Tag: how to

Google Classroom Overview for Parents

Last Friday I published a video in which I demonstrated the teacher view and student view of Google Classroom. A lot of people replied to ask if I had a similar one about the parent view of Google Classroom. I didn’t have one, but I was happy to refer people to this section of Sam […]

How to Use Microsoft Flip – Teacher and Student Views

It’s that time of year again when many of us are thinking about ways for our students to get to know each other and us. One popular way of doing that is through short video introductions. Microsoft Flip (formerly known as Flipgrid) provides a great platform on which to do that. As a teacher you […]

How Wastewater Gets Recycled

This morning my YouTube subscriptions included a notification of a new TED-Ed lesson that caught my attention. That lesson is titled How the Water You Flush Becomes the Water You Drink. As the titled implies, the lesson is all about how wastewater gets cleaned and put back into the water cycle where we’ll eventually drink […]

47,000 People Get Their Educational Technology Tips This Way

This morning when I checked my YouTube Studio account I noticed that my little channel had passed the 47,000 subscriber mark. Despite publishing videos on YouTube since at least 2009, I’ve never had a viral hit and probably never will. Instead of worrying about that I just try to make as many helpful videos as I can. […]

Five New Padlet Features to Try

Along with Google Workspace tools, Padlet is one of the educational technology tools that I’ve used the most consistently over the last fifteen years. I’ve used it for everything from hosting online brainstorming sessions to digital mapping to distraction-free YouTube viewing and a whole lot more. Padlet recently add five new features for the new […]

Bring the Joy Back to School With Book Creator

Disclosure: Book Creator is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Book Creator has been one of my go-to multimedia creation tools for nearly a decade. For back-to-school season they’ve created a hub of resources arranged around the theme of bringing joy back to school. Amongst many excellent resources in that hub you’ll find registration links for a […]

18 Google Keep Tutorials for Teachers

A couple of weeks ago I published a short tutorial on how to use Google Keep to scan and search handwritten notes. Publishing that tutorial prompted me to update my playlist of tutorials on ways that teachers and students can use Google Keep. The full playlist of 18 Google Keep tutorials can be seen here […]

How to Create and Share Canva Templates

In the winter of 2021-22 my kids and I conducted a winter bird survey at our house. Because my kids were little and because I thought it would be fun, I made a little observation journal that we put on our refrigerator. Last winter we did it again and I shared our observation template with a […]

Don’t Let the Graphs Fool You

Tools like Canva, Adobe Express, and even good ol’ PowerPoint make it incredibly easy to quickly create good looking graphs. But as Randy Krum points out in his book, Cool Infographics, a graphic that looks good isn’t necessarily a good graphic. In fact, many times a graphic is made to look good in order to […]

Audio, Assessments, and Summer Cold – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising on what should be a great summer day. Fortunately, I’m feeling much better than I did throughout the week as a struggled with a miserable cold that had me sleeping a lot more than normal and exercising a lot less than normal. I did get out […]

Three Google Slides Accessibility Features You Should Know How to Enable

As the new school year approaches it’s a good idea to review some of the easily overlooked, but important features of some of the tools we use the most. Google Slides is one of those tools that I use a lot and has a lot of features that are easy to overlook. For example, unless […]

By Request – Teacher and Student Views of Joining Google Classroom

Twice this week readers emailed me to ask if I had any tutorials about how students join Google Classroom. I didn’t have a current one so I made one.  In my new video that is embedded below I demonstrate three ways to invite students to join Google Classroom and the three ways that students can […]

How to Use AI in Google Slides

In case you haven’t heard, AI is the buzzword of the year in education and technology. If you haven’t tried any AI tools yet, Google Slides has one that it’s easy to use and that you might actually want to use on a regular basis.  The “insert images” menu in Google Slides now has an […]

18 Google Calendar Tutorials for Teachers

Earlier this week I shared directions for creating appointment slots in Google Calendar. After doing that it occurred to me that I’ve made a lot of Google Calendar tutorials over the years. And while I have a big playlist of more than 700 Google Workspace tutorials, I’ve never broken out the Google Calendar tutorials into […]

Five Uses for Google Docs Besides Essay Writing

Over the last sixteen years I’ve used Google Docs and had students use Google Docs for lots of activities besides just writing essays. I’ve used Google Documents to facilitate analysis of primary sources, to create charts and diagrams, to facilitate group note-taking, to publish simple webpages, and to make collaborative task lists. All of those […]

How to Create an Online Reservation System With Calendly

In one of yesterday’s posts I shared directions on how to create an online reservation system by using Google Calendar’s appointment slots feature. If you don’t have a Google Workspace account or you simply want an option for creating an online reservation system that doesn’t rely on Google, Calendly is a good option for you.  […]

How to Embed Videos Into Book Creator Pages

Book Creator is a tool that I’ve been using and recommending for many years. It provides a great way for you and your students to create all kinds of multimedia books. In the pages of Book Creator books you can include text, comics, pictures, audio, maps, and videos. The process of including YouTube videos in […]

How to Create a Reservation System in Google Calendar

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a suggestion for an alternative to using Google Forms for letting students book time in the library during the school day. Since the school was already using Google Workspace, my first suggestion was to try using Google Calendar with the appointment slots […]

Two Ways to Create Simple and Focused Websites

At this time of year I am often asked for recommendations for simple website builders that teachers and students can use to create small websites. The purpose isn’t to share everything they’ve done and have you grade it. Tools like Seesaw and Spaces are good for that. The purpose of these kinds of sites is […]

Staying Organized With Google Drive Folder Descriptions

At the start of every new school year I have high hopes for doing a better job of staying organized than I did the previous year. This year is no exception to that rule. One area in which I hope to improve my organization is in Google Drive. For years I’ve simply relied on the […]

How to Add Audio to Almost Anything in Google Workspace

Mote is a great tool for adding audio comments to Google Docs, Google Classroom, and Google Slides. You can also use Mote to add audio to Google Forms and insert audio into Google Slides with just one click. Mote also lets you record audio messages to share directly in Gmail and or via QR codes. All of […]

Slides, Assessments, and Bikes – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’ve finally had a nice stretch of summer weather, if you ignore yesterday’s rain. This week was full of bike rides, a backyard camping trip with my daughters, and general summer fun. I hope that you’ve had an equally great week.  Besides the fun mentioned above, I spent a lot […]

One Good Way to Record a Video in Gmail

Sometimes it is easier to reply to an email with a video than it is to write out a reply. For example, when a colleague asks me for help with Google Classroom I could write step-by-step directions or I could record a short screencast that would accomplish the same thing. Loom’s Chrome extension makes it […]

All About Batteries – And How to Preserve Your Laptop’s Battery Life

This week TED-Ed published a new lesson that addresses a topic that just about everyone who owns a cell phone has wondered about at one time or another. That question is “why do phone batteries get worse over time?”   Why Your Phone Battery Gets Worse Over Time explains how lithium ion batteries work, why they […]

An eBook for History Teachers and History Students

At the start of every school year I like to review search strategies with students. If you like to do the same and want some new ideas to try this fall, take a look at my eBook Teaching Search Strategies to History Students.  In Teaching Search Strategies to History Students I outline activities that you can […]

Seven ClassTools Templates to Try This Year

ClassTools has long been a favorite resource of mine for creating all kinds of fun, online activities for social studies classes. As the new school year approaches it’s a good time to take a look at seven of my favorite ClassTools games and activities templates.  Play Your Dates Right is one of the templates that […]

Three Self-Paced Courses for the Start of the School Year

If you’re interested in a professional development course that you can do while sitting outside before the summer ends, take a look at the courses I offer through PracticalEdTech.com.  Animated Explanations!This five-part course teaches you everything you need to know to create and teach with your own animated explanations. In the course you’ll learn why the […]

How to Create and Share Google Photos Albums

A couple of days ago a reader emailed me to ask for suggestions on how to share pictures with her students’ parents without having to send the pictures as email attachments every day or every week. I was happy to provide a couple of suggestions.  My first idea was to use a service like Seesaw […]

How to Scan and Search Handwritten Notes in Google Keep and Docs

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I shared a couple of studies that support the benefits of handwriting notes over typing notes. In the newsletter I also shared a couple of tips for digitizing handwritten notes. One of the things that I mentioned was using Google Keep to digitize handwritten notes.  Google Keep’s free mobile […]

Five Tools for Creating Automatically Scored Formative Assessments

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was asked to teach additional classes this fall. She reached out to me for suggestions on tools to create self-grading formative assessments to save her time this fall. I’d bet that there are many other teachers in the same situation and wondering the same thing. […]

Canva, Pictures, and Micro:bits – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine were the sun has set on the month of July, 2023. This month I hosted a course on search strategies for teachers and students. If you missed it, I’ll be offering it again soon. Look for an announcement in the next couple of days about that.  Despite being one of the […]

How to Annotate Images on Google Jamboard

Even though it’s not as popular as it was a couple of years ago, Google Jamboard is still a great tool for conducting a variety of online activities including collaborative brainstorming sessions, creating word mover activities, and annotating images. It’s the annotating images use case that I demonstrate in this new video.  Annotating images in […]

How to Get in the Flow

In a world in which there is no shortage of digital distractions it can be hard to get into the flow of working a project, studying, or simply sitting and thinking for a while. That’s why I like what Engageable is trying to do, why I appreciate the work of Cal Newport, and why I […]

A New Google Classroom Control Over Assignment Submissions

When you return to school this fall Google Classroom will have some new features for you to try. One of those new features that was recently announced is more control over assignment submissions. And unlike some of the features announced earlier this summer, this update is one that will be available to all teachers regardless […]

Math, Calories, and Copyright – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising over what should be a nice summer day to play outside. We’re going to ride bikes and play outside at a friend’s birthday party. I hope that you do something equally fun this weekend.  This week I wrapped-up the new version of my search strategies course. […]

Introduction to Classwork in Microsoft Teams

Teachers who use Microsoft Teams will have a convenient new feature to use this fall. That feature is called Classwork and it will enable you to create modules of resources drawn from assignments and OneNote notebook pages as well as web links, files, and Microsoft Forms quizzes.  Last month at the ISTE conference I saw […]

Something Fun 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. A few years ago through Google Alerts, I made […]

How to Download Google Maps

Summer is not over (at least not in the Northern Hemisphere). There’s still time before school starts again to go for a hike in a place or ride your bike somewhere you’ve never been before. But doing that can be a little intimidating if you don’t know where exactly you’re going.  Most of us rely […]

Five Wolfram Alpha Tutorials for Teachers

Yesterday afternoon I published a new video and post on Ed Tech Fitness. The video and post were about using Wolfram Alpha to create personalized estimates of calories burned by doing a variety of activities like hiking, running, swimming, and even playing lawn games.  Writing that post on Ed Tech Fitness was the inspiration for […]

Four Dozen Google Forms Tutorials

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. In a video that I published earlier this year I mentioned that the vast majority of my videos don’t get more than a few hundred views. But […]

Three Ways to Create Your Own Mobile App

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. Since the start of the year I’ve answered about a dozen emails from readers who are interested in creating mobiles apps either by themselves or with […]

10 Google Earth and Maps Activities for Math Lessons

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. Last week I shared directions for measuring perimeter and area in Google Earth. Doing that is one of many ways to incorporate Google Earth into mathematics […]

10 Ways to Use Adobe Express in School

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. I’ve made a handful of videos about using Adobe Express in your classroom. Those videos include making videos with Adobe Express and making custom QR codes […]

71 Google Slides Tutorials

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. Over the last decade I’m made more than eighty Google Slides video tutorials. Some of them are a bit outdated now, the rest are still relevant. […]

Microsoft Forms Tutorials for Teachers

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. Despite the fact that I’ve been using Google Forms for as long as it has existed and that it is my default tool for creating online […]

How to Add Q&A to Your Live Google Slides Presentations

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. There are plenty of ways to gather questions and feedback from students in a digital format. But one of the ways that is often overlooked is […]

Hello History – Have a Chat With Hundreds of Historical Figures

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. Hello History is a new AI app that I wrote about last week. Almost immediately after I published my blog post about Hello History I started […]

How to Quickly Turn Your Writing Into Videos

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. ChatGPT might be the first thing you think of when you read AI today, but there have been plenty of other AI tools before it. One […]

Three Good Tools for Recording Brainstorming Sessions

I’m taking the week off to do a bunch of fun things with my kids. While I’m away the most popular posts of the year so far will reappear. Earlier this week on Practical Ed Tech I published an article about using the Nominal Group Technique for classroom brainstorming sessions. What follows is an excerpt […]

Cars, Cards, and LEGOs – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where I’m up early (I’m always up early) and getting ready for my neighborhood’s annual Founders Day events to support our little library. I’ll be helping with the car show. One of my favorite cars that will be on display is the 1934 Packard seen in my photograph above. If you […]

How to Use Live Presentation Mode in Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms has a lot of features that make it better than Google Forms for classroom use. Those include a built-in timer and embedded use of Immersive Reader. This week Microsoft added another great feature to Microsoft Forms. That feature is a live presentation mode.  The new live presentation mode in Microsoft Forms takes your […]

Two New Google Bard Features to Try

This week Google added a handful of new features to Google Bard including support for many more languages. Two of the new features that jumped out to me were the option to use images as prompts and the option to hear Bard responses read aloud. Both of those features are demonstrated in this short video.  […]

Need LEGO Ideas? Take a Look at This!

