share a link to a specific scene within an Expedition. Previously if you wanted to get all of your students onto the same scene at the same time you had to guide them through the whole Expedition. Now […]

Glide Now Lets You Publish App Templates

Glide is probably my favorite new tool of 2019. The free service lets you take a Google Sheet and quickly turn it into a mobile app. It can be used to create all kinds of apps including staff directories, study guides, scavenger hunts, and local tourism guides. My tutorial on how to use Glide can […]

Ten Free Tools for Creating Mind Maps and Flowcharts – Updated for 2019-20

Creating a mind map is an excellent way to generate and write down ideas connected to a central topic. I frequently use mind maps to generate ideas for blog posts and for workshop topics. Students can use them to generate ideas for creative writing, to plan presentations, and to record all of the factors contributing […]

Ask Me Anything This Friday

On Friday afternoon at 3pm ET.  I’m recording the next episode of my Practical Ed Tech Live series in which I answer batches of questions that readers like you send to me throughout the week.  This school year I’m opening each broadcast with a recap of some ed tech news that you might have missed […]

How to Use the Mindful Internet Use Chrome Extension

On Friday morning I wrote about a Chrome extension called Mindful Internet Use that I recently added to my browser. The extension displays motivation quotes and asks thought-provoking questions whenever you access a time-wasting site like Facebook or stay on a time-wasting activity for too long. It’s an interesting alternative to just blocking yourself from […]

Ten Sites & Apps to Help Students Learn New Vocabulary Words – Updated for 2019-20

There was a time when I regularly published longer lists of helpful sites and apps. Over the last few years I got away from doing that with any regularity because I wasn’t sure that anyone really benefited from them. But in the last month I’ve been asked a handful of questions that could have been […]

Mindful Internet Use – A Chrome Extension to Make You Think About Your Habits

On Thursday morning I shared a TED Talk given by Dr. Judson Brewer. The talk was about using mindfulness practices to break a bad habit. This morning I came across a Chrome extension that employs that same concept to help people break or curtail the habit of wasting time mindlessly browsing the Internet. Mindful Internet […]

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast – Episode #5

Yesterday afternoon I hosted the latest broadcast of Practical Ed Tech Live. If you missed it, you can now watch the video or listen to it as a podcast. All episodes of the Practical Ed Tech Podcast are available on this Anchor.fm page. All episodes are also available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Radio Public, Pocket […]

The Ten Most Popular Posts on Free Technology for Teachers – In August

At the end of every month I like to take a look back at the most popular posts of the previous thirty days. I’m a couple of days late this time. I make these lists to get some insights into what readers want to see more or less of. I also do this as a […]

ClassHook Adds Live Discussions for Video Lessons

Last Friday on the Practical Ed Tech Podcast I mentioned that ClassHook has a new feature for facilitating discussions about the videos that you show to your students. The new feature is called Live Discussions and it builds upon the popular Pause Prompts feature that ClassHook introduced earlier this year. Pause Prompts are timestamped questions […]

The Week in Review – Icebreakers, Cool Cats, and Pictures

Good morning from Maine where it is a beautiful start to Labor Day weekend. We have family visiting for the weekend so I’m going to quickly write this week’s week-in-review before they everyone wakes up. This week I had the privilege to work with teachers in Saint John’s High School in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. We worked […]

Ten Google Product Updates for Teachers to Note

Every month Google rolls-out updates to many of the products that teachers and students use through G Suite for Education. Some of those updates happen in background on the administrative side of G Suite for Education. Those updates usually don’t have much impact on end-users. Then there are updates that directly affect teachers and students. […]

Practical Ed Tech Podcast Episode #4

This morning I hosted a new episode of Practical Ed Tech Live on my YouTube channel. For those who missed it, it is now available as the fourth episode of the Practical Ed Tech Podcast. The podcast can be found on Anchor.fm, on Google Podcasts, on Spotify, on RadioPublic, and on Pocket Casts. I’m working […]

These Cool Cats Will Teach You About Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal Verbs Friends is a fun YouTube channel that features cats explaining phrasal verbs. The videos use pictures of cats in green-screen settings to show and explain the various meanings of phrasal verbs like “warm up” and “take care.” Applications for Education Phrasal verbs can be tricky for students to understand. These cute cat videos […]

It’s That Time Again – Why Leaves Change Color in the Fall

There are some trees in my neighborhood whose leaves always start to change color earlier than the rest. I noticed them this morning as I drove down my road. And when I got home I noticed one in my backyard was starting to develop some red leaves too. That means it’s time for my annual […]

Ten Tools for Telling Stories With Pictures – Updated for 2019-20

Four years ago I published a PDF that outlined ten tools and how students can use them to tell stories with pictures. On Monday I received an email from a reader who had recently stumbled upon that PDF. She rightly pointed out that a couple of the tools featured in that document were no longer […]

A Chrome Extension to Help With a Facebook Fast

I’m going on a bit of a Facebook fast. Like many people I say that I’m going “just check Facebook for a minute” and then find that I’ve wasted twenty minutes going down a rabbit hole following interesting links or commenting on friends’ posts. I’m also prone to getting melancholy when I see some of […]

Four Good Places to Find Audio Files for Multimedia Projects

Whenever I talk to students or teachers about using music in multimedia projects I emphasize that just because a song is available to stream or download through the Internet, doesn’t mean that you have the rights to re-use it. Therefore, you should strive to use public domain or Creative Commons licensed music. To that end, […]

The Week in Review – Bad News and New Fonts

Good morning from Maine where the 50F air and the appearance of red leaves makes it feels like the end of summer is near. This always leaves me feeling conflicted as I don’t want summer to end, but I also love the arrival of autumn. I’m looking forward to getting outside this weekend and I […]

A Modification to Book Trailer Projects

Over the years I’ve written plenty about book trailer videos and the tools that students need for making book trailer videos. For the most part, the book trailers that I’ve made and those that I’ve seen have been designed to entice the viewer to read the book featured in the video. This week I read […]

A Quick Way to Check if a Website is Working Correctly or Not

On Thursday afternoon I was having trouble loading a couple of websites that I planned to use in a presentation. To make check if the problem was on my end or with the website I turned to a handy site called Down For Everyone Or Just Me? The site will tell you if a website that you’re […]

A Good Source of Free Music for Multimedia Projects

Last fall the Free Music Archive, one of my go-to sources of free music for multimedia projects, nearly closed. Fortunately, it was taken over by KitSplit who has kept it running. The Free Music Archive provides free, high-quality, music in a wide range of genres. The content on Free Music Archive is used under various […]

PrepFactory Offers Free, Personalized ACT & SAT Prep

SAT prep was one of the things that I used to do in my homeroom when I had junior year students. Many of the activities were directly from SAT prep books that I had purchased. Today, there are many excellent online options for SAT prep. One of the best options is available on PrepFactory. PrepFactory […]

Book Creator’s Autodraw Feature Now Works on iPads

Back in June Book Creator added an autodraw feature to the Chrome version of their popular multimedia ebook creation service. Autodraw enables you to attempt to draw something and have Book Creator try to interpret what that drawing is. As you draw Book Creator will display a menu of completed drawings based on what you’re […]

The Week in Review – Originality, Audio, and Clocks

Good afternoon from rainy South Paris, Maine. Even though the weather was less than ideal for a bike ride I went out for ride to exercise this morning. Along the way I saw a red leaf on a maple tree. In this part of the world, the appearance of red leaves on maple trees is […]

How to Extract Audio from a Video

One of the questions that I answered during today’s Practical Ed Tech Live episode was, “is there a way that I can just take the audio out of the videos to publish it as a podcast?” There are a few ways that you can extract the audio from a video. One of the easier ways […]

ICYMI – Practical Ed Tech Live Recording

This morning I hosted a new episode of Practical Ed Tech Live on my YouTube channel. I hadn’t held one of these sessions since the last school year ended. For the new school year I’m adding a new element to the broadcast. That element is a recap of some of the bigger stories in the […]

Post-it App for Android – Turn Physical Stickies Into Digital Ones

For many years Post-it has offered a free iPhone and iPad app that you can use to turn a collection of physical sticky notes into digital ones. This morning I discovered that Post-it now offers an Android version of the same app. Both versions of the Post-it app let you snap a picture of a […]

How to Add an Animated Clock to PowerPoint Slides

This afternoon I received an email from a reader who had watched my video about adding timers to PowerPoint slides. My video features a timer with a digital countdown display. She wanted to know if there is a way to add an analog clock countdown display to a PowerPoint slide. It is possible to do […]

How to Annotate Webpages With Seesaw’s Chrome Extension

Seesaw recently released an updated Chrome extension that makes it easy for students to save and annotate articles in their digital portfolios. With SeeSaw’s free Chrome extension installed students can save an entire webpage or select a portion of the page to save. Once they’ve made a selection of what to save the Chrome extension […]

Google is Adding an Originality Checker to Google Classroom

Today, in what they’re spinning as a feature to “help students turn in their best work,” Google announced the addition of an originality checker to Google Classroom. Google is calling this new feature Originality Reports. Originality Reports in Google Classroom will let students and teachers check documents for elements of plagiarism originality against the millions […]

DocsTeach Adds New Documents and Lessons About Suffrage

Earlier this week the Library of Congress launched a new crowdsourcing campaign to transcribe more than 20,000 primary source documents related to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. The LOC isn’t the only organization to make primary sources related to suffrage available online. DocsTeach, produced by the National Archives, has a Women’s Rights […]

Join Me on Friday for Practical Ed Tech Live!

This Friday at 9am ET I’m bringing back my Practical Ed Tech Live series in which I answer batches of questions that readers like you send to me throughout the week. I’ll be broadcasting this live on my YouTube channel (subscribe to my channel to be notified when I go live). You can ask me questions […]

How to Add Video and Audio Comments to Google Docs

The comment bank feature in Google Classroom is nice for quickly adding text comments to your students’ Google Documents. But there are times when hearing your voice and or seeing your face can make the feedback that you give to kids a little bit more memorable than just a text comment. That’s why I’m a […]

Rubrics, Whiteboards, and Phys Ed – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is a beautiful morning for a bike ride. That’s what I’m going to do as soon as I finish writing this week-in-review. This week I hosted a professional development webinar all about using Google Classroom, Calendar, and Keep. If you missed it, it will be available on-demand at the […]

Google Drive Priority Page Now Available for All G Suite Accounts

Earlier this year Google began rolling-out a “priority page” in Google Drive for some G Suite accounts that were on the “rapid release” program. Today, Google announced that all G Suite accounts are now eligible for and will begin to appear in all Google Drive accounts. Priority Page in Google Drive is a feature that […]

How to Digitally Sign Documents

Whether it’s a form for your HR department, permission slips for athletics, or an acceptable use agreement for a school-issued laptop, back-to-school season often involves signing a lot of documents. In the old days those documents would be printed and you’d sign them then stick them in a mailbox and hope they didn’t get lost […]

How to Use QuickCite to Create MLA 8 Citations

QuickCite is a new tool that helps students create properly formatted MLA 8 citations. As I wrote earlier this week, QuickCite can also be used by students to create informal citations for use in things like blog posts, slideshows, and videos. One of the features of QuickCite that I particularly like is that it provides […]

How to Use Creative Commons Search

Whenever I talk to students and teachers about creating multimedia projects I always encourage using images that are either owned by them or are in the public domain. Doing that avoids infringing on someone’s copyright. It’s not always possible to find the right image for a project in your personal images or in the public […]

How to Clear the Ambient Noise from a Podcast Recording

One of the things that can ruin an otherwise good podcast is an annoying hiss or similar ambient noise in the background. Fortunately, there are ways to remove or replace that noise in post-production. I was recently looking for a way to do this when I came across a video from Make Use Of on […]

QuickCite – A Site That Helps Students Properly Format Citations

From the developer of the popular Flippity service comes a new tool designed for students. That tool is called QuickCite and it helps students properly format MLA 8 citations. Students can also use QuickCite for less formal citation needs like those used in slideshows and video credits. QuickCite is not like many of the well-known […]

How to Embed Google Docs Into Your Blog Posts

One of the things that makes Google Documents popular is that you can easily publish your documents for anyone to read online even if they don’t have Google accounts of their own. How to Embed a Google Doc Into Your Blog You can do this by choosing the “publish to the web” option found in […]

How to Use Flipgrid to Create Whiteboard Videos

A couple of days ago Flipgrid released some new features that all teachers can use in the new school year. Those new features include tools for creating whiteboard-style instructional videos. You can use this feature to create whiteboard videos for your students to watch in Flipgrid. You can also have your students use the whiteboard […]

What is Two-Factor Authentication? – And Why You Should Use It

Last night I had a chat with someone who had her Netflix account hacked. The hacker changed her password and the email address associated with the account. This prompted a bigger conversation about how accounts get hacked and some simple steps to prevent being hacked. Those steps include not using the same password for multiple […]

ClassHook Gets a New Look

ClassHook is a service that I recommend trying when you’re looking for video clips to illustrate a concept and don’t want just another “how to” video. ClassHook provides a search tool for finding clips from well-known television shows and movies to be used in your lessons. You can search according to topic, standard, grade level, […]

Five Google Product Updates for Teachers to Note

Every month Google pushes updates to all of their products. The ISTE conference is held in June so there were a lot of updates made then that directly impact teachers and students. July was a bit slower in terms of updates that directly impact teachers and students, but there were still some to note. Here […]

Knowt – Quickly Turn Notes Into Practice Quizzes

Knowt is a free service that students can use to quickly turn their notes into practice quizzes. I recently learned about it from Larry Ferlazzo and I gave it a try right away because of his description of it. At its core Knowt is an online notebook. It has all of the text editing functions […]

How to Use the Read-aloud Function in Microsoft Edge

Edge is Microsoft’s web browser that replaced their classic Internet Explorer. Edge has a lot of handy features including a customizable read-aloud function. The read-aloud function has been available in the Windows version of Edge for quite a while. This morning, thanks to Mike Tholfsen I learned that the read-aloud function is available in the […]

Alt Text, Google Keep, and Posters – The Week in Review

Good morning from sunny Paris, Maine where it’s going to be a great day to play outside. Before my kids wake up and and we start our day of play, I have this week’s list of the most popular posts of the week to share with you. Take a look and see if there is […]

How to Design Posters and Print Them With a Standard Printer

I got my first “back to school” email this week which was a jolting reminder of just how quickly time flies during summer break. The “back to school” email that I received was from a classroom supplies and classroom decorations vendor. While I don’t have a free alternative to glue sticks, pushpins, and paperclips, I […]

Three Good Resources for Shark Week

This Sunday is the start of Discovery’s annual Shark Week. A couple of weeks ago I shared SciShow Kids’ Super Sharks lesson. That’s a nice lesson for elementary school students. If you’re looking for something for older students, take a look at the following resources. The Global Fishing Watch map includes an animated layer that displays the […]

Five More Handy Features of Google Keep

Last week I published a video that highlighted ten handy features of Google Keep. Since then a few people have emailed me to point out other features that I should have included in that video. So thanks to some reminders from Matt, Susan, and Kevin here are five more features Google Keep for teachers and […]

Another Great Source of Ed Tech Tools Tutorial Videos

On Thursday I shared my playlist of more than 300 Google tools tutorial videos. Today I’d like to highlight someone else’s YouTube channel. Brad Dale regularly publishes quick tutorial videos about a variety of helpful, free tools including Wakelet, Flipgrid, and Google Drawings. And it’s through Brad’s YouTube channel that I learned about a neat […]

Neil and Buzz Go For a Walk – A Tour of the First Hours on the Moon

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. By now you’ve probably seen Google’s Google Earth story about the mission. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a few minutes of your time. Neil and Buzz Go For a Walk is another neat site about the Apollo 11 mission that’s worth […]

Quik – Quickly Create Audio Slideshow Videos

Quik is a free app from GoPro for quickly creating videos on your Android or iOS phone or tablet. With the app installed on you can import pictures and videos that you have stored on your phone, in Google Photos, or in a GoPro Plus account. After you’ve selected a few pictures or video clips […]

See What’s Behind Any Webpage With Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles

One of the topics that we talked about during the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp was digital literacy and critical thinking. To that end, I presented Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles as a tool that can be used to create a modified version of real news story from legitimate sources. Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles lets you see the code behind […]

A Chrome Extension That Shows You the Value of Your Time

Time Is Money is a free Chrome extension that can help students see what the expression “time is money” means. Time Is Money will display the number of hours a person would have to work in order to have enough money to purchase any product that has a price listed on a shopping site. For example, I went […]

Green Screens, Posters, and Books – The Week in Review

Good afternoon from Maine where I’m enjoying watching a replay of today’s Tour de France stage after a fun morning participating in a team triathlon. My team finished, “The Team With No Name,” finished first and won a cowbell. I hope that you’re also having a great weekend. Next week I’m hosting the Practical Ed […]

A Free Service That Lets You Print Almost Any Poster

Canva is a great service for designing all kinds of graphics for online and offline use. Canva includes a gallery of templates for making classroom posters. Once you have designed your poster you can use Canva’s print-on-demand service to have it printed and mailed to you. Canva charges a nominal fee for their print-on-demand service. […]

How to Create a Green Screen Video on an iPad

Last night I posted a tutorial on how to create a green screen video in iMovie on a Mac. After I Tweeted that some folks asked me about making green screen videos on iPads. As I promised to them, here’s my tutorial on how to create a green screen video on an iPad. Materials and […]

How to Create a Green Screen Video in iMovie

Creating green screen videos is be a fun way for students to share what they’ve learned through research about a place or event. Making green screen videos is also a great way for kids to make their own weather forecast and newscast videos. Through the use of green screen editing students can virtually appear in […]

Schedule Assignment/ Assessment Windows in Otus LMS

Otus is a learning management system that continues to grow in popularity in part because of some of the tools they offer for free that other learning management systems don’t offer or charge extra to use. One of those features is an assignment/ assessment window. The assignment/ assessment window feature in Otus lets teachers set […]

5 Ways to Enhance Your Classroom Blog

A classroom blog can be used for so many purposes that it is still one of the things that I think every class should have. A blog can be used for communicating important information to parents and students, it can be used by students as a journal to reflect on lessons, it can be used […]

How to Customize Your Edublogs Favicon

A couple of weeks ago I published a video about how to customize the favicon on Blogger blogs. Since then I’ve answered a few emails from readers who wanted to know if the same is possible in Edublogs. Yes, it is possible to customize the favicon icon for Edublogs blogs. The process of doing this […]

How to Refine a Search According to Top-level Domain

One of the overlooked search strategies that I often share with students and their teachers is refining Google search results according to top-level domain. Refining a search according to top-level domain is a good way for students to discover high-quality content that might not otherwise rank highly in their search results. The process of refining […]

Plan Safe Running, Walking, and Biking Routes With Strava

Strava is an app that I use to record data about my bike rides and runs. There is a social component to Strava that lets you follow your friends and give them “kudos” for completing a ride or run too. You can use Strava without planning a route, but if you’re going to a new […]

How to Quickly Copy Questions Between Google Forms

This week Google added a new “import questions” function to Google Forms. This is a native feature that lets you view your previously created Forms and then select questions to import into a new Form. This feature removes the need to use an add-on like Form Recycler or to do any copying and pasting. Watch […]

Google Forms Now Has a Native Function to Import Questions from Other Forms

Yesterday I recapped the important Google products updates from June for teachers to note. July is starting out with another noteworthy update. That update is the ability to import questions from one Google Form into another without the use of any add-ons like Form Recycler. Google Forms now has a native feature for importing questions […]

Expeditions, Writing Prompts, and Accessibility – The Month in Review

June has come and gone. At the end of every month I like to take a look back and see which blog posts were the most popular of the previous thirty days. The following were the most popular posts in June, 2019. 1. Google Expeditions is Now Available on Chromebooks! 2. Interactive Versions of Aesop’s […]

Expeditions, Search, and 202 Miles on a Bike – The Week in Review

Good afternoon from Maine where today I’m recuperating after riding my bike for 202 miles yesterday. The ride was part of a fundraiser for the Fast Freddie Foundation that gives bicycles and safety equipment to underprivileged kids all over the United States. Fast Freddie Rodriguez (pictured with me) is a retired professional cyclist whose record […]

How to Use Book Creator’s New Autodraw Feature

At the beginning of this week Book Creator announced the launch of a new set of drawing tools that students can use in the creation of multimedia ebooks. Among those tools is a new feature Book Creator is calling autodraw. Autodraw allows people like me who don’t have much drawing ability to attempt to draw […]

How to Change Your Blogger Favicon

Blogger is a popular choice for creating classroom blogs and personal blogs because it can be accessed through your Google account and because it is easy to use to start a blog. In a matter of a few minutes you can have a new blog up and running through Blogger. Blogger offers lots of simple […]

Why Should You Read Hamlet – A New TED-Ed Lesson

Last year TED-Ed started publishing a series of video lessons titled Why Should You Read…? Each lesson is about a classic work of literature that many of us have read and have made our students read. When making our students read those classics we’ve all been asked, “why do we have to read this?” This […]

The Joy of Search – Get a Sample Chapter and Learn a Great Search Strategy

The Joy of Search is the title of Dan Russell’s forthcoming book about search strategies. I pre-ordered my copy from Amazon about six weeks ago and am eagerly anticipating its arrival this fall. Dan Russell’s official title is Senior Research Scientist for Search Quality and User Happiness at Google. What he does that you, I, […]

A Brief History of Yellowstone – A Video Your Students Could Easily Create

National Geographic recently published a new video titled A Brief History of Yellowstone. The video hits almost all of the key points in the history of Yellowstone becoming the first national park in the U.S. Unfortunately, the video isn’t terribly interesting to watch. That’s a statement coming from a person who will watch PBS documentaries […]

Immersive Reader, Carmen Sandiego, and Fire Alarms – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where it was a beautiful summer day. It was perfect for playing outside and that’s exactly what we did. I hope that you were able to do something fun today too. This week I had the privilege to spend two days with tech coaches and teachers in the Portsmouth, Virginia school […]

How to Make Digital Collages in SeeSaw

Yesterday, I shared five highlights from SeeSaw’s update in advance of next week’s ISTE conference. One of those highlights is a new drag-and-drop digital collage creation tool. Students can use the new collage tool with pictures, text, speech and thought bubbles, drawings, and digital stickers. Students can also use SeeSaw to record themselves talking about […]

How to Automatically Caption and Translate PowerPoint Presentations

Late last year Microsoft introduced real-time captioning and translation of PowerPoint presentations. At that time it wasn’t available in all versions of PowerPoint. That changed this week when Mike Tholfsen, product manager for Microsoft EDU, Tweeted that real-time captioning and translation is now available in all versions of PowerPoint for Windows, Mac, and Web. Watch […]

5 New SeeSaw Features for Teachers and Students Creating Digital Portfolios

SeeSaw is a digital portfolio tool that I have used and recommended since shortly after its launch in 2014. After initially launching as an iPad app it quickly evolved to become tool that can be used on Android devices, on laptops, on desktops, and on Chromebooks. This week SeeSaw added more features designed with Chromebook […]

Interactive Maps of Migrations and Changes of Seasons

Over the years I’ve featured Project Noah and the USA Phenology Network’s maps as platforms through which students can track the changes of seasons in North America. Recently, through the Maps Mania blog I learned about another good site that students can use to track the changes in seasons. That site is called Journey North. […]

More Immersive Reader News – Thinglink Integrates Immersive Reader

Earlier I shared the news that Microsoft is adding their popular accessibility too, Immersive Reader, to Microsoft Forms. Shortly after I received that news from Mike Tholfsen I got an email from Thinglink informing me that they’re also adding Immersive Reader to their excellent image and video annotation tools. Thinglink is a service that I […]

Adobe Spark Now Has a Collaboration Option

Adobe Spark has been one of my favorite video creation tools since its launch in 2016. It can also be used to make simple web pages and graphics. Adobe Spark is a versatile tool that I’ve used to help students make video book trailers, to create video biographies, and to showcase the highlights of their […]

Timelines as Portfolios

Last month I featured some of my favorite tools for students to make digital portfolios and tools for students to use to create multimedia collages to celebrate the school year. One of the things that I forgot to mention last month was the idea of using multimedia timelines as a means to sharing growth throughout […]

Create Rubrics in Google Classroom – Coming Soon!