Making things with LEGOs is one of my favorite indoor activities to do with my daughters. We’ve spent many rainy days building all kinds of things LEGOs. Often we follow the directions from a guidebook and sometimes we just make our own things. Every once in a while they ask for another LEGO guidebook.  I’m […]

A Good Tool for Mapping Census Data

Earlier today I was looking for a dataset that I could use in a new data visualization tool that I’m testing out. That quest took to me the website of the U.S. Census Bureau. It was there that I went down a rabbit hole of looking at data. Eventually, I stumbled into a mapping tool […]

An eBook for History Teachers and Their Students

Earlier this year I listed the educational technology topics that I’m still passionate about after all these years. One of those topics is search strategies and discovery tools for students. To that end, I’ve recently updated my e-book on Teaching Search Strategies to History Students. In my updated e-book Teaching Search Strategies to History Students […]

Engageable Helps You Learn to Recharge and Focus

Last Friday I shared three more notes from ISTE Live. The third of those was that I Engageable was the only tech tool that I saw in the expo focusing on SEL and similar ideas about overall well-being of students and teachers. If you haven’t taken a look at it, here’s a short overview of […]

Create Interactive Video Lessons With ClickView

ClickView was one of the first fifteen things that caught my eye during last week’s ISTE Live conference. It’s a tool that you can use to create interactive video lessons with videos you’ve made as well as with videos you find online. There are other tools like ClickView available to teachers. What caught my attention […]

Three Self-paced Courses You Can Complete This Summer

If you’re interested in a professional development course that you can do while sitting outside this summer, take a look at the courses I offer through PracticalEdTech.com.  Animated Explanations!This five-part course teaches you everything you need to know to create and teach with your own animated explanations. In the course you’ll learn why the process of […]

A Good Guide to Graphic Design in Educational Technology

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I mentioned that I recently went on a bit of a quest to find research about the value of good graphic design in the context of education. Thanks to Google Scholar, I was successful in finding some good information about the value of well-designed slides in education. Along […]

How to Use Canva’s AI Image Generator

There is no shortage of AI tools available to teachers today. Some are stand-alone and some are being built into the tools we’re already using. Canva’s AI image generator is an example of a good one being added into a tool that is already popular with teachers.  Canva’s AI image generator is a simple text-to-image […]

Create Custom Animation Paths in Canva Slides

Adding a little transition animation to your slideshow presentations can make things pop a little bit. But at this point we’re all conditioned to the standard “slide in,” “spin,” and “breathe” animations found in PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Canva. That’s why you might want to try adding your own custom animation path to your next […]

The Most Popular Posts of the Month

Good evening from New Hampshire where I’m having a little R&R with my family after a very busy week and a busy month. The sun came out just in time for us to enjoy some time outdoors before bedtime. As I write this my kids have just fallen asleep and I will be doing the […]

A Brief Introduction to micro:bit and MakeCode

On Tuesday morning I went to micro:bit workshop hosted by Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez. It was a ton of fun. My only complaint, I wish it was longer because I wanted to keep playing with my new friends as we explored and tinkered together.  On Tuesday evening I shared some of my notes from […]

25 Search Strategies You Need to Know – New Course Starting Soon

One of the most popular webinars and courses that I’ve hosted over the years have been about search strategies and how to teach them to students. This summer I’m offering a new Practical Ed Tech course on that topic. The course starts in two days! 25 Search Strategies You Need to Know is a five-part […]

The Coolest Canva Use I’ve Seen

Yesterday morning at ISTE Live I met Lauren Enders. Lauren is a well-known presenter in the field of AAC (augmentative and alternative communication). We chatted for a good twenty minutes or more about many things including how she’s using Canva as an AAC tool. In fact, she gave me permission to share the recording of […]

How to Publish Google Slides Presentations

Around this time every year I field a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I update many of them. That’s why over the […]

Notes from a Micro:bit Workshop

Today, I attended a workshop hosted by Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez. It was a great workshop about using Micro:bit. Gary gave some introductory directions and then we had some challenge activities to try to complete in small groups. I worked with Sheila from Virginia Beach and Scott from California (sorry Scott, I can’t remember […]

How to Collaborate on Google Slides

Around this time every year I field a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I update many of them. That’s why over the […]

How to Magically Make a Presentation in Minutes

There are some people who love and enjoy the process of making slideshow presentations. Then there are people like me who enjoy presenting, but don’t necessarily enjoy making the slides. For folks who identify with me on that front, Canva’s Docs to Decks tool is for you! Docs to Decks is Canva’s AI-powered tool for […]

How to Use Audio and Video in Google Slides

Around this time every year I field a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I update many of them. That’s why over the […]

How to Create Your First Google Slides Presentation

Around this time every year I field a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I update many of them. That’s why over the […]

Advanced Google Forms Features for Teachers

Like I do at this time every year, in the last few weeks I’ve fielded a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I […]

How to Use Pictures and Videos in Google Forms Quizzes

Like I do at this time every year, in the last few weeks I’ve fielded a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I […]

How to Customize Google Forms Themes

Like I do at this time every year, in the last few weeks I’ve fielded a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I […]

The Solution to a Frustrating Google Slides Problem

When Google finally added a built-in audio option for Google Slides, we were all happy because we no longer needed to use unreliable third-party add-ons to use audio in our presentations. However, four years later there are still some quirks to adding audio into Google Slides presentations. One of those quirks was recently driving me […]

How to Create Your First Quiz in Google Forms

Like I do at this time every year, in the last few weeks I’ve fielded a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that I […]

How to Create Your First Google Form

Like I do at this time every year, in the last few weeks I’ve fielded a bunch of questions from readers who are moving into new jobs at schools that use Google Workspace for Education. And while I have a lot of Google Workspace tutorials available on my YouTube channel, I think it’s time that […]

How to Share Google Street View Imagery Including Building Interiors

It’s no secret to those of you who have followed my blog for long, I love exploring in Google Maps, Earth, and Street View. I can spend hours just lucky dipping around the world. When I was a kid I enjoyed looking at maps in school. I’m sure that if Google Street View existed when […]

How to Use the New Adobe Express Video Editor

There is a new version of Adobe Express. The new version is still in a beta phase, but you can try it out right now and go back to the old version if you want to. I’ve been trying out the new version for about a week. My favorite aspect of the new version of […]

TypeStudio is Now Streamlabs Podcast Editor

TypeStudio was one of my favorite new tools to emerge in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, this morning I learned that it has pivoted and is now focused on podcast editing instead of video editing. Part of that pivot comes with a new name, Streamlabs Podcast Editor (now owned by Logitech).  I have yet […]

How to Install Google Earth Pro on a Mac

A few weeks ago I shared directions for adding Google Drive videos to Google Earth tours. The demonstration that I gave was done with Google Earth Pro on my Mac. That demo prompted an email from a viewer who needed some help installing Google Earth Pro on her Mac. To answer that email I made […]

New Microsoft Teams Features to Note

A couple of weeks ago Mike Tholfsen published a video highlighting new Microsoft Word features for teachers to note. This week he published a video highlighting eight new Microsoft Teams features for teachers to note.  Some of the new Teams features demonstrated in Mike’s video include new background and filter options, new zoom options, and […]

Maps, Novels, and AI Assessments – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the rain keeps coming down. It feels like it has been more than a week since we’ve seen the sun. That’s because it has been that long since we didn’t have a rainy day. We’re going a bit stir crazy, but our dogs are still having fun playing fetch regardless […]

Three Good Ways to Map Spreadsheet Data

In my previous post about how to create a story map I featured a tool called StoryMap JS. That tool is great for making story maps that have no more than about twenty scenes. Any more than that and the process becomes a bit cumbersome and tedious. Fortunately, there are tools that you can use […]

How to Create a Story Map

A couple of days ago I published a post about a story map titled 1,001 Novels: A Library of America. That post is already one of the most popular things I’ve published this year!  Viewing 1,001 Novels: A Library of America reminded me of a free tool that students can use to create story maps. […]

How to Use AI to Create Formative Assessments

A day ago I published a big list of AI tools and resources for teachers. This morning I tried another AI tool that is worth noting. That tool is the new AI-powered assessment generator that is now built into Formative.  Formative’s new AI-powered assessment generator is currently a beta product that anyone with an active […]

Three New Padlet Slideshow Features

Back in February Padlet introduced a new feature that enables you to quickly turn a collection of notes on a Padlet wall into a slideshow. Recently, Padlet added three new features to its slideshow function.  The latest Padlet slideshow features include a new slide navigator, a new QR code generator, and an automatic playback function.  […]

How to Move Your Gmail in Bulk

A few weeks ago I published directions on how to use Google Takeout to move your most important Google Workspaces assets out of one account to use in another. Late last week a reader asked me about just moving Gmail messages from one account to another. You can do that with Google Takeout, but there […]

Turn Pictures Into Digital Map Pins

Felt.com is a digital mapping tool that launched late last year and has since impressed me with both its ease of use and its plentiful features. The latest feature added to Felt that I really like is the option to take any of your pictures and use them as placemarkers or pins on your maps.  […]

Five Easy Ways to Improve Your Videos

  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 bunch of editing tricks. Here are some simple things that we can do to improve our videos without having to learn a whole bunch of […]

Five Ways You Can Edit Images in Google Slides

When I started using Google Slides fifteen+ years ago it was a rather bare bones alternative to PowerPoint. That is no longer the case. Today, there are tons neat little features that you can use in Google Slides to improve the appearance of your presentations. Some of those things are found in the image formatting […]

Three Tools for Making Short Audio Recordings – No Accounts Required

There are three tools that I typically recommend to those who are looking to just record short spoken audio tracks and don’t require additional editing functions. Those three tools are Vocaroo, Online Voice Recorder, and Twisted Wave. All three of these tools don’t require students to have email addresses or create any kind of account […]

Searching for Images in Google Bard

Last month Google introduced a new Bard feature that makes it easy to copy the text of a chat to a Google Document. To start this month Google has added another new feature to Bard. That feature is the ability to conduct image searches. I gave it a try on Thursday. The results were interesting.  […]

How to Enable Collaboration on a YouTube Channel

This is the time of year of end-of-year celebrations captured on video. If you have multiple people in your school recording videos to share with a wider audience, you could have everyone send those videos to one person to post to YouTube. Another option, perhaps a bit easier option, is to have those people collaborate […]

Five Good Resources for Teaching and Learning About Copyright

In no particular order, here are some of my go-to resources for helping students and teachers understand the importance and the key concepts of copyright as it relates to school projects. Stanford University LibrariesStanford University Libraries offers the most comprehensive collection of resources about copyright and fair use that I know of. You could spend […]

How to Add Timestamps to Your YouTube Videos

When you’re publishing videos that are longer than five or six minutes on your YouTube channel it can be helpful to viewers to add some timestamps to the video’s description. Including timestamps in the description lets your viewers click to jump to an exact mark in the video. There are a couple of ways that […]

A Class for Teachers Who Want to Make More Money

My most popular Practical Ed Tech course this year is How to Create and Sell Your Digital Products in 2023. Now that summer is here (in the northern hemisphere) this is a great time to take the course if you haven’t already done so.  The format of this course is email-based. Starting with day you register, […]

57 Google Earth & Maps Tutorials for Teachers and Students

Upon the publication of my latest video about how to add Google Drive videos to Google Earth Pro my playlist of tutorials on using Google Earth and Google Maps grew to 57.  In my playlist of 57 Google Earth and Maps tutorials you’ll find directions for everything from the basics of navigation to creating historic […]

New Microsoft Word Features to Note

Good, old Microsoft Word has come a long way since the days that I used it on a computer lab desktop as an undergrad. Now it has AI features, collaboration tools, and much more. Heck, these days you don’t even have to install it on a computer in order to use it. Mike Tholfsen recently […]

How to Create Around the World With Google Earth Tours

The Amazing Race is the only reality game show that I’ve watched with interest for as long as it has been on television. Years ago I created a classroom game based on the same premise of the show. This spring I updated that game with some new graphics and new challenges and then published it […]

4,000+ Pages of Walt Whitman’s Papers

This week the Library of Congress announced the addition of more than 4,000 new primary source documents to the By the People website. Those primary sources are all letters, notes, and manuscripts written by Walt Whitman.  The purpose of the By the People project is to enlist the help of the public to transcribe thousands of primary source documents that are […]

An eBook for History Teachers and Their Students

Earlier this spring I listed the educational technology topics that I’m still passionate about after all these years. One of those topics is search strategies and discovery tools for students. To that end, I’ve recently updated my e-book on Teaching Search Strategies to History Students. In my updated e-book Teaching Search Strategies to History Students […]

How to Add Google Drive Videos to Google Earth Pro Placemarks

Last week a reader emailed me to ask for help inserting videos into placemarks in Google Earth Pro. His students had recorded videos and saved them in Google Drive. They wanted to use them in their Google Earth Pro placemarks. I was happy to help.  Before giving you the directions for how to add Google […]

Ten Ways to Use Adobe Express in School

I’ve made a handful of videos about using Adobe Express in your classroom. Those videos include making videos with Adobe Express and making custom QR codes with it. Those are just a couple of the many ways to use Adobe Express in your classroom. Let’s take a look at some of the many ways that […]

A Good Way for Students to Visually Compare the Sizes of Countries and States

My students here in Maine always think of our state as being a big place and it is big in relation to the rest of New England. Compared to our friends in the west, Maine is a small place. Similarly, they sometimes have trouble understanding the size of the lower 48 states compared to Canada. […]

Search Options When Your District Blocks Google Search

Late last week I got the following email from a reader:   Recently our district blocked Google Search. My teachers are frantic as to what to use for kid research etc….What are some of your go to search/research websites that do not link to Google? My first sarcastic thought was to Google some suggestions 🙂 […]

Bard, Search, and Gardens – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising as I sip my coffee and listen to the birds begin to chirp. The benefit of having a puppy that wakes up just before sunrise is getting to hear the birds as they wake up for the day. It’s a nice way to start the day […]

Moving Google Drive Files and Chrome Bookmarks

In an earlier post I explained and demonstrated how to use Google Takeout to save all of the data from your Google account. If you only want or need a handful of files, there is an easier option than using Google Takeout. That option is to simply download the individual files in your Google Drive […]

A Better Way to do Summer PD

Picture this: the sun is shining, you’re wearing your favorite summer casual clothes (an old Phish t-shirt in my case), but you’re going to miss a great day of outdoor play because you have to go to school for a summer PD day. What if there was a better way to do summer PD? There […]

How to Use Google Takeout 2023

It’s that time of year when I start to get lots of questions from readers about what to do with files in their Google Workspace accounts before they leave one school for another.  In fact, just yesterday I answered that question three times. My answer was to use Google Takeout to create zip files that […]

Create Animated Timelines in Google Slides

One of my most popular Google Slides tutorials is a video about how to use Google Slides to create a timeline. A follow-up to that video demonstrates how to use the animation tools in Google Slides to add animations to a timeline. In the following video I demonstrate how to create an animated timeline in Google […]

Chrome Tip – Quickly Hide or Show Bookmarks

In a webinar I recently hosted I incidentally showed a quick way to show or hide the bookmarks bar in Chrome. The webinar was not about Chrome or anything Google-related so I was surprised when someone asked me to show the trick again. There is not a trick, just hit CTRL+Shift+B to show or hide […]

A New Google Bard Feature

Bard is Google’s alternative to ChatGPT. If you haven’t tried it yet, watch this video that I made in March and then give it a try.  The newest feature added to Bard makes it easy to quickly transfer the transcript of your Bard chat into a Google Document. All you need to do is simply […]

Scholar, Books, Datasets, and More – Google Search Tools Students Overlook

In last week’s episode of Two EdTech Guys Take Questions Rushton and I answered a question about alternatives to using Google search. What we failed to emphasize is that Google offers a lot of search tools that students often overlook or don’t even know about. Some of my favorites of those are highlighted and demonstrated […]

How to Add Excel to Your Mac

After a decade of using Windows as my primary operating system, I recently switched back to using a MacBook Air as my primary computer. Making the switch has meant re-learning a couple of little things. It has also meant installing some software that I always took for granted while using Windows. I don’t use Excel […]

Bugs, Brass, and Gardens – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining as I sip my second cup of coffee of the day. Yes, at 5:07am I’m drinking my second cup. That’s what happens when you have little kids and a puppy. Speaking of puppies, ours has his first meeting with a trainer this morning. We’re all excited […]

Here’s How Hard It Is To Get Sites to Stop Stealing My Work and for Namecheap to Stop Hosting It

Today, I will probably get nothing done because I have to spend hours getting the website DoMyPaper.club to stop stealing my work. I’ve sent multiple DMCA notices to Namecheap which hosts the site. Namecheap only responds when I call them out on Twitter.  Google’s DMCA takedown process is flawed as it recently said that they […]

Alternative Search Engines Discussed by Two EdTech Guys

Yesterday afternoon Ruston Hurley and I got together to record another installment of our Two EdTech Guys Take Questions series. In the episode we answered a question about alternative search engines, went on a bit of a tangent about image metadata, and shared a couple of cool things that might inspire your students.  You can […]

How to Add Voice Notes to Pictures in Google Keep

Google Keep is the app that I probably use more than any other on my Pixel 5. It’s an app that does everything I need to save notes, clip bookmarks, and set reminders for myself. It also has a lot of little “hidden” features that I use from time-to-time. For example, you can use to add […]

How to Create Custom Route Maps in Google My Maps

In a few weeks I’m participating in a global bicycling challenge that asks participants to complete 100 miles of biking on one Saturday. I’m going to do it with a couple of my friends. In preparation for that day I’ve been mapping out a variety of routes that we could take. We’ll decide before we […]

Here’s How to Blend Images in Google Slides

The image that you see to above was used in a blog post that I wrote years ago. It recently surfaced again when I was looking for an old math resource (sadly, no longer available).  The image above was made by blending two images together in Google Slides. To make the final image I went […]

Seven Simple Steps for Creating Videos In Your Classroom

On page 76 of Invent To Learn Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez write, “The movie can be done without a storyboard or script, the 3D object may not be the most precisely planned out, but the point is to create something that can be shared and talked about.” Later in the same chapter they advise avoiding […]

Six Interesting Things You Can Add to Google Sites

Last week I shared a playlist of Google Sites tutorials that I’ve made over the last few years. Some of those tutorials focus on the basics of Google Sites while others highlight advanced features like adding third-party content to your sites. On that note, here are some things you can do to enhance your Google […]

Fun With Augmented Reality in Search

Thanks to where I live and the amount of time that I’ve spent hiking, camping, fly fishing I have slightly more experience seeing wildlife like bears and moose than the average person. My kids often ask me to tell a story about seeing a bear, a moose, or other animal. Unfortunately, when they ask for […]

Three Online Courses You Can Start Today

As the school year starts to wind-down you might find yourself looking for some new project ideas to keep your kids (perhaps yourself) interested and excited during the last month or so of the year. I have a couple of self-paced courses that provide you with exactly that.  Animated Explanations!This five-part course teaches you everything […]

Blurring Faces and Two Dozen Other YouTube Tips for Teachers

Earlier this week I took a few hours off from work to go see a play at my daughter’s elementary school. Doing that reminded me that we’re getting to part of the school year that tends to have a lot of special events. Many of those are events that you or someone in your school […]

How to Customize Page Headers in Google Sites

Yesterday morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for advice on how to make the page titles stand-out on her Google Site. What she was referring to was the list of page titles in the header of the site itself.  For years Google Sites didn’t offer many customization options that would […]

25 Gmail Tips for Teachers

If answering email takes up way more time in your day than you would like it to, take a look at my playlist of 25 Gmail tips for teachers and students. The playlist includes everything from how to sort your Gmail messages to filtering and blocking senders to email etiquette tips we all need to be reminded of from time to […]

If You Have a YouTube Channel, Watch Out for This Email Scam

Last fall I wrote about and made a short video about a phishing scam in which the sender pretends to be from YouTube support. Yesterday, I saw a new variation on that same scam appear in my inbox.  As you can see in the screenshot above, the email subject line is Copyright Warning.pdf and the […]

48 Digital Mapping Tutorials

Even though I write a lot about Google Earth and Google Maps, there is more to digital mapping than just using those tools. In fact, there are some great digital mapping tools not made by Google that students can use to create things like historic map overlays, map and timeline combinations, and map-based stories.  In […]

DOGOnews and Free Comic Book Day

DOGOnews is a student news site offers features articles for K-8 students. DOGOnews covers current events stories in the areas of science, sports, entertainment, and variety of topics that fall under the banner of social studies. Teachers can find stories by browsing the categories, filtering by grade level, or filtering by grade level.  This morning when […]

71 Google Slides Tutorials for Teachers and Students

Over the last decade I’m made more than eighty Google Slides video tutorials. Some of them are a bit outdated now, the rest are still relevant. All of the relevant ones are now organized into one playlist.  In my playlist of Google Slides tutorials you’ll find everything from the basics of using Google Slides to […]

Join Me for a Search Strategies Webinar Tomorrow

Do you teach middle school or high school social studies classes? Have you ever had a student say to you, “Google has nothing on this” or “I can’t find any information about this?”  If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, you’ll want to join me in a webinar tomorrow evening (Eastern Time) that […]

23 Other Things I Wrote in April

In addition to publishing here on Free Technology for Teachers, I also publish on two other sites that I maintain. Take a look at the list below to see the other things I wrote in April. From EdTechFitness.com: Put On Your (Safety) Glasses and Take a Look at These N/A Brews Go Outside, It’s Good […]

66 Canva Tutorials for Teachers

Other than Google Workspace tools, Canva is the tool that I’ve published the most tutorials about on my YouTube channel. In fact, with the publication of my latest Canva tutorial video I’ve now published 66 tutorials about using Canva’s many features for making videos, presentations, timelines, posters, greeting cards, worksheets, and many other graphics. All of those videos are available in […]

Rain, Maps, and Slideshows – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the clouds have returned after yesterday’s reprieve from what feels like a month of rain. It’s a great morning for making pour-over coffee and sipping it at a leisurely pace. But since I have young kids, I won’t be sipping it at a leisurely pace. Instead, I’ll drink it while […]

47 Google Forms Tutorials

In a video that I published earlier this year I mentioned that the vast majority of my videos don’t get more than a few hundred views. But there are some outliers. The biggest outlier is my simple video about the basics of creating a quiz in Google Forms which has received nearly half a million views. That’s […]

Search Tools Your Students (And You?) Are Probably Overlooking

AI search tools like ChatGPT infused into Bing and Google’s Bard are getting a lot of attention right now. But when it’s time to search most students still default to Google.com. Unfortunately, by relying on just Google.com and trendy AI search tools students are missing out on a lot of excellent excellent and helpful material. […]

Three Self-paced Courses You Can Start This Weekend

Spring in Maine means a lot of cold and wet weather. We have a bit of a reprieve today, but tomorrow we’re back to cool and rainy weather for another five days (if the forecast is correct). This pattern puts a damper on many outdoor spring activities. I’m using this time to work through an […]

GE Teach – Make Side-by-Side Map Comparisons in One Browser Tab

GE Teach is a great map tool that is developed and maintained by a high school teacher in Texas named Josh Williams.  GE Teach has gone through a bunch of iterations over the years and the latest version is better than ever. On GE Teach students can compare two maps side-by-side. Students can select from gallery […]

A Round-up of 15 AI Resources Created Without Using AI

For the last four months anything that I’ve published about AI (artificial intelligence) has vaulted to the top of the list of the most popular posts of the week, month, and year. I’m beginning to think that if I just wrote AI AI AI AI AI for 500 lines that it would be the most […]

Search Strategies Webinar Next Tuesday

Do you teach middle school or high school social studies classes? Have you ever had a student say to you, “Google has nothing on this” or “I can’t find any information about this?”  If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, you’ll want to join me for next Tuesday’s webinar all about teaching search […]

Ten Google Earth and Maps Activities for Math Lessons

Last week I shared directions for measuring perimeter and area in Google Earth. Doing that is one of many ways to incorporate Google Earth into mathematics lessons. Making that video prompted me to make a list of ways to use Google Earth and Maps (which has similar measuring tools) in mathematics lessons.  Here’s my list […]

Seven Google Scholar Features You Should Know How to Use

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I made the case for using Google Scholar as part of your research process. In the newsletter I included a short video overview of Google Scholar features you should know how to use. That video is embedded below.  Video – Google Scholar Features You Should Know How to […]

Four Easy Ways to Make End-of-Year Slideshow Videos

Even though the cold and rainy weather we’re experiencing here in Maine makes it feel like summer is a long way off, it’s not. I was reminded of this yesterday afternoon when I got my first email of the spring in which someone asked for advice about making an end-of-year video for her grade six […]

Reminder: Take Out the Trash

About a month ago I got a new MacBook Air. It has been about a decade since I last used a Mac as my primary computer.  One of the things that I’m constantly reminded of while using my MacBook Air is the need to clear stuff off of the desktop. As you might guess, I take […]

How to Measure Perimeter and Area in Google Earth

As I mentioned in this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter, Google Earth and digital mapping is an area of ed tech that I still get excited about after all these years.  Google Earth is a tool that people often think of as being something that’s only useful for social studies lessons. However, there are many […]

How to Add Collaborators to Google Calendar

As I’m sure many of you do, I often play the role of “tech support person” for friends and family. That was the case a few days ago when a friend of mine who owns a local, small business asked for help with Google Calendar.  My friend wanted a quick and easy way for his […]

How to Impose Time Limits on Google Forms – And 46 Other Tutorials

Over the weekend a reader reached out to me for help with Google Forms. Specifically, he wanted to know how to impose a time limit on a Google Form. I was happy to help. The method that I use to impose a time limit on Google Forms is to enable the Google Forms add-on called […]

Create Historic Map Overlays With These Free Tools

Yesterday morning I shared a collection of more than 100,000 historic maps for classroom use. In that post I mentioned using those maps to create digital overlays on current maps. Google Earth provides a couple of ways to do that. Felt.com is another digital mapping tool that can be used for the same purpose.  In […]

MLA and APA Provide Guidance for Citing Content Created by AI

It’s a bit of an understatement to say that the rapid growth of AI-powered writing and drawing tools is raising many questions for teachers and students. One of those frequently asked questions is “how do you cite ChatGPT?”  Recently, the MLA and the APA have published guidance on how to cite content created through the […]

Five Things You Can Teach Through Geocaching

Geocaching is one of the things that I spend a good bit of time talking about in both my workshop and in my webinar about blending technology into outdoor learning. Geocaching is a great activity to do to get kids outside for hands-on learning experiences. Here are five things that you can teach through geocaching […]

Birds, Turtles, and Bikes – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where spring has finally sprung! All week the weather has been fantastic and today is forecasted to be another gorgeous spring day. I’ve been riding my bike outside all week and I’ll be doing that again today.  Last week I was sick. This week all the other members of my family […]

How to Find Image Metadata and More

A couple of years ago I published a video and blog post about how to find image metadata. Since then the tool that I featured in that video has gone offline. Today, I recorded a new video that features two other methods for finding image sources and image metadata.  In the video that is embedded […]

Webinar – Blending Technology Into Outdoor Learning

The last two days have been the first truly warm and sunny spring days of the year here in western Maine. While playing with our puppy and soaking up the sunshine yesterday afternoon I said to myself, “self, it’s time to host your technology and outdoor learning webinar.” So last night I updated my webinar […]

Three Helpful Google Sites Updates

Earlier this year I published 29 Google Sites tutorials. I’ll soon need to add a 30th tutorial to that list because this week Google released three helpful updates to Google Sites.  The latest updates to Google Sites give you more design control and improve the collaboration process in Google Sites.  In Google Sites you can […]

Don’t Miss This Webinar! – Coding in the Age of AI

On Wednesday I passed along a great resource that Gary Stager shared with me. Today, I have another announcement from Gary that you should note right now. That is a free webinar he’s hosting on April 27th.  Coding in the Age of AI is a two-hour, hands-on webinar in which you’ll program in Lynx as […]

This AI Tool Generates Reading Comprehension Questions for Any Article

QuestionWell is a new AI tool that will generate reading comprehension and guiding questions for just about any article that you specify. Questions created by QuestionWell can be saved in a document or exported to a handful of popular quiz apps including Kahoot and Quizziz.  There are two ways that you can use QuestionWell to […]

Get a Free Turtle Art Tiles Project Guide

Pratyeka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Many moons ago when I was in elementary school, using Logo Writer on an Apple IIe was my introduction to programming. Since then and still today I think that Logo and it’s offspring like Scratch and Turtle Art are powerful tools for introducing programming to students of all ages. […]