Last year Google added a comment bank option to Google Classroom. That feature, demonstrated here, can save you a lot of time when giving your students feedback on their assignments. Today, Google announced another grading feature that teachers have wanted for years. That feature is the option to create and attached rubrics to assignments within […]

The Third “Where on Google Earth is Carmen Sandiego?” Game is Now Available

Back in March Google launched “Where on Google Earth is Carmen Sandiego?” for use in the web and mobile versions of Google Earth. Then in May a second Carmen Sandiego game was added to Google Earth. Today, Google added a third Carmen Sandiego game to Google Earth. Just like in the first two games, the […]

Coming Soon! PowerPoint Will Coach You Through Presentation Rehearsals

Thanks to a Tweet from Mike Tholfsen this afternoon I learned about an exciting new feature that is coming soon to PowerPoint. That feature is called Presentation Coach. Presentation Coach is a rehearsal mode that you can use in PowerPoint (web version only, it appears) to get instant feedback on your presentation including your pacing, […]

Writing Prompts, Beakers, and Fables – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re hoping that the sun will peak out for a trip to the playground. Maine is known for moose and lobster. At our local playground there is a moose carved into boulder. My daughters always want to sit on it. And they’re hoping to do that again today. I hope […]

500 Creative Writing Prompts

Back in April I featured a neat creative writing tool called The Most Dangerous Writing App. Since then The Most Dangerous Writing App has changed to The Most Dangerous Writing Prompts. The service now includes 500 writing prompts to help you get started on your next great work of creative writing. The concept of The […]

How to Use WorldCat to Locate Books in Libraries Near You

Over the last couple of days I’ve seen a lot of summer reading lists floating around on Twitter. If you’re starting to acquire your summer reading books, before you hit “buy now” on Amazon, search on WorldCat to see if a library in your area has a copy of the book that you want to […]

Geocaching, Green Screens, and Gmail – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where it was a perfect early summer day. It started with a bike ride which was followed by a trip to the playground with my daughters. Our day ended with getting ice cream! It was on the way to get ice cream that I noticed the pictured door that was labeled […]

Veescope Live – A Free Green Screen App for Your iPad

Veescope Live is a free iPad app for creating green screen videos. Of the free iPad apps for making green screen videos that I’ve tried, including all of the most popular ones, Veescope Live is easiest to set-up and use even with the annoying quirk of menus not always closing on the first tap (and […]

How to Automatically Send G Suite Email to a Gmail Address – And How to Filter Your Email

The end of the school year is here for many of us. It is at this time of year that I am often asked about how to forward G Suite for Edu email to Gmail addresses. Some people want to do this because they only want to check one inbox during the summer. Others do […]

8 Good Resources to Help Students Develop Spelling Skills

Last night the Scripps National Spelling Bee ended in an eight-way tie! In honor of the eight champions, here are eight resources that can help your students develop their spelling skills. Making Sense of Spelling Making Sense of Spelling is a TED-Ed lesson that explains why some words have multiple correct spellings, the relationships between […]

How to Use Gmail’s Confidential Mode

Yesterday, Google announced that beginning on June 25th confidential mode will be available by default in all G Suite domains. The confidential mode will allow you to send emails that your recipients cannot print, copy, download, or forward. Through the confidential mode you can even require that recipients have to use an SMS code to […]

How to Use the Google Dictionary Chrome Extension

The Google Dictionary Chrome extension is a handy little tool that lets you highlight a word on any webpage to quickly find a definition and hear a pronunciation of that word. Google Dictionary isn’t the only Chrome extension that has this capability, but it is the only one that Google itself offers. In the following […]

Where to Find Public Domain Pictures and Video Clips

In my previous post I shared the news that Canva has acquired Pixabay and Pexels. Both of those sites are popular places to find pictures and video clips that are in the public domain. The libraries of both sites are now accessible through Canva but are also still available to use independently. In the following […]

Four Ways to Show & Share Videos Without Distractions

At this point I think we can all agree that YouTube can be a great place to find educational videos to share with students. Of course, the downside to YouTube has always been all of the “related” content that appears around the videos that you find on YouTube. In the following video I demonstrate four […]

AR, VR, and Bowling – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining to start this Memorial Day weekend. We’re going to Maine Wildlife Park, riding bicycles, and playing outside for as long as we can put with the black flies this weekend. I hope that wherever you are this weekend, you can get outside too. Before I head […]

Three Good Resources to Help Students Become Discerning News Consumers

Earlier this week TED-Ed published a new lesson titled Can You Spot the Problem With These Headlines? The short video lesson walks students through dissecting a couple of hypothetical news headlines. By watching the video students can begin to understand how headlines are written to entice readers and how misleading headlines are created. Here are a […]

Five DIY Virtual Reality Projects for Students

Google’s VR Tour Creator offers an excellent way to create virtual tours that can be viewed in your web browser and or in the Google Expeditions app. Google’s Street View imagery is the backbone of the VR Tour Creator. To start creating a tour you have to identify a location using the built-in connection to […]

How to Make an Animated Timeline in Google Slides

Eighteen months ago I published a video about how to use Google Slides to create a timeline. Yesterday, that video hit 50,000 views. I watched the video again and realized that I could use the animation tools in Google Slides to add animations to my timeline. So yesterday I made a video about how to […]

How to Use the New Version of Google Books

On Monday I published a list of my ten go-to tech tools for social studies teachers and students. Google Books was one of the tools that I included in that list. Recently, Google Books got an updated user interface. The new interface includes some handy features including an option to quickly locate libraries near you […]

Easy Notecards and Flashcards

Easy Notecards is a free study aid that Vicki Davis introduced to me eight years ago. This post is an update on what I wrote eight years ago. As you probably guessed from name, Easy Notecards is a free tool for creating text-based and image-based flashcards. What makes Easy Notecards a little different from other […]

Rivet – A Reading App from Google

Rivet is a reading app from Area 120 (a Google property). The free app offers more than 2,000 books for students to read independently. The books are appropriate for students in Kindergarten through second grade (5-8 years old). All of the books provide audio support to students in the form of an option to tap […]

Digital Maps, Collages, and Legends – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where this week the weather was finally nice enough for bike rides, flip-flops, and lots of yard work. And this weekend’s forecast has lots of sunshine in it which is perfect for Mother’s Day. Speaking of which, happy Mother’s Day to my mom, to Jess (Isla and Emma’s awesome mom), and […]

8 Options for Making Digital Maps

In yesterday’s post about English Heritage’s Map of Myth, Legend, and Folklore I included a mention of using StoryMap JS to create interactive maps. That prompted a response from Cindy Rudy who suggested the idea of using Thinglink or Google Earth to make similar maps of myths, legends, and folklore. That was my inspiration for this […]

Give Video Feedback in the Otus LMS

Otus is a learning management system that I’ve watched evolve from a relatively simple iPad app into a full-fledged LMS that can be used on any device. When I first wrote about Otus in 2014 I wrote, “the possibilities for teachers using Otus seem limitless.” This morning, thanks to an Otus Facebook post, I learned […]

Forms, Expeditions, and RSS – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where I’m looking forward to a fun day of playing outside with my daughters. Earlier this week I took a day off to take them to the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray, Maine. They love seeing all of the animals there so much that we have an annual pass to the […]

5 Ways to Quickly Create Audio Slideshows for End-of-Year Events

Around this time every year I start to field a bunch of emails from readers who are looking for advice on how to quickly create audio slideshow videos for end-of-year events. Here are five options that I like for making audio slideshow videos. This list is arranged according to my preference for the quickest way […]

5 Google Earth Pro Tips for Teachers and Students

Google Earth is currently available in a few different versions. There is the web browser version that was built for use in Chrome and Chromebooks. There is an iOS version and an Android version for use on tablets and phones. And then there is the original version made for use as desktop software on Windows, […]

Mobile Apps, Copyright, and Flipgrid – The Week in Review

Good evening from rainy Maine where I spent part of the day pumping water out of the basement of my 170 year old house. I hope that your day was a little better than mine. This week I had the privilege to speak in Bonner Springs, Kansas to a great group of teachers who welcomed […]

Checkology – Lessons in Being Discerning Media Consumers

Checkology is a website designed to help students learn to be discerning consumers of online, print, and television media. Checkology has a free version and a premium version. This review is only about the free version of Checkology. Checkology’s free version offers four interactive modules for students to complete. Each of the modules is comprised […]

Four Free Tools for Creating Your Own Mobile Apps

Creating a mobile app can be a great way to get students interested in learning programming concepts and to get them to dive into researching a topic so that they can build the best apps they can. For example, if a student wanted to create an app that serves as a fun review game, he […]

13 Flipgrid Tutorial Videos – #FlipgridFever

Flipgrid is a free video response service that has become massively popular in the last couple of years. Everywhere that I go, including today’s visit to Bonner Springs, Kansas, teachers are using Flipgrid to collect students’ video responses to all kinds of prompts. If you haven’t tried Flipgrid, I have thirteen tutorial videos that will […]

Create Individualized Spelling Games Through Flippity Spelling Words

Flippity’s Spelling Words is a free Google Sheets template that you can use to create individualized spelling games for your students. To do this you simply have to make a list of words that you want each of your students to practice. You’ll then put those lists under your students’ names in a Google Sheets […]

Best of the Web – The TLA Edition

Greetings from the Austin, Texas airport where I’m waiting for a flight home after a great three days at the TLA annual conference. I gave three presentations and ran two workshops during the conference. The last of my presentations ended just a couple of hours ago. The room was packed (I was worried about the […]

Glide – Make Your Own App by Just Making a Spreadsheet

Glide is an amazing free tool that I featured in a presentation during yesterday’s TLA Tech Glamp. Glide enables anyone who can make a spreadsheet in Google Sheets to create his or her own mobile app. If that sounds simple, that’s because it is just that simple. The headers that you put into your spreadsheet […]

Only Seven Seats Left!

The snow is almost gone here in western Maine. It won’t be long now until we’re breaking out the shorts, tee shirts, and flip flops. As the summer gets closer the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp is filling up. As of this morning there are only seven seats remaining for this hands-on learning experience. If […]

Spring, Winter, and a New Look – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re hoping the sun comes out today like it did last weekend. Of course, after last weekend’s warm weather we woke up to six inches of fresh snow on Monday morning. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope that you can get outside to play too. This week I decided […]

How to Use The Most Dangerous Writing App

On Monday I wrote a review of a neat tool called The Most Dangerous Writing App. It’s a website that provides a blank canvas to write on for a minimum time of your choosing. The catch is that if you stop writing before the time is up, you lose your work. I’ve received a few […]

A Great Email Etiquette Lesson from a Student

This morning, like most mornings, I opened my email to see a bunch of requests for help with various educational technology tools. Half of them I am very happy to answer. Those are the ones in which the sender addresses me by name and makes a polite request. Then there are the ones like this […]

Braingenie – Math & Science Practice from CK-12

Braingenie is a free service offered by the CK-12 Foundation. Braingenie provides online math and science practice activities for elementary, middle, and high school students. Braingenie’s library of activities is divided into nine sections and many subsections. The nine sections are 1-8 Math, Brain Math, Algebra I, Algebra II, Precalculus, 6-8 Science, Biology, Chemistry, and […]

Synth Adds Podcast Moderation Features

Synth is an excellent tool for creating short podcasts. In fact, it’s one of my picks for Best of the Web for the 2018-19 school year. But to call Synth a podcasting tool is a bit misleading because it is more than that. On Synth you can create threaded audio conversations in which people reply […]

Join Me Tomorrow Afternoon for a Live Q&A

Tomorrow at 4pm Eastern Time I’ll be going live on my YouTube channel to answer another round of questions from readers like you. If you have a question about educational technology that you’d like me to answer you can put in the form below or just join the live broadcast and submit your question this afternoon. Subscribe […]

The Most Dangerous Writing App – Great for Jumpstarting Creative Writing

The Most Dangerous Writing App is a free service that is designed to force you to write without stopping for a preset amount of time. You can set your writing timer for as few as three minutes or as many as many as sixty minutes. If you stop writing before the minimum time has been […]

Seven Good Tools for Creating Word Clouds

The popularity of word cloud generation tools seems to have declined from their peak of about six years ago. None-the-less they are still useful in providing students with a nice way to visualize the most frequently used words in a passage of text. Wordle is probably the best known tool for making word clouds. But […]

Create Text Message Exchanges Between Fictional and Historical Characters

The Classtools SMS Generator is one of my favorite tools from the large catalog of free tools offered by Classtools. The SMS Generator is intended for creating fictional text message exchanges between fictional and or historical characters. It is free to use and does not require students to log-in. To use the SMS Generator just click the […]

How to Share Google Slides via QR Code

Earlier this week I published a video and blog post about how to share Google Forms through QR codes. In response to that video a follower of my Facebook page asked for some help sharing Google Slides presentations via QR code. Students were having trouble viewing the slides she had shared via QR code so […]

Questions to Ask When Planning a Classroom Video Project

Making videos can be a great way to get students excited and invested in the process of researching a topic and presenting their findings for others to see. But before you dive headlong into a video project with your students take some time consider the following questions as you plan the project. *Planning questions to […]

A Chrome Extension for Clutter-free Reading and Printing

Mercury Reader is a Chrome extension that removes sidebar content from articles that you view in your Chrome web browser. It will hide banner ads, suggested “related” articles, and anything else that is not a part of the primary article on the page you are viewing. When you use Mercury Reader to print an article, […]

How to Make Interactive Videos

For many years I helped teachers and students use YouTube’s annotations tool to create series of interactive or choose-your-own-adventure videos. Unfortunately, YouTube discontinued that service about eighteen months ago. This week a reader contacted me for a recommendation on other ways to make interactive videos. My suggestion was to try using Thinglink’s video editor. Thinglink […]

Practical Ed Tech Q&A Recording

This afternoon I hosted another live Q&A session on my YouTube channel and on Facebook. If you missed it, the recording of the session is now available as embedded below. The questions that I answered during the broadcast are included below the video. A teacher is using the extension audioplayer for slides with students recording […]

How to Set Answer Requirements on Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms is a good tool for creating online surveys and quizzes. Setting answer restrictions is one of the overlooked features of Microsoft Forms. Creating answer restrictions allows you to specify the type of input that you’ll accept in response to a question. As you can see in my new video, setting answer restrictions can […]

How to Create QR Codes for Google Forms

Now that Google has shutdown Goo.gl many people have been looking for a new way to create QR codes for Google Forms. Goo.gl was convenient because you could shorten a URL and get a QR code in one place. My recommendation now for making a QR code for sharing Google Forms is to use QR […]

Add-ons, Jeopardy, and Carmen San Diego – The Month in Review

Good morning from Maine where we still have plenty of snow, but it is starting to melt fairly quickly. This month I had the privilege to speak at a couple of conferences and spend a week working with my favorite charter school in Key West, Florida. In April I’ll be speaking at three events starting […]

Math Keyboard and More Updates to Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms doesn’t get as much coverage on this blog as Google Forms, but that doesn’t mean that Microsoft Forms doesn’t have some great features. In fact, it has some features that I wish Google would add to Google Forms. In March Microsoft added some nice features to Microsoft Forms. For students and teachers, the […]

Last Weekend for Early Registration Discounts for Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp

The Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp is down to only ten seats remaining and only three days left to get the early registration discount. If you have been thinking about joining us this summer for two days of hands-on learning, now is the time to register. Here’s a list of ten things that you can […]

This Chrome Extension Helps You Tune Out Negativity on Social Media

I have long said (half jokingly) that YouTube comments are a lot like the graffiti you find on the walls of dive bar bathrooms. In other words, nothing good is found in them. There are some exceptions to that rule but they are few and far between. It seems that Google agrees with me because […]

Weebly vs. Google Sites

One of the questions that I am frequently asked revolves around selecting a platform for making a classroom website. There are two tools for that purpose that I recommend more than any others. Those are Weebly and Google Sites. There are a few factors to consider when choosing which one is right for you and […]

Change the Appearance of Any Page With Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles

During the Best of the Web webinar that I hosted yesterday I mentioned Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles product. It’s a great tool that lets you see the code behind any web page and change that code to display anything that you want in place of the original text and images. After you have made the changes […]

Google Earth and Maps Lessons for Five Subject Areas

Google Earth and Google Maps are two of my favorite educational technology tools that often are seen as only being useful for geography or history lessons. While they are good for lessons in those subjects, Google Earth and Google Maps can be used for lessons in other subject areas. Here are some ideas and resources […]

Check Out the Periodic Table of iOS 12 Apps for Education

Mark Anderson, known as ICT Evangelist on Twitter, recently published a handy guide to educational iPad apps that are updated for iOS 12. The guide is arranged in periodic table format. Rather than featuring elements, the table features iPad apps. The guide is further arranged into eight categories. The categories of apps on Mark’s Periodic […]

Webinar Recording – Best of the Web 2019

This afternoon I hosted a free webinar in which I highlighted some of my favorite new and updated ed tech tools. During the webinar I gave brief demonstrations of Google’s VR Tour Creator, Synth for podcasting, Bouncy Balls for monitoring noise, and programming augmented reality experiences through Metaverse. The webinar also included short demonstrations of […]

Six Good Lessons About Man’s Best Friend

As long-time readers of this blog know, I love dogs. Small dogs, big dogs, skinny dogs, and fat dogs, I love them all. And I have a particularly soft spot for older dogs in shelters (I’ve adopted three in the last decade). So it was with much interest that I watched the latest TED-Ed lesson […]

Things to Learn and Do at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp

For the last two days I have been featuring slides from my presentations at this week’s MACUL Conference in Detroit. Many of the things in those slides will be included in the hands-on learning experiences at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp that I’m hosting in July. Here’s a list of ten things that you […]

From Basic to Advanced Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom

My last presentation of the day the 2019 MACUL Conference was 5 Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom. Before the presentation started I introduced those who came early to cell phone crashing. 5 Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom is a progression of easy to difficult projects that can be adapted for use in almost […]

Introduction to AR & VR in Education

Worlds Are Colliding: Introduction to AR & VR in Education was my first presentation of the day today at the 2019 MACUL Conference. This presentation has been updated a bit since I gave it four weeks ago at a conference in Vancouver, B.C. The updates weren’t so much about the slides (although there were a […]

Best of the Web – Spring 2019 Edition

This morning at the 2019 MACUL Conference I gave the latest edition of my popular Best of the Web presentation. It includes some of my old standbys as well as some new tools. A few of the new things in the presentation include YouHue, VR Math, and Bo Clips. Some of the old standbys have updates that I […]

Fast & Fun Formative Assessment – Slides

I ended my day today at the 2019 MACUL Conference by giving a favorite presentation of mine, Fast & Formative Assessment. I always giving this presentation and, based on the level of audience participation, people who come to it enjoy it too. It’s intended to provide attendees with ideas for fun assessment strategies and some […]

Resources & Ideas for Classroom Podcasting

The first presentation that I gave today at the 2019 MACUL Conference was all about podcasting. In the presentation I shared some research about the benefits of students producing podcasts. And as you might expect, I shared some tools and strategies for creating podcasts with your students. The slides from my presentation, Community Podcasting, are […]

5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Lessons – Slides

Today, at the 2019 MACUL Conference I gave three presentations. The second of those presentations was 5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Lessons. This is a topic that combines two things that I enjoy, educational technology and being outdoors. You can take a look at the slides as they are embedded below. Some of […]

Recording of Yesterday’s Q&A

Yesterday afternoon I sat down to answer another batch of questions from you, my awesome readers! I broadcast the Q&A on my YouTube channel and on Facebook. If you missed it, the recording is now available here and as embedded below. Here is the list of questions that I answered during the broadcast: How can […]

5 Ways to Tell Stories With Maps

Maps can be great tools for supporting nonfiction and fiction stories. Being able to see the greater context of a location can go a long way toward helping students see the complete overview of a story. This can be helpful for learning about historical events, for supporting biographies, or for seeing the settings of fiction […]

How to Create a Map-based Story With StoryMap JS

StoryMap JS is a free tool that comes from the same people that offer the popular multimedia timeline tool called Timeline JS. On StoryMap JS you can create map-based stories. You create the story by matching slides to locations on a map. In the following video I demonstrate how to use StoryMap JS. Applications for […]

Now You Can Download Your Synth Podcasts

Synth is a free podcasting tool that I’ve been recommending since its launch last fall. It provides a simple way to create short podcasts that people can reply to with their own audio comments. Think of it kind of like Flipgrid for audio. Yesterday, Synth announced that you and your students can now download your […]

Making Animoto Videos With Purpose

It was almost eleven years ago that I discovered Animoto during my lunch break between two ninth-grade world geography classes. That day I tried Animoto while eating lunch and decided to have my next class make some short videos with it. In less than 30 minutes all of my students had made videos based on […]

Live Q&A Tomorrow

Tomorrow at 5pm Eastern Time I’ll be going live on my YouTube channel to answer another round of questions from readers like you. If you have a question about educational technology that you’d like me to answer you can put in the form below or just join the live broadcast and submit your question tomorrow. […]

A New Look for Google Drive on iOS and Android

The Google Drive iOS and Android apps are getting a new look! As announced by Google earlier this afternoon, the apps are going to have a “material design” interface that is similar to the one used in the web browser version of Google Drive. The updated Google Drive iOS and Android apps will have a […]

Three Good Mobile Blogging Activities for Students

One of my favorite uses of iPads, Android tablets, and cell phones is mobile blogging. Blogging apps make it possible for students to record their observations and those of others from almost anywhere. Here are three mobile blogging activities that you might have students try on your next field trip. 1. One-take and or quick-cut […]

News and Add-ons – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it’s not quite as frosty as it has been the last few weeks. According to the calendar spring is only a couple of weeks away. The many feet of snow in my backyard disguise that fact. I’m ready for spring which is why this week I tied a bunch of […]

297 Google Tools Tutorial Videos

About four years ago I started to put forth a concerted effort to publish more tutorial videos on my YouTube channel. In that time I have created nearly 1000 tutorials. 297 of those tutorials are about various products available to G Suite for Education users. You can find all 297 of my Google tools tutorial […]

How to Use Jamboard Without Owning a Jamboard

In Wednesday’s Practical Ed Tech Live episode I suggested having students use Google’s Jamboard to collaboratively create drawings. A couple people have emailed me to ask how that is done if you don’t own one of Google’s physical interactive whiteboards called Jamboards. The answer is that you can simply go to jamboard.google.com in your web browser, […]

Recording of Yesterday’s Live Q&A

Yesterday afternoon I hosted another edition of Practical Ed Tech Live! I answered a handful of questions from readers during the fourteen minute broadcast. The recording is now available to watch here and as embedded below. The questions that I answered appear below the video. Do you have a suggestion for a way to move […]

Here’s the Latest Thing I Learned About Myself Through Google Alerts

Like any good digital citizen I have Google Alerts set up for my name and related spellings of my name. Over the years I’ve learned through Google Alerts that there are karate experts, children’s authors, voice coaches, and theater critics who are also named Richard Byrne. Yesterday, I made a new discovery about “myself.” That […]

My Five Favorite Google Sheets Add-ons

Last week and through the beginning of this week I have been featuring my favorite Google Docs, Slides, and Forms add-ons. Today, it is time to share my favorite Google Sheets add-ons. These aren’t necessarily the most popular add-ons, but they are the ones that I think of first whenever I’m asked for recommendations for […]

How to Move Materials Between Your G Suite Accounts

Earlier this week a reader sent me the following question, “Do you have a suggestion for a way to move my folders from one Google drive to another one? I’m moving and want to take with me my work folders.” I do have a suggestion. The suggestion is to either download your folders as ZIP […]

5 Favorite Google Slides Add-ons

Last week I shared my favorite Google Forms add-ons. Yesterday, I shared my favorite Google Docs add-ons. So today I’m sharing my favorite Google Slides add-ons. Unsplash Unsplash Photos Google Slides add-on gives you instant access to Unsplash’s collection of free, royalty-free photographs. In the following video I demonstrate how to add the Add-on to […]

Five Good Places to Find Current Events Stories for Kids

For a couple of years I taught an elective that was all about current events. That was one of my favorite social studies teaching assignments because I enjoy listening to what students have to save about the news. CNN Student News was one of my go-to resources when I was teaching that current events course. […]

Six New G Suite Features for Teachers and Students

Every month Google adds new features to G Suite. Some features only matter to administrators and some features only matter to business users. The complete list of new features is always available on the G Suite Updates blog. If you don’t want to scroll through that blog, here’s a summary of the new features that […]

How to Save Time When Adding Comments to Google Docs

This morning I showed one of my favorite time-saving tricks to a great group of adult education teachers. The “trick” is to save time when adding comments to students’ Google Docs. You can do this with canned comments in Google Classroom and there are some Google Docs Add-ons that do similar things. The most straight-forward […]

My 5 Favorite Google Forms Add-ons

This morning I led a small workshop about creative uses for Google Forms and Google Slides. As often happens during those workshops someone asked me what my favorite Forms add-ons are. In no particular order, here are my five favorite Google Forms add-ons. Certify’em Certify’em is a Google Forms Add-on that makes it possible for you […]

Weather, Whiteboards, and Adventure – The Month in Review

The end of February has arrived. How did the second month of the year go for you? It was a busy one for me as I did bit speaking at conferences, hosted a few webinars, did some writing that will eventually appear in a book, and planned the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. In there […]

How to Create Your First Website With Google Sites

There are lots of excellent tools for creating your first classroom website. I’m often asked which one is the best one to use. My usual advice is to try Google Sites if your school uses G Suite for Education. I make that recommendation because when you sign into Google Sites with your G Suite account […]

Metaverse Studio – Create Your Own Augmented Reality Learning Experiences

Metaverse Studio is a tool for creating your own augmented reality learning experiences. I have been using Metaverse since its launch almost two years ago. Over those two years it has evolved to make it easy for any teacher or student to create augmented reality learning experiences. With Metaverse you can create interactive, augmented reality […]

Flowcharts Explained by Common Craft – And How to Make Them

Common Craft has released a new explanatory video all about flowcharts. The new video explains what a flowchart is, why they are used, what they can be used for, and the structure of a basic flowchart. Applications for Education After your students learn what flowcharts are and what they are used for, have them try […]

Only Two Days Left! – Super-early Registration Discount for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp

It is bitterly cold here in Maine today. But summer will be here eventually and it will be glorious! The sun will rise early and stay up late, the warm breeze will blow, and the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp will happen. If you’re interested in joining us for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp, […]

ClassHook’s Pause Prompts Let You Add Questions to Existing Videos

ClassHook is a great service for finding video clips to use in your classroom. ClassHook clips come from well-known movies and television shows. You can search for those clips according to subject area and topic. Earlier this month ClassHook introduced a new feature called Pause Prompts. Pause Prompts are questions that pop-up and pause a […]

Built to Last – A Look at What Works in Ed Tech

This morning I had the honor of giving the opening keynote at the SET-BC District Partner Conference in Vancouver. The title of my talk was Built to Last – What Works in Educational Technology. The purpose of the talk is to provide an overview of what makes some ed tech tools last for many years […]

How to Find More Free Images to Use in Adobe Spark Videos

Adobe Spark is one of my favorite free tools for creating videos. It works well on Chromebooks and any other laptop that is using a modern web browser. One the excellent features of Adobe Spark Video is the integrated image search tool. When students use images found through the integrated search, the image is automatically […]

A Comparison of Blogging Services for Teachers and Students

The Edublogs Student Blogging Challenge kicks-off two weeks from now. You don’t need to be an Edublogs user in order for your students to participate in the challenge. If you’re new to blogging or new to having students blog, Edublogs is a solid choice for a blogging platform. Edublogs isn’t the only option for student […]

Whiteboards, Valentines, and Adventure – The Week in Review

Good morning from Paris Hill, Maine where the snow has stopped and the sun is shining. It’s a perfect day to go snowshoe festival. That’s exactly what one of my daughters and I are going to do as soon as I finish writing this post. This week I had the pleasure of leading an all-day […]

ReadWorks Now Offers Illustrated eBooks

ReadWorks, a fantastic free service for ELA teachers, recently added new illustrated ebooks to their library. These illustrated ebooks can be used in the same way that all other ReadWorks ebooks can be used by you and your students. That includes distributing ebooks to your students through a ReadWorks classroom and or through Google Classroom. […]

FAQs About the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp

Earlier this week I sent out an email about super-early registration for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. Some people have already jumped on that offer and others have emailed me with questions about the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. Here’s a short list of the some of the frequently asked questions and their answers. […]

How to Use Keynote to Create Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

Last week I published a video about using Google Slides to create choose your own adventure stories. That prompted a couple of people to ask if Keynote and or PowerPoint can be used in the same manner. The answer to that question is yes. In the following video I demonstrate how you can use Keynote […]

Search, AR, VR, and Stories – The Week in Review

Good morning from cold and windy Maine. How windy? In the words of my two-year-old, “soooo windy!” Before sharing the list of the week’s most popular posts, I have an update about Free Technology for Teachers that will answer some of the questions that I’ve received lately. The reason for the lighter posting over the […]

How to Use Google Slides to Create Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

Google Slides has lots of little hidden features and overlooked tools that students can use to make all kinds creative presentations. One of those overlooked features is linking slides to other slides. If used correctly and with a little planning students can create choose-your-own-adventure stories by using the slide linking feature in Google Slides. That’s […]

Building Image-based Search Challenges

On Monday I wrote about a couple of image-based search challenges that I do with students. I use those challenges as a way to get students to think about all of the search tools and search strategies that they have at their disposal. To solve the challenges students need to combine strategies and tools. I […]

Search Strategies, PDFs, and the Super Bowl

Good morning from Maine where I’m not doing anything particularly exciting other than brewing up a batch of chili to have during the Super Bowl tomorrow night. Between stirs of the chili I’m working on materials for a bunch of workshops and keynotes that I have coming up over the next three months. The first […]

Share Rubrics and Other Improvements to Microsoft Teams for Edu

Back in August rubric grading was added to Microsoft Teams for Edu. With that feature enabled you can attach rubrics to assignments for students to see before and after completing an assignment. Equally important, you’ll be able to grade an assignment using that rubric without having to open multiple tabs or windows. This week at […]

Remove Image Backgrounds With PhotoScissors

PhotoScissors is a free image editing tool that you can use to remove the background from your images. PhotoScissors is available to use for free online and is available to download as desktop software. To use PhotoScissors online simply go to the site and upload a picture that you want to edit. After you have […]

Remind, Timelines, and Landmarks – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re eagerly anticipating the arrival of the biggest snow storm of the year. The forecast for where I live calls for 20″ of snow! As a skier, I can’t wait for it! As the owner of a long driveway and long walkways, I’m not looking forward to shoveling. This week […]

Picture Yourself in Front of Any Landmark With Remove.BG and Google Slides

Last weekend I published a video about Remove.bg and it has certainly been a hit with many readers. I’ve received a lot of comments and questions about it in my email, Facebook pages, and on Twitter. This morning a reader named Marni sent me a question that was typical of what I’ve been seeing this […]

New Features Added to Synth – Simple Podcasting for Students

Synth is one of my favorite new ed tech tools of the 2018-19 school year. If you’re familiar with what Synth does, it provides a simple way to create short podcasts that people can reply to with their own audio comments. Think of it kind of like Flipgrid for audio. You can experience a Synth […]

Anyone Can Learn to Type Thanks to Typing Club’s Accessibility Settings

Typing Club is a free typing instruction site that offers some unique features for students and teachers. One of those features that I covered in depth last year is the story-based typing practice activities. In those activities, demonstrated here, students unlock stories as they type. Unlocking the next part of the story provides and incentive […]

The History of Science

The History of Science is a Crash Course series that just came to my attention when I stumbled onto The Atomic Bomb: Crash Course History of Science #33. The entire series features videos hosted by Hank Green in which he explains how big questions in science were answered and how big breakthroughs were made. Like […]

Ten Awesome Updates to Microsoft’s Learning Tools

Microsoft’s free Learning Tools keep getting better. This week Microsoft announced ten updates that are either available now or will be available soon to Word and OneNote users. And if you’re not currently using Word or OneNote some of these updates just might make you give Word and OneNote a try. Here are some of […]

Taskade – A Feature-packed Task Management Tool

Taskade is a task management tool for individuals and teams. Like many task management tools you can create lists, share those lists, and check-off items when they’re completed. You can do that with Google Keep, OneNote, and a host of other task management tools. What makes Taskade different is the list of additional features that […]

Microsoft Forms is Adding Email Confirmation

Microsoft Forms is an excellent though often overlooked Microsoft tool. Like its better known rival, Google Forms, Microsoft Forms can be used to make quizzes and surveys. Last night (a strange time for a feature announcement) Microsoft’s Forms Blog carried the announcement that Forms would soon have an email confirmation option for Form respondents. When […]

A Good Place to Find Movies in the Public Domain

As I wrote in my guide to using media in classroom projects, using public domain media is your best bet when you can’t use media that you created yourself. In that guide I included a list of places to find public domain media. This morning, I discovered another good resource. That resource is PublicDomainMovie.net. On […]

A Quick & Easy Way to Create an Audio Recording

For the last decade Vocaroo has been my go-to tool whenever I’ve needed to make a short spoken audio recording. That might change now that I’ve started using Online-Voice-Recorder.com from 123Apps. Online-Voice-Recorder.com offers the same simplicity of Vocaroo plus a couple of features that I’ve always wished Vocaroo had. One of those features is the […]

These Chrome Extensions Show Vocabulary Words When You Open New Tabs

Opening a new Chrome tab so that you can check Facebook for “just a minute” is a dangerous game. If it’s not Facebook it could be any number of equally time-sucking sites like Pinterest, Twitter, or YouTube. In the past I’ve suggested using Recall Study Time to see a reminder whenever a new Chrome tab […]

Best of 2018 – Create a Video Lesson Completely in PowerPoint

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from May. One of the easier ways to get started making your own video lessons is found within […]

Drawings, Emojis, and Passwords – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where Santa is about to visit my daughters, again. We spent actual Christmas day traveling back from Florida where we visited grandma and uncles. So this morning my girls are having a second visit from Santa. (Santa’s reindeer take a long time to go from Florida to Maine, if you ask […]

Best of 2018 – How to Use Google’s VR Tour Creator

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from May. A few hours ago Google announced the launch of their new VR Tour Creator. This free […]

Best of 2018 – Five Options for Creating Animated Videos on Chromebooks

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from May. Creating animated videos can be a great way for students to explain a science concept, to […]

Best of 2018 – Top 5 Choices for Making Multimedia Quizzes

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from March. Over the years I have tried and written reviews of dozens of tools that teachers can […]

How to Make Your Own Emojis – And How to Use Them in a Lesson

During the summer Tony Vincent helped me see emojis as more than just annoying symbols that people use in text messages and social media posts. He did that with a slick graphic that he created and shared on Twitter. In the graphic, seen here, he created a game in which students have to decipher school […]

Best of 2018 – Interactive Periodic Table of Elements

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from February. There are lots of websites offering interactive or dynamic periodic tables. One that has been around […]

Best of 2018 – Ten Overlooked Google Docs Features

This week is a vacation week for the vast majority of readers of this blog. As I do at this time every year, I’m going to republish some of the most popular posts of 2018. Here’s one from January. Google Docs has a lot of features that new users often don’t notice. Some these are […]

Readers’ Choice Winners

Last week I posted the final nominations for the Free Technology for Teachers Readers’ Choice awards. The final voting closed over the weekend and the results are in. 2018 Free Technology for Teachers Readers’ Choice awards.  Best Virtual Reality App Google Expeditions Best Augmented Reality App Anatomy 4D  Best Digital Portfolio App/ Website Google Sites […]

Canvas – A Good Alternative to Google Drawings for Tablet Users

Canvas is a new drawing tool from Google. Canvas is a great alternative to Google Drawings for iPad and Android tablet users. Canvas lets anyone create a drawing in his or her web browser by simply going to Canvas.apps.chrome. Once there you can start drawing on a blank canvas. There are four drawing tools that […]

How to Use Flipgrid’s Android App

Based on the number of videos that I have made about it in the last month, it is not a secret that I think Flipgrid is a fantastic tool for gathering feedback from students. One of the reasons that I like it so much is that it works equally well and is equally easy for […]

How to Use Flipgrid on an iPad

Last week I published a detailed tutorial on how to get started using Flipgrid in your classroom. In that tutorial I focused on using Flipgrid in the web browser on Mac, Windows, and Chrome OS computers. Students can also use Flipgrid on iPads. The Flipgrid iPad app is intended for student use not for teacher […]

Six Resources for Learning About the Science of Flight

Yesterday marked the 115th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first successful airplane flight. That reminded me that I have a bunch of interesting resources for learning about the development of and science of flight. The Wright Brothers – The Invention of the Aerial Age is another good timeline for teaching about the developments made by the […]

Vote for Your Favorite Ed Tech Tools of 2018

Last week I asked you to nominate your favorite educational technology tools of the year. The nominations are in and the final voting is now open. You can vote for your favorites in the form embedded below. (I removed the categories of favorite iPad and Android apps because there weren’t any apps that received more […]

How to Use a Spreadsheet to Create a Map

Last week when I posted about Google closing Fusion Tables I mentioned that some of the functions of Fusion Tables can be replicated in Google Sheets. An example of that is creating a map based on the data in a Google Sheet. Google’s My Maps tool lets you import a Google Sheet and have the […]

Kids World Atlas – An iPad App for Learning About Animals Around the World

Last week I wrote a review of the Kids U.S. Atlas iPad app. That app offers an interactive map of the United States that kids can tap on to learn about 25 animals that are indigenous to the United States. Kids World Atlas is the companion app to the Kids U.S. Atlas. Kids World Atlas […]

21 Places to Find Media for Classroom Projects

Yesterday, people who subscribe to the Practical Ed Tech newsletter received a copy of my guide to finding copyright-friendly media for use in classroom projects. The guide includes explanations of Public Domain, Creative Commons, and Fair Use. In the section on using self-created media I included an example of how I unintentionally committed a copyright […]

Trash, Math, and Expeditions – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where it was a balmy 43F today. It was a perfect day for a hike in western Maine. There’s something about the fresh air that invigorates my body and mind. A walk in the woods almost always inspires new blog post ideas in my mind. Today, was not an exception to […]

Kids US Atlas – Learn About Animals of the United States

Kids US Atlas is an iPad app that features an interactive map of the United States. On the interactive map you will find twenty-five animals that are indigenous to the United States. Tap on the animals to read about them, to hear about them, and to watch videos about them. The text passages about the […]

How to Use Flipgrid – From Sign-up to Video Responses

Flipgrid is one of the most popular ed tech tools to emerge in the last couple of years. It can be used as tool for video-based formative assessment, it can be used as an alternative to a classroom YouTube channel, and it can be used to connect classrooms around the world. Those are just a […]

Five Short Lessons About the Shortest Day of the Year

The winter solstice is about a week away. I always like to go outside to snowshoe or ski on the solstice just to say to the world that a lack of daylight isn’t going to ruin my fun. Not everyone feels the same way about the shortest day of the year. And if you’re looking […]

Reminder – Empty Your Google Drive Trash Bin

People who use Google Drive through a G Suite for Education account don’t have to worry about running out of storage space as G Suite for Education provides unlimited storage. But if you use Google Drive in a personal account (gmail) or through a business account, you do need to worry about running out of […]

Try Pexels Videos to Find Green Screen Backgrounds

Making green screen videos can be a fun way for students to share what they’ve learned through research about a place or event. And it’s a great way for kids to make their own weather forecast and newscast videos. Last week on Twitter I was asked where I go to find video clips to use […]

Free Math Lesson Plans from NASA

Space Math is a NASA website containing space-themed math lessons for students in elementary school through high school. You can search for lessons according to grade level or mathematics topic. The bulk of the materials seem to be PDFs of directions for carrying out the lesson plans. The exception to that pattern being the middle school (grades […]

Speakd – Listen to Your Google Docs

Speakd is a free Google Docs add-on that will read your documents aloud. When you have Speakd installed in Google Docs you can open the add-on and press play at any time to hear your document read aloud. Unlike some other text-to-speech tools, Speakd doesn’t require you to copy and paste text to hear it […]

How to Download Google Docs

It is not a secret that I’m a devoted Google Docs user. Since the first time that I tried it, I’ve done nearly all of my writing in Google Documents. Even when I was writing for a magazine that required all submissions to be in Word format, I wrote in Google Documents. I was able […]

NPR is Hosting a Student Podcast Challenge

Thanks to Ms. Meade on Twitter, last night I learned about NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge. The challenge is open to students in fifth through twelfth grade. To enter the challenge students have to create a podcast that is three to twelve minutes long. Their podcasts can’t include music so it really is a contest about […]

How to Use Adobe Spark to Create Videos

Since the first day that it launched two and a half years ago, I knew that Adobe Spark would be a great tool for students to use to create videos. Like any good product it has evolved over the last couple of years by adding more features without eliminating the core features. Some of the […]

How to Add Videos to Google Slides Without Using YouTube

This morning I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if it was possible for his students to add their personal videos to Google Slides presentations without having to use YouTube. His plan is for students to collaborate to create a Google Slides presentation about a 4-H event and he wants students […]

QR Codes, Music, and CoRubrics – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where I’m home after a great few days at the LACUE conference in New Orleans. November was a busy month as I hosted three professional development courses through Practical Ed Tech and was a featured presenter at two conferences. Thank you to everyone who participated in one of my courses or […]

Turn Text to Speech With the Voicepods Chrome Extension

A couple of months ago I discovered a new text to speech tool called Voicepods. When I first tried it and wrote about it Voicepods would only create voice recordings based on text that you wrote. This week Voicepods launched a free Chrome extension that will let you have the text of any webpage read […]

Dear Colleagues, Can We Please Stop Sharing These Things?

Can we teach critical thinking and good digital citizenship practices if we don’t use them ourselves? I’m asking because every week I see another educator in my social networks share a Facebook scam. Here are the last two that I saw shared by people who have administrative roles in schools. A posting by a page […]

Slides and Notes from LACUE

I’ve just wrapped-up two days of giving presentations at the LACUE conference in New Orleans. A huge thank you to the conference organizers for inviting me and to everyone who came to my presentations. If you’re curious about what I spoke about at the conference, my slides and brief notes are included below. Best of […]

Sites in VR – The VR App for Those Without VR Headsets

Sites in VR is a free Android and iOS app that provides a 1700 virtual reality views of significant landmarks around the world. The app is a good one for those who would like to experience a bit of virtual reality without having to use a virtual reality headset. Sites in VR provides imagery that […]

Google Classroom is Now Open to All G Suite Domains

Today, Google announced that Google Classroom is now available to all G Suite domains including non-profit and business domains. This follows last year’s addition of Google Classroom to personal Google accounts. Today’s announcement essentially makes Google Classroom available to anyone and any entity that wants to use it. I wasn’t able to turn on Classroom […]

Google is Removing Annotations from YouTube Videos

Eighteen months ago Google removed the annotations editor from YouTube. Today, I logged into the YouTube editor and saw an announcement that Google is going to remove all existing annotations from YouTube videos on January 15th. Google states that viewers don’t like annotations and typically close twelve of them for every one that they do […]

11 Years Later…

On this day eleven years I published my first blog post here on Free Technology for Teachers. I had a little bit of an idea of what I wanted to do and no idea that eleven years and nearly 14,000 posts later I would still be doing it. Some of you have been with me […]

How to Create Custom Greeting Cards on Storyboard That

A few years ago Storyboard That introduced a great little feature for making greeting cards. Initially, it was only available for a few holidays, but now is available for all of the major greeting card holidays. This is a feature that anyone can use on Storyboard That. In the following video I demonstrate how to […]

How to Use Guest Mode in Flipgrid

A few weeks ago Flipgrid added a new feature called Guest Mode. Guest Mode allows you to give parents access to view a specific topic within a Flipgrid grid. Guest Mode also provides the option for parents to record a video to be added to a specific topic within a Flipgrid grid. Watch my following […]

Backchannels, Sounds, and Thanksgiving – The Week in Review

Good morning from snowy Maine. I hope that all of you who celebrated Thanksgiving this week had a wonderful holiday with family and friends. Based on the number of “out of office” emails I received this week, a fair number of you were off all week. Earlier this week I hosted the first night of […]

What If You Stopped Sleeping? – Video Lesson

As the parent of a two year old and a one year old I know a thing or two about operating on little sleep. There are times when I wonder if I’ll ever get a full night’s sleep again. Which begs the question, “what if I stopped sleeping?” That question is the focus of an […]

Human Body Study Jams

Scholastic Study Jams are slideshows and animations that provide a short overview of various topics in science and math. The Human Body Study Jams from Scholastic provide short overviews of topics in anatomy and physiology. There are six Human Body Study Jams; skeletal system, nervous system, digestive system, respiratory system, muscular system, and circulatory system. Applications for […]

Black Friday Sale on Practical Ed Tech Webinars

One of the ways that I keep Free Technology for Teachers running is through the sales of professional development webinars on my other site, Practical Ed Tech. In the last year I hosted more than three dozen professional development webinars on that site. For Black Friday and Cyber Monday I’m offering the six most popular […]

How to Create a Backchannel on Padlet

Padlet is one of the most versatile tech tools that a teacher can have in his or her toolbox. From making KWL charts to exit tickets to simply posting ideas in a shared online space, Padlet can be used in nearly every grade level and subject area. And your notes aren’t limited to just text […]

Bensound – Free Music for Video Projects

On Tuesday I wrote about the impending closure of the Free Music Archive. In that post I shared some other sites to find free music to use in your multimedia projects. Thanks to an email from Kari Kakeh I’ve learned about another good site to find free music. That site is called Bensound. Bensound offers […]

Wakelet Now Lets You Copy and Build Upon Collections

Wakelet is free bookmarking and note-taking service that I’ve been using since April when I started looking for alternatives to Padlet. On Wakelet you can create collection and sub-collections of notes, bookmarks, and pictures. You can add those materials to your Wakelet collections through a browser extension or by adding them directly to your collection […]

Two Good Places to Find Classrooms to Connect With

Last week I ran a guest post written by Sarah Fromhold containing great tips for hosting Mystery Skype or Mystery Hangout activities. Since then I’ve fielded a few emails from readers who were looking for other ways that they can connect their classrooms with other classrooms. There are two things that I’ve recommended to those folks. […]

The Free Music Archive is Closing – But Not All is Lost

For the better part of the last decade the Free Music Archive has been one of my go-to places to find free music to use video projects. Unfortunately, the end is near for the Free Music Archive. Earlier this month the hosts of the FMA announced that it would be shutting down at the end […]

Fiction vs. Non-fiction – A Canva Infographic

This morning I was browsing through Canva’s gallery of free design templates looking for one to use for an upcoming course that I’m teaching. That’s when I stumbled into a this Fiction vs. Non-Fiction infographic template. As you can see below, the template could be printed as used as is. Better yet, you could have […]

5 Free Thanksgiving Lesson Plans You Can Use This Week

Thanksgiving is just a few days away. If you’re an elementary school teacher who has school this week, Storyboard That has five free Thanksgiving lesson plans that you can use. As you might expect, all of the Thanksgiving lesson plans that Storyboard That offers are centered around the use of storyboards and artwork. The five […]

Guests, Snow, and Feedback – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’ve had two small snowstorms this week. They haven’t been big snowfalls, but they have produced enough snow that all the leaves I didn’t rake won’t be discovered again until spring. On the upside, ski season is here and I’m looking forward to getting my oldest daughter on skis this […]

Three Tools for Creating Custom Maps Without a Google Account

Google’s My Maps is a great tool for designing custom maps. The problem with it is that students can only save their work if they have Google accounts. If your school uses G Suite for Education that’s probably not a problem, but it is a problem for students who don’t have G Suite accounts. If […]

A Digital Differentiation Model

This week I am hosting some guest bloggers. This entry is from Danielle Lagnese. Personalizing learning in my classroom four years ago was challenging. To say the least. Imagine eight red buckets from Dollar Tree filled with binder clipped packets of worksheets. We did the best we could, but humidity curled the papers beyond recognition. […]

BookSnaps, Passage Snaps, and a Flex-time PD Model

This week I am hosting some guest bloggers. This entry is from Jerry Schneider who shares a couple of good examples of using a “flex-time PD model.” In an effort to make professional development more flexible and adaptable to the needs of our teachers, our school district is trying something new. Teachers in our school […]

CoRubrics – An Add-on to Facilitate Assessment Among Students

This week I am hosting guest posts. This one was authored by Jaume Feliu at the Salas i Xandri High School in Sant Quirze del Vallès, near Barcelona. More and more rubrics are coming into the classroom for assessment. Rubrics are tools that encourage formative assessment, especially when students use them for self-assessment and peer […]

Teaching Online – What Does it Take?

This week I am hosting guest blog posts. This one is from Nik Peachey. I have been following Nik’s work for many years and I was flattered that he wanted to guest post on my little blog. As the market for online tutoring and particularly for online English lessons continues to grow at rapid pace, […]

Meaningful Reading Engagement with Quote Cards

This is a guest post from Noah Geisel. “Quote cards were fun way to be more creative with it and manipulate it instead of just writing it down.” — Cruz, 20. My Digital Media & Learning class is driven by critical thinking and analysis. There’s a lot of reading and reading reflection, and I wanted students to […]

Great Ideas for Mystery Skype & Hangouts

This week I am welcoming some guest bloggers. This one is from Sarah Fromhold. Mystery Skype is a concept that first began around 2011. The premise is that students Skype with another class somewhere in the world, and each class tries to guess the location of the schools by asking yes or no questions. When […]

Edji – A Great Tool for Literacy and Critical Thinking

This week I am welcoming some guest bloggers. This one is from Eric Hills. As a tech coach, I love spending time trying to find tools that are easy to use, can enhance student learning, and are engaging for students. Edji checks all three of those boxes for me. I’ve learned about so many amazing […]

My Party PBL – Technology and Project Based Learning

This week I am welcoming some guest bloggers. This one is from Debbie Carona. The PBL, My Party Election, originally written by Mike Kaechele, became a part of the U.S. History curriculum for 8th graders at St. John’s Episcopal School Dallas during the Presidential Election of 2016. Students worked in groups with politically like-minded teammates […]

Music, Feedback, and Flowcharts – The Week in Review

Good evening from Nebraska where I’m visiting my good friends Kris and Beth Still. Some of you may remember that Beth was the person who organized the NECC Newbie Project back in 2009 to get me to the NECC (now called ISTE) conference. We were relative strangers before then but good friends since then. Wherever […]

Is Your Feedback Really Effective? – This Google Docs Add-on Will Tell You

Anyone who has ever spent a Sunday afternoon grading essay after essay has at some point wondered, “did anyone listen when I explained homophones?” This usually happened to me around the 27th essay of the day. It’s at about that point that it’s a fair question to ask, “is my feedback effective?” That’s the question […]

Add Adobe Spark Creations Into Book Creator eBooks

Adobe Spark and Book Creator are two of my favorite multimedia production tools. And now you can combine the two! Earlier this week Book Creator announced that you can now embed videos made with Adobe Spark into the pages of Book Creator ebooks. But it’s not just Adobe Spark videos that you can embed into […]

Build a Body – An Interactive Biology Lesson

Spend a few minutes using Build a Body and it is easy to understand why it was recognized by the National Science Foundation. In Sponge Lab Biology’s Build a Body students construct a human body system-by-system. To build a body students drag and drop into place the organs and bones of a human body. Each […]

This Is What an Astronaut’s Camera Sees

What an Astronaut’s Camera Sees is an impressive narrated video of images of Earth as captured from space. The video is narrated by Dr. Justin Wilkinson from NASA. The video includes images of deserts in Africa, Sicily, the Kamchatka Peninsula, China, the Zagros Mountains, Australia, the Great Salt Lake, and the Andes Mountains. The video […]

How GPS Works

From finding a place to eat in a new city to navigating a detour to geocaching, GPS is an amazing technology. But just how does GPS work? NASA’s eClips channel on YouTube has a good student-friendly explanation of how GPS works. Applications for Education Geocaching is a fun activity for students to do to learn about latitude […]

Visme – Great Tools for Making Flowcharts and Mind Maps

Visme is a graphic design tool that I’ve been using off and on for the last five years. Back when I started using Visme it was known as EWC Presenter and it was a good tool for designing slides and infographics. Recently, Visme added new flowchart design templates and tools. The flowcharts that you make […]

Five Places to Find Free Music and Sounds for Multimedia Projects

From adding music to a slideshow to adding sound effects to videos to bumper music for podcasts, there are plenty of classroom projects that require free audio files. If you find yourself or your students in need of some free music or sound effects, take a look at these sites that offer thousands of free […]

A New and Easy ClassDojo Login for Students

Earlier this fall ClassDojo added new features to their digital portfolio tools for students and teachers. The highlight of those was the option for students to select the items that they want included in their portfolios. ClassDojo calls these student-led portfolios. Today, ClassDojo added a new way for students to sign into their portfolios. Beginning […]

MyBib is Back

The last time that I wrote about MyBib it was to report that I didn’t have any information about when it would be back online, if ever. That was exactly one month ago. This morning I received an email from a reader named Eliza who excitedly told me that MyBib is back! As soon as […]

Writing Checkers, Images, and Rain – The Week in Review

Good morning from soggy Maine where the deluge of rain has canceled my plans for playing outside this morning. So I’ll settle for riding my bike on an indoor trainer. It’s not the most fun way to exercise, but it is effective. Wherever you are this weekend I hope that you get time to do […]