Free Webinar – Using Rockets to Investigate Forces and Motion

The Smithsonian Learning Lab hosts a regular series of free professional development webinars for teachers. The next one is titled Using Rockets to Investigate Forces and Motion.  The free webinar will be on Tuesday, April 11th at 4pm ET. The Smithsonian hosts the webinars on YouTube which means you don’t need to register to attend. […]

Rest, Search, and Finance – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining on an early spring day. I spent most of the week either sick in bed, sick on the couch, or sick in a recliner. I’m feeling better now and ready for a fun weekend ahead.  Due to my health I didn’t write as many blog posts […]

gotFeedback – An AI Tool for Providing Feedback on Writing

gotFeedback is a new tool for providing your students with feedback on their writing. As the title of this post stated, gotFeedback uses artificial intelligence to help you provide your students with feedback on their writing.  To use gotFeedback you can either upload a document (PDF or Word) or paste the text of a document […]

Searching With ChatGPT in Bing

Last week I got access to the new version of Bing. The new version of Bing includes a chat function that is powered by ChatGPT. With this function enabled you can search and get results in the traditional manner or you can view results in a manner that is conversational. As you can see in […]

Big and Small Contest

As I’ve shared in the past, Instructables is one of my favorite places to find inspiration for fun, hands-on STEM projects. On Instructables you’ll find directions for all kinds of neat projects including things like automatic plant watering systems, automated LED lighting systems and alarms, and more Arduino and Micro:bit projects than you can shake […]

Magic Eraser – Quickly Clean Images in Canva

One of the many new features that Canva has released in the last week or so is a new image editing tool called Magic Eraser. This little tool makes it quick and easy to remove imperfections and other unwanted things from your photographs. For example, in my demonstration video that is embedded below I removed […]

New! Freehand Drawings in Canva

Last week Canva hosted a big event to announce a bunch of new features. One of those features is something that I’ve thought they should have added years ago, a freehand drawing tool.  Canva’s freehand drawing tool lets you choose a drawing tool (pencil, pen, highlighter) and customize it to make the lines it creates […]

Pacing Group Activities With Focusable

A few weeks ago I ran a workshop in which I changed up the way that I paced the session. What I’ve almost always done is give a little instruction then time to try and complete a little practice activity. Then I’ll hold a little debrief before moving onto the next activity. It’s a pretty […]

An Interactive Simulation of Greenhouse Effect

PhET was one of the resource that I featured in this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter. Shortly after hitting send on that newsletter I learned about a new simulation that PhET now offers.  The latest PhET simulation is about the greenhouse effect. The simulation can be used to help students understand the effect of greenhouse […]

How to Use Microsoft Designer

Microsoft Designer is a new AI-powered tool that enables users to quickly generate many variations of a graphic design with just a few clicks. The purpose of Microsoft Designer is to give you a gallery of designs based on your input. You can then choose the design that you like best to download and use […]

How to Add Audio to Google Slides

Last week I was looking through my YouTube Studio analytics when I noticed that one of the most-searched phrases was “add audio to Google Slides.” I took that as a sign that it was time to create a new video about how to add audio to Google Slides. So that’s exactly what I did.  In […]

Seven Tips for Good Infographic Design

Last week Canva made waves on social media with all of their announcements about their new AI-powered design tools. While those tools look great and I plan to use them, I think it’s still important for students to learn some basic design principles instead of just relying on whatever an algorithm spits out. To that […]

How to Use the Latest Version of Focusable

Focusable was one of my favorite new tools in 2022. In 2023 it has continued to evolve to help teachers and students learn how to ignore distractions and focus on important tasks. Focusable was recently updated with a new user interface designed to help you get focus and get into a flow a little more […]

Projection Wizard – See How Maps Distort the World

Projection Wizard is an interesting tool developed by Bojan Šavrič at Oregon State University. The purpose of Projection Wizard is to help cartographers select the best map projections for their projects. To use the Projection Wizard select a distortion property from a menu appearing to the left of the map. Then use the highlighting tool […]

Signs of Spring Bingo

My daughters are obsessed with Humphrey the Hamster books written by Betty Birney. We’re currently reading Spring According to Humphrey. In the book the class is tasked with looking for signs of spring.  Reading Spring According to Humphrey has prompted my daughters to look for signs of spring around our neighborhood. One of those signs […]

Four Methods for Distraction-free YouTube Viewing

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for some suggestions on how to display YouTube videos in her classroom without showing all of the related sidebar content that appears on YouTube. If you find yourself in a similar position, here are some things to try. Put the videos into slides […]

Teacher and Student Views of Reading Progress and Reading Coach in Microsoft Teams

Last year Microsoft added actionable insights to Reading Progress in Microsoft Teams. This year there is even more information and there are more actions that you can take when using Reading Progress and Reading Coach in Microsoft Teams.  In a new video that he released yesterday, Mike Tholfsen provides a complete overview of how to […]

How to Add Q&A to Your Google Slides Presentations

There are plenty of ways to gather questions and feedback from students in a digital format. But one of the ways that is often overlooked is to just add a Q&A component to a slide presentation. That can be done quite easily in Google Slides right from the presentation menu. Watch my video embedded below […]

An Overview of Using and Detecting Artificial Intelligence

This week’s news that Google Workspace will have new artificial intelligence tools added to it throughout the year was not unexpected. It was another sign that if you haven’t being paying attention to the development of AI tools this year, you should start paying attention to them. Even if your school tries to ban or […]

The Microphone I Recommend for Video and Audio Recordings

The podcasting platform that I recommend the most recently changed names. The screencasting tool that I use the most also recently changed names. One thing that hasn’t changed is the microphone that I use with those tools.  For years I have used and continue to recommend the Snowball iCE microphone. The Snowball iCE microphone is the microphone […]

Annotate Videos With Text and Pictures

Timelinely is a neat tool for annotating videos that you find on YouTube to share with your students. To get started simply paste a YouTube URL into the Timelinely homepage to get started. Once you have entered the URL for a video, a new screen appears that allows you to add tags or annotations to […]

How to Record a Google Earth Tour

The Amazing Race is the only reality game show that I’ve watched with interest for as long as it has been on television. Years ago I created a classroom game based on the same premise of the show. Last spring I updated that game with some new graphics and new challenges and then published it […]

Whimsical – An AI Concept Map Generator

For the last handful of months whenever I scroll through Product Hunt and just about every other new product is an AI-powered product. Or at least they claim to be using AI. One that recently jump out to me is Whimsical.  Whimsical is a mind mapping and concept mapping tool that I first tried a […]

15 Microsoft Forms Tutorials for Teachers

Despite the fact that I’ve been using Google Forms for as long as it has existed and that it is my default tool for creating online forms and quizzes, there are some things about Microsoft Forms that I prefer over Google Forms. One of those things is the ability to convert a Word document into […]

A New Answer to the Questions I’m Asked the Most

For many years now the question that I am asked more than any other is about the videos that appear on my YouTube channel. Specifically, people want to know how I’m highlighting my mouse pointer in my videos or how I’m creating the moving oval cut-out of my webcam. Sometimes they want to know the […]

Anchor is Now Spotify for Podcasters

For the last five or so years I’ve been using and recommending Anchor for creating podcasts on your desktop and mobile devices. In fact, at the start of this year I released a new tutorial on how to use it to create a podcast on your Android phone. Today, Anchor was renamed Spotify for Podcasters.  […]

How to Create Your Own Online Connecto Game

Connecto is one of the many online game creation templates that Flippity offers. Flippity calls it Connecto, but the style of game is exactly like the classic Connect 4 board game (I’m sure that for trademark reasons Flippity can’t use that name for their Connecto game template).  In a Connecto game students see a question […]

How to Start Using Plickers in Your Classroom

Last week I led a workshop for a group of special education teachers, paraprofessionals, and consultants. One of the elements of the workshop was about creating and conducting fun formative assessments. To that end, I introduced the group to Plickers. It was a hit!  Plickers has been around for almost a decade. It’s still a […]

Changes are Coming to Your Favorite Google Workspace Tools

If you opened a new Google Document today you might have seen a new little clock icon appearing in the upper-right corner of the screen. But if you didn’t see it, don’t worry because you will start seeing it before too long. That clock icon is one of the updates coming to Google Docs, Slides, […]

Three Activities All Teachers Can Create in Classwork

Physical Education Activities for Pi Day

Pi Day is just one week away (as is the start of my new course). In recent years I’ve shared some video lessons about Pi Day and some hands-on Pi Day lesson ideas. This year I’d like to highlight some physical education activities for Pi Day.  OPEN Phys Ed offers five free physical education lesson […]

A Lesson in Writing Myths

The Hero’s Journey is a free writing template from Read Write Think that I originally reviewed ten years ago. Like all of the RWT templates it was Flash-based. It has since been relaunched to run on HTML5 in any web browser.  The Hero’s Journey is an online writing activity produced by Read Write Think. The […]

Another Tool for Detecting Writing Created by AI

Artificial Intelligence was the theme of February in the educational technology world. That theme is continuing as we begin the month of March. On that note, I’ve found another new tool designed to try to detect writing generated with AI tools like ChatGPT.  Crossplag AI Content Detector is a free tool that you can use […]

How to Measure in 2D and 3D in Google Earth

More than a decade ago Tom Barrett’s Maths Maps inspired me to start thinking about how Google Maps and Google Earth can be used in mathematics lessons. Since then I’ve developed some of my own math activities that incorporate measuring in Google Earth. If you’d like to create your own math lessons that incorporate measuring […]

How to Create Custom Google Slides Guidelines

One of the many “hidden” features of Google Slides is found in the view menu. It’s there that you’ll find the option to turn on and turn off gridlines (Google calls them guides). Not only can you turn on or turn off the guidelines, you can also add additional lines and create custom spacing for […]

Three Tips for Math Teachers & Students Using Google Docs

Last weekend a reader reached out to me for advice on helping her students write equations in Google Docs. The add-ons she had tried were either too confusing or too expensive to use with all of her pre-Algebra and Algebra I students. My suggestion was to try having students just use the special characters menu […]

How to Use Street View Imagery in Canva Presentations

Earlier this week I published a tutorial for making your first presentation in Canva. After you and or your students feel comfortable with the basics, you may want to start exploring some of the advanced features available within Canva. One of those is the ability to embed interactive Google Maps and Google Street View imagery […]

45,000 People Get Their Educational Technology Tips This Way

Yesterday morning when I checked my YouTube Studio account I noticed that my little channel had passed the 45,000 subscriber mark. Despite publishing videos on YouTube since at least 2009, I’ve never had a viral hit and probably never will. Instead of worrying about that I just try to make as many helpful videos as […]

New Month, New Course – Five Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom

Creating videos with students is one of my favorite things to do with students. Over the years I’ve helped students and their teachers create animated videos, green screen videos, mini documentaries, and instructional videos. In my new Practical Ed Tech course, Five Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom I will teach you how to do […]

Three Ways to Share Google Maps Views in Google Classroom

Google Maps is one of the tools that I always list as a must-have for history and geography teachers. It provides an easy way to show students multiple, detailed views of the significant natural and human-made landmarks they’re learning about in your classroom.  Projecting them on a big screen in the front of your classroom […]

How to Create Your First Canva Presentation

Over the years I’ve published a lot of Canva tutorials. But until last week I had never created one specifically for students and teachers making their first presentations in Canva. That’s what this new video is all about.  In How to Create Your First Canva Presentation I demonstrate how to sign into your account, how […]

AI, Brainstorming, and Authentication – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the wind is howling and the wind chill makes it feel as though it’s -15F right now. It’s no wonder our cat has camped himself in front of the stove this morning. I much prefer he do that than rub his head on my laptop as I type this week’s […]

My Updated Guide to Media for Classroom Projects

Over the last year some of my old favorite sources of media for classroom projects changed or completely disappeared. They’ve been replaced by some new and updated sources for free sound effects, music, videos, pictures, and drawings to use in classroom projects. That’s why I created an updated guide to finding media for classroom projects.  […]

The Google Docs Features Starter Pack

I recently published a playlist of 76 Google Docs tutorials. But you certainly don’t need to use all of the features of Google Docs demonstrated in that playlist let alone watch all of the videos. In fact, I’m often asked for a list of the “must-know” features instead of all of the “could use” features. […]

Three Ways to Quickly Map Spreadsheet Data

I recently came across an older Towards Data Science article about ten ways to represent data on maps. Reading the article reminded me of something that I’ve tried to share with social studies teachers and students over the years. That thing is that a great data set can tell you a lot. A great map can tell […]

How to Create Your Own Online Memory Games

A few years ago one of my students created a memory game app with the MIT App Inventor. It was a great exercise through which she learned about all of the variables and parts of the app that need to be designed. If you’re a little more pressed for time than my student was and […]

How to Blur Objects and Faces In Your Videos

Yesterday I published a post about using two-factor authentication on Twitter. In that post I included a video demonstration. In that video I blurred the QR code and the verification code that was sent to me. If you’re making tutorial videos to share with others, you’ll want to do the same. Fortunately, blurring objects in […]

Stocks, Bonds, Options, and Economics

A couple of days ago I published a short video that I made to explain stock options. In planning to make that video I went back through my archives to look at some related resources that I’ve shared over the years. Here are some highlights from my archive of resources for teaching and learning about […]

How to Make a Mini Course

The Internet is not lacking for tools to create online courses. I’ve tried a lot of them over the years. The bad ones force you to become an expert on how to use their platforms before you can publish your own courses. The good ones make it easy for you to develop and publish a […]

How to Use the Google Authenticator App With Twitter

In what appears to be an on-going quest to drive users away, late last week Elon Musk Twitter announced that it would soon start charging for two factor account authentication done via text messaging (SMS). That doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to use two-factor authentication for free, it just means that you’ll have to do […]

Warm-up Activities for Group Brainstorming Sessions

Last week I published a blog post about tools for recording brainstorming sessions. That ended up being one of the most popular things I’ve published this month.  Writing that post reminded me of a set of brainstorming warm-up activities designed by Ethos3. Ethos3 is a presentation design company that has worked with some of the biggest name […]

Brainstorms, Pictures, and Videos – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where winter weather has returned after a brief respite on Thursday. It was sunny, dry, and warm enough to ride my bike outside for the first time since the start of the year. This weekend, I’m back to skiing and teaching skiing. I hope that you have something equally fun planned […]

Free Course on ChatGPT and AI in Education

Do you have questions and concerns about artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and their potential impact on schools? Have you heard of ChatGPT, but haven’t tried it because you’re not sure if it’s a fad or something you should learn about? If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, Rushton Hurley‘s new course ChatGPT: […]

An Overview of Microsoft’s Search Coach

Last summer Microsoft announced a new Teams product that would be rolling to education users over the coming school year. That product is called Search Coach and it appears to now be widely available to all Microsoft Teams education users.  As its name implies, Search Coach in Microsoft Teams provides students with tips to improve […]

Q&A With Two Ed Tech Guys

Three years ago Rushton Hurley and I started a series of live Q&A webinars titled Two EdTech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. While we’ve stopped hosting live webinars, we are still answering lots of questions and still sharing cool stuff. Now we’re doing that in a recorded format. The first episode of the […]

Three Good Tools for Recording Brainstorming Sessions

Earlier this week on Practical Ed Tech I published an article about using the Nominal Group Technique for classroom brainstorming sessions. What follows is an excerpt from that article. Even if you host your NGT brainstorming sessions in person, you’ll want to create a record of the ideas shared by students. Here are some tools […]

Writing With Emojis

Yesterday I wrote about Tony Vincent’s new page of free Shapegrams. As I mentioned in that post, Tony has always had great ideas for using clever graphics in the classroom. In fact, five years ago Tony Tweeted a slick graphic that convinced me to pay more attention to the clever used of emojis.  In the […]

Free Shapegrams from Tony Vincent!

I’ve known Tony Vincent for at least a dozen years. In all that time he’s always had awesome graphics on his website and in his presentations. So when he recently reached out to tell me about his new page of free Shapegrams, I knew I had to share it with all of you.  Shapegrams are […]

Three Tools for Building Your Own Online Games That Aren’t Kahoot-like

Earlier today I fielded a question from a reader who was looking for some suggestions for tools he could use to create some online games for his students to play. Specifically, he was looking for some alternatives to the typical suggestions of Kahoot, Quizizz, and Gimkit. There are a lot of options that I could […]

Lumen5 – Quickly Turn Your Writing Into Videos

ChatGPT might be the first thing you think of when you read AI today, but there have been plenty of other AI tools before it. One such tool is Lumen5. Lumen5 is a tool that will produce a video for you based upon your written work. To create a video with Lumen5 you can enter the URL […]

How to Search Within Desktop and Mobile Pages

How to search within documents, web pages, and spreadsheets is one of the first things that I teach to students at the start of a new semester or new school year (for year-long courses). It’s a simple thing that can lead to more efficient use of time spent on research. Over the weekend a reader […]

Three Self-paced Courses You Can Start Today!

Throughout the year I host a variety of live Practical Ed Tech webinars. Many of you have joined me for them this year and in prior school years. But my timing of those webinars doesn’t work for a lot of you. That’s why I also offer some self-paced courses over on Practical Ed Tech. Here’s […]

Two Ways to Use Pictures in Formative Assessment

When I taught a computer repair class for high school students there were two ways that I consistently used pictures and diagrams in formative assessment. Formative Assessment With Images on FormativeEvery week I would have students answer questions based on a diagram that I upload to Formative.com. I like using Formative.com for this purpose because I […]

Science, Math, and Philosophy Lessons for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is just a couple of days away. If you teach primary grades, your students may be excited about exchanging little cards and candies (my daughters have been talking about it for weeks). If you teach middle school or high school students, you’re probably bracing yourself for a few days filled with extra teenage […]

Feedback, AI, and Language – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is roughly 50 degrees warmer than it was at this time last week! One thing that hasn’t changed since last week is that AI is the still the hot topic in education. I think I’ve fielded more questions related to AI in the last week than I have about […]

25 Gmail Tips for Teachers and Students

As part of my on-going quest to bring some organization to the more than 1,500 videos on my YouTube channel, I’ve created a new playlist of 25 Gmail tips for teachers and students. The playlist includes everything from how to sort your Gmail messages to filtering and blocking senders to email etiquette tips we all […]

How to Quickly Turn Padlet Notes Into a Slideshow

Earlier this week Padlet launched a new feature that lets you quickly turn the multimedia notes on a Padlet wall into a slideshow. If you haven’t tried it yet, watch my new video to see how easy it is to use the new slideshow feature in Padlet. The video also shows you how to enable […]

25 YouTube Tips for Teachers

A couple of weeks ago I shared directions on how to start a YouTube channel. Yesterday, I published directions on how to add end screens to your videos. Those are just two of twenty-five YouTube tutorial videos that I’ve published over the last few years. All of my YouTube tips for teachers are now arranged […]

A Quick Tip for Sorting Gmail

Here’s a little tip that I shared with a friend last weekend and I figured a few of you might appreciate it as well. When an email that you are expecting to appear in your primary tab in Gmail appears in another tab, you can simply drag it over to your primary tab. When you […]

29 Google Sites Tutorials for Teachers

Yesterday afternoon a reader emailed me to ask if I had any resources she could reference while building a website with Google Sites. The first video that I thought to send her was this one covering all of the basics of creating your first Google Site. In looking for that video I came across a […]

New Padlet Feature! Present Padlet Walls as Slideshows

Padlet has been one of my go-to tools for more than a decade. That staying power is due in large part to the flexibility of the tool and that the team and Padlet continues to add more and more helpful features for teachers. The latest feature added to Padlet is an option to present all […]

How to Set Expiration Dates for Google Docs

Setting access expiration dates is one of the many “hidden” or frequently overlooked features of Google Documents. This is a feature you can use when you want to share a Google Document with a person or group of people for a limited time. By setting an expiration date you can grant access for as little […]

Three Tools for Detecting Writing Created by AI

If you haven’t heard, AI writing tools are the hot edtech topic of the year so far. Your students are probably using them whether you know it or not. And if your middle school or high school is trying to ban them, your students are definitely using them (tell teenagers what they can’t do and […]

How to Add Video Playlists to Google Sites

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I wrote about preparing for some workshops that I’ll be leading this spring and summer. Creating resource pages is one of things that I always do in preparation for leading workshops. Those resource pages always include some video tutorials that people can refer to after the workshop if […]

How to Use SVG Files in PowerPoint

Last week a reader reached out to me for advice about how to design slides and PDFs so that the images in them didn’t get grainy-looking when they were enlarged. The solution that immediately came to my mind was to use SVG files whenever possible instead of JPG or PNG files. SVG stands for Scalable […]

10 Tools for Gathering Real-time Feedback From Students

Chat tools and polling services provide good ways to hear from all of the students in a classroom. These kinds of tools, often referred to as backchannel tools, allow shy students to ask questions and share comments. For your more outspoken students who want to comment on everything, a feedback mechanism provides a good outlet […]

How to Use Canva to Create Custom Valentine’s Day Cards for Kids to Share

Now that Groundhog Day has come and gone, Valentine’s Day is the next holiday that my daughters are looking forward to celebrating. Yesterday, both of them came home from school with letters from their teachers about Valentine’s Day activities planned for their classrooms. The activities are mostly the exchange of little cards between classmates. I’m […]

GPTZero – Another Tool to Detect Writing Created by AI

Yesterday, I shared a brief overview of AI Text Classifier which can be used to determine the likelihood that a article was written with ChatGPT. Today, I have a similar tool to share with you. GPTZero is a free tool that analyzes text to determine whether or not it was written by an artificial intelligence […]

Focusable – Fitness Tracking for Your Mind

Focusable is a free app and website that I started using at the start of this school year. It’s a tool that anyone can use to teach themselves to focus on completing difficult tasks, to ignore cheap social media distractions, and to recharge after completing a stressful task. Since September I’ve used Focusable as a […]

The Makers of ChatGPT Have Launched a Tool to Detect Text Written With AI

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I included a video overview of a tool called AI Writing Check that detects whether or not an article has been written with the use of a tool like ChatGPT. Two days after publishing my newsletter, the makers of ChatGPT announced the launch of their own tool designed […]

Three Things You Should Know How to Do With TinyURL

I’m not 100% certain of this, but I’d make a substantial wager that TinyURL was the first URL shortener I ever used. I know I was using it before I started this blog and that’s going on 16 years this year. The point being that TinyURL has been around a long time. It’s that longevity […]

How to Remove Apps and Files from Your Android Phone

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why you should remove unused apps from your Google account and from your Android phone. One reader correctly pointed out that while I explained why you should do that, I didn’t explain how to remove unused apps from your Android phone. To remedy that, I created a […]

75 Google Documents Tutorials

Last week I published a new tutorial about how to add footnotes to Google Documents. After publishing it I decided that it was time to continue on my quest to bring some better organization to my YouTube channel. The next step in that quest was to create a playlist of my Google Documents tutorials.  I […]

How to Map Spreadsheet Data on Felt

Felt is a multimedia mapping tool that I started using late last year and it has quickly become one of my favorite mapping tools. With Felt you can create everything some simple directions maps to maps that have historic overlays to maps of animal migrations and much more. The latest update to Felt makes it […]

How to Add Footnotes to Your Google Documents

When it comes answering tech support questions it is often easier to show the solution with a screencast video than it is to write directions. That’s why I made this screencast video when earlier this week I was asked “how can I add footnotes into my Google Documents?” In the video I show where to […]

How to Create a YouTube Channel

If you’re looking for a little weekend project, starting a YouTube channel could be a good one for you. Whether you make a YouTube channel simply to share instructional videos with your students or you make a YouTube channel with the hopes of becoming rich and famous, the process of getting started is the same. […]

Create Writing Prompts With Spinner Wheel

In reviewing my Google Analytics earlier this week I noticed that “writing prompts” was one of the most frequently searched terms on FreeTech4Teachers.com in the last month. That was the inspiration for a new video about how to create a random writing prompt generator.  In this new video I demonstrate how to use Spinner Wheel […]

How to Add Checkboxes to Tables in Google Docs

Earlier this week when I was looking back at The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators I noticed that Google Docs was still a beta product back when that book was written. Google Docs has come a long way since then. Today, Google Docs is packed with some many handy little features that it’s […]

How to Find the Source for Images in Google Slides

A couple of weeks ago I published a video about using the explore function in Google Slides to find images to use in presentations. Since then I’ve had a few people ask for clarification about how to use the image source when using the other image search option in Google Slides. The process of finding […]

AI Writing Check

AI Writing Check is a free tool created by the collaborative efforts of the non-profits Quill.org and CommonLit. AI Writing Check is a tool that was created to help teachers try to recognize writing created through the use of artificial intelligence.  To use AI Writing Check you simply have to copy a passage of text […]

How to Clean-up Image Backgrounds in Canva Designs

Last week someone reached out to me after watching my original video about using Canva’s image background removal tool. She was having a little trouble because the automatic background remover was leaving a few patches of the original image intact. To help, I recorded a new video that demonstrates how to clean-up the parts of […]

A Classic Search Lesson from My Archives

The “memories” feature is just about the only thing I like about Facebook these days. This morning Facebook reminded me of a memory from my first time attending the BETT Show in London back in 2014. That memory included a first-hand reminder of why you should consider other words and phrases when conducting research. Here’s […]

Using Google Slides to Organize Research

Like many of you, when I was in middle school and high school I was taught to create index cards to organize our research. After creating the cards we sorted them into an order to support writing our research papers. That same concept can be applied to organizing research with Google Slides. In the video […]

What Are Carbohydrates and How Do They Impact Your Health?

One of my goals for early part of 2023 is to set a new personal best time at a bike race that I’m entered in for the third year in a row. To do that I’m watching my diet much more carefully than I typically do at this time of year. Like many people, foods […]

Physical Phonics Games

I have been a fan of the online learning game called Teach Your Monster to Read for many years. The game is designed to help students improve the speed and accuracy with which they recognize letters and sounds. The game gets its name from the friendly monster avatars that students use in the game. Teach Your […]

A New Felt Mapping Tool

A few days ago I shared a neat map of gray whale migration patterns. That map was created on the Felt mapping platform. Felt was one of my favorite new tools of 2022 and is only getting better at the start of 2023.  The most recent update to Felt introduced an easier way to access […]

Design a Mobile App With Google Slides

Yesterday I published a post featuring three tools for creating mobile apps. I should point out that while those tools are helpful, students still need to take time to plan what they want their apps to do and how they will look. To that end, in the past I’ve had my students use Google Slides […]

Three Ways to Create Your Own Mobile App

Since the start of the year I’ve answered about a dozen emails from readers who are interested in creating mobiles apps either by themselves or with their students. In most cases I’ve recommended one of the following three tools.  Glide Apps Glide Apps enables anyone who can make a spreadsheet in Google Sheets to create […]

Tools for Teaching Adventure – A New OPEN Phys Ed Resource

OPEN Phys ED is one of my favorite websites because they offer great lesson plans and other resources for getting kids active in more than just the traditional gym class activities of years gone by. OPEN Phys Ed emphasizes providing all students with ways to feel engaged and empowered in physical education classes.  OPEN Phys […]

New and Notable Microsoft Forms Features

Mike Tholfsen is my go-to person for all things Microsoft Edu. This week he released a new video highlighting nine new features in Microsoft Forms for 2023. A couple of the updates are what I would call mostly cosmetic. The rest of the updates are definitely worth noting and trying if you haven’t already given […]

27 Google Drive Tips and Tricks

I’m in the process of organizing my YouTube channel to be more than just two big playlists of Practical Ed Tech Tips and Google Tutorials. To that end, this morning I went through my channel and put my current and relevant Google Drive tutorials into one playlist.  My new Google Drive tutorials playlist contains twenty-seven […]

Why You Should Clean Your Phone

When was the last time you looked at your phone? According to my site analytics there’s at least a 55% 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 […]