How to Use QR Codes to Share Animated Videos

Earlier this week I answered an email from a reader who had heard someone talk about using QR codes so that people could watch animations made by students. Not having heard that person speak or seen the actual presentation my guess was that the process went like this; students wrote stories, students then made videos […]

How to Insert Equations and Special Characters Into Google Documents

Here’s a question that I get a lot when I conduct on-site G Suite for Education training, “is there an easy way to add math symbols to documents?” In fact, there is an easy way to add mathematics symbols, equations, and other special characters to Google Documents. To do that simply open the Insert drop-down […]

How to Change the Color of Google Calendar Events

This week I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a way to add background images in the new (current) version of Google Calendar. Unfortunately, the current version of Google Calendar doesn’t have a native capability for adding background images. However, you can change the color of the events that are displayed […]

Guest Bloggers Wanted

Once a year I host guest bloggers for a week. This year I’m doing that during the week of November 11th. In past years I have had some awesome guest bloggers who went to to boost their own blogs by having their work appear on Free Technology for Teachers. If you would like to be […]

Storyboards, Pictures, and Classics – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it should be a nice morning for playing in leaf piles before the snow flies this evening. But before we go outside to play the sun needs to rise and I need to finish writing this week’s week-in-review. I started this week by speaking at the CECA/CASL annual conference in […]

Can You Trust YouTube “Influencers?” – A Media Literacy Lesson

Talk to almost any teenager and you’ll quickly learn that they spend more time watching YouTube videos than they do watching traditional television programming. And many of those teenagers have a favorite YouTube “star” to watch. Some of those stars are being paid thousands of dollars to include products in their videos. That often happens […]

Storybird – Fantastic Art to Inspire Writing

Earlier this week I was browsing for new Chrome extensions to try when I stumbled upon the Chrome extension for Storybird. The extension itself doesn’t do much more than just direct you to the Storybird website. But trying the extension did remind me of the great art that you can find in Storybird. The artwork […]

Your Life in Comics – 100 Writing Prompts from Make Beliefs Comix

Make Beliefs Comix is a nice service on which students can create their own comics. But there is more to Make Beliefs Comix than just comic creation tools. Make Beliefs Comix offers free ebooks containing many writing prompts for students. Your Life in Comics is the latest ebook released by Make Beliefs Comix. The ebook […]

GoTalk – Simple Video Conferencing for Small Groups

GoTalk is a new video conferencing system designed for small groups. The GoTalk system is easy to use. Part of the reason why GoTalk is easy to use is that it doesn’t require you to register to get started. To get started simply go to the GoTalk site, select a URL for your conference room, […]

PicLits – Using Pictures to Inspire Creative Writing

PicLits is an excellent site for finding creative writing prompts. PicLits aims to provide inspiration for writing short stories. PicLits tries to reach this goal by providing users with images upon which they can build their writing. To get writers started, PicLits provides a list of words which can be dragged and dropped into sentence form. If you don’t want to […]

VR, Certificates, and Google Earth – The Week in Review

Moose Tracks Good evening from Maine where it was a beautiful fall day. It was a perfect day for playing outside which is what we did to celebrate our youngest daughter’s first birthday. I hope that you had a great Saturday too! Tomorrow I will be speaking at the CECA/CASL conference in Connecticut. I will […]

TED-Ed Explains Why Students Should Read Classics

A few weeks ago TED-Ed published a lesson titled Why Should You Read Edgar Allan Poe? It now appears that lesson was the first in a series of lessons designed to explain and encourage students to read some classics. Since the Poe lesson was published TED-Ed has published similar lessons about Don Quixote, Waiting for […]

Three Ways to Make Social Media Profiles for Historical and Literary Characters

Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was looking for a way that her students could create fake Facebook and other social media profiles based on historical and literary characters. The tool that I used to recommend for creating that kind of fake Facebook profile hasn’t been reliable in recent years. […]

How to Create Storyboard Templates in Google Slides or PowerPoint

Creating a storyboard is an excellent way for students to plan video projects. Storyboards provide a frame-by-frame outline of the plot of a video. Even if your students are going to use tools like Adobe Spark or Powtoon that have frame-by-frame video editing, it is still helpful to have students plan their videos before jumping […]

How to Set Start and End Times for Videos in Google Slides

This morning I answered an email from a reader who had a question about ytCropper. The link ytCropper link for her cropped video wasn’t working in Google Slides. My solution was to not use ytCropper and instead just use the built-in formatting tools in Google Slides. The video formatting tools in Google Slides includes the […]

Plickers Brings Back Individual Student Reports!

Back in September the folks at Plickers, a popular student-response service, released a bunch of updates to their mobile apps and website. Some of those updates, like easier display of questions have been popular. Some of those updates were panned by teachers. Fortunately, the Plickers team has been responsive to the voices of their users […]

JotForm – A Better Way to Create Online Forms

Disclosure: JotForm is an advertiser on FreeTech4teachers.com If you have ever looked at a form on a web page and thought, “I’d like my forms to look like that,” then JotForm is the service you need to try. JotForm is a service for making fillable online forms. You can use JotForm to create registration forms, […]

New Accessibility Options in Flipgrid and Other Microsoft Products

This week Microsoft unveiled a slew of new accessibility options for the services that teachers and students use most. One of those features is the inclusion of Immersive Reader in Flipgrid. Immersive Reader is a free service that students can use to have text read aloud to them. Immersive Reader not only reads aloud it […]

Wakelet Makes it Easier to Organize Bookmarks

Wakelet is quickly becoming a popular choice amongst teachers who want to create collections of notes that can include text, videos, links, and pictures. Students can use it for the same purpose and share their collections with their teachers. This week Wakelet added a new feature to their Chrome extension. The Wakelet Chrome extension now […]

How to Design a Custom Certificate in Google Slides

On Monday I shared tutorials for two ways to send personalized certificates via Google Forms and Google Sheets. What I didn’t include in those tutorials was how to create a custom certificate without using the default certificate template found in Google Slides. In the following video I demonstrate how you can design your own customized […]

A New Vertical Ruler and New Margin Settings in Google Docs

Google has added two new formatting features to Google Docs. First, there is now a vertical ruler that you can use to evenly space the rows in tables in your Google Documents. Second, you can now adjust the size of the margins in your headers and footers.  Both of these changes will be helpful to […]

Halloween Articles for ELA Lessons

ReadWorks is a popular service that offers a huge library of standards-aligned ELA lesson plans for K-12. You can search the ReadWorks library according to grade level and topic. Throughout the year ReadWorks publishes curated collections to align with holidays and other major events. This week ReadWorks published a collection of forty-two articles and lesson […]

How to Import Files Into Google Earth

In my previous post I shared the steps that I took to find a Google Earth file that contains more than 550 ancient locations in ancient Greece. At the end of the video in that post I demonstrated how I was able to display those locations in Google Earth. That method can be used for […]

How to Send Personalized Certificates via Google Forms or Google Sheets

From perfect attendance to volunteerism to honor roll there are lots of occasions during the school year for schools to issue certificates to students. It used to be that to personalize certificates for students you would have to manually enter their names on the certificates that you were going to print for them. Today, there […]

One Click Provides More Room to Work in Google Docs

I just spent the last three weeks working with students and teachers who had Chromebooks as their primary computers throughout the school day. One of the things that I showed some of the students during that time was how to expand the size of the Google Docs editor so that they had more screen space […]

60 Second Adventures in Religion – Animated Explanations

Some days I scroll through Feedly or Facebook and come across things that immediately make me think of a current or former colleague. That is exactly what happened when I saw the Open University’s 60 Second Adventures in Religion videos. I’m quite sure that my former colleague Bree will be interested in using these videos as […]

Eight Options for Creating Screencasts on Chromebooks

Recording screencasts is one relatively easy way to get started making videos in your classroom. Today, I helped some middle school students make screencasts in which they explained the animations they made to represent forms of energy. Those students used Screencastify on their Chromebooks to make their videos. But Screencastify isn’t the only screencasting tool […]

Google Has Added a Captioning System to Google Slides

Today, Google announced a new Google Slides feature that some teachers are going to love. Google Slides now has a real-time captioning system. This system works when you are presenting your slides (full screen) and have a microphone connected to your computer. When you turn on the captioning option Google will automatically create and display […]

YouTube, Math, and Media – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where I was home for the day before having to fly back to Florida tomorrow morning. Next week I’ll be finishing up my third week working with the awesome teachers at Sigsbee Charter School in Key West. If you would like to have me work with your school this year, please […]

Wakelet Has a New Sections Option

Wakelet is a free bookmarking and note-sharing service that I first tried back in April when I started to look for new alternatives to Padlet. On Wakelet you can create collections of notes that can include text, videos, links, and pictures. The options for adding pictures are linking to an online image, uploading an image, […]

A Fun and Free State & Country Capital Identification Game

Capital Toss is a free geography game from ABCya. The game has a state capitals mode and a country capitals mode. In both modes of the game works the same way. The name of a state or country appears at the bottom of the screen and three rows of capital names scroll across the top. When […]

Voicepods Has New Editing Features – Turn Text Into Voice Recordings

A few weeks ago I introduced a new tool called Voicepods. Voicepods is a service that will create voice recordings based on the text that you write. The voice recording that is generated from your text can be listened to online and you can download it as an MP3 to use wherever MP3 playback is […]

FAQs About Upcoming Practical Ed Tech Courses

This weekend I have answered a bunch of questions about the two Practical Ed Tech courses that are starting next week. I figure that if even one person asks there are probably a few others who are curious about the same topic too. Here’s a list FAQs about the Practical Ed Tech courses that are […]

Create a Screencast Within Padlet

Back in June I published a video that demonstrated ten types of notes that you can add to Padlet walls. Thanks to Dan Methven I recently learned that there is another new way to add notes to Padlet walls. The new type of note is a screencast video. If you install Padlet’s Chrome extension you […]

Classroom, Math, and Instagram – The Month in Review

It’s the end of September. By now everyone has been back in school for at least a month. I hope that the start of school year has gone well for you. As we head into October here’s a look back at the most popular posts of September, 2018. A quick reminder, in October I’m hosting […]

Seterra Offers Science Quiz Games

Disclosure: Seterra is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com A couple of weeks ago I featured Seterra’s hundreds of geography quiz games that are available in more than thirty languages. But geography isn’t the only subject that Seterra offers quiz games about. Seterra also offers games about human anatomy, plant cells, animal cells, and microscopes. Just […]

Sheets, Math, and Timelines – The Week in Review

Good morning from Key West, Florida where I have spent the week working with the great staff of Sigsbee Charter School. And while it is great to be in the sunshine state, it’s also hard to be away from my little family for so long too. Thanks to Skype we’re able to see each other […]

Manufacture Your Future – A Discovery Virtual Field Trip

Next Friday at 1pm EDT Discovery Education is a hosting a virtual field trip titled Manufacture Your Future. The virtual field trip will take students to the Arconic plant in Texas where they’ll learn about the 3D printing in the context of the aerospace industry. During the virtual field trip students will hear from engineers […]

The LOC Launches the National Screening Room Online

The Library of Congress has a new online collection called the National Screening Room. The National Screening Room currently contains 287 videos. The videos are digital copies of films made in the 19th and 20th centuries. You can browse the collection by date, location of the filming, and subject. You can also search for videos […]

5 Ways to Use Google Slides Besides Making Presentations

Google Slides has come a long way since the first time that I had students use it a decade ago. Many features have been added in that time. Many of those features make it possible to use Google Slides for more than just making slideshows. Here are five ways that you and your students can […]

Facebook, Backchannels, and Math – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it feels like fall. Starting on Monday week I’ll be working with the Sigsbee Charter School in Key West, Florida for most of the next few weeks which means that I’ll miss a good chunk of my favorite season here in Maine. That’s why today I plan to soak up […]

Three Apps to Explore the Potential of Augmented Reality

On Friday I am giving a presentation about augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality in education. If you’re unsure of the differences between the three, take a look at my explanatory video and slideshow on the topic. As a part of the presentation that I am giving I will be demonstrating a few augmented […]

7 Reasons to Try Using Backchannels in Your Classroom

A couple of the most popular posts that I have published lately were about creating backchannel chats to use in your classroom. In response to those posts some readers have sent questions asking for more explanation of why they should try tools like Backchannel Chat or Yo Teach. Here are some reasons to try using […]

Anchor Adds New “Smart” Background Music to Podcasts

Anchor is a podcast recording and publishing tool that I have been writing about all year. I started writing about it because using it is the easiest way to record, edit, and publish podcasts. I’ve continued to write about it because the new features seem to be added every month. This month’s new Anchor feature […]

How to Create a Progress Tracker With Google Forms and Sheets

Last week I wrote about using Google Forms and a pivot table in Google Sheets to create reading logs and other progress trackers. Over the weekend I received a lot of emails from folks asking various clarifying questions on how to use the pivot table functions. To answer those questions I recorded the following tutorial […]

Find Free Photos by Searching on Every Stock Photo

Regular readers of this blog probably know that my go-to places for free images are Photos for Class, Pixabay, and Unsplash. But those aren’t the only places that you can find free images to use multimedia projects. Rather than lucky-dipping through other sites you can just head to Every Stock Photo for find a picture. Every Stock […]

Math, Instagram, and Civics – The Week in Review

Good afternoon from Maine where it is a beautiful late summer day. We just got back from a great morning at the Oxford County Fair where my girls enjoyed seeing pigs, goats, sheep, cows, horses, and even an emu! While my daughters nap I am working on some new blog posts. This week nearly 500 […]

Two Ways to Use Google Sheets to Create Reading Logs

Google Forms and Google Sheets are my go-to tools when I need to collect and organize data. One of the things that I often help teachers do with data in Google Forms and Sheets is create progress trackers or reading logs. There are two ways that you can do this. The first method outlined below […]

By Request – Get Organized With Google Classroom and More

A few weeks ago on PracticalEdTech.com I hosted a webinar titled Get Organized With Google Classroom, Calendar, and Keep. 75 people joined that webinar to learn all about the new features of Google Classroom and how they can be used in their classrooms this year. In the last couple of weeks I’ve heard from many […]

Voicepods – Automatically Turn Text Into Voice Recordings

Voicepods is a neat service that will create voice recordings based on the text that you write. Voicepods offers eight voices in which you can have your text read-aloud. The voice recording that is generated from your text can be listened to online and you can download it as an MP3 to use wherever MP3 […]

Free Webinars from the Council for Economic Education

The Council for Economic Education has recently published their fall schedule of free professional development webinars for teachers. The series begins next week on September 18th and runs weekly through December 12th. All of the webinars are scheduled for 7pm Eastern Time. You can register for one webinar or all of the webinars. There is […]

Seterra – Hundreds of Interactive Geography Games in More Than 30 Languages

Seterra is a service that offers interactive geography games in more than thirty languages. I used the service for years with some of my own students. In the last couple of years Seterra has evolved from a desktop application to a web and mobile app service. You can play Seterra games in the web browser […]

Webinar Recording – Making Great Handouts With Storyboard That

Yesterday afternoon I hosted a webinar titled Making Great Handouts With Storyboard That Templates. Almost 500 people registered for the webinar! If you wanted to attend but couldn’t make it at the scheduled time or you’re just reading about it for the first time, you can now watch the recording of the webinar on my […]

Share Math Playground Activities to Google Classroom

Math Playground offers hundreds of free math games and interactive modules for elementary school students. I’m not sure if this is old news or not, but this morning I was looking at some of the games and noticed that you can share the games directly to Google Classroom. To share a Math Playground activity to […]

Two Interactive Copies of the Constitution for Constitution Day

Next Monday is Constitution Day in the United States. By law all schools that receive federal funds have to offer some instruction on on the Constitution. If you’re looking for some activities to do with your students on Constitution Day, consider having your students explore one of the following interactive displays of the Constitution. The […]

Nature Cat’s Great Outdoors – An App for Sunny, Rainy, and Snowy Days

Nature Cat’s Great Outdoors is a free app from PBS Kids. The app, available for iOS and Android, provides students with activities they can do outdoors in all kinds of weather. And there some indoor activities for those days when you really don’t want to go outdoors. To use the Nature Cat’s Great Outdoors app […]

Free Webinar Today! – Making Great Handouts With Storyboard That Templates

Today, at 4pm ET I’m hosting a free webinar titled Making Great Handouts With Storyboard That Templates. This webinar will feature many of the new story cube and worksheet design tools that were added to Storyboard That for the new school year. In Making Great Handouts With Storyboard That Templates you will learn how you can use […]

How to Become a Mystery Skype Master!

In a post earlier today I shared an explanation of the Mystery Skype game and some places to find partners to play the game. But if you’re not sure how to get started, Microsoft offers a detailed overview in the form of Become a Mystery Skype Master. Become a Mystery Skype Master is a nine […]

The Online Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

The Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond hosts the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. This online atlas contains more than 700 historical maps of the United States. The maps within the atlas are arranged into eighteen sections. As a student and teacher of history I was drawn to the sections […]

Poetry, Google Classroom, and Twine – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where it is a crisp, cool early fall evening. The change of seasons is one of my favorite things about living in northern New England. Yesterday afternoon I had a great time walking in the woods with my dogs. Today, we had fun taking our kids for a walk along a […]

Free Webinar – Making Great Handouts With Storyboard That Templates

At the end of yesterday’s post about making printable story cubes I mentioned that I’m hosting a free webinar next week. The webinar will go into detail about using the printable story cube and other handout templates that are offered by Storyboard That. Storyboard That is a great tool for those who don’t consider themselves […]

How to Add a Materials Section to Google Classroom

Last night I shared the news that Google has added the option for teachers to add materials like digital handouts to the Classwork section in Google Classroom. Judging by the emails and Tweets I’ve already seen, this is going to be a popular feature. To help you get started adding materials to your Google Classroom […]

5 Multimedia Projects for Social Studies Classes

If you teach social studies and you’re looking for a new project to engage your students this year, I have some suggestions for you. All of the following ideas can be modified for use in elementary school, middle school, or high school settings. Create Virtual Tours Services like Google Expeditions are great for locating virtual […]

Three Good Options for Digitizing Your Students’ Physical Work

Whether it’s a model made for a science fair or a paper on which a student successfully solved a complex math problem, there are times when we want to save a copy of physical work to use in digital portfolios. The following three tools are great for taking a picture of a student’s physical work, […]

18 Great Cartoons That Teach Cyber Safety Lessons

Planet Nutshell is a video production company that produces short, animated videos to explain products, services, and concepts. Within their education section you will find videos addressing topics in  mathematics, physics, climate science, and cyber safety. Their series of videos about Internet safety consists of eighteen videos for K-12 students. The series is called NetSafe and it has eighteen episodes […]

How to Collaboratively Create Documents on Canva

Last week Clint Heitz asked me for a suggestion for tools that students can use to make magazines online. He has used Lucid Press and was looking for other options to try. There were two tools that I suggested. One suggestion was to try Book Creator and the other was to try Canva. In the following video […]

How to Use Yo Teach! to Create a Classroom Backchannel

On Friday I wrote an overview of a new backchannel tool called Yo Teach! It’s a great alternative to the much-loved, but now gone, TodaysMeet. To help more people get started on Yo Teach! I made the tutorial video that is embedded below. Before you watch the video here are a couple of highlights of […]

Classroom, Games, and Books – The Month in Review

Good afternoon from Maine where it is a beautiful late summer day. I don’t know about you, but I always feel like August passes too quickly. At the beginning of the month it feels like, “hey, it’s summer!” and by the end of the month it feels like, “back to school, already?” I hope that […]

Yo Teach! – A Great Alternative to TodaysMeet

Since TodaysMeet was shuttered in June I have fielded lots of emails and Tweets from teachers looking for alternatives to it. I have been suggesting Backchannel Chat and GoSoapBox, but as of this morning I have a new alternative to TodaysMeet that I really like. That tool is called Yo Teach! Yo Teach! was developed […]

250 Google Tools Tutorials for Teachers

A few years ago I decided to start making video tutorials for the many Google tools that I write about on this blog and feature in some of my professional development workshops. This week I created my 250th Google tools tutorial. All of my Google tools tutorial videos can be found in this YouTube playlist. […]

How to Quickly Add Page Numbers to Long Google Documents

Since Sunday evening when I published the 2018-19 Practical Ed Tech Handbook I have had a couple of people ask how I added the page numbers to it and kept them straight in Google Docs. The answer is found in a simple, but often overlooked function in the “insert” drop-down menu in Google Docs. Simply […]

A New Way to Add Google Keep Notes to Google Documents

Last year Google added the option to insert your Google Keep notes into your Google Documents. That feature made it easy for students who use Google Keep to bookmark resources while conducting research to then insert those bookmarked resources into their Google Documents. This week Google changed the way that you can access Google Keep […]

View Upcoming Google Classroom Assignments in Google Docs

A new little side panel option recently appeared in my Google Docs. In fact, it appeared while I was in the middle of a workshop in which I was showcasing some Google Docs add-ons. The new side panel in Google Docs provides quick access to Google Calendar, Google Keep, and Google Tasks. You can view […]

5 Ideas for Making Multimedia eBooks With Students

For many years Book Creator was my go-to recommendation for teachers who wanted to have their students create multimedia ebooks on iPads. So when the folks at Book Creator launched an online version to use Google Chrome I quickly added it to my list of recommended web tools too. Book Creator can be used by […]

G Suite and Chrome Accessibility

Accessibility options for G Suite for Education services and Google’s Chrome browser have improved in the last couple of years. If you use these services with students who need improved accessibility options, the G Suite user guide to accessibility is a resource that you should bookmark. The user guide is divided into sixteen sections. In the first […]

Get Your Copy of the 2018-19 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Last night subscribers to the Practical Ed Tech Newsletter were sent copies of the 2018-19 Practical Ed Tech Handbook. This annual publication is a free, 36 page PDF that highlights my favorite educational technology sites and apps. The Practical Ed Tech Handbook is organized into nine sections. Those sections are: Communication tools and strategies.  Search […]

Tips on What to Include in Digital Portfolios

During the course ​​of ​​the ​​school​ ​year ​​our​ ​students will ​​create ​​some ​​fantastic ​​digital artifacts.​​ Building ​​a ​​digital ​​portfolio ​​is ​​a ​​great​​way​​ for ​​students ​​to ​​organize those artifacts to share with you and to share with their parents. If you’re considering having your students create digital portfolios this year, but you’re not sure what to […]

Emojis, Citations, and Tech Fails – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where a few more red leaves are appearing every day. As the summer winds down I’ve take a couple of afternoons off to go fly fishing and to spend more time with daughters before my schedule gets busy with fall commitments to schools and conferences all over the U.S. If you […]

Three Tools to Help Students Understand Classroom Noise

I like the sound of a classroom full of kids talking and working together on projects. But there are times when students need to be aware of the volume of their voices during those times that they’re working together. And there times when you do need your students to be quiet for activities like silent […]

How to Create a Bibliography With MyBib

Earlier this week I learned about a new bibliography creation tool called MyBib. MyBib is an open source project. Unlike some of the big names in the bibliography generator market, MyBib doesn’t charge a fee for their advanced features like exporting your bibliography to Google Drive or using a citation style other than MLA or […]

5 Google Slides Editing Tips

Google Slides has come a long way since its early days as a bare-bones slideshow tool. Today, it is packed with features. Some of those features are obvious and others are hidden away in menus that are frequently ignored. In the following video I provide an overview of five Google Slides editing tips. Watch the […]

MyBib – A Free Citation Generator

MyBib is a free, open source citation generator that rivals similar services that charge a subscription fee. MyBib can create citations and bibliographies in a wide range of styles including the popular MLA, APA, Chicago, IEEE, and Harvard styles. If a student isn’t sure which style to use, he or she can see examples of […]

5 Back-to-School Tech Tips for Teachers

The new school year has now started for almost everyone. And if it hasn’t started in your area, it will be starting soon. In the last few days before school starts take some time to make sure that your tech is in order just like the rest of your classroom. Here’s my back-to-school tech checklist […]

Fake News, Books, and Audio Slides – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is good to be home after two weeks of travel for back-to-school workshops. Nothing says “back to school” quite like seeing a couple of leaves that have changed color. Yes, that happens early here in northern New England. But there is still plenty of warm weather left and my […]

Create a Word Search on ABCya

ABCya is known for their many educational games available to play in your web browser or as stand-alone iOS and Android apps. ABCya also provides some tools for teachers to use to create printable activities. One of those templates is a word search generator. As you can see in my video below, making a word […]

Participate – Create and Share Collections of Resources

Participate offers a variety of free professional development resources for teachers. Last month I featured one of their free online book clubs. Today, I’m featuring Participate’s free collections service. Participate Collections provides you with a place to create organized collections of resources. You can make your collections on your own or invite colleagues to build […]

How to Create a Backchannel Chat

For most of the last decade I recommended using TodaysMeet to create backchannel chats. In June TodaysMeet shut down. Since then I have been using Backchannel Chat to create backchannel chat rooms. While it isn’t exactly like TodaysMeet, it is probably best alternative that I have used in the last two months. On Backchannel Chat […]

Your Next Read – Webs of Book Recommendations

Your Next Read is a site that provides you with a web of book recommendations based on the authors and books you already like. Here’s how it works; type in the title of a book you like or author you like and Your Next Read will provide you with a web of books that might also enjoy. Click […]

Best of the Web Summer 2018

This morning I had the privilege to visit the Lewis County C1 School District in Missouri. One of the presentations that I gave there was the latest version of my popular Best of the Web presentation. The presentation is broken into four sections. Those sections are creating and remixing, workflow and classroom management, exploring and […]

How to Manage Installed Chrome Extensions

During a workshop that I was leading this week someone asked me how she could remove some of the extension icons that were displayed in her Chrome browser. The simple solution is to right-click on the extension icon and then choose the option to either hide or remove the extension. Hiding it will just hide […]

Google Classroom, Jeopardy, and Scratch – The Week in Review

Good evening from Paris Hill, Maine where I’m home after a week on the road in which I facilitated professional development for teachers in Kansas and Illinois. Next week I’ll be in Missouri. If you would like to have me visit your school in the new school year, please get in touch. I only have […]