Gray Whale Migration and More Felt Mapping Ideas

Felt is a multimedia mapping tool that I started using late last year. It has quickly become one of my preferred tools for creating multimedia maps. In fact, at this point I think I like more than Google’s My Maps. The aesthetics of Felt are great and it has a great selection of easy-to-use features. […]

Dozens of PowerPoint Tips & Tricks

On Saturday I shared my playlist of Google Slides tutorials. This morning I have a PowerPoint tips playlist to share with you. Over the years I haven’t made nearly as many PowerPoint tutorial videos as I have Google Slides tutorial videos. That said, my PowerPoint tips playlist still includes more than two dozen tutorials.  Some […]

Dozens of Google Slides Tutorials

Earlier this week after publishing An Important Tip for Using Image Search in Google Slides it occurred to me that I should probably start to organize all of the Google Slides tutorials that I’d made over the years. As I started to search through my YouTube channel I discovered that I’ve made more than eighty Google Slides […]

How to Use Voice Typing in Google Slides

Google recently improved the voice typing function in Google Docs and Google Slides. The tools work in the same way as before, but the voice recognition and accuracy is better than it has been in the past. If you’ve never tried voice typing in Google Slides, watch this new video to see how it works.  […]

A Quick Tip for Using the Same Color in Multiple Adobe Express Projects

A couple of days ago I shared a tip for duplicating colors in Canva design elements. A similar thing can be done in Adobe Express.  When you find or create a color scheme in Adobe Express that you want to use in multiple projects, there is an easy way to make sure you get all […]

BookWidgets Adds a New Video Quiz Option to Use in Google Classroom and Beyond

At the end of last year I highlighted the collection of more than thirty activity templates from BookWidgets that can be used in Google Classroom. This week BookWidgets added a useful new widget simply called Video Quiz.  As the name implies, the video quiz widget in BookWidgets lets you create a video-based quiz to use […]

An Important Tip for Using Image Search in Google Slides

The Explore function in Google Slides can be a good tool to use to find images to use in your presentations. The images found through the Explore function in Google Slides are supposed to be Creative Commons licensed images. However, Google doesn’t make that information readily available within the Explore image search results. That’s why […]

I’m Feeling Lucky – Around the World With Google Earth

Google Earth is one of my all-time favorite tools for teaching geography and history lessons. Two of my favorite ways to use Google Earth in the classroom are outlined below.  From voyages to games to simple measuring tools, the web version of Google Earth has a lot of neat features that can help students learn […]

A Quick Tip for Using the Same Color in Multiple Canva Designs

Canva has lots of helpful design tools for students and teachers. Some of those are fairly obvious while others are a bit hidden and easy to overlook. One of those that’s easy to overlook is the color hex code field in the color palette selection tool. Once you know how to use it, you might […]

How to Remove Google Forms Add-ons

Last week my Android notified me that I had 22 apps that I hadn’t used in the last 30 days. I took that as a good reminder to do an audit of all the things connected to my Google account and disable or uninstall the apps, extensions, and add-ons that I no longer use. That […]

Ask Two EdTech Guys

At the end of 2022 Rushton Hurley and I brought the curtain down on our series of live webinars titled Two EdTech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. The archive of the shows lives on right here. And if you can’t get enough of our friendly faces and banter, we’re bringing the series back […]

Create a Snowman Word Game

Earlier today when I picked up my daughter from preschool she proudly showed me the snowman artwork that she had made during art class. A picture of her artwork is the featured image of this blog post.  Seeing my daughter’s snowman art reminded me of the snowman word game template offered by Flippity. Flippity’s Snowman word game […]

How to Convert Google Forms into Microsoft Forms

Yesterday I published separate collections of tutorials for using Google Forms and for using Microsoft Forms. But what if you are transitioning from a Google Workspace environment to an Office 365 environment and don’t want to recreate all of your forms from scratch? There is a solution to that problem.  In the new video that […]

Dozens of Tutorials for Getting Started With Google Forms

In a video that I made last week I mentioned that the vast majority of my videos don’t get more than a few hundred views. But there are some outliers. The biggest outlier is my simple video about the basics of creating a quiz in Google Forms which has received nearly half a million views. That’s […]

Eight Tutorials for Getting Started With Microsoft Forms

This post was inspired by a former colleague of mine who reached out to me for some help as she transitions from a school that uses Google Workspace to one that uses Microsoft Office 365. Specifically, she was concerned about losing access to Google Forms and whether or not she could use Microsoft Forms for […]

Contests, Maps, and Drawings – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where normal winter weather has returned. It’s cold and clear as I get ready to head out to our local ski area. Last weekend it was warm enough that my family went skiing one day and rode our bikes outside the next. This weekend we’ll be sticking to the snow sports. […]

Create Your Podcast This Year

If you’ve been thinking about creating a podcast, this is the time to do it. If you’ve been thinking about having your students create podcasts like Tony Vincent’s students did way back before podcasting was trendy, this is the year to do it. Creating a podcast has never been easier. In fact, you can record, […]

Why I Keep Making Videos That Nobody Watches

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I make a lot of videos. On average I publish about 25 videos per month. Some of my videos have gotten hundreds of thousands of views. But those videos are the outliers on my YouTube channel. The vast majority of my videos […]

5 Google Docs Features You Might Have Overlooked or Forgotten About

Google Documents has been around so long now that some of us who have been using it from the start may have forgotten about some features. I did that just the other day when I “remembered” to use the version history to go back and look at a some edits that I had made to […]

How to Sort Microsoft Forms Entries by Completion Time

A couple of days ago I helped a reader who needed a quick way to sort Google Forms responses so that the most recent submission was always easy to find. I’m guessing that there’s probably a Microsoft Forms user out there who would like to know how to do a similar thing. That’s why I […]

How to Use Custom Backgrounds in Animate from Audio Videos

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I featured a fun tool from Adobe called Animate from Audio. Based on the responses that I received to the newsletter, Animate from Audio is going to be used in a lot of classrooms over the next couple of weeks. A couple of the responses that I got […]

How to Sort Google Sheets and Forms Entries in Reverse Chronological Order

Last week a reader reached out to me for some guidance on how to handle a Google Form that had more than one hundred submissions. He was looking for a way to quickly find the most information submitted in the most recent entries. My solution to that problem was to use Z-A sort in the […]

A Cool Tool for Uncluttering and Saving Online Articles

Unclutter is a free and open-source Chrome and Firefox browser extension that anyone can use to remove the clutter from a web page. That’s not all that Unclutter does. It also lets you save articles to read later, highlight and annotate articles that you save, and Unclutter lets you adjust the size and contrast of […]

How to Create a Podcast on Your Android Phone

The new year is here! If one of your goals for 2023 is to finally start that podcast you’ve been thinking about, Anchor offers an easy to get started. In fact, you can record, edit, and publish an entire podcast on your pone by using Anchor’s free Android app.  To get started on creating a […]

How to Collaborate on Canva Documents

The new Canva Documents tool has a lot of great features for teachers and students. Not the least of which is the ability to collaborate on documents and designs.  The collaboration feature on Canva Documents enables you to invite anyone to work with you as a full editor or commenter on any document that you […]

How to Create Map Overlays

Felt was one of my favorite new tools in 2022. In fact, I liked it so much that I included it in my Best of the Web for 2022. Felt is a free multimedia mapping tool that I think is easier for first-time users to use than Google’s My Maps or ESRI’s mapping tools. Right […]

Two Ways to Create Short Audio Recordings to Share via QR Code

A couple of weeks ago a loyal reader reached to me for my thoughts about sharing audio recordings via QR codes. His idea was to place QR codes on objects within his classroom and school so that students could scan them to hear his audio recordings. There were two tools that I recommended to him. […]

Best of 2022 – Screencasting on Chromebooks

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. Back in June […]

Best of 2022 – DIY Online Board Games

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. Those of you […]

Best of 2022 – Using Focusable as a Progress Journal

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. About a month […]

Best of 2022 – Readlee

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. Every once in […]

New Course – How to Create & Sell Your Digital Products in 2023

Two weeks I hosted a webinar about creating and selling digital teaching materials. After the webinar a handful of people reached out to ask if I could go into more depth on the topics covered in the webinar. I certainly can, but it’s hard to do in just one webinar. Therefore, I’ve created a new […]

Best of 2022 – Can I Use That Picture?

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. A couple of […]

Best of 2022 – Overlooked Google Docs Features

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. As Google Docs […]

Best of 2022 – Free and Customizable Clip Art

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. CoCoMaterial is an […]

HUE Animation Studio – The Complete Stop Motion Animation Kit

For the first time in more than a decade I’ve partnered with a company to give away a physical technology product. I’ve partnered with HUE Cameras to give away three HUE Animation Studio – Complete Stop Motion Studio Animation Kits.  Watch my video review of HUE Animation Studio then read on for details about how […]

Best of 2022 – How to Stop Procrastinating

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. I meant to […]

Best of 2022 – Game Templates in Canva

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year.  Last week I […]

How to Change Padlet Notification Settings

Last week Padlet released an update to their notification system. The updated system gives you more control over which notifications receive and how you receive them. You can receive them via email or through push notifications. In this short video I demonstrate how to change your Padlet notification settings. The video also shows you how […]

My Five Favorite Features of Canva Documents

A couple of weeks ago Canva opened the public beta of their new Documents tool. I’ve previously highlighted Docs to Slideshow conversion tool within it and the AI writing feature within Canva Docs. Those are two of my favorite features of Canva Docs.  In this new video I highlight some other great features including the […]

A New Course to Start 2023

Last week I hosted a webinar about creating and selling digital teaching materials. After the webinar a handful of people reached out to ask if I could go into more depth on the topics covered in the webinar. I certainly can, but it’s hard to do in just one webinar. Therefore, I’ve created a new […]

Slideator – Add Your Voice to Almost Any Type of Slideshow

Slideator is a free tool that you can use to add voice-over and webcam recordings to your slides. Slideator works with just about any type of slideshow that you own. You can even use it with a set of slides that you have in PDF. In addition to adding your voice-over and webcam recording to […]

How to Redirect Students When They’ve Completed a Google Form

Yesterday I published a video about collecting pictures through Google Forms. That post was inspired by a request for help from a former colleague of mine. This post was also inspired by the second part of that colleague’s help request. The question he had was about how to direct people to purchase tickets for an […]

How to Collect Pictures Through Google Forms

Last week a former colleague of mine reached out to me for help setting up a system to collect profile information to put into a printed event program. He was looking for a convenient way for people to submit a profile picture and brief biographies to include in a printed program. My suggestion was to […]

Quickly Turn Documents Into Slideshows in Canva

The new Canva Documents has a bunch of neat tools including the AI writing tool that I highlighted last week. Continuing on that theme of artificial intelligence, Canva now has a feature that lets you quickly turn a document into a slideshow presentation.  When you viewing a document in Canva take a look at the […]

17 Tools for Collaboratively Creating Mind Maps and Flowcharts

Last week there was a spike in traffic to my blog post about using whiteboard and brainstorming templates in Canva. Seeing that spike reminded me that it was probably time to update my list of good tools for creating mind maps and flowcharts. Here’s my updated list of mind mapping and flowchart creation tools. Canva The […]

44,000+ People Get Ed Tech Tips This Way

This morning when I logged into my YouTube account I noticed that my little channel now has more than 44,000 subscribers for the first time. I’ve never had a video go viral nor have I tried to make one for that purpose. Instead, all of my videos are just simple how-to videos about a wide […]

Take a Look at Padlet’s New Notification Options

Padlet is a tool that I’ve been using for over a decade in a wide variety of classroom settings. In fact, I’ve been using for so long that I’ve seen it evolve from a simple tool called Wall Wisher in 2009 to the multimedia sharing, brainstorming, and mapping tool that it is today. The latest […]

Create Animations from Audio in Adobe Express

I like to end the week with something fun. If you do too, head over to Animate from Audio hosted by Adobe Express. Animate from Audio is a fun little tool that matches your spoken words to an animated character of your choosing. The finished product is a fun little video that you can download […]

How to Clip Sections of Your YouTube Videos

A few weeks ago I published an overview of some YouTube Studio settings that you should know how to use. This week while helping someone with one of their videos uploaded to YouTube, I realized that my previous post about YouTube Studio should have included how to clip sections of your videos. To remedy that, […]

Can I Use That Picture? – A Short Guide to Using Pictures from the Web

A couple of weeks ago in my Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week newsletter I included a PDF guide to use in determining whether or not you can use a picture you’ve found on the Internet. To accompany that guide and provide some clarifications I then recorded a short video presentation in Canva.  In […]

Bookmarking With the Updated Google Keep Chrome Extension

A little over a month ago I was worried that my days of using the Google Keep Chrome extension to bookmark websites were coming to an end. Based on the number of views of that blog post and the emails that I got in response to it, I wasn’t the only one who had that […]

Artificial Intelligence in Canva Documents

Last week Canva opened access to their highly anticipated Canva Documents tool. It includes all of the features that you’d probably expect to find in a modern document creation tool. Those include collaboration, commenting, and many formatting options. Canva Documents also includes an artificial intelligence feature that’s called Magic Write.  Magic Write is the artificial […]

Tract is Coming to an End

One of the unfortunate realities of the educational technology market is that sometimes really good products and services aren’t sustainable businesses. That appears to be the case with one of my favorite services, Tract.  Yesterday afternoon Tract announced that they are shutting down on January 1, 2023. That means you have just a couple of […]

Webinar Today – How to Create & Sell Your Digital Products in 2023

One of the ways that I’m able to keep Free Technology for Teachers going is through the support of generous people like you who purchase my digital products like 50 Tech Tuesday Tips and my Practical Ed Tech courses like Animated Explanations. None of those things on their own provide a living, but they do […]

A Short Overview of ChatGPT

Yesterday I published Ten Canva Features for Students – An Experiment. The first part of the experiment was publishing a blog post that was written entirely by the artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT. The second part of the experiment was to compare the visits to that blog post with those of blog posts on the same […]

Get Your Free Copy of The 2022-23 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Near the start of every school year I publish an updated version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. This year it took me a bit longer than usual to get it done and I didn’t send it out until mid-September. Since then I made a few minor edits to it (mostly to correct grammatical mistakes […]