SeeSaw’s Android App Has New Features for Students and Teachers

SeeSaw is one of my favorite tools for creating and maintaining digital portfolios. In fact, I featured it in a workshop that I facilitated yesterday. This week SeeSaw added some new options to their free Android app. Students can now use the app to respond to activity prompts that their teachers have shared. Students can […]

How to Record Audio in Google Slides

The Audio Player for Slides Chrome extension was recently updated with some features that teachers have wanted for years! First, you can now use the extension to have music play continuously throughout a presentation even when you change slides. Second, you can now make audio recordings directly in your slides. In the following video I […]

Add Music to Play Continuously in a Google Slides Presentation

A couple of weeks ago I published a video about how to use the Audio Player for Google Slides Chrome extension. That extension was updated this week. The updated version of Audio Player for Google Slides gives you the option to have your music play continuously through your slideshow. The previous version of the extension […]

Flipgrid’s Mobile App Now Has Basic Editing Options

Buried in amongst the other Microsoft EDU announcements that were made this week was the news that Flipgrid’s mobile app was updated. The latest version of the Flipgrid mobile app has a basic editing function that will let students trim the beginning and or end of a video before submitting it to a grid. Additionally, the […]

Videos, Scratch, and Fly Fishing – The Week in Review

Good evening from rainy Paris Hill, Maine where I’m home after a few days of fly fishing. It was nice to get away and recharge offline before a busy few months of workshops and conference keynotes starts on Monday when I fly to Kansas. I’ll probably be offline most of tomorrow too as I soak […]

10 Overlooked Google Docs Features

The new school year will be here soon and I haven’t taken a break all summer. I’m taking a short break from the Internet to go fishing at one of my favorite places in the world, Kennebago Lake. I’ll be back with new posts on Saturday. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the […]

Free iPad Apps for Creating Animated Movies

The new school year will be here soon and I haven’t taken a break all summer. I’m taking a short break from the Internet to go fishing at one of my favorite places in the world, Kennebago Lake. I’ll be back with new posts on Saturday. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the […]

GIFs, Forms, and Math – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on July. As I do at the end of every month I’ve put together a list of the ten most read posts of the previous 30 days. It’s interesting to note that not all of the posts in the list were published in July. In fact, […]

A Short Guide to Getting Started With Google Drive

Six years ago I published a short PDF that contained directions for getting started using Google Drive. I still get requests for that document even though it is outdated. This evening I’m happy to share that I have put together an updated guide to getting started with Google Drive. This guide was developed for a […]

7 Ways to Make Animated GIFs

Whiteboard-style videos and Common Craft-style videos can be a great for helping students understand big concepts in short, easy-to-follow videos. But for smaller concepts, an animated GIF can do the trick. In the last few months I’ve come across a lot of free tools for making animated GIFs. Here’s a run down of some of the […]

150+ Tips for New Teachers

One of the best things about being a teacher is the support that you can often find from colleagues in your own building and, increasingly, through online professional groups. That collegiality can be a huge asset to teachers who are new to the profession. That’s why five years ago I started to collect and publish […]

Brush Ninja – Make Animated GIFs on Your Desktop or Mobile Device

Brush Ninja is a free tool for creating animated GIFs. Unlike some similar tools, Brush Ninja works equally well in the web browser on a Chromebook, Windows or Mac laptop, iPads, Android tablets, and iOS and Android phones. To make an animated GIF on Brush Ninja simply go to the website and start drawing on […]

Take a Look at TypingClub’s Unique Approach to Typing Practice

TypingClub is a site that offers an extensive set of typing lessons for students. On TypingClub you’ll find lessons that use a traditional approach to typing practice as well as lessons that use a rather novel approach to typing practice. That novel unique approach to typing practice is found in TypingClub’s story-based typing practice. This […]

Editing PDFs and Nine Other Microsoft Word Tutorials

On Wednesday morning I published a couple of tutorials about annotating PDFs and annotating Google Slides. Shortly after publishing those tutorials Mike Tholfsen Tweeted a link to Microsoft’s 10 Handy Tips for Microsoft Word. One of those tips is using Word to edit PDFs. A short video tutorial for that process is embedded below. The […]

The New Gmail is Coming Soon to More Domains and Users

Back in April Google revealed a redesigned Gmail user interface with a fantastic set of features including reply suggestions, message snoozing, and follow-up reminders. When it was announced the new Gmail interface was only available to those domains in the Early Adopter Program. Today, Google announced that the new Gmail interface will soon be available […]

Loom is Introducing a Desktop Screencasting Tool

Loom is a screencast recording tool that I started to use earlier this year and have found to be excellent for making short videos directly from my inbox. This afternoon I received an email from Loom that announced their plans to introduce a desktop app this fall. There are not many details about it available […]

Join Me on Tuesday at 4pm for a Webinar on Google Earth, Maps, and VR Tours

Tomorrow, July 24th, at 4pm Eastern Time I am hosting a Practical Ed Tech webinar all about Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google’s VR Tour Creator. During Tuesday’s webinar you will learn: 1. How to create multimedia maps. 2. How to build virtual tours. 3. How to collaboratively create multimedia maps. 4. How to map […]

How to Create an Animated GIF

Animated GIFs can be handy for quickly showing a process or sequence of events. Check out Common Craft’s soccer guide for great examples of using animated GIFs to illustrate concepts. And, of course, GIFs are fun to use to make a point in a social media post. If you want to make your own animated […]

An Easy Way to Find Images for Google Slides Presentations

There are plenty of good places to find public domain and Creative Commons images to use in your Google Slides presentations. The Unsplash photos add-on even makes it possible to find public domain images without ever leaving the slides editor. But even with the wealth of images available in the public domain, using your own […]

An Easy Way to Find 360 Videos to View in Google Cardboard

Google Expeditions offers lots of 360 content that your students can explore in Google Cardboard viewers. But Google Expeditions isn’t the only source of 360 content that you can use in your Google Cardboard or other virtual reality headsets. There is a lot of 360 content available on YouTube. For example, take a look at […]

How to Use Blended Play for Classroom Review Games

Last week I published a post about a neat game platform called Blended Play. Blended Play provides five online game boards that you can project in your classroom to use as the template for review games. I have had a lot of questions about Blended Play since I published my blog post about it last […]

A Great Example of Sharing Stories Through Google’s My Maps

Kevin Hodgson’s blog has been one of my daily reads for the better part of the last ten years. Kevin is a sixth grade teacher and masterful storyteller. Over the years I have learned a lot from reading his blog. Earlier this week Kevin published a blog post titled #WriteOut:Mapping the Immigrant Experience at the […]

How to Add Music to Google Slides

In my previous post I shared some information about the AudioPlayer for Google Slides Chrome extension. If you need some help getting started with that extension, please watch the following video tutorial that I created. It should be noted that the first time you use the extension it could take ten to fifteen minutes for […]

Formatically Offers a New Instant Citation Tool

Formatically is a service that was designed by college students to help other students create properly formatted works cited pages. Last year I published a tutorial about how to use it. This week Formatically introduced a new instant citation tool. The instant citation tool can be used by anyone to format an APA, MLA, Chicago, […]

Three Ways to Record and Share Video Notes in Real-time

Tools like EDpuzzle and TED-Ed are good for creating questions that you want your students to answer about videos that you share with them. But if you want students to share their own questions or notes with you, you’ll have to try some tools that were designed for that purpose. Here are three tools that […]

How to Protect Student Privacy With Blurring Effects in Videos

On Monday morning I had the privilege to give a presentation about classroom video projects during the TechSplash conference in Abingdon, Virginia. One of the elements of that presentation addressed protecting student privacy when publishing videos online. In the presentation I gave a demonstration of how to use YouTube’s built-in editing tools to blur faces […]

Ten Common Challenges in 2018

This morning I had the privilege to give the opening keynote at the TechSplash conference in Abingdon, Virginia. When I was invited to the conference the organizers expressed interest in one of my older keynote topics so I updated it for 2018. The slides from my talk are embedded below.

These Chrome Extensions Can Help You Stay On Task

In my previous post I shared a few tools that can help you save time on routine tasks. A related challenge is managing your time to be more productive. Both students and adults can struggle with resisting the urge to do things like checking Facebook or checking Amazon for a sale. During the course of […]

How to Add a Timer to PowerPoint Slides

I recently received this email from a reader who was looking for help adding a timer to her PowerPoint slides, “I need your help adding a timer to already made quizzes in PowerPoint. I need a timer that shows 30 minutes. I would like the timer to be seen at the top right corner on […]

Flippity’s Google Sheets Add-on is Working Again!

Back in May I started to get a bunch of messages from readers who were experiencing trouble with the Flippity Add-on for Google Sheets. The trouble was that after years of successful use, people were getting a warning message from Google that said the Flippity Add-on was unverified and not recommended for use. I reached […]

Text2MindMap is Back – Outlines and Mind Maps on the Same Page

For a few years there was a popular mind map tool called Text2MindMap that enabled you to create mind maps from typed outlines. It was popular because you could see a written outline on one side of your screen and the connected mind map on the other side of the screen. Unfortunately, Text2MindMap went offline […]

Rye Board – An Online Corkboard for Your Ideas

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo’s This Week In Web 2.0 I recently learned about a new online corkboard tool called Rye Board. Rye Board provides you with a blank canvas on which you can place text notes, images, and drawings. Notes and pictures can be dragged and dropped into any arrangement that you like. Drawings can […]

Kami – Annotate and Collaborate on PDFs

Disclosure: Kami is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Kami is a neat service that makes it easy to annotate and comment on PDFs. The folks at Kami describe their service as a digital pen and paper. That is an accurate description of what the core of the service provides. The core function of Kami provides you […]

Create Your Own Search Engine

Last week I saw some folks on Twitter sharing a link to a site called Kidy that advertised itself as an “intellegent, safe search engine for kids.” I checked out the site and found that it was just an implementation of a Google Custom Search Engine that anyone can create. The implementation on Kidy was […]

Socrative Has a New Owner – Not Much Changes

Before there was Kahoot or Quizizz there was Socrative. Socrative was a pioneer in the area of quiz-style student response systems that incorporated responses from students’ phones, tablets, and computers. Socrative has offered individual and team games from the start. And the aspect of Socrative that I appreciate the most from a classroom management standpoint […]

TypingClub’s Typing Jungle Offers Hundreds of Typing Lessons

Disclosure: Typing Club is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com TypingClub has been providing excellent typing instruction for many years. I’ve watched as the service grew from a simple practice site to a complete system that teaches students proper typing technique. The latest version of TypingClub features a program called Typing Jungle that provides more than 600 […]

Math, Forms, and Images – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the steamy weather has finally cooled off a bit. While it’s still cool we’re going on one of our favorite outings. We’re going to the Maine Wildlife Park to feed the ducks and see the baby moose including this one that was befriended by a German Shepherd. Wherever you are […]

Monster Heart Medic – A Game for Learning About Heart Health

Monster Heart Medic is a free iPad app produced by the Lawrence Hall of Science with funding from the National Institutes of Health. The purpose of the app is to help students learn about the cardiovascular system through a game environment. The basic premise of Monster Heart Medic is that students have to help a […]

A Lesson From the Evolution of My Bookmarks

One of the questions that readers ask me on a fairly regular basis is, “how do you keep track of everything?” The answer to that has remained largely the same for the last decade. My process is that when I find something interesting I bookmark it, review it, and, if I like it, I write […]

A Crash Course on Independence Day

Tomorrow, July 4th, is Independence Day in the U.S.  In the video below John Green offers a short overview of the history of Independence Day and the ways in which Americans have celebrated the holiday since 1776. As always, Green includes plenty of sarcastic comments throughout the video so if your students have trouble recognizing […]

Google Classroom, Flipgrid, and SeeSaw – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and it is a perfect day to play outside with daughters and my dogs. Before they’re awake and we’re bounding out the door, I have this week’s week-in-review to share. This week the annual ISTE conference was held in Chicago. I wasn’t able to attend this […]

ABCya’s Number Chart Is a Fun Math Activity for Kids

ABCya’s Number Chart is a simple but fun online activity for elementary school students. The chart offers “beginner” and “challenge” activities. In both activity levels students have to drag numbers into their proper places on a number line. In the “beginner” level students are shown a number line of ten numbers at a time. In the […]

This RWT Template Helps Students Craft Persuasive Essays

Developing persuasive writing skills is a process that students start in elementary school and continue to develop through high school and beyond. Read Write Think offers a good interactive guide that can help students craft a good persuasive essay. The Persuasion Map asks students to start with a thesis statement before walking them through developing […]

Lessons to Help You and Your Students Become Better Researchers

If you’re looking to improve your search skills this summer or you want to find new ideas for teaching search skills, check out Power Searching With Google. Power Searching With Google was hosted by Google back in 2012. With the exception of the live Hangouts on Air that were held during the course, all of […]

What is a Storyboard? – History and Use Cases

Over the years I’ve written many blog posts about using storyboards in a variety of classroom settings. I’ve even hosted webinars on the topic. But until today I never wondered about the origins of storyboards. That changed when I read Aaron Sherman’s What is a Storyboard? In What is a Storyboard? Aaron Sherman, founder of […]

How to Use SeeSaw’s New Activity Library

Earlier this week SeeSaw unveiled a new activity library for teachers. The new library contains more than 1500 activities that you can assign to your students in your SeeSaw classroom. You can use the activities as they are written or modify them to meet your students’ needs. In the following video I demonstrate how to […]

More Ways to Add Content to Book Creator Projects – Coming Soon!

Thanks to Amy Burns I just learned about a great, new feature that is soon to be available in Book Creator. The new feature will let you embed content from third-party sites into your Book Creator books. Some of the many third-party sites that will be supported in this new feature include Desmos (an online […]

How to Save Bookmarks Using OneNote for Android

In 2018 I have been using OneNote as my primary tool for saving bookmarks and quick notes. Previously, used Google Keep for all of my bookmarks and notes on my Android phone. I made the switch because I found OneNote’s Android app to have more features that I use on a regular basis. The feature […]

Five Google Classroom Improvements Announced During ISTE

The week of the annual ISTE conference is when many of the biggest purveyors of technology products unveil their latest and greatest offerings. Google is not an exception to that rule and so uses this week to showcase their latest product updates. This week they’ve introduced five Google Classroom updates. Some three of these are […]

A Complete Guide to Making Videos in Microsoft Photos

Windows Movie Maker is no longer available for download and Microsoft now recommends using the video creation tools that are built into Microsoft Photos. In Microsoft Photos you can create videos that feature your pictures or other pictures that you have permission to use (Creative Commons licensed or Public Domain). At the most basic level […]

How to Use Flipgrid to Publish Instructional Videos

In Sunday’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week I mentioned three ways to use Flipgrid now that all features are free for all users. One of those ways is to have students record and publish instructional videos. They can do this is a few ways. They can record themselves in front of a whiteboard, […]

How to Measure Distances in Google Earth

The addition of a measurement tool in the Chrome (browser) and Android versions of Google Earth was one of the many things that Google announced yesterday. I’m not sure what took them so long to add this because it was always a feature in the desktop version of Google Earth. In the following video I […]

SeeSaw Unveils a New Activity Library – 1500+ Activities to Use Now

SeeSaw is a great digital portfolio tool that students can use on Chromebooks, iPads, Android tablets, and on any computer that has an updated web browser. Last fall SeeSaw introduced a feature called “Activities” that enabled teachers to create and give assignments in their SeeSaw online classrooms. That feature proved to be a hit! Now […]

A New Look for Kahoot – Coming Soon

Two weeks ago Kahoot added a new game creation capability to their free mobile apps. This week at ISTE they’re previewing a new user interface for teachers. The new user interface is based on the one that is now available for Kahoot business users. The new interface features improved collaboration options and improved results reporting. […]

The Web Version of Google Earth Finally Gets a Measuring Tool

Distance measurement has been a feature of the desktop version of Google Earth for as long as I have been using it. So I was surprised when it wasn’t included in the browser-based version of Google Earth that was launched last year. This morning Google announced that a measuring tool has finally been added into […]

Flipgrid, Forms, and Accessibility – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on a nice summer day. The week was full of great summer weather and none better than the actual first day of summer on Thursday when my daughters and I played outside all day except for nap time. I hope those of you in the northern […]

Where You Can Follow My Work

If you’re reading this, the numbers say that you found my blog through one of the following methods: Facebook referral – Here’s the Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page. Email referral – Join the daily email list. Organic search  Twitter referral – Follow me on Twitter. Pinterest referral – Follow my primary board.  There are […]

Vynchronize – Watch Videos and Discuss Them in the Same Window

Vynchronize is a new video discussion platform that I learned about through Larry Ferlazzo’s recent This Week in Web 2.0 post. Vynchronize lets you create an online room in which you can watch a video while chatting about it with other viewers at the same time. To use Vynchronize just go to the site, enter […]

Otus Adds New Features Including a Lockdown Browser

Otus is a fantastic learning management system (LMS) that I’ve watched mature from its early iterations as an iPad-specific tool to a full-fledged LMS. This week, the folks at Otus announced a new round of updates to their LMS. Included in those update is a new lockdown browser mode that can be activated when students […]

Anchor Now Has an iPad App for Easy Podcast Creation and Publication

Anchor is a free service that makes easy to record, edit, and publish your own podcasts. In fact, you can record and publish your first podcast in less than six minutes. You can use Anchor in your web browser, as an Android app, as an iPhone app, and now as an iPad app. Yesterday, Anchor […]

New Google Forms Customization Options

For years and years people have asked me if there is way to customize the fonts in Google Forms. And for years and years I’ve had to say no. That is finally going to change! Yesterday, Google announced the addition of new Google Forms customization options. Choose Your Font Style You can now choose from […]

4 Fun Summer Science Activities

Now that summer is here in the northern hemisphere it’s a great time to go outside for a science lesson. SciShow Kids has four suggestions for outdoor science lessons. In Fun Summer Science adults and children can learn about the science of bubbles, kites, ice cream, and solar energy. Each segment includes an explanation of […]

Add Voice Recordings to Maps

Over the weekend I tested an app called JoJo that lets you create short audio recordings and have them placed on map. For a myriad of reasons including privacy concerns, JoJo is not an app that I would recommend for school use. But the app did give me an idea for combining audio recordings and […]

Huge Flipgrid News! – All Features Now Free

Flipgrid has been acquired by Microsoft. That’s good news for the founders of Flipgrid and great news for all of us who enjoy using Flipgrid. As of this morning all Flipgrid features are now free for all users! If you are a person who paid for a Flipgrid Pro account, you’ll be getting a prorated […]

Games, Screencasting, and Ducks – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where we had a great day exploring the Maine Wildlife Park. My older daughter loved feeding the ducks! And we all enjoyed seeing the deer, moose, lynx and bears up close. It was a great way to relax after a long week on the road during which included seven workshops in […]

How to Duplicate a Google Site

A couple of weeks ago the option to duplicate a site was added to the new version of Google Sites. Duplicating a Google Site will let you make an exact copy of an existing site and have it reside at a new URL. Duplicating a site could be a convenient option to use at the […]

Now You and Your Students Can Create Quizzes in Kahoot’s Mobile App

Kahoot has released a major update to their free mobile apps. As of this morning you can now create a Kahoot game within the free app. The app also lets you distribute games to be played in your classroom or as “challenges” for students to play at home. More importantly, now students can create games […]

Adverbs, Themes, and Labels – New Immersive Reader Features

Immersive Reader is a free add-in for Word, OneNote, Outlook, and Edge enables students to have articles read aloud to them at pace that meets their needs. Additionally, Immersive Reader will identify individual syllables, highlight each word as it is read, and identify parts of speech for students. It has become my go-to recommendation whenever […]

Updated – 5 Online, Collaborative Whiteboard Services

Online, collaborative, whiteboards can be great tools for hosting quick review sessions for your students. Your students can also use these tools to conduct online study sessions with each other. Here are five free online whiteboard tools to try. Draw Chat is a free service that allows anyone to create a video chat over a whiteboard, […]

How to Automatically Forward Your G Suite Email to a Personal Gmail Address

This is the time of year that I always get a bunch of questions from folks who leaving a school and want to take some emails with them from their old accounts. That can be done by just forwarding those messages from your old account to your personal account. But if you’re not leaving your […]

5 Ways to Make Stop-motion and Time-lapse Movies

Creating a stop-motion video or a time-lapse videos can be a good way for students to tell a story in the style of Gumby. Making stop-motion and time-lapse videos can also be a good way for students to demonstrate how a lengthy process works without making people watch a long video. The following free tools […]

Flipgrid Password-protected All Grids This Morning

This morning all teachers using Flipgrid were sent an email about privacy updates that they made to all accounts. Those updates included automatically password-protecting all Flipgrid grids that did not already have password-protection in place. That means that students will need to enter a password in order to view and or add to a Flipgrid […]

Notion – Project Management & Reference Wiki Now With New Mobile Apps

Notion is a service that I described in March as being part project management and part reference wiki. The service provides a place for teams to make task lists, set due dates, and share files. Notion also provides pages for writing and sharing documents. Today, Notion sent an email to users to announce the new […]

New Layout Controls in Google Slides

Back in April Google added some handy rulers and guides to Google Slides. Those tools make it a little easier to ensure that elements on your slides are aligned as you want to be. Today, Google introduced another little tool that will help you make your slides look a little better. Google Slides now gives […]

Microsoft Adds New OneNote and Teams Features for Teachers and Students

This week Microsoft announced a handful of new OneNote and Teams features. These new features were all developed for the purpose of improving collaboration and transparency. Rubrics in Teams  Back in February Microsoft acquired Chalkup. One of Chalkup’s primary services was to provide a platform for creating, sharing, using rubrics to grade assignments online. Chalkup’s […]

Five Things You and Your Students Can Make With Canva

During the weekend I received an email from a reader who was looking for advice on host to make a logo or graphic for her class and to use on social media. My recommendation was to try using Canva. I’m never going to be mistaken as a graphic design artist and even I can make […]

Reminder – The End is Near for TodaysMeet

In case you missed the news at the end of April, one of my all-time favorite services is shutting down on June 16th. On that day TodaysMeet will go offline. For almost a decade TodaysMeet was the go-to tool for teachers who wanted to create a backchannel discussion forum for their students. I used in […]

Forms, Videos, and VR – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun has just set on the month of May. It was a busy month for me as I worked on developing a new course that will be available through the Teaching Channel later this summer. I also hosted a few webinars and conducted some on-site workshops in May. June […]

Google Expeditions Updated With New Augmented Reality Content

Since its launch Google’s Expeditions app has been a hit in many schools. What started out as a somewhat canned teacher-led virtual reality experience has morphed into a tool that students can use to explore and discover new things on their own. Last summer Google added the option for students to explore the VR expeditions […]

Three Google Sheets Add-ons That Can Help You Get Things Done

Google Sheets has a lot of features baked into that can help you organize things and get things done efficiently. Start exploring the Add-ons for Google Sheets and you will find even more ways to get things done efficiently. These are my go-to Add-ons for Google Sheets. Online Rubric This free Google Sheets Add-on makes […]

SpeakPipe Has New Customization Options

SpeakPipe is a great little service that lets you collect voice messages from visitors to your blog. I used it for many years on a classroom blog so that parents could leave voice messages by just clicking the “send a message” button on my blog. I could then either listen to the message or read […]

inkleWriter is Shutting Down – Try These Alternatives for Writing CYA Fiction

For years inkleWriter has been one of my go-to recommendations for tools to create choose-your-adventure stories. Unfortunately, this morning as I was planning a workshop, I noticed an announcement on inkleWriter’s homepage about their forthcoming shutdown. So if you find yourself looking for an alternative to inkleWriter, give the following two options a try. Twine […]

Purpose Games – Create and Play Educational Games

Purpose Games is a free service for creating and or playing simple educational games. The service currently gives users the ability to create seven types of games. Those game types are image quizzes, text quizzes, matching games, fill-in-the-blank games, multiple choice games, shape games, and slide games. Text quizzes, matching games, fill-in-the-blank, and multiple choice […]

Geography, Portfolios, and Programming – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where I’m home after spending a few days in Key West, Florida where I had the privilege to work with some energetic teachers at Sigsbee Charter School. The trip laid the groundwork for some exciting work we’re going to do in the fall. As much as I enjoy traveling and working […]

Turn CSV Files Into Heat Maps

Heat Map Tool is a tool for easily creating heat maps or incident maps from a CSV file. To create a heat map all you need to do is upload a CSV file then specify your desired display attributes like scale, colors, and opacity. You can edit the display attributes of your map whenever you like. If […]

How to Include a Flickr Slideshow in Google Sites

This afternoon I spent time working with teachers to develop new websites through Google Sites. One of the things that many wanted to include was a slideshow of pictures from classroom activities and field trip activities. One way to do this is to embed a Google Slides presentation into a page. Another way is to […]

How to Embed Your Slideshows Into Your Blog

Yesterday’s post about Speaker Deck prompted a few readers to ask me about other options for embedding slideshows into blog posts. The options are different depending upon which slideshow tool you like to use. Therefore, I’m sharing methods for embedding slideshows made with the three most popular presentation tools. Google Slides Follow these steps to […]

An Interactive Story Building Lesson

Word Tamer is a site for learning the process of developing characters, settings, and plots. Word Tamer is set up as an interactive journey through a carnival of literary devices. As students move through the carnival they develop characters, develop a setting, and develop a plot for their stories. At each stop in the Word Tamer […]

Google Offers a Sites Conversion Tool – Domain Admins Take Note

Whether you like it or not, Google is slowly pushing everyone who uses the old version of Google Sites into the new version. For some people this is a source of great stress and for others it’s not a big deal at all. If you’re a G Suite for Education domain administrator you’ve probably fielded […]

ClassDojo Introduces a New Digital Portfolio Option

For the last couple of years ClassDojo has offered a digital portfolio feature called Student Stories. This summer ClassDojo is introducing a new portfolio option called simply ClassDojo Portfolios. The new ClassDojo Portfolios will be student-led portfolios. Students will choose the items that they want to include in their portfolios. They can include pictures, documents, […]

Three Ways to Develop Programming Skills This Summer

Summer is almost here and it’s a great time to learn a new skill that you can bring into your classroom next fall. One of the skills that seems to be mentioned in almost every education periodical these days is programming or coding. Learning to program isn’t as difficult as you might think that is. […]

A Quick Google Docs Formatting Tip

Google Docs has lots of handy features that are “hidden” in plain sight. Many of those features address common formatting needs. For example, in the far right edge of the editor menu there is a function to clear all formatting. This is a handy function to use after copying and pasting from a Word document […]

Nine Fun and Challenging Geography Games

Yesterday, I shared the City-Guesser geography game. That game was just the latest in a long list of online geography games that I have tried over the years. Many have come and gone over the years but the following are still going strong. GameOn World is a multiplayer geography game developed by a high school teacher […]

Play Code Fred to Learn About Circulation and Respiration

Code Fred is a free online game developed by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. The game helps players learn about the human body’s responses to trauma. The object of the game is to help “Fred” escape from the woods while he is chased by a wolf. To keep Fred running players have to […]

How to Include a Discussion Element in Your Google Site

The transition from the old version of Google Sites to the new version of Google Sites has left a lot of people longing for features of the old version. Commenting was one of the features of the old version that does not exist in the new version. That prompted one reader to email me with […]

Use These Two Google Slides Add-ons to Create Audio Slideshows

It’s that time of year when I get a lot of requests for recommendations on tools for making audio slideshows. I get these requests because people want to make slideshows to showcase some of the highlights of the year in their schools. One relatively quick and easy way to make an audio slideshow in Google […]

Three Ways to Collect Video Reflections from Students

As the 2017-18 school year winds down for many of us, it’s a good time to have students reflect on what they learned throughout the year. You could have students write these reflections and post them on a classroom blog. Another option is to have them record one-take videos to share their reflections with you […]

The Life of a City – Early Silent Films of New York City

The Library of Congress has some neat playlists on YouTube that history teachers should explore. One of those playlists is titled The Life of a City: Early Films of New York. This playlist includes 24 silent film clips of events like the opening of the East River bridge, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Parade, and the […]

How to Export, Save, and Re-purpose Your Edublogs Posts

As the end of the school year approaches you might find yourself wondering what to do with all of the blogs posts your students wrote during the year. If you used Edublogs for your classroom blog, there is an easy way to export and save a copy of all of those posts. Follow these steps […]

How to Install and Manage Chrome Extensions

From time-to-time the icons in my Chrome browser prompt questions from viewers of my YouTube videos. Usually, the questions are about which extensions I’m using. Today, I was sent this question: Do you ever worry that by having so many extensions installed you have more risk for security breaches? My answer was that I do […]

New TED-Ed Lesson – What Causes Constipation?