Ten Canva Features for Students – An Experiment

Canva is a graphic design platform that offers a wide range of features for creating professional-looking documents. Some of the key features that may be useful for students include the following: 1. Templates: Canva offers a variety of customizable templates for different types of documents, including posters, presentations, reports, and infographics. This can make it […]

A New Google Slides Feature That Could Help Reduce Collaborator Confusion

For as long as Google Slides has existed one of the problems with it has been collaborators accidentally editing over each other’s work. In the early days of Google Slides, before I put collaboration protocols in place, I broke up a few “fights” between students who had accused each other of “wrecking” the other’s work. […]

What’s New in Focusable? More Ways to Help You Focus

Focusable is the first thing listed in my Best of the Web 2022 presentation. Since the first time that I tried it back in September, I knew that Focusable was a tool that could do a lot of good for teachers and students. It does so by helping you learn to ignore distractions and focus […]

How to Create & Sell Your Own Digital Products in 2023

One of the ways that I’m able to keep Free Technology for Teachers going is through the support of generous people like you who purchase my digital products like 50 Tech Tuesday Tips and my Practical Ed Tech courses like Animated Explanations. None of those things on their own provide a living, but they do […]

New Base Map Options on Felt

Felt is a new digital mapping tool that I’ve featured a few times in the last month because I think it is fantastic alternative to Google’s My Maps and the web version of Google Earth for creating custom maps. In fact, I like it so much that I demonstrated it in my Best of the […]

How to Create Image Revealing Effects in PowerPoint

On Wednesday I published a short video about how to create image revealing effects in Google Slides. Shortly afterwards a viewer emailed me with a question about doing something similar in PowerPoint. I was happy to help by recording this new video to demonstrate how to create image revealing effects in PowerPoint.  Creating an image […]

How to Create an Image Revealing Effect in Google Slides

About a week ago a reader reached to me to ask for a suggestion on how to create an image revealing effect without the use of proprietary interactive whiteboard software. My first thought was to give TinyTap a try because that platform does include a feature called “Houdini Mode” that can be used to hide […]

Best of the Web 2022 – Webinar Recording

Yesterday afternoon I hosted a free webinar in which I shared my favorite new edtech tools of 2022 and some old favorites that had significant updates in 2022. Nearly 200 people registered for the webinar but only 25 actually joined the live session. That told me two things. First, people will sign up for anything […]

A Handful of Resources for Computer Science Education Week

This week is Computer Science Education Week. I’ve long thought that every student should have some experience with computer science. After all, computer science is what powers so much of what kids do in their daily lives today. I was introduced to some computer science concepts when I was in elementary school in the 1980’s […]

Interactive Math & Science Simulations for Online and Offline Use

PhET is one of my favorite resources for math and science teachers. In fact, it’s included as one of my Best of the Web picks for 2022. One of the many things that I like about PhET math and science simulations is that you can use them with or without an internet connection. That’s something […]

Free Webinars Today and Tomorrow

Today at 8pm ET/ 5pm PT Rushton Hurley and I are hosting the last live episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. After two and a half years of hosting these live webinars we’re changing formats in 2023, but we wanted to have more live session to end 2022. I […]

Biographies in Infographic Form

Last week while looking for a Canva template to create the copyright guide that I distributed in my Practical Ed Tech newsletter I came across an interesting template titled George Washington’s Biography. It’s a relatively simple template that students could easily modify to create a visual-heavy biography of just about anyone including themselves.  Applications for […]

How to Correctly Use Google Images to Find Pictures for Your Projects

Last week a student in my Google Earth & Maps Crash Course emailed me with a question about using Google Images for a classroom project. Specifically, she wanted to know about licensing and whether or not students could use the images they found through Google Image search.  The short answer to the question of can […]

How to Find and Download Your Old Canva Projects

Last week a reader emailed me to ask for help with Canva. Specifically, he wanted to know where all of his videos had gone. He wasn’t the first person to send me that question so I decided to make a short video to show three ways to find your old Canva projects and then download […]

Posters, Pictures, and Leftovers – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where yesterday it felt like winter and today it feels like spring. My family is supposed to go see the Christmas lights display at the Boothbay Botanical Gardens this evening, but the rain might dampen our plans. So we might end up spending the day making Christmas cookies. Either way, we’re […]

50 Canva Tutorials for Teachers

Other than Google Workspace tools, Canva is the tool that I’ve published the most tutorials about on my YouTube channel. In fact, with the publication of my latest Canva tutorial video I’ve now published 50 tutorials about using Canva’s many features for making videos, presentations, timelines, posters, greeting cards, worksheets, and many other graphics. All of those videos are available in […]

Two Ways to Make Timelines With Adobe Express

A couple of days ago I read a Book Widgets blog post about fun ways to use timelines in your lessons. Reading that blog post inspired me to create a new video about another tool that students can use to create timelines. That tool is Adobe Express.  In Adobe Express there are two ways that […]

Image Candy – A Free Suite of Image Editing Tools

Image Candy is a free set of image editing tools that you can use without having to register for any kind of account. In all there are thirteen free image editing tools included in Image Candy. All of them are quick and easy to use.  Some of the free image editing tools that you’ll find […]

How to Make Custom QR Codes With Adobe Express

Yesterday afternoon I published a video and blog post about using Canva to create custom QR codes that include your own images and graphic designs. The Adobe Express suite of tools also offers a QR code creation tool. QR code creation tool in Adobe Express doesn’t let you use pictures in your codes like Canva […]

How to Create Custom QR Codes in Canva

Over the last fifteen years I’ve seen QR codes rise in popularity, fall in popularity, and rise again. They never lost their appeal to me because they can be used in schools a bunch of helpful ways. There are more QR code creation tools than ever before including one that is built into Canva. In […]

One More Day

Over the last year many of you have kindly supported my work here on Free Technology for Teachers and Practical Ed Tech by purchasing a copy of my eBook, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. If you’ve been thinking about purchasing a copy, there’s a 20% discount available until the end of the day on November 30th.  […]

Threadit is Closing – A Few Alternatives to Try

Threadit is a Google product that when it launched I thought could have become a rival to Microsoft Flip. As feature-laden as Threadit is, it never really caught on and now Google is shutting it down in a few weeks. On December 19th Google is closing the doors on Threadit. If you have videos in […]

15 Years of Free Technology for Teachers – Some Thoughts

Fifteen years ago today I was supervising detention when I wrote the first post on this blog. I did not have any idea what was to come over the next fifteen years let alone that I’d still be writing about educational technology in 2022. So on this occasion, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to […]

Three YouTube Features Every Teacher Should Know How to Use

In last week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I detailed a few features of YouTube Studio that every teacher who uploads videos to YouTube should know how to use. The video included in that newsletter can be seen here. Chances are that even if you don’t upload videos to YouTube, you probably use YouTube to find […]

Clipart & Drawings for Classroom Projects

Earlier this week I shared ClipArt ETC and Clippix ETC as good resources for locating free clipart and pictures to use in classroom projects. That was the third post this fall that I’ve published to feature a good place for teachers and students to find free drawings. To summarize all three of those posts I […]

A Thanksgiving Leftovers Search Lesson and Bookmarking Tip

One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is eating the leftovers the next day. I enjoy a good turkey sandwich almost as much as Ross, but I do like to mix it up a bit and try other ways to use leftovers. In fact, I was doing that earlier this week (yes, I was planning […]

Two Cool Mapping Tools in the Felt Mapping Platform

A couple of weeks ago I published an introductory overview of a new digital mapping platform called Felt. As I said in that introduction, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of all of the things that students can do and make on Felt. One of those things is the ability to quickly and easily […]

How to Search Within Your Google Drive Folders

Yesterday afternoon I shared a tip for keeping track of what you put into your Google Drive folders. This morning I have a tip on how to find the things that you and or your collaborators put into your Google Drive folders.  Google Drive has contained a search function almost since its launch more than […]

Watch Out for This Email Scam Pretending to Be From YouTube Support

If you have a YouTube channel, there is a new (new to me anyway) email scam that you need to be aware of. This scam landed in my inbox earlier today. Fortunately, the scam is so poorly executed that it is rather easy to spot.  The scam is that someone finds the email address you […]

How to Add Descriptions to Google Drive Folders

A few days ago I received an email from a reader who was looking for suggestions about how to keep track of what is contained with the folders of a Google Drive account. My suggestion was to try adding descriptions to the folder.  When you right-click on a folder in your Google Drive account a […]

How to Read Music – And 17 Other Lessons About Music

Music Snippet is a Google Docs add-on that I’ve written about in the past. It’s handy tool for writing music in Google Docs. A reader recently asked me about it which prompted me to search my archives for other music-related resources. One that I came across was a TED-Ed lesson that explains the fundamentals of reading […]

Two Good Ways to Create Simple and Focused Websites

Parts of this post originally appeared late last year in an issue  of my Practical Ed Tech weekly newsletter.  I am often asked for recommendations for simple website builders that teachers and students can use to create small websites. The purpose isn’t to share everything they’ve done and have you grade it. Tools like Seesaw […]

STEAM Lessons About the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade

Watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a little tradition in my house just like it is in millions of other homes in the United States. For the last few years Macy’s has offered some hands-on STEAM lessons related to the parade.  Parade 101 features four video demonstrations of hands-on activities that students can do at […]

Elk, Geography, and Art – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where I’m home after spending most of the week in western Nebraska. It was there that I took the picture featured in this post. It’s a little hard to make it out, but there’s a bull elk in the picture. It was one of three that walked right past me early […]

Five Digital Mapping Tools That Aren’t Made by Google

Google Earth and Google’s My Maps are great tools for students to use to create multimedia maps. But Google isn’t the only game in town when it comes to digital map creation tools. In fact, there are some good ones that are freely available to you and your students outside of what Google offers. Here’s […]

How to Create a Story Map

StoryMap JS is a tool that I’ve been using and recommending for many years. It’s a free tool that students can use to create a story map in a manner similar to Google’s My Maps or the old Google Tour Builder. The difference between those tools and StoryMap JS is that StoryMap JS is much […]

Loom Adds New Features That Will Be Helpful to Teachers and Students

Loom is one of the tools that I regularly recommend when I’m asked to recommend a video tool for creating instructional videos. This week Loom announced two new features that could prove to be quite helpful to teachers and students.  The first new feature to note is a floating speaker notes tool in the Loom […]

Where I’d Like to Go – A Geography Lesson With Google Drawings

I originally wrote this blog post and recorded the video in 2021 while thinking about icebreaker activities for the start of the school year. The activity is also great for Geography Awareness Week.  As the new school year starts many you may find yourself looking for some new ideas to break the ice and get […]

Plate Tectonics and a Search Lesson

This is a post from my archives that fits with the theme of Geography Awareness Week.  This morning I responded to a Tweet from someone who was looking for “plate tectonics virtual experiences for students.” My mind immediately went to using Google Earth. A quick search in my archives and I found this lesson plan […]

A Google Earth Lesson With the “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button

Since it is Geography Awareness Week I thought I’d pull a lesson plan from my archives to share with you.  From voyages to games to simple measuring tools, the web version of Google Earth has a lot of neat features that can help students learn about the world. One of those neat features is the […]

Tools for Translating Live Presentations

Last week a reader emailed me to ask the following question: Do you have any recommendations for a live translation during a keynote address or conference? For example, if the speaker is doing their presentation in English but we have Spanish speakers in the audience. They can follow along by reading the Spanish on a […]

Creating and Conducting Polls in Google Slides and PowerPoint

Poll Everywhere is a polling tool that I’ve used off and on throughout the past decade. It’s a great tool for gathering questions from an audience, polling an audience, and seeing word clouds of sentiment from an audience. People can respond to your poll questions from their laptops, tablets, and phones.  You can use Poll Everywhere […]

Felt – A New Way to Create Multimedia Maps

About a week ago Larry Ferlazzo mentioned a new mapping tool in one of his blog posts. That tool is called Felt. I tried it a few days ago and I have to say that I like it a lot. Felt offers a lot of easy-to-use tools for creating custom maps. Some of the features […]

Keep, Quiz, and Templates – The Week in Review

Good evening from Banner County, Nebraska! I’m here for the next few days to visit my good friends Kris and Beth Still. Those of you who have followed by blog since its early days may recall that Beth is the person who organized the NECC Newbie project way back in 2009. It was through her […]

Free, Customizable Clip Art

CoCoMaterial is an online library of almost 2,500 drawings that you can download and re-use for free. I’ve been using it for about a month and I really like the style of the artwork found on CoCoMaterial. It has been a hit with the folks participating in my Animated Explanations course this month. This week […]

YouTube Studio Settings for Teachers

Many years ago I was at the annual ISTE conference when I heard a speaker say, “if you want the biggest authentic audience for your students’ work, put it on YouTube.” I think he had a good point because it is possible for your students’ work be seen by millions of people if it’s really […]

Making and Leading Virtual Tours With Expeditions Pro

Many of us lamented the loss of Google Expeditions because it was a great tool for leading students on virtual reality tours of all kinds of interesting places around the world. Similarly, many of us were disappointed when Google shuttered Tour Creator because it was a great tool for students to use to create their […]

Now You Can Use Focusable Without Registering for an Account

I have been using Focusable since September to help me stop procrastinating and focus on the work that I need to get done when I’d rather be doing something else. Focusable isn’t just for adults. In fact, it was created for classroom use. However, Focusable has always required that users register for an account in […]

Fun Facts About Turkeys – And a Digital Turkey Project

We frequently have wild turkeys come through our backyard. And almost as frequently one of my dogs will chase them until they fly off. I was recently telling a friend about this pattern and he said, “I didn’t know that turkeys can fly.” That’s actually a pretty common response if you don’t live where wild […]

SpacesEDU Updates iPad App

Spaces is a digital portfolio tool that I’ve covered since the beginning of 2021 when it launched with a great feature called Asynchronous Breakout Rooms. Since then it has grown to include better reporting features and “best of” showcase features. The latest update comes in the form of an updated iPad app.  The updated app […]

Tips for Managing Google Drive Folders

A couple of mornings ago a reader asked me to help her figure out how a Google Doc she didn’t remember sharing was accessed by a colleague. After ruling out that her account had been compromised I discovered that the document in question was part of a shared Google Drive folder. The document was created […]

30+ Activity Templates to Use in Google Classroom

Disclosure: BookWidgets is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com It was around this time last year that I tried BookWidgets for the first time. I was immediately impressed by the variety of templates it offered for creating unique online learning activities for students. I was also impressed by how easy it was to use BookWidgets. Since then […]

Math and Geography

Over the weekend a Tweet from Thomas Petra reminded me of a great Google Earth resource that he developed years ago. That resource is Real World Math. And though he stopped updating it a couple of years ago, there are still many Google Earth files on it that you can download to use as the […]

Is This the End of the Google Keep Chrome Extension?