In late March TED-Ed answered “why isn’t the world covered in poop?” Last week they published a lesson answering the related question, “what causes constipation?“ What Causes Constipation? teaches viewers about the roles of the large intestine and pelvic floor muscles in the process of expelling stool. The lesson also teaches viewers about the dietary […]

How to Add Points of Interest to Virtual Reality Tours in Google’s Tour Creator

Last week Google introduced the new Tour Creator for making virtual reality tours. I published a tutorial last week that shows you how to create a basic tour. Today, I made a new tutorial that shows you how to include featured points of interest within each scene in your tour. Those points of interest can […]

Twelve Tools for Building End-of-year Review Activities (That Aren’t Kahoot Games)

The end of the school year is quickly approaching. At this time of the year I start to get a lot of requests for suggestions for tools to create review activities. Here are twelve good options for creating review activities. Video-based review activities: Vizia is a free tool for creating video-based quizzes. On Vizia you an […]

A Fun Game for Learning About Physics

Simple Machines is a fun game from the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. Simple Machines is a game that is designed to help students learn about the basic physics principles involved in the use of levels, pulleys, planes, axles, and wheels. The object of the game is to help a robot character named Twitch gather the […]

Video Guides to Common Fallacies

The Guide to Common Fallacies is a resource that I wish I had back when I was teaching ninth grade students to recognize bias, propaganda, and logical fallacies. The Guide to Common Fallacies is a series of nine short videos from the PBS Idea Channel. Each video covers a different common fallacy. Some of the fallacies explained in […]

Six New Features Coming to Google Forms

Google Forms has long been a go-to tool for teachers to create surveys and give quizzes online. Today, Google announced six new features that are going to make Google Forms better than ever. Like most updates to G Suite, these features will be rolled out gradually so if you don’t see them today, you will […]

Microsoft Teams for Education Gets Five New Features

This week Microsoft announced the release of five new features for Microsoft Teams for Education. The two of the more significant of the five new features are the ability to schedule assignment postings and the ability to give assignments to individual students or small groups. Schedule assignment postings Scheduling the posting of assignments is a […]

Changes Coming to the Google Drive User Interface – Web Version

Earlier this week I posted the reminder that the Google Drive desktop app is being phased out this month. Yesterday, Google announced that there’s another change coming to Google Drive. That change is a cosmetic change to the Google Drive user interface that you will see when you access Google Drive through your web browser. […]

Animaker Edify – Easily Create Animated Videos In an Online Classroom

Disclosure: This is sponsored content.  Animaker Edify is an excellent service for teachers and students who want to create animated videos. In reviewing Animaker Edify it hit on all of the things that I look for in a video creation tool for classrooms. It provides for teacher management of students’ accounts, offers a huge gallery […]

How to Use Google’s New VR Tour Creator

A few hours ago Google announced the launch of their new VR Tour Creator. This free tool lets everyone create their own virtual tours to view in Google Cardboard and or in the Chrome web browser. Tours are created by selecting locations in Google Maps and then selecting 360 degree Street View imagery. There’s also […]

Three Ways to Collect Registration Information for School Fundraiser Events

This evening I answered the following email from a reader who is organizing a fundraising event for her class: Our class will be doing a dine to donate night at Applebee’s on May 31st and manager would like estimate for number of attendees and suggested we use something online for people to signup. I thought […]

Weebly vs. Google Sites

Twice in the last few I have chatted with a school technology coaches who wanted my opinion about which platform their teachers should use to create classroom websites for the next school year. In one case I recommended Weebly and in the other I recommended Google Sites. Here’s the rationale that I used in both […]

What’s Going On With Flippity? – I Found Out for You

A few weeks ago I was giving a presentation that included a demonstration of Flippity’s Google Sheets Add-on. A few minutes after the presentation a bunch of people told me that they received a security warning when they tried to install the Add-on. (I hadn’t seen the message because it was a new development since […]

History and Literature Text Messages

ClassTools.net is one of my favorite places to find templates for online activities for middle school and high school students. One of the templates on ClassTools.net that I’ve recommended for years is the Fake SMS Generator. Watch my following video to learn how to use the SMS Generator on ClassTools. Applications for Education You could […]

Easy Accents for Google Slides

For the last couple of years I have recommended the Easy Accents Add-on for Google Docs. It’s a free Add-on that gives you access to a virtual keyboard to use to write non-English characters in your Google Documents. Recently, the Easy Accents Add-on became available in a version for Google Slides. Easy Accents for Google […]

Certificates, Quests, and Comics – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining, my lawn is turning green, and we’re all going to play outside today. I have a couple of things to do before the kids wake up including finishing this blog post. This week I spent a lot of time dealing with a change in my hosting […]

GeoGebra for PowerPoint – Access and Insert GeoGebra Within PowerPoint

GeoGebra is a favorite ed tech resource of math teachers all over the globe. PowerPoint is the default presentation tool on millions of computers in schools. You can use the two together through the GeoGebra PowerPoint Add-in. The GeoGebra PowerPoint Add-in lets you access GeoGebra materials directly from your PowerPoint slides. You can also use […]

Sourcera for Google Slides – Historical Images to Use In Your Slides

Sourcera is an Add-on for Google Slides that lets you search for historical images and insert them directly into your slides. Sourcera pulls images from eleven sources including Flickr’s Commons, the British Library, and the Digital Public Library of America. To find an image through Sourcera you need to highlight a word on a slide […]

Glue vs. tape – A TED-Ed Science Lesson

The back windshield in my truck is currently being held in place by some clear packaging tape. There’s a big crack in it and my local glass shop can’t fix it until Tuesday. Tape was my “fix” because super glue would not only make a mess, but that mess could end up dripping onto the […]

300+ Printable Comic Templates

Make Beliefs Comix is a great multilingual comic strip creation service that I’ve featured many times in the past. One of the features of Make Beliefs Comix that I like is the collection of printable comic strip templates. These printable templates are in addition to the online Make Beliefs Comix creation tool. The templates are divided […]

Only Five Openings Left

Over the years I have been fortunate to visit hundreds of schools to help teachers use technology to create better learning experiences for their students. Sometimes that means helping people get up to speed on G Suite for Education. But I also do a lot of work with teachers on topics related to coding, media […]

17 Audacity Tutorials for Beginners

Audacity is a free, open-source program for recording and editing audio. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. For classroom podcasting projects or other classroom audio recording projects, it is hard to beat Audacity. The only trouble is that it can feel a bit overwhelming the first time that you open it up on […]

MOOO – Museum of Obsolete Objects

Do you remember using the end of a pencil to dial your rotary phone? Did you have an answering machines that used cassette tapes? Do you remember the annoyance of having your mouse connected to your computer? If you said yes to any of those questions, you should take a look at a YouTube channel […]

Padlet, Spark, and PhET – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where the snow that coated my yard on many mornings in April now all gone. Another sign that spring is here can be found in my TV viewing habit of quickly jumping between three channels to watch the Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox play on the same night. Two of the […]

Today’s Blogging Q&A Recording

This afternoon I hosted a live Q&A session about blogging. I used YouTube’s relatively new desktop livestreaming tool for the broadcast. If you missed the broadcast, you can watch the recording as embedded below. A list of the questions that I answered is included below the video in this post. How do I get started? […]

How to Automatically Issue Certificates When Students Pass a Quiz in Google Forms

The quizzes setting in Google Forms makes it easy to quickly score quizzes and return quiz scores to your students. The Google Forms Add-on called Certify’em makes it possible to not only give students their grades right away, it also issues them a certificate for passing the quiz. Watch my video embedded below to learn […]

Old Google Sites vs. New Google Sites

Last week I published a video about converting old Google Sites to the new version of Google Sites. That post prompted a lot of emails from readers who wanted to know what would happen when they switch from the old version to the new version of Google Sites. To answer those questions I’ve put together […]

TodaysMeet Is Shutting Down – Six Alternatives to Try

TodaysMeet is shutting down. James Socol, the creator and only developer of TodaysMeet, has announced that he’s shutting it down on June 16th. I’m going to miss it and I know that a lot of you will too. I encourage you to read the announcement that James posted because it will give you a good […]

PhET, Grasshoppers, and AR Creatures – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where spring is in the air. Lately, we’ve had some rainy days mixed with wonderfully warm and sunny days. That’s a winning combination to make the flowers grow start to sprout in our gardens. It’s also great for getting outside to walk, run, bike or just enjoy not having to wear […]

From the Catbird Seat – A Poetry Podcast

Just in time for the end of National Poetry Month the Library of Congress has launched a new podcast series about poetry. The podcast is called From the Catbird Seat. The podcast will feature conversations with Rob Casper and Anne Holmes from the Poetry and Literature Center at the LOC. In the first eight episodes […]

Join Me On Monday for a Blogging Q&A

After more than a decade of daily blogging I’d like to think that I’ve learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t. If you’re thinking about starting a blog or you just want to up your blogging game, join me on Monday afternoon at 3pm Eastern Time for a free, live blogging […]

Caring for Comics – And Other Ideas for Video Projects

Earlier this week the Library of Congress Twitter account posted a link to the LOC’s reference page about the deterioration of paper. From that page I stumbled into the library’s Collections Care reference pages. Those pages are full of information about how to care for and preserve a variety of physical media including newspapers and comic […]

Google Tasks – A Very Simple Task Management App

On Wednesday Google announced a bunch of updates to Gmail. That story was covered by every blog under the sun and garnered lots of commentary on social media. What didn’t get nearly as much attention was Google’s launch of a new task management app called Google Tasks. Google Tasks is a free app that is […]

A Quick Guide to OneNote

Over the last few months I have come to appreciate all of the things that OneNote does that my trusty old Google Keep can’t do. Whenever a product has as many features layered into it as OneNote does, it can take some time to understand how all of those features work individually and can work […]

How to Embed Flipgrid Topics Into Google Sites

One of the good things about the new version of Google Sites is that Google has made it much easier to embed content from third party services. Flipgrid is one of the popular ed tech tools that you might want to add to your Google Site. By embedding a fully functional Flipgrid topic into your […]

New to New Google Sites? 5 Features You Should Know How To Use

The new (current) version of Google Sites is easier for new users to start using. But with that ease of use comes fewer features and some “hidden” features that are often overlooked. If you’re thinking about building a website with the new version of Google Sites, here are five features that you should know how […]

Inspiration From an App That Didn’t Work as Expected

In preparation for a webinar that I am hosting on Thursday I tested a new app that is supposed to help users identify trees. The app is called FindATree. The concept behind the app is solid, but the execution is lacking. The app has you answer a few questions about the characteristics of the tree […]

Record and Share Observations of Nature on iNaturalist

iNaturalist is a community website for sharing pictures and observations of plants and animals. To enable easy sharing of observations, iNaturalist offers a free Android app and a free iOS app. Using the apps you can take a picture, geo-locate it, write your observations, and upload to the iNaturalist community. If your observation is incomplete, for example if you’re […]

Dig Into Mining – Virtual Field Labs and Field Trips About Copper Mining

Dig Into Mining is a free resource from Discovery Education and Freeport-McMoran (the world’s largest copper mining company). The purpose of Dig Into Mining is to help students understand how copper is mined and processed for use in products like pipes and wires. Dig Into Mining offers seven virtual labs and virtual tours that Discovery […]

PhET PowerPoint Add-in – Add Science & Math Simulations to Slides

PhET is a free resource that has been popular with science and math teachers for many years. PhET provides free interactive math and science simulations covering topics in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. In the PhET library you’ll find simulations appropriate for elementary, middle, high school, and university students. PhET even offers a […]

Storyline JS – Turn Your Spreadsheets Into Stories

In yesterday’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week I featured the storytelling tools produced by Knight Lab at Northwestern University. One of those tools is called Storyline JS. Storyline JS lets you create an interactive, annotated line chart. The purpose of Storyline JS is to enable you to add detailed annotations to the data […]

5 PowerPoint Features Often Overlooked by Students and Teachers

About ten years ago I started to notice a lot of alternatives to PowerPoint popping-up on the web. Some of those presentation tools like Google Slides and Prezi are still going strong while others have faded away. Through it all, PowerPoint kept chugging along even though it wasn’t a darling of Web 2.0 users. Today, […]

Slides, Forms, and Novels – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where this morning it actually feels like spring! It’s a nice contrast to the snowy mornings that we had twice this week. I’m hoping that the weather stays nice through the weekend because we have a couple of fun outdoor activities planned including a Tinkergarten class tomorrow. Speaking of outdoor activities, […]

Grasshopper – Learn to Code on Your Phone

Grasshopper is a free app that teaches you to Javascript coding through a series of easy-to-follow tutorials. The free app, available for iOS and Android, starts off with an introduction to the basic vocabulary of coding before moving into the coding lessons. You have to pass the vocabulary quiz before your can jump into the […]

5 Ways to Improve Your Next Video

Today we have more tools to record, edit, and share videos than ever before. With the tap of an app or the click of a link, you and your students can be making videos to tell stories, to teach lessons, or to share news. That’s why more than 300 hours of video gets added to […]

The Origins of the London Underground

Fun fact: I once got terribly lost in London when the Tube line that I was on unexpectedly (to me, anyway) went out of service and I had to find an alternate route back to my hotel. I’m telling you that only as a way to introduce a new TED-Ed lesson about the world’s first […]

Guides and Rulers for Google Slides

If you’re like me, you might need a little help making things line up the way they should in your presentations. If you’re a Google Slides user, one of the things that can help you with that is using the guides and rulers. This week Google updated the guides option so that you can add […]

Now You Can Include Google Slides In a Google Document

Inserting charts from Google Sheets has been an option in Google Documents for quite a while. This week Google added the option to add a slide from Google Slides into a document. Your chosen slide essentially appears as an image within your document. Once it is inserted into your document you can resize your slide […]

Animated Map of First Foliage Appearances

Last Friday I was in Greenwich, Connecticut to give a presentation. Greenwich is roughly 300 miles south of my home in Maine. Greenwich was in full spring bloom with green grass and foliage starting to bud on the trees. Meanwhile back home in Maine my yard was covered in snow. In making that drive I […]

Enable These Google Forms Settings to Save Time When Making Quizzes

Making quizzes and giving quizzes is a common use of Google Forms. If you have ever built a quiz and given it to your students only to notice after the fact that you forgot to assign a point value to a question, then you need to watch my video about setting Forms preferences. If you’ve […]

5 Good Resources for Teaching & Learning About Mount Everest

April and May is considered to be the peak climbing season in the Himalaya Mountains. Of course, the most famous of those mountains is Everest. As long-time readers of this blog may recall, one of my bucket list items is seeing Mount Everest in person. Until then I have to entertain myself with books, videos, […]

See What’s New in Microsoft EDU

About a month ago I shared the news of the addition of a picture library to Microsoft’s Immersive Reader add-in for Word, OneNote, Outlook, and Edge. That’s not the only thing that Microsoft has recently added to their list of education products. As I learned by reading and watching the latest edition of What’s New […]

The Value of Paper In a Digital World

One of the things that I mention in my keynote Leading Students In a Hyper-connected World is the need to teach students the value of occasionally disconnecting from the web to focus on the completion of a task. A few years ago I heard Chris Brogan sum this up nicely by saying “paper doesn’t have a new browser […]

Novels on Location – A Map of Novels

Novels on Location is a neat of use Google Maps. The idea behind Novels on Location is to help readers find novels according to the story’s geographical settings. When you visit Novels on Location you can find novels by clicking on the placemarks that you see on the Google Map. An alternative way to search is by using […]

Hacking a “Hacking STEM” Project

In Sunday’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week email I featured Microsoft’s Hacking STEM project library. The idea behind Hacking STEM is to make low-cost or no-cost hands-on STEM projects accessible to as many people as possible. You can follow Microsoft’s directions as written or modify the projects to use other materials to build […]

A Replacement for the Deprecated “Announcements” Element in Google Sites

Google’s replacement of the classic version of Google Sites with a new version has left some people wishing that Google had left Sites well enough alone. The new version doesn’t, yet, have all of the features of the classic version and it may never get all of them. For example, the “announcements” feature of the […]

Podcast Recording and Editing Tips

Podcasting has made a resurgence in recent years. Many teachers are now including podcasting projects in their classrooms. Edublogs recently published a great guide to help you get your classroom podcast started. Editing a podcast before publication can often be the most tedious part of the podcasting process. Dennis Grice has a tip that can […]

How to Create a Custom Google Forms Theme

A couple of years ago I published a video tutorial on how to create a custom Google Forms theme. More than 10,000 people have since used that video tutorial to customize the appearance of their Google Forms. One of the criticisms of that video that I have heard from some viewers is that it goes […]

2000+ Recordings of Poets and Fiction Writers Reading and Discussing Their Work

A few years ago the Library of Congress published an online collection of audio recordings of poets and fiction writers reading and discussing their works. At the time of its launch the collection contain 124 recordings. Since then the collection has grown to include more than 2,000 recordings. The Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature contains recordings […]

By Request – Life on Minimum Wage Simulation

Last week I received a handful of requests for the Google Docs version of my Life on Minimum Wage economics game. While I no longer grant print or edit access to my public Google Docs, I do make PDFs of my documents available to download through Box.com. The purpose of Life on Minimum Wage is […]

My Go-to Tool for Making Stop Motion Movies

Update October 2020: This resource is no longer available.  This evening I received an email from a reader who was looking for a free tool to use to have his students make stop-motion videos. (By the way, I get emails from readers every day and I try to answer all of them). JellyCam is the […]

Spark, Parks, and Jeopardy – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where it is snowing, again. This week was a classic spring week in Maine in which we had both sunshine and snow. We’re still weeks away from seeing green grass like I saw yesterday when I was in Greenwich, Connecticut where I facilitated a professional development workshop. Speaking of professional development, […]

5 Good Resources for Teaching and Learning About the American Revolution

This coming Monday is Patriots’ Day. It is an official state holiday here in Maine, in Massachusetts, and in Wisconsin. The day commemorates the Battles of Lexington and Concord. As a New Englander this is a good day to review some good resources for teaching and learning about the American Revolution. History Animated has an […]

Now You Can Add Custom Links to Google Sites Navigation Bar

At first I wasn’t thrilled with the switch from the old version of Google Sites to the new one. That was largely due to the absence of many useful features in the new version that had existed in the old version. Slowly Google has added those features back into the new (current) version of Sites. […]

JuxtaposeJS – Create Side-by-Side Comparison Frames

JuxtaposeJS is a free tool for making and hosting side-by-side comparisons of images. The tool was designed to help people see before and after views of a location, a building, a person, or anything else that changes appearance over time. JuxtaposeJS will let you put the images into a slider frame that you can embed […]

Todost – A Simple Task Management Tool

Todost is a free and simple tool for keeping track of items on your to-do list. To make a list just go to the website on your laptop or on your phone. Once at the site you can start entering your list of tasks for the day. Click the check box next to each task […]

PrepFactory Offers Individualized SAT, ACT, PARCC, and SBAC Prep

Disclosure: PrepFactory is a long-time advertiser and supporter of FreeTech4Teachers.com PrepFactory began as a free service providing SAT and ACT review videos. In 2017 they switched from video-based to interactive question-based instruction. At about the same time, they expanded their offerings to include middle school subjects. Recently, they expanded again to offer study guides for […]

Publishing an Example of Copyright Infringement

Update: after filing a DMCA takedown notice, this copyright infringement issue was resolved. Thanks to a friendly reader, I was tipped-off to the latest case of an educational technology “expert” committing an egregious copyright violation. It has been a few months since a good example like this has come across my desk. In this latest […]

Sympathy for Padlet

Last week when Padlet‘s founder and CEO Nitesh Goel announced the changes to Padlet’s pricing model the online ed tech community was upset. Some of the Tweets and Facebook posts that I saw about it were a bit harsh to say the least. I’m sure that Nitesh saw much worse in his inbox than I […]

NASA’s Interactive Guide to the Solar System

I have been reviewing and sharing sharing resources from NASA for almost as long as this blog has existed. Somehow, I missed NASA’s Solar System Exploration until it was mentioned last week on Maps Mania. NASA’s Solar System Exploration website contains interactive displays of the planets, dwarf planets, and moons of our solar system. To […]

What Makes a Poem? – A Lesson for Poetry Month

This is National Poetry Month. “What is a poem?” might be the first question that students ask after, “why is it National Poetry Month?” The answer to that first question can be found in a TED-Ed lesson titled What Makes a Poem…a Poem? By watching What Makes a Poem? students can learn the origins of poetry, the […]

Padlet, QR Codes, and Body Odor – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun is setting on a productive day. Today, I was able to pack up the tools that I’ve been using to convert old barn space into my office space. Some of you have been following this project since I started it late last summer. Now when you join me […]

Dimensions – An Academic Research Engine

When it comes to searching for research studies and other academic articles many people turn to Google Scholar. But as your friendly librarian will tell you, there are still other databases that you should try. Dimensions is one such example of that. Dimensions is a search engine focused on helping users discover research publications including […]

How to Find & Make OneNote Templates

The more that I use it, the more I think that OneNote is a fantastic all-in-one product for note-taking, bookmarking, and general organization of your digital life. Like any robust product, OneNote has some features that you might overlook unless someone points them out. In my case, templates were a feature that I didn’t notice […]

Unsplash for iPad – Quickly Add Public Domain Pictures to Keynote & iMovie

Unsplash is one of my favorite places to find high quality pictures to use in presentations. This week Unsplash launched a new iOS app. The new Unsplash app lets you search through the entire Unsplash collection. The best part of the Unsplash iPad app is that once you find a picture that you like you […]

Google Drive is Not Going Away

In the last 18 hours three people have emailed me with a concern that Google Drive is going away. To be clear, Google Drive is not going away. But if you are using the Google Drive desktop app for Mac or Windows you may see a somewhat confusing pop-up message that reads, “Google Drive for […]

5 More Alternatives to Padlet

Almost overnight 5 Alternatives to Padlet became one of my most popular posts of the year. Many of you Tweeted and emailed me to suggest some other alternatives. In no particular order, here are some more alternatives to Padlet. Netboard.me was suggested by Tiziana Angiolini. At first glance it looks like it has a lot […]

How to Quickly Create a Livestream on YouTube

YouTube used to have a built-in option for creating a video with the webcam built into your laptop. That feature went away a couple of years ago. Now it’s back in a new form. You can now create a livestream on YouTube right from your laptop just like you can on a mobile phone. Here […]

5 Alternatives to Padlet

For the last 24 hours the Twittersphere has been buzzing about the recent changes to Padlet. While none of the following tools have as many features as Padlet, they all provide the core element of a digital wall to which you apply digital sticky notes. Here are five alternatives to Padlet. These are in the […]

Padlet Makes a Big Change to Free Plan

Padlet is a tool that I have used and recommended for many years. In the last year the folks at Padlet have introduced a slew of great new features including built-in video and audio recording. As anyone who runs an online service can tell you, with popularity comes increasing overhead to keep the service running. […]

ReCall Study Time – An Extension to Get You Back on Task

ReCall Study Time is a Chrome extension that is designed to help you stop wasting time on social media sites and get back on task. With the extension installed and enabled you’ll see a big reminder to get back on task whenever you try to open Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, or Instagram in a new […]

Realtime Board – Collaborative Whiteboard With Change Tracking and Voting

Realtime Board is an online whiteboard tool that I have been recommending for the last half-dozen years. At its basic level Realtime Board provides a blank canvas on which you can type, draw, and post pictures. You can connect elements on your boards through a simple linking tool. Over the last couple of months it […]

Poetry Lesson Plans Incorporating Word Mover

April is National Poetry Month. This is a great time to remind you of Read Write Think’s Word Mover app for iOS, Android, and web browser. Word Mover from Read Write Think is a free app that helps students develop poems and short stories. When students open the Word Mover app they are shown a […]

Fast Advanced Google Search

Google’s advanced search tools can help students find useful information that doesn’t necessarily appear at the top of search results pages. Unfortunately, students often forget about the advanced search options or don’t even know where to find them. There is a Chrome extension that aims to help alleviate those problems. Fast Advanced Google Search is […]

By Request – 5 Task Management Tools for Students

This morning I received an email from a reader seeking suggestions for to-do list management tools her students can use to keep track of assignments and other things that they have to do during the week. Here are my suggestions for task-management tools for students. OneNote If your school uses Microsoft products, I’d take a […]

How to Quickly Create a QR Code for Almost Anything

Over the weekend I shared the news that Google is shuttering the Goo.gl service. In that post I shared a handful of alternatives to Goo.gl. This morning someone emailed me to ask about an alternative to Goo.gl for creating QR codes. My suggestion is to use QR Droid Zapper. With that tool you can create […]

Math, Newspapers, Animations – March in Review

March has come and gone. Today was a nice Sunday to play outside with my older daughter. In walking the back edge of our property we found the interesting cluster of trees seen in the picture. I hope that you had a nice Sunday and nice start to your month too. Every month I put […]

Vintage Travel Posters, Advertisements, and Films

In my post about Seward’s Folly I included the image of a vintage advertisement for an Alaskan cruise on Canadian Pacific. That poster came from the Boston Public Library’s Flickr collection of vintage travel posters. Most of the images in that collection are either in the public domain or have a Creative Commons license allowing for re-use […]

This Periodic Table Shows Elements By Country and Date of Discovery

On Tuesday morning I shared a collection of seven good resources to help students learn the Periodic Table of Elements. The next day Open Culture shared this periodic table visualization that shows the country and year in which each element was discovered. The Periodic Table by country and date of discovery (If you cannot see […]

5 Good Story Starters for Students

On Tuesday morning I shared the idea of using the Story Dice apps (available for iOS and Android) as writing prompts or story starters for students. A few of you wrote to me and asked about similar options that will work on Chromebooks. Here is a handful of story starter options that will work in […]

The Basics of Creating a Quiz in Google Forms

Years ago I published a slideshow that demonstrated how to create a quiz in Google Forms. Even though that slideshow is now outdated, I still get requests for copies of it. To replace that slideshow I made the following video that demonstrates how to create a quiz in the current version of Google Forms. Take […]

Three Search Tools Students Often Overlook

Google is the default search engine for many students. In fact, if your students have Chromebooks and the school has set Google as the default search engine, they may not even realize that there are search engines other than Google. Here are three search tools that students often overlook. Bing Sure this seems obvious and […]

How to Create Animations With ABCya Animate

ABCya Animate is a free tool that students can use to create animations. It can be a great tool for elementary school and middle school students to use to create animations to use to tell a short story. For example, in my demonstration video the animation I started to make could be used as part […]

Three Mistakes Students Make In Online Research

Whether it’s a simple question or a complex research task, the first thing students do is turn to Google for help. They might type a query into a Google search or, increasingly, they’ll speak their query into Google Assistant, Alexa, or Siri. That practice in itself can be a mistake. Here are three other mistakes […]

5 Brainstorming Warm-up Activities

Ethos3 is a presentation design company that has worked with some of the biggest name brands in the world. The Ethos3 Slideshare channel is a good place to get some inspiration and tips for designing your own slideshows. One of those slideshows is Wake Up Brain! In the slideshow you’ll find five warm-up activities that […]

This TED-Ed Lesson Is Full of …!

Why Isn’t the World Covered In Poop? is the latest video lesson published by TED-Ed. With a title like that, how could you not be curious enough to spend five minutes watching the video? And that’s exactly what I just did. Why Isn’t the World Covered In Poop? is really a lesson about dung beetles […]

Making and Understanding Paper Airplanes

Making and Understanding Paper Planes is a short video that was produced by students for Next Vista’s Creative Flight video contest. Like a lot of the videos hosted on Next Vista, this video is a good example of students producing a video to teach a short lesson. In the video the students demonstrate how to […]

STEM, Music, and Spring – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where spring is in the air and lots of snow is still on the ground. Some of my favorite days of the year happen now when there’s still snow on the ground but it’s warm enough during the day to have fun in the sun. In fact, that’s what I did […]

Video – An Overview of How to Find & Keep Track of Free Audio Files

Over the last couple weeks I’ve published a series of posts featuring free sources of audio files that you can download for re-use in your multimedia projects. In the following video I provide an overview of three places to find free audio files. In the video I show how to find files on each of […]

How to Share Kahoot Challenges Through Remind

This week Kahoot announced an integration with the Remind messaging service. This integration lets you send your Kahoot Challenges (games for students to play at home) to your students and their parents through the Remind messaging service. In the following video I demonstrate how to send your Kahoot Challenges through the Remind messaging service.

Use a Whiteboard in Skype Interviews

Skype Interviews is a free Microsoft service that was developed for employers to use to interview potential employees. It was specifically designed with coders and programmers in mind as there is a code editor component that lets candidates display their skills in realtime. Yesterday, Microsoft added a whiteboard to Skype Interviews. The whiteboard in Skype […]

5 Online Collaborative Whiteboard Services

An online, collaborative, whiteboard can be a great tool for hosting a quick review session for your students. Your students can also use these tools to conduct online study sessions with each other. Yes,  this could be done with something like Skype, but having a built-in whiteboard is particularly useful when having a review session […]

Kahoot Now Lets You Share Games Through Remind

Last fall Kahoot released a new feature called “Challenges” that are review games your students can play at home or anytime they are outside of your classroom. That feature has proven to be popular. Today, Kahoot announced a new integration with Remind that will make it easier than ever to send Kahoot Challenges to your […]

Quizalize Announces a Game Design Competition for Students

Quizalize is one of my favorite services for creating and running review games for your students to play in your classroom or at home. Now they want students to get in on the game design fun. For the next five weeks Quizalize is accepting submissions to their Design-A-Game competition. The Design-A-Game competition asks students to […]

Picture Dictionary and Custom Colors Added to Immersive Reader

Microsoft’s Immersive Reader just might be my favorite accessibility tool. This free add-in for Word, OneNote, Outlook, and Edge enables students to have articles read aloud to them at pace that meets their needs. Additionally, Immersive Reader will identify individual syllables, highlight each word as it is read, and identify parts of speech for students. […]

Notion – A Project Management and Reference Wiki

Notion is an interesting service that combines elements of project management with elements of a wiki service. At its core Notion is designed for teams to work on projects together. You can create sections for each of your projects. Within each section you can create a list of tasks. Notion also lets you add sections […]

Scratchwork.io – A Video Whiteboard for Math Students

Scratchwork is a new online whiteboard and video conferencing tool designed with math students in mind. The platform works like many similar services as it provides you with a whiteboard on which you can draw, type, and import images to annotate. Scratchwork is a little different than other services because it includes a Latex editor […]

Draw Chat – Free Video Conferencing With a Whiteboard

Draw Chat is a free service that allows anyone to create a video chat over a whiteboard, PDF, image, or map. To use Draw Chat you just have to visit the site and click “Start New Whiteboard.” Once your whiteboard launches you will have the option to enable access to your webcam and microphone. You […]

ZapSplat – Thousands of Free Sound Effects

ZapSplat is a website that offers more than 20,000 sound effects and songs that you can download and re-use for free. The licensing that ZapSplat uses is quite clear. As long as you cite ZapSplat, you can use the sound effects and music in your videos, podcasts, and other multimedia projects. ZapSplat does require you […]

ABCya! Offers 24 Tutorials for Fun Hands-on Projects

ABCya! is best known for its huge collection of educational games like these typing games. This evening I went directly to ABCya’s homepage where I noticed that they now offer a collection of how-to videos. ABCya’s video page includes twenty-four instructional videos that teach you how to complete fun craft projects like making slime, creating […]

Sharalike – Quickly Create Audio Slideshows

Sharalike is a free iOS, Android, and web app that makes it easy to create audio slideshow videos. To create an audio slideshow video with Sharalike simply open the app, select pictures to import, drag and drop them into any sequence you like, and then choose some music to accompany your images. Sharalike handles all […]

TinyTap – Create Image Reveal Games and Identification Games

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a way to create educational games in which students have to correctly answer questions in order to reveal a picture or part of a picture. My suggestion was to try TinyTap. TinyTap is a free iPad app and free Android app that […]

Jamendo Can Help Students Understand Copyright

Copyright is one of the topics that I always cover in my webinars and workshops about making videos with students. The subtopic under copyright that many students struggle to understand is how copyright affects the music they can or cannot include in their video projects. That confusion is often rooted in the idea that someone […]

Now You Can Add a Custom Favicon to Your Google Site

Now that Google is allowing you to embed third-party content into your Google Site, it’s time to update your site with a custom favicon. The favicon is that little icon that appears in your browser tab next to the title of a website. This week Google announced that you can now customize your site’s favicon. […]

Write Notes and Save Bookmarks to Sync With Google Docs & Slides

This morning I was browsing Product Hunt when I saw someone pitching a Chrome extension that promised to let you write notes while browsing the web and save those notes to Google Drive. As I read the description I thought to myself, “that’s what Google Keep does.” The Google Keep Chrome extension will let you […]

Echoes of the Great War – Online WWI Exhibition

Echoes of the Great War is a fantastic collection of videos, audio recordings, and pictures about WWI. This online exhibition created by the Library of Congress. Echoes of the Great War is arranged thematically. Those four themes are Arguing Over War, Over Here, Over There, and World Overturned. Within each of those themes you will […]

13 Free Typing Games for Kids

TypeTastic is a service that currently offers thirteen free typing games. The games start with basic skills like identifying the letters on a keyboard and build up to touch typing skills. Unlike some other typing games services, all of the TypeTastic games are designed to work equally well on laptop as they are on a […]

A Great List of Tools for Making Cool Infographics

Cool Infographics is a book and a blog written by Randy Krum. I read his book a few years ago and came away with some great design ideas that I now use in my slides and in some social media posts. On his blog Randy critiques the design quality and information accuracy of infographics found […]

Dig CC Mixter – Find Music for Your Next Video Project

In this week’s tip of the week newsletter I featured sources of public domain and Creative Commons licensed videos. I’ve had a couple of people reply with questions about using music in multimedia projects. Just because a song is available to stream or download through the Internet, doesn’t mean that you have the rights to […]

How to Use Padlet’s New Broadcast Feature

Padlet has been on a roll with new updates over the last year. The latest feature added to Padlet makes it easier than ever to share your Padlet walls with your students and colleagues. Now when you’re using Padlet on your Android or iOS device you can broadcast your wall to be discovered by other […]

12 Alternatives to Google Image Search – Comparison Chart

Unless they’re introduced to other options, Google Images tends to be the default image search tool for students and adults. Google Images is convenient, but it’s not the best place for students to find images that are in the public domain or to images that have been labeled with a Creative Commons license. That’s why […]

Here’s the Way That I Recommend Using the Internet Archive

In last night’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week newsletter I mentioned using the Internet Archive as a source of public domain video clips to re-use in classroom video projects. That suggestion drew a lot of emails from readers this morning. Most of the emails expressed concern about the content that students can find […]

Three Good Tools for Annotating Images Online

Annotating images can be a good activity for students to do illustrate their understanding of a process by adding information to a blank flowchart. Annotating images is also a good way for students to highlight and identify parts of a diagram like one of a plant cell. I have had students annotate images to identify […]

Quizzes, Syrup, and Public Domain Videos – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where the winter keeps on going. This week we had lots of new snow fall. As a skier, I love the snow. But many of my friends were not so happy about the latest snowstorm. In other news from Lake Wobegon Paris Hill, this week I scheduled a new webinar for […]

Photos for Class Now Offers More Free Images for Students

Photos for Class is one of my favorite sites for students to use to find free images to use their projects. The most outstanding feature of Photos for Class is that it automatically adds attribution information to the footer of the images that students download. For the last few years Photos for Class has relied […]

The Library of Congress Seeks a Teacher-in-Residence

The Library of Congress has a great opportunity for a performing arts or visual arts teacher in the 2018-19 school year. The LOC is seeking a performing arts or visual arts teacher to be a teacher-in-residence at the LOC in Washington, DC. The selected teacher will be able to do some or all of the […]

8 Changes to Google Docs & Slides Menus

If you’re a regular Google Docs and Google Slides user you may have already noticed some changes to your menus and toolbars. If you haven’t seen anything change, you will see some changes soon. Yesterday, Google announced eight changes to the Docs and Slides drop-down menus and toolbars. None of the changes will impact the […]

How to Find Public Domain Videos on Flickr

Flickr is known for hosting millions of images, but it also hosts lots of videos. The advanced search tools within Flickr make it easy to find videos that have Creative Commons licenses or have a public domain designation. With just one click those videos can be downloaded to your computer. Watch my video embedded below […]

Three Places to Find Public Domain Video Clips

This afternoon I received an email from a reader who was trying to help one of her colleagues with a classroom video project. They wanted to know if it was possible to download YouTube videos or to make a screencast of a YouTube video to then use in another video. My response was to point […]

Soon You’ll Have More Information About Who Views Your Google Docs

Version History, previously called Revision History, in Google Docs has always let you see when someone made a change to a document with him or her. But Version History doesn’t tell you if someone just went in and looked at the shared document. The same has always been true for Google Slides and Google Sheets […]

Use ViewPure to Share a Portion of a Video With Password Protection

Over the weekend I shared information about ViewPure’s curated playlists for teachers and students. Another feature of ViewPure that you should note is the option to share just a portion of a video and to password protect it when you share it. To share a portion of a YouTube video through ViewPure you first need […]

The Services I Recommend for Classroom Blogging Today

I started blogging with students twelve years ago. I started this blog eleven years ago. Over that time I’ve seen a lot of new blogging services pop-up and disappear a few years later. But there are two services that have stood the test of time that I recommend today whenever someone asks me which service […]

New Shared File Organization Coming to Google Drive

In an blog post published yesterday Google stated, “searching for content by owner is the most popular way to search for content in Drive today.” That’s why they a new file organization option is coming soon to your Google Drive dashboard. In the next couple of weeks the “shared with me” section of your Google […]

How to Add Voice Comments to PDFs and Word Documents

People who subscribe to the weekly Practical Ed Tech newsletter got this tip yesterday. But this is too good not to share with everyone. Kaizena, originally just a tool for voice commenting on Google Docs, can also be used to add voice comments to PDFs and Word documents. The process of using Kaizena for voice […]

My Top 5 Choices for Making Multimedia Quizzes

Over the years I have tried and written reviews of dozens of tools that teachers can use to create multimedia quizzes. But at the end of the day there is just a handful of tools that I consistently think of when it is time to make a quiz myself. Those tools are included in the […]

ViewPure Now Offers Curated Playlists

ViewPure, a great tool for distraction-free YouTube viewing, has relatively new collections of videos for teachers. The collections are organized according to grade level and topic. Start here by choosing either high school, middle school, upper elementary, or pre-K through lower elementary. After choosing the grade range you can choose a subject area and then […]

This Is Why I Share Interesting Videos

I share interesting videos on this blog on a regular basis because I always found that a good, short video can be an good lead-in to a lesson or discussion. This morning I woke up to this nice Tweet from Vilma Manahan that confirmed for me that other teachers feel the same way. Thank you […]

5 Tools for Creating Multimedia Books – Comparison Chart

Developing a multimedia ebook or magazine can be a to get kids excited about writing. Incorporating pictures, videos, and audio can be a good way for students to illustrate and or further explain portions of fiction and non-fiction stories that they write. The five tools featured in the chart embedded below enable students to create […]

5 Audio Recording & Editing Tools – Feature Comparison Chart

A few years ago I put together a series of charts that provided quick overviews of the features of popular ed tech tools. Since then some favorite tools have changed features, changed business models, or went out of business. So I’ve decided to update all of those charts. Here’s my updated comparison chart of the […]

7 Options for Creating Timelines Online – An Updated Comparison Chart

Making timelines is a go-to activity for many social studies teachers. When I made timelines as a student and in my first year or two of teaching, timelines were made on paper. Today, there are better ways to have students create timelines. In fact, in Teaching History With Technology I feature a couple of my […]

Science and Games – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on the month of February. As I do at the end of every month I’ve compiled a list of the most popular posts of the month. This month the bulk of the most popular posts were related to science and or games. Take a look at […]

Ten Ideas for Classroom Podcasts

On Sunday I published a video that shows how quickly and easily you can create a podcast on Anchor.fm. If you watched the video and you’re ready to get started, your next step is probably to generate ideas for your classroom podcast. Here are ten ideas that I brainstormed to help you and your students […]

Reshot – A New Source of Free Images for Multimedia Projects

Reshot is a new site that offers free “handpicked” images that you can download to reuse in multimedia projects. The site, like many like it, lets you download images for free. According to Reshot’s licensing statement, image attribution isn’t required, but it is appreciated. To that end Reshot makes it easy to find and copy […]

How to Create a Podcast

Last week Anchor.fm launched a new and improved site that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish a podcast. I liked the redesigned site so much that I featured it as my tip of the week in the Practical Ed Tech newsletter. If you’re not subscribed to that newsletter or you are and […]

Solve Me Puzzles – Play or Create Math Puzzles

Solve Me Puzzles is a free site provided by the nonprofit Education Development Center. The site offers free math puzzles for students to play and templates for teachers to use to create math puzzles. Solve Me Puzzles features three basic puzzle types. The Who Am I? puzzles feature a little robot character that students identify […]

Truss Me – Design and Test Weight-bearing Structures

Truss Me is an app that students can use to design and test simple weight-bearing structures. Truss Me can be used in “challenge” mode or in “free play” mode. The challenge mode contains fifteen activities in which students are awarded points for strength and efficiency of their structures. For example, if a structure holds the […]

Ptable – Interactive Periodic Table of Elements

There are lots of websites offering interactive or dynamic periodic tables. One that has been around for many years now is Ptable. Ptable is an interactive display of the Periodic Table of Elements. Place your mouse pointer over an element to access the basic information about it. Click on an element to open a Wikipedia article about […]

Science, Wikispaces, and Timelines – The Week in Review

Good morning from the almost completely renovated Free Technology for Teachers World Headquarters in Paris, Maine. If you have followed my week-in-review posts since last fall you know that I have been converting some space in a barn into office space. I’m in the home stretch now as I just have bit more painting to […]

How to Find and Install PowerPoint Add-ins

In the last couple of months I’ve featured a handful of Google Slides Add-ons that provide additional features for your Google Slides account. PowerPoint users have a similar option to add features through the use of PowerPoint Add-ins. In my video embedded below I demonstrate how to find and install PowerPoint Add-ins. In this video […]

Front Row Introduces New ELA Practice Activities

Front Row is an excellent service that provides differentiated reading materials and practice exercises in K-12 classrooms. Front Row offers articles and exercises on topics in math, science, social studies, and language arts. The latest update to Front Row features new ELA skills practice activities. The new ELA skills practice activities on Front Row are […]

Anchor 3.0 Provides an Easy Way to Create Podcasts

Anchor is a free service for creating podcasts on your phone or on your laptop. When the service started it was just a simple app that let you record short (two minutes or less) episodes to publish on the Anchor network. Over the last couple of years the service has steadily added more features leading […]

How to Schedule Blog Posts

Posting on a consistent schedule is one of the keys to maintaining interest in any blog. One of the best ways to maintain a consistent schedule is to use the scheduling tools that are built into most blogging services. By using the scheduling tools you can write a bunch of posts at once and have […]

Three Tools for Combining Maps With Timelines

Creating timelines whose events are directly connected to a map display is a good way for students to see correlations between locations and events. Here are three tools that students can use to create mapped timeline stories. StoryMap JS comes from the same people that offer Timeline JS. On StoryMap JS you can create mapped stories. […]

Loom Adds Options for Grouping and Sharing Videos

Loom is a free tool for creating screencast videos in your web browser. Loom even has an option to create screencasts directly from your inbox to use as responses to emails. Today, Loom announced two beta features. The first new feature allows you to organize your Loom screencast videos into groups. The second new feature […]

Math, NASA, and Bingo – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where by the time most of you read this I will be on my way further north to Moosehead Lake. As long time readers of this blog know, President’s Day weekend is the weekend that I always go to Moosehead to ice fish with about two dozen other teachers and principals. […]

Managing Classroom and Student Blogs

One of the questions that I am frequently asked about blogging and have included in my webinar on the topic is “do you recommend that I have just one blog or should all of my students have their own blogs?” There is not a clear cut answer to this question because the answer depends upon […]

Immersive Reader on iPads

When I was at the BETT Show last month I learned about the planned expansion of Microsoft’s Learning Tools including Immersive Reader. Part of that expansion rolled out yesterday with the addition of Learning Tools for Word on iPads. NEW! Word for iPad on @Office365 now has shipped Learning Tools! Check the “View” tab #mieexpert […]

Nine Ways to Add Notes to Padlet Walls

A few weeks ago Padlet added the option to record audio directly in a note. By my count, that marked the ninth way that students can added notes to a Padlet. I made the following video to explain and demonstrate all of the types of notes that can be added to a Padlet wall. Nine […]

Blue Whales in Virtual Reality

Blue Whale VR is a free virtual reality app that provides a 360 tour of a blue whale’s anatomy. The app isn’t terribly interactive. The only interactive element is that students can move around the whale during the tour. If you don’t have VR viewers, you can access the tour through this YouTube video. The […]

What is Hotlinking?

This morning I received an email from a reader who had a question about my article on making bingo game boards in Google Sheets. Her question was essentially, “why won’t Pixabay images show up on the board?” The answer is that Pixabay doesn’t allow hotlinking its images. The following is from an article about image […]

Two Simple Timeline Creation Tools That Are Frequently Overlooked

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a suggestion for a timeline creation tool. My recommendation was to try Timeline JS which is my favorite tool and is featured in my Teaching History With Technology course. But there are many other ways to create timelines. Two of those ways […]

ReClipped Adds New Features for Recording & Sharing Video Notes

ReClipped is a video annotation tool that I first tried back in November. I was impressed by how ReClipped lets you not only clip or highlight sections of videos, but also lets you write time-stamped notes about those clipped sections. Watch the video here to see ReClipped in action. Recently, ReClipped added some new features […]

Last-minute Collection of Valentine’s Day Resources

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. If you’re looking for some last minute activities to do in your classroom, take a look at these resources that I featured earlier in the month. Storyboard That offers templates for designing and printing Valentine’s Day cards. To do this your students will first have to create a simple three-frame storyboard. Then […]

Webinar Recording – Inquiry and the Fire Lab

On Monday I hosted a free webinar sponsored by Underwriters Laboratories Xplorlabs. The webinar focused on the ideas of inquiry-based learning and how they are applied to Xplorlabs’s Fire Forensics: Claims and Evidence online learning experience. If you missed the webinar, you can view the recording as embedded below. Inquiry-based Learning and the Fire Lab from Richard […]

Pixorize – Free Image Annotation Tool

Pixorize is a free tool for adding interactive annotations to your images. Using Pixorize is a fairly straight-forward process. To get started just upload any picture that you have saved on your computer. (After your image is uploaded you may need to resize it to make it fit into your browser). Once the image is […]

18 Sets of Free to Use and Reuse Pictures and Videos

The Library of Congress is a great place to find a lot of media that is in the public domain. The only problem with finding material on the LOC’s website is just that, it’s often hard to find. In an attempt to begin to remedy that situation the Library of Congress has started to publish […]

Olympics, STEM, and Quizzes – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where I’m sitting inside my newly heated barn which is becoming office space, slowly. Getting the heat working was the most important step in the process because now I can finish mudding, taping, and painting the walls. I’ll be spending the day working on that project. It’s not exactly fun, but […]

Newspaper Templates for Google Docs & Word

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for suggestions on tools that his students can use to collaboratively create a newspaper. My first suggestion was to try LucidPress. My second thought was to try using some Google Docs templates. I didn’t have any Google Docs templates of my own so […]

5 Good Resources for Health Teachers

Yesterday afternoon I ran into one of my old colleagues who asked me for some recommendations for tech tools that she could use in her health classes. One of the suggestions that I made was to try the Cardio VR app. I also promised to come up with some other suggestions. In this video I […]

10 Blog Post Ideas for Your School Blog

“I don’t know what to write about” is one of reasons that many people cite for not regularly updating their school or classroom blogs. One of the ways that teachers and principals can avoid running out of blog post topics is to think about the questions that parents frequently ask during parent-teacher conferences or during […]

Play and Learn Science – An App for Students and Their Parents

Play and Learn Science is a free app (Android and iOS versions available) designed for kids to learn science concepts. Not only that, the app is designed to help parents help their kids learn science concepts. Play and Learn Science has four sections for kids. Each of those sections contains three activities related to science […]

Vysor – Mirror Your Android Device to Your Computer’s Screen

Vysor is a program that makes it easy to mirror your Android phone or tablet to your Windows, Mac, Linux, or Chrome OS computer. To mirror your Android device to your computer you do have to install the Vysor software. After installing Vysor you can mirror your phone to your computer by simply connecting the […]

PrepFactory Introduces New PARCC and SBAC Review Content

PrepFactory is a free service that has offered great ACT and SAT prep materials. Last year they started to branch out into guided math and language arts review lessons for middle school students. This year the folks at PrepFactory released PARCC and SBAC content for students in sixth through tenth grade. Just like their ACT […]

ClassHook Adds a New Feature for Using Videos in Your Classroom

ClassHook is a free service that helps you locate video clips to use in your classroom. ClassHook’s best feature is being able to search for video clips according to subject and topic. Most of the video clips that you’ll find on ClassHook come from well-known television shows and movies. Over the weekend ClassHook introduced a […]

Free Hands-on STEM Lesson Plans and Projects

“Hacking STEM” was one of the initiatives that Microsoft was heavily promoting at the BETT Show last month. I asked a few Microsoft employees what “hacking STEM” meant. They all replied with explanations that centered on the idea of providing teachers with hands-on STEM lessons and projects that can be done without having to spend […]

Try the Redesigned Make Beliefs Comix

Make Beliefs Comix has long been one of my favorite tools for creating comics. In fact, I recently featured it in this post about using comics in social studies lessons. Over the weekend the founder of Make Beliefs Comix sent me a note about the redesign of his free comic creation tool. The new version […]

FAQs About G Suite for Teachers

In January 36 people completed my Practical Ed Tech course called G Suite for Teachers. A couple more people started this weekend. The course is designed to equip you with the skills you need to feel confident using G Suite for Education tools in your classroom. If you have been thinking about taking the course, […]

These Google Docs Add-ons Make It Easy to Find Public Domain Images

Whenever I talk about copyright I always encourage teachers and students to use their own images when they need to include visuals in a paper or presentation. If you don’t own an appropriate picture then look for images that are in the public domain. While Google Docs does have a built-in image search tool, Google […]

Docs, Games, and Expeditions – The Week in Review

Good morning from the Free Technology for Teachers World Headquarters in Paris, Maine. Those of you who have been following the saga of my office renovation should note that it is once again functional except for the lack of heat which will be fixed on Thursday. In the meantime, this hardy blogger is making do […]

The Math and Science of Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is less than two weeks away. In middle schools and high schools everywhere there will be students who are excited about it, some who dread it, and others who are indifferent. I always fell into the indifferent category. Wherever your students stand on Valentine’s Day, the following two videos make for interesting lessons […]

7 Ways to Create Screencasts on Chromebooks – Updated for 2018

This week’s news about Screencast-o-matic has prompted me to update my list of tools for creating screencast videos on Chromebooks. All of these tools can be used by you or your students to create demonstrations of how a tool works, to create a simple video lesson in which you talk over a slideshow, or to […]

How to Set a New Default Font for All of Your Google Docs

Last weekend I highlighted ten frequently overlooked Google Docs features. Here’s another one that I’m reminded of on a regular basis. The default font for new Google Documents is 11 point Arial. You can easily change that whenever you start a new document, but there is another, better option. You can change the default font […]

Five Good Educational Resources to Use Before the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is this coming Sunday. Just like last year, I predict that the Patriots will win. The odds are good that you have some students who are also interested in the game. Try one of the following resources to turn your students’ enthusiasm for the Super Bowl into a fun lesson. The Superb […]

My Favorite Screencasting Tool Now Works on Chromebooks

Screencast-o-Matic has been my favorite screencasting tool for years. I use it on my Windows and Mac computers to create almost all of the videos that you see on my YouTube channel. The one knock against Screencast-o-Matic has always been that it wouldn’t work on Chromebooks. That has changed. Last fall Screencast-o-Matic launched a beta […]

Design and Print Valentine’s Day Cards on Storyboard That

If your elementary school was like mine, on Valentine’s Day your teacher would have you fill out little sheets of Valentine’s Day cards to distribute to classmates or to take home to your parents. Back then our cards all came from the same template and looked more or less the same (at least they did […]

What is Groundhog Day?

Today is Groundhog Day. Today is the day that, according to legend, a groundhog will predict how much longer winter will last in the northern hemisphere. Your students might be wondering where this tradition originated. The following two videos provide brief explanations of Groundhog Day’s origins. This video from Storm Shield explains a bit of […]

Try Quick Key’s Gridded Response Format for Your Next Math Assessment

Quick Key is a free app that I have liked and written about since my friend Mike Morrell showed it to me almost five years ago. Every year since then Quick Key has improved by adding new features that teachers want. The latest feature added to Quick Key is a gridded response format. Quick Key’s […]

Quizalize Launches New Insights Features

Quizalize is one of my favorite tools for creating and hosting quiz games. One of the aspects of Quizalize that I have liked since it launched is the option to run quiz games as at-home activities instead of just in-class activities (Kahoot launched a similar option last fall). The other aspect of Quizalize that I […]

How to Add Audio, Video, and Picture Notes to Padlet Walls

Padlet has a new audio recording option that allows you to record for up to fifteen minutes at a time. This is a great addition to the video and picture note options that Padlet already offered. In my video embedded below I demonstrate how to create audio, video, and picture notes on Padlet. Applications for […]

Ranked Responses – New Microsoft Forms Question Types

Microsoft recently added a couple of new response formats to Microsoft Forms. The new response formats are “ranking” and “Likert.” These new response types can be used when making a quiz or a survey in Microsoft Forms. The new ranking response format is exactly what you would guess that it is. You can build a […]

Three Ways to Add Audio to Google Slides

One of the questions that new Google Slides users often ask me is, “how do I add music to the slides?” In the early days of Google Slides that wasn’t possible at all. Today, there are three methods that you can use to add music to Google Slides. AudioPlayer for Google Slides is a free […]

Add Live Polls and Q&A to Your PowerPoint Slides

Glisser is a live polling and online Q&A platform that offers a free PowerPoint add-in. Glisser’s free PowerPoint add-in will sync your slides to Glisser’s online service. With Glisser activated you can ask multiple choice poll questions or let your audience submit their own questions much like the Q&A feature for Google Slides. To use […]

New Google Sites Publishing Options

One of my favorite features of the old version of Google Sites was the option to restrict access to individual pages through a function called “page-level permissions.” Google hasn’t brought that feature over to the new version of Google Sites, but they did get a little closer with the announcement of a new option to […]

How to Use Microsoft Translator

Last week I wrote that Microsoft Translator was the coolest thing that I saw at BETT. If you haven’t tried Microsoft Translator, watch my video below to see how it works. For a demo of Microsoft Translator working in PowerPoint in a classroom, watch this video from Microsoft. (Jump to the 1 minute mark).

LinguaPracticaVR – Learn English in Virtual Reality

Update August 2019: This app is no longer available.  As I walked around the BETT Show last week there seemed to be a vendor selling a virtual reality product at every turn. LinguaPracticaVR is one of those VR products that I tested. LinguaPracticaVR offers free English lessons in a virtual reality context. LinguaPracticaVR builds short […]

Code for Life – Coding Challenges and Lesson Plans

Code for Life is a free program that I learned about while attending the BETT Show last week. Code for Life has a programming interface based on Blockly. Anyone who has used Blockly or Scratch will immediately recognize the similarities when they launch Code for Life’s programming interface. Code for Life contains more than 100 […]

A Free Teleprompter

Thanks to Beth Holland this weekend I learned about a free teleprompter service called CuePrompter. CuePrompter displays your written script in a clear, large, scrolling format in your web browser. It’s perfect for use when recording yourself or someone else on camera. To use CuePrompter just go to the site then start entering your script […]

Slides, Mount Rushmore, and Tours – The Week in Review

Good evening from terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport where I’m waiting for a flight home after attending the BETT Show in London. It was a whirlwind trip to catch up with some friends and colleagues based in Europe while also seeing some of the new offerings of some of the ed tech industry. I am […]

Gamifying Writing Instruction

Last night at TeachMeet BETT Simon Johnson gave a great little talk about 21 Things Every Teacher Should Try. He didn’t cover all 21 things in the talk (he only had seven minutes to talk), but one of the things that he did talk about was game-based learning. The example that he gave was gamifiying […]

Ten Overlooked Google Docs Features

On Monday I featured ten overlooked Google Slides features. Like Google Slides, Google Docs has a lot of features that new users often don’t notice. Some these are features that even experienced Google Docs users overlook. Some of these features will save you time, some will give you more formatting flexibility, and others will improve […]

A Periodic Table of AR and VR Apps

At the start of the BETT Show Mark Anderson and Steve Bambury announced the release of their new Periodic Table of iOS Apps for AR and VR. The table is an interactive Thinglink image that links to AR and VR apps. The apps can be used to address topics in STEM, creativity, geography, storytelling, art, […]

Important News About Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a great tool for making videos, storytelling websites, and simple graphics. It has been popular since its launch a few years ago. Also since its launch there have been many questions about whether or not it can be used with students under the age of 13. For while Adobe’s guide for educators […]

The Coolest Thing I Saw at BETT Today!

Today at the BETT Show in London I met with Mike Tholfsen to learn about some of the free products that Microsoft is making for schools. He shared some more details on the announcements that Microsoft made earlier in the week, but I was absolutely blown away when he demonstrated Microsoft Translator! Microsoft Translator does […]

WriteReader Launches a New User Interface

WriteReader is one of my favorite writing tools for elementary school students and their teachers. WriteReader is a free service that students can use to create multimedia ebooks. I like it so much that I have included it in my Best of the Web 2018 presentation. This week WriteReader unveiled an updated user interface. The […]

Patches – Create Your Own Virtual Reality Environments

In the past I’ve featured Google’s Cardboard Camera and Street View apps as tools for creating simple virtual reality imagery. Those tools are great if you want to capture immersive images of physical environments and share those images with others. But if you want to create completely drawn and animated virtual reality scenes, then you’ll […]

Mentimeter Adds a New Q&A Feature

Mentimeter, one of the tools that I often mention for conducting formative assessments, has just released a new Q&A feature. The new feature will let your audience submit questions that they want you to answer. Additionally, members of the audience can vote for the questions that they want you to answer. The new Mentimeter Q&A […]

How to Add Voice Comments to Google Docs

Last night I shared the news of Kaizena’s updated Google Docs Add-on that streamlines the process of adding voice comments to Google Documents. If you haven’t tried it, watch the video that I just made about how to add voice comments to Google Documents. Applications for Education As I wrote last night, the combination of […]

Microsoft Introduces Page Locking for OneNote Class Notebooks

Today, Microsoft announced a slew of new features for teachers and students who use Office 365 Education. Among those new features is an option that anyone using OneNote Class Notebooks is sure to appreciate. That is the new option to lock pages as “read only” for students. A couple of other new OneNote features to […]

Ten Overlooked Google Slides Features

Like any robust presentation tool, Google Slides has many features that often go overlooked by new users. Some of these features will let you accomplish the things that you used to do in PowerPoint or Keynote while others will just save you a bit of time. Either way, here are ten features of Google Slides […]

Kaizena – Streamlined Voice Commenting in Google Docs

Kaizena is a free Google Docs Add-on that makes it easy to add voice comments to your documents and to the documents that students share with you. Today, the Kaizena team announced a new streamlined version of their Google Docs Add-on. The new version lets you record your voice comments without having to ever leave […]

Math, Social Studies, and Diagrams – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where a cold bug has hit our house. I tried to fight it, but this morning I have to admit that I’ve caught it too. This might put me a little behind on my plan to have Practical Ed Tech completely remodeled by kick-off off the Patriots’ game on Sunday afternoon. […]

My Unprofessional Videos

If you follow my YouTube channel or even if you just watch the videos that I put into blog posts here, you’ll notice a significant lack of editing. In the last couple of weeks I’ve had a few people ask me why I don’t make my videos look more professional. So this morning I went […]

How to Make an Interactive Diagram in PowerPoint

A couple of days ago I published a video that demonstrated how to create an interactive diagram in Google Slides. This morning I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if the same thing can be done in PowerPoint. Yes, you can use PowerPoint to create interactive diagrams. I made the following […]

How to Create & Send Screencasts from Your Inbox

On Thursday morning I featured Loom 2.0 which offers a convenient way to create screencasts on a Chromebook, Mac, or Windows computer. One of the “hidden” features of Loom is that once you have connected it to your email account, you can launch Loom’s screen recorder directly from your inbox. Not only can you launch […]

Simple Tips for Learning From PD Webinars

I love webinars. They’re a convenient way to learn from experts that I otherwise wouldn’t get to interact with. But not everyone enjoys them like I do. In fact, I didn’t always find them enjoyable. Then a handful of years ago I made some simple, almost “duh,” discoveries that helped me get more out of […]

Taking Notes on a Touchscreen – Three Options Compared

iPads, Android tablets, and touchscreen laptops that fold flat make it easy for those who prefer to handwrite their notes to preserve those notes in a digital format. I’ve used Google Keep for this purpose for a number of years, but as a part of my on-going effort to feature more non-Google tools I spent […]

10 Free Apps for Elementary School Math Lessons

Math Learning Center offers ten free apps that are designed for teaching elementary school mathematics lessons. All of the apps are available in versions as free iPad apps, as Chrome apps, and for use in the web browser of any computer. With the exception of the flashcards app, all of the Math Learning Center’s free […]

USGS Multimedia Gallery – Excellent Public Domain Images and Videos

Today, I want to make sure that you’re aware of some other great materials available through the USGS Multimedia Gallery. The USGS Multimedia Gallery contains large collections of educational videos, animations, podcasts, and image galleries. You can search each collection by topic, keyword tag, or year of creation. RSS feeds are available for each gallery. In addition to […]

5 Ways to Use Comics in Social Studies Lessons

Creating cartoons and comic strips can be a fun way for students to show their understanding of events and concepts. For the student who is intimidated (or bored) by the idea of writing yet another essay or making another PowerPoint presentation, creating a comic strip is a welcome change. Here are five ideas for using […]

W3Schools – Your HTML Reference

W3Schools is my go-to reference for all questions regarding how to write any aspect of HTML code. In fact, when I was recently asked a question about writing HTML that I couldn’t immediately answer, I turned to W3Schools. W3Schools offers complete tutorials for learning to write HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP. If you’re just getting […]

Twitter Moments – One Storify Alternative

Earlier this week someone emailed me looking for an alternative to Storify which is shutting down and no longer accepting submissions.  Moving forward, one way to create collections of Tweets about a topic is to use Twitter’s Moments feature. I have a video about how to create Twitter Moments. In May Storify will be removing […]

10 Good Resources for Math Teachers and Students

One of the things that I wish that I had done when started this blog was to build pages like Larry Ferlazzo’s “Best Resources for X” lists. Instead, I have relied on people using the search box on this blog to find the resources that they need. That’s why from time to time I will […]

This Add-on Makes It Easy to Create Photo Slideshows

Photo Slideshow is a free Add-on that makes it quick and easy to import an entire Google Photos or Google Drive folder into Google Slides. Once you have installed the Add-on just select either Google Photos or Google Drive and then choose the folder of images that you want to have displayed in a slideshow. […]

7 Ways for Students to Use Google Drawings

Google Drawings is an often overlooked, yet useful tool that students can access within their G Suite for Education accounts. As I shared in one of yesterday’s posts, Google Drawings can be used to create hyperlinked images much like you can do in Thinglink which now requires a subscription in most cases. There are other […]

Google Calendar Is Changing – It’s Nothing to Worry About

As I wrote last week, Google Calendar is changing soon whether you like it or not. By the end of February all users will be migrated over to the new version of Google Calendar. If you’re worried about the switch, don’t be. As I demonstrate and explain in this video, there are not any significant […]

Videos and Google Earth File for Learning About Glaciers

SciShow Kids recently published a new video that explains to children how glaciers are formed and how they change over time. SciShow Kids is intended for early elementary school grades and this video about glaciers not an exception to that pattern. For older students you might want to take a look at How Do Glaciers […]

Getting Out of Your Ed Tech Rut

For the last seven weeks I’ve been making it a point to try out the features of Microsoft’s offerings for teachers and students. See yesterday’s post about Microsoft Forms as an example of that. I have been doing this because it is forcing me to take an honest look at the competitor to G Suite […]

Search Within a Folder in Google Drive

A convenient update to Google Drive was released yesterday afternoon. You can now search within a folder in your Google Drive account. You can do this in one of two ways. The easiest way is to right-click on a folder’s name and then select search. The second option is to open a folder and then […]

Three Things I Like About Microsoft Forms

I’ve been a devoted user of Google Docs, Forms, and all things G Suite for more than a decade. I’ve helped thousands of teachers get started with Google Forms. I tell you all that as a way of saying that it takes a lot for me to be happy with an alternative product. But that’s […]

What is a Red Herring? – And Other Lessons on Critical Thinking

In today’s age of clickbait headlines and increasingly polarized news reporting, it is more important than ever to teach students to be critical thinkers. One of the ways that we can do that is to teach them about logical fallacies and how they are used to try to win an argument. Wireless Philosophy offers 35 […]

New Workshops and Keynotes for 2018

Facilitating on-site workshops and giving keynotes at conferences is one of the ways that I am able to fund Free Technology for Teachers and, in turn, future college tuition costs for my daughters. For 2018 I have developed some new standard offerings to go along with the custom workshops that I am always happy to develop […]

Space Camp Scholarships

The Mars Generation Space Camp Scholarship is a great opportunity for U.S. high school students to receive an all-expenses paid trip to space camp in Huntsville, Alabama. Applying for and receiving this scholarship will take some significant effort on the part of students who apply for it. Students must propose an outreach project that they […]

Tutorials on Organizing OneNote

To most outside observers my notebooks, both digital and physical, are a hot mess. That’s because I rarely employ tags, folders, or any of the other traditional methods used to organize a notebook. The only time I do use tags and folders is when I am working on specific research project. The rest of the […]

Free Music to Use In Google Slides Presentations

Earlier this week I published directions for how to add music to your Google Slides presentations. In those directions I mentioned that in order to add music to your presentation you first need to store it in your Google Drive account. If you find yourself or your students in need of some free music to […]

Certificates, Rocks, and Wicked Cold – The Week in Review

Good morning from Paris Hill, Maine where wind chill is currently -27F and it’s only going to get colder as the sun comes up and the wind picks up. Usually, I like to go outside and do something fun with my dogs and kids on a snowy day. But today is going to have to […]

A Short Overview of Immersive Reader from Microsoft

Immersive Reader is a free tool available from Microsoft. As I wrote earlier this week, Immersive Reader will read aloud the articles that students have in their OneNote notebooks. Immersive Reader does more than just read articles aloud. It will identify to students the nouns, verbs, and adjectives within an article. Students can also choose […]

18 Tools for Making Videos on Chromebooks

In the first years of Chromebooks the options for making videos were rather limited. Today, while there still aren’t as many options as there are for Mac and Windows users, there are many more options available. In the document that is embedded below I have featured eighteen good options for making screencasts, animated movies, stop-motion […]

How Is Wind Chill Calculated?

Here in Maine it snowed all day yesterday. I like the snow. What I don’t like is the bitter wind that follows the day after a snow storm. Today’s daytime forecast for my area has a high temperature of 1F and the wind chill down to -31F. If you live in a cold climate, your […]

Google Calendar is Changing Whether You Like It or Not

Back in October Google announced a new user interface for Google Calendar. Many folks who use consumer Gmail accounts to access Google Calendar are already using the new version of Google Calendar. Those who use Google Calendar within G Suite for Education will soon forced to use the new interface too. Yesterday, Google announced migration […]

Can I Use Canva With Students Under 13? – Yes, But Read This

Canva is a fantastic service for creating all kinds of graphics. Over the years I have featured many ways to use it in your classroom. Here’s a collection of free lesson plans that incorporate Canva and graphic design in many subject areas. Whenever I write about it, someone will ask me about Canva’s terms of […]

Three Options for Hosting Snow Day Study Sessions

Batten down the hatches! We’ve got a big storm about to hit the northeastern part of the United States. When I went to bed last night many schools were already announcing closings for today and when I got up at 4am even more had closed. Then when I went on Twitter someone asked me for […]

Free Timer Templates for PowerPoint Presentations

Over the years I have featured a lot of free countdown timers that you can use in your classroom. At the beginning of the 2017-18 school year I published this list of recommended countdown timers. Here’s one more option to consider, using a timer in a PowerPoint slide. Microsoft offers a couple of timer templates […]

How to Add Audio to Google Slides

AudioPlayer for Google Slides is a free Add-on that will let you add music to the background of a presentation created with Google Slides. The music that you add through the Add-on can loop in the background throughout the course of your presentation. Watch my video to learn how to use AudioPlayer for Google Slides. […]

Immersive Reader – A Fantastic Addition to OneNote

For the last six weeks I have been making a concerted effort to increase my working knowledge of OneNote in order to be able to make better comparisons between it and its competitors. One of the aspects of OneNote that I appreciate is its flexibility. An example of that flexibility is found in a free […]

12 Free Lessons About Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms

Scholastic has a nice resource called StudyJams that contains short videos, slideshows, and quizzes about a variety of topics commonly taught in elementary school classrooms. Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms is one of the topics covered in a unit of twelve StudyJams. The Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms StudyJams include videos, slideshows, and short quizzes. Some of […]

How to Automatically Filter Words From YouTube Comments

YouTube can be a great place to share your instructional videos with your students and the world at large. Every video that you upload to your YouTube channel has the potential to reach and help millions of people. With that potential audience of millions comes the potential for annoying and or downright offensive comments. Fortunately, […]

How to Use Flipgrid – A 2017 Favorite

For the last five days I have featured the most popular posts of 2017. On this last day of the year, I’m going to highlight my favorite posts of the year regardless of their popularity. This post features my guide to using Flipgrid. Flipgrid is a fantastic service for collecting video responses to prompts that […]

Zero Noise Classroom – A 2017 Favorite

For the last five days I have featured the most popular posts of 2017. On this last day of the year, I’m going to highlight my favorite posts of the year regardless of their popularity. This post features a convenient noise meter and timer. Zero Noise Classroom provides a countdown timer and a noise meter […]

Toontastic 3D – A 2017 Favorite

For the last five days I have featured the most popular posts of 2017. On this last day of the year, I’m going to highlight my favorite posts of the year regardless of their popularity. This post features my initial review of Toontastic 3D followed by a tutorial video. On Thursday Google released a new […]

Try This Fun, Free AR App for Outdoor Lessons – A 2017 Favorite

For the last five days I have featured the most popular posts of 2017. On this last day of the year, I’m going to highlight my favorite posts of the year regardless of their popularity. This post features an augmented reality app for elementary school students. Spring is here in the northern hemisphere and those […]

Goals, Wishes, and Cold – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re experiencing a stretch of cold days that hasn’t been seen since the 1970’s. How cold is it? Earlier this week I referred to Tuesday’s high temperature of 7f as a “warm day.” I took advantage of that warm day by going out to hike up and ski down Saddleback […]

Grids, Timelines, and Notes in Google Slides – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in September. This week Google added a handful of […]

Ten Things You Can Do With Google Forms – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in August. Google Forms and Google Sheets is the […]

Resources for Teaching Digital Citizenship – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in August. The new school year is when we […]

The Periodic Table in Pictures and Words – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in July. The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures […]

Make Stop Motion Videos on Your Chromebook – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in June. On Monday I livestreamed a presentation about […]

Six Types of Classroom Video Projects – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in June. The process of creating and publishing videos […]

7 Ways to Use Google Keep in Your Classroom – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in May. This week’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of […]

10 Ways to Use Google Earth in Your Classroom – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This one of the most popular posts in May. A couple of weeks ago Google released the […]

How to Add Spoken Audio to Google Slides – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. Here’s one from March of 2017. The Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week that I published yesterday was […]

21 Tools for Conducting Digital Formative Assessments – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. This was one of the most popular posts in February. Conducting simple formative assessments is one way […]

5 Ways Students Can Earn Money Without Flipping Burgers – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. Here is one from January. One of the talks that I give from time to time is […]

Track Progress Toward Goals With This Google Sheets Template – Best of 2017

As I do during this week every year, I am taking some time off to relax and prepare for the new year. Every day this week I will be featuring the most popular blog posts of the year. Here is one from January. This morning I received an email from a subscriber to the Practical […]

Three FAQs from New Google Slides Users

I have hosted hundreds of G Suite webinars and workshops over the last eight years. In that time there have been some questions that I learned to address early on because people always ask them. Here are three questions that I frequently hear from new Google Slides users. Learn more about Google Slides in my […]

Image Search, Science, and Math – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re going to have a white Christmas. Eight inches of snow fell last night and more is on the way. That means it’s time for me to get to shoveling just as soon as I finish writing this week in review. This week more people joined the 2018 Practical Ed […]

Three Apps That Solve Math Problems Through a Picture

A few years ago when Photomath hit the App store there was all manner of debate about whether or not it was a good app for students. I fall into the side that argues that students are going to find apps like Photomath whether we tell them about it or not. Therefore, we need to […]

Updated List of Chromebooks That Support Android Apps

Thursday’s post about the Google Science Journal app prompted a lot of people to ask me, in email and on Facebook, if the app would work on Chromebooks. The answer is that it will work on some Chromebooks. To run the Google Science Journal app on a Chromebook you have to have a Chromebook that […]

Classmint – Online Flashcards With Annotated Images

Classmint is an online flashcard service. Like other services similar to it, Classmint can be used to create and share sets of flashcards. A couple of aspects of Classmint make it different from some other flashcard services. First, Classmint will read your flashcards to you. Second, in addition to supporting the use of images in your […]

Ancient Egypt 101 – A Six Minute Primer

Ancient Egypt 101 is a new video produced by National Geographic. The video doesn’t reveal any new information or go into any great detail. What it does provide is a concise overview of the history of ancient Egypt and how some aspects of ancient Egyptian culture are still present today. Applications for Education One of […]

G Suite for Teachers – An On-demand Course Starting in January

As you may know, one of the ways that I am able to keep Free Technology for Teachers running is through sales of my online Practical Ed Tech courses. For the last few years the most popular of those courses has been Getting Going With G Suite. More than 500 teachers have gone through that […]

MySimpleShow – Create Explanatory Videos

MySimpleShow is a great tool for creating animated explanatory videos. One of the things that I like about MySimpleShow is that students have to create a script in order to produce a video through MySimpleShow. In fact, that is really only way that students can make a video through the service because it is through […]