I’ve been using Google Keep for nearly all of my bookmarking for the last half-dozen years or more. It nicely syncs my bookmarks, notes, and reminders between my phone and any computer that I use when logged into my Chrome profile. Unfortunately, my days of using Chrome as my primary bookmarking tool may be coming […]

5 Things You Can Make With Microsoft Flip Besides Selfie Videos

Microsoft Flip (formerly known as Flipgrid) is a great tool for getting to know your students through the use of short selfie-style videos. I’ve also used it for asynchronous classroom discussions. You might have done the same with your students then gotten to the point of wondering, “okay, what’s next?” If that’s where you are […]

Documents, Maps, and Clocks – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is unusually warm for November. There have been many years in the past when I have been skiing by this point in the fall. Today, we’re going to the beach! We won’t swim because the water is quite cold despite the warm air temperature. Instead, we’ll have fun exploring […]

How Focusable Helps Me Stop Procrastinating

On Thursday morning I wrote about a new TED-Ed lesson that explains why we procrastinate. The lesson also offers some suggestions for breaking the procrastination habit. One of those suggestions is to journal about how you feel when faced with a task that you would rather avoid. To that end, I suggested trying Focusable.  I’ve […]

Get Ready for The Great Thanksgiving Listen 2022

During Tuesday night’s episode of Two EdTech Guys Take Questions the topic of audio recording came up. That prompted me to go on a little bit of a tangent (as I’m prone to doing) about The Great Thanksgiving Listen hosted by StoryCorps.  The Great Thanksgiving Listen hosted by StoryCorps is back for the eigth year in […]

How to Make Multimedia Maps on Padlet

Geography Awareness Week is coming up in a couple of weeks. In preparation for my favorite academic week of the year, I’ve recorded an updated tutorial on how to make multimedia maps with Padlet.  Padlet is one of the most versatile tools you can put in your digital toolbox. Creating multimedia maps is just one of […]

A Webinar (or Workshop) and an eBook for Your School

Last December I published the first edition of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. When I did that I made the offer of hosting a free webinar for any school or group that purchases ten or more copies. So far I’ve had a handful of people take me up on that offer. That offer is still good and […]

How to Create a Digital Map Collection in Wakelet

Wakelet is a free, collaborative bookmarking and file organization tool that puts things into a nice visual display. So when a former colleague emailed me a couple of days ago to ask for help creating a collection of digital maps Wakelet was one of the first tools to come to mind (Padlet was the other). […]

How to Import PDFs Into Book Creator Projects

About a week ago Book Creator rolled-out the third or fourth new feature of this school year. That feature is the ability to import PDFs to use in your Book Creator projects. I had a cold and couldn’t speak well last week so I had to wait until this week to give Book Creator’s new […]

How to Adjust Playback Volume in Google Slides

Support for audio files was welcome addition to Google Slides when it was announced in the fall of 2019. But four years later there are still some quirks to it to watch out for. And sometimes the setting you need isn’t quickly found. That was the case a few days ago when someone emailed me […]

Make Green Screen Videos With Zoom and Adobe Express

A few weeks ago I shared directions for creating green screen videos in Canva. That method is great because it doesn’t require you to record in front of a physical green screen. Today, I’d like to share another method that doesn’t require you to record in front of a physical green screen. That method uses […]

Finding and Exploring 15 Minute Cities

City Access Map is an interactive map that anyone can use to find and explore the walkability of cities around the world. Specifically, City Access Map lets you explore cities in which residents can access needed services within a fifteen minute walk. City Access Map calls these cities 15 Minute Cities.  You can explore City Access […]

How to Set Notifications for Individual Google Documents

Google Drive has long let you receive email and desktop notifications for edits and comments to your shared Google Docs. Unfortunately, it was an “all or nothing” setting. In other words, you could either receive notifications or not receive notifications for all documents. Recently, Google Docs was updated so that you can now set notification […]

A Fun Tool for Creating Avatars

The internet is full of websites on which you can make little icons and avatars. What it’s not full of is free sites for that purpose that aren’t littered with pop-up ads and similar annoyances. That’s why I was happy to find Mustachio. Mustachio is a free site that anyone can use to create a […]

How to Create a Timed Quiz in Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms recently got some new features that are helpful for teachers. One of those new features is the ability to set a time limit for completing a quiz once it has been started. This is different than the setting to automatically close a form at a given date and time. This new timed quiz […]

My Top Five Tips for Creating Instructional Videos

Over the years I’ve made more than 1,000 videos for my YouTube channel and nearly as many for students in my classrooms. Here are five tips that I’ve figured out along the way. Keep it short and sweet. Two five minute videos are better than one ten minute video. Even though it’s the same amount […]

Trick O’ Treat Safety Review Games

Halloween is just eight days away. If you’re an elementary school teacher, you might be planning to do some trick o’ treating safety reviews with your students. Playing Kahoot games is a fun way to review almost anything including Halloween safety. That’s why a few years ago I made the following video to demonstrate how to find and modify […]

Why Does the Road Crack? – Another Question from my Daughters

One of my favorite things to do these days is to ride bikes with my daughters. Sometimes I even record those rides on Strava because my older daughter now wants to keep track of how fast she can go down a little section of road in our neighborhood (current record 10.5mph). When we were riding […]

Five Things Students Can Explain With Simple Animations

One of my all-time favorite tech coaching experiences was helping an eighth grade science class produce short animations to explain forms of energy. It was one of my favorite experiences for two reasons. First, the teacher came to me and said, “I’m sick of boring PowerPoints. Get them to do anything else.” Second, the kids […]

Now You Can Import PDFs Into Book Creator

Earlier this fall Book Creator added some helpful new features in the form of audio, video, and text commenting. This week the folks at Book Creator rolled-out another new and helpful feature. That feature is the ability to import PDFs to use in your Book Creator multimedia books. Here’s a thirty second demo of the […]

Another Good Place to Find Free Drawings for Classroom Projects

Earlier this year I published a list of good places to find free images and drawings to use in your classroom projects. Thanks to something that Troy Patterson Tweeted earlier this week I have another good resource to add to that list.  CocoMaterial is an online library of nearly 2,500 drawings that you can download […]

Five Google Workspace Tips That Can Make Your Day Better

The best part of a being a teacher is making connections with kids. Making those connections takes time. Unfortunately, teaching also comes with a lot of procedural and administrative tasks that take away from the time that can be used to build those connections with students. But you can get some of that time back […]

Five Ways QR Codes Can Be Helpful in Your School

Last week I was looking through my YouTube Studio analytics and noticed that once again my video about creating QR codes for Google Forms was trending upward. Searches on my blog for “QR code generator” were up last week as well. If you were one of those people searching for information about QR codes, here […]

Voices, Search, and Bare Trees – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the leaves are falling faster than ever. A couple nights ago a big rain storm through and some of our trees lost all of their leaves. I love the beauty of the changing leaves of autumn. I don’t, however, enjoy raking all of the leaves that fall as I will […]

50 Tech Tuesday Tips for You

Are you a new tech coach, tech integrator, or media specialist who has been asked to run a little tech workshop? Do you need some ideas for it? If so, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips is for you!  50 Tech Tuesday Tips was curated from more than 400 editions of The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter. In 50 Tech Tuesday […]

A Fun Timeline Game for History Students

Play Your Dates Right is another great game template developed by Russel Tarr at ClassTools.net. The concept of Play Your Dates Right is that students have to pick the correct sequence of three historical events. The event in the middle of the game template is always the event that actually did come second. Students have […]

How to Print Guest Lists for Google Calendar Events

Google Calendar, like most products in Google Workspace, has lots of little features that are often overlooked. Just because those features are overlooked doesn’t mean that they’re not useful. For example, you can print a guest list from an event on any of your Google Calendars. In the short video that is embedded below I […]

Explore the K-12 Section of The Open Library

The Open Library is a part of the Internet Archive that provides vistors with the opportunity to search for, browse through, and read eBooks. The Open Library is a collection of more than one million ebook titles. I recently revisited the Open Library and noticed a couple of new-to-me things. First, there is now a virtual bookshelf explorer that you can […]

Lesson Plans About Setting SMART Goals

Storyboard That is a great tool that can be used for creating cartoons, flowcharts, timelines, and wireframes in addition to typical storyboards. Storyboard That also offers a huge library of lesson plans on everything from classic literature to history to cyber safety. One of the newest lesson plans added to the Storyboard That library is […]

Grid Views and Timelines in Google Slides

Last week I hosted a webinar about using Google Workspace in the context of social studies classes. One of the things that I mentioned in that webinar was using Google Slides to create interactive timelines. I went into much more detail during the webinar, but you can see the basics of how to create a […]

How to Add Background Music to PowerPoint Presentations

Last week a reader emailed me to ask for help adding background music to a PowerPoint presentation. He mentioned that he was using the web browser-based version of PowerPoint and was having trouble getting audio to play in the background throughout the presentation. Fortunately, there was a fairly easy fix that I was able to […]

Record a Tour in Google Earth

The Amazing Race is the only reality game show that I’ve watched with interest for as long as it has been on television. Years ago I created a classroom game based on the same premise of the show. This spring I updated that game with some new graphics and new challenges and then published it […]

This Little Trick Makes Podcast Editing Easier

When editing a video there are visuals that make it relatively easy to know where to cut. The same is not true when editing audio for a podcast unless you use the “clap and pause” trick. That trick, demonstrated in the short video that is embedded below, gives you a clear audible sign of where […]

A Classic – How to Use Classtools.net to Create a Fake Text Message Exchange

Russel Tarr, owner of Classtools.net, has developed and published a bunch of great tools over the years. One of my favorite of those is the Fake SMS Generator which Russel developed almost a decade ago and is still going strong. The Classtools Fake SMS Generator is free to use and does not require students to register […]

How to Create Your Own Search Engine

A couple of weeks ago I published a post about two ways to add an image search tool to your website. One of those methods is to build your own search engine. Thanks to Google’s Programmable Search tool it’s much easier to create your own search engine than you might think it is. In the […]

Pizza, Cats, and Videos – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re going to enjoy a nice long weekend of riding our bikes, raking some leaves, and visiting Storyland one last time before it closes for the winter. I hope that you have a great weekend! If your weekend plans include catching up on some ed tech news, take a look […]

Eight Good Tools for Creating and Publishing Timelines

Having students create timelines has been a standard in the playbooks of history teachers since the beginning of history. Writing a timeline is a good way for students to chronologically summarize sequences of events and see how the events are connected. When I was a student and when I started teaching timelines were made on […]

Tutorials for Getting Started With the Smithsonian Learning Lab

The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create and search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans from a wide range of Smithsonian-hosted resources. It also lets you create collections to share with others as well as create assignments to give to your students. To start the new school year The Smithsonian published a collection […]

How to Create Green Screen Videos in Canva

A couple of weeks ago Canva held an event to announce a bunch features that were going to be added over the coming months. One of those features is now available in the form of a background remover for video clips. Just like you can use Canva to remove image backgrounds you can now use […]

Using Focusable as a Progress Journal

Disclosure: Focusable is an advertiser on my websites. About a month ago I started using Focusable to help me focus on my work even when I really didn’t want to. That includes working on a particularly frustrating project that I have to get done. The project is rebuilding my Practical Ed Tech website from the […]

Webinar This Week – Search Strategies Students Need to Know

Many students will spend just a minute or two looking at search results before declaring, “Google has nothing on this.” If you have ever had a student say that to you, you know that they think of search as a function and not a process. In a webinar this Thursday I’ll teach you how to […]

Join Me and Rushton Hurley This Tuesday Evening for a Free Webinar

On Tuesday, October 4th at 8pm ET/ 4pm PT Rushton Hurley and I will be hosting the second episode of our third season of Two EdTech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. Just like the title says we take questions, answer questions, and share some cool stuff that we’ve found around the web. We’d […]

An October Video Project – Halloween Safety

Halloween is thirty days away. My kids have been planning their costumes since last November or so it seems because they’re very excited about it. Last fall I shared a list of Halloween-themed activities and resources. In that list I included playing a Halloween safety review game from Kahoot. Keeping with the idea of Halloween […]

September’s Most Popular Posts on Free Technology for Teachers

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on the week and on the month of September, 2022. I don’t know about you, but for me the month seemed to come and go in the blink of an eye. My oldest daughter started Kindergarten, I hosted a bunch of webinars, and tried to enjoy […]

Significant Changes to Screencastify’s Free Plan Take Effect on Monday

Those of us who are using Screencastify’s free plan will have some choices to make on Monday when the changes that Screencastify announced back in August take effect.  What’s Changing? Starting on Monday, October 3rd Screencastify’s free plan will limit you to having just ten videos in your account at a time. Previously, you could […]

A Quick Way to Check the Safety of Links

One of the best ways to protect your computer and network from malicious software is to simply avoid opening links that appear in your email from unfamiliar senders. Additionally, you should avoid clicking on links that you weren’t expecting and those that just set off your spidey senses. When you do come across a link […]

Grading Google Forms Short Answers Without Google Classroom

Last week I got an email from a reader who was looking for advice about grading short-answer questions in Google Forms. Specifically, the person wanted to know if there was a more efficient way to grade short-answer questions than tabbing through the “responses” pages.  While you can have short-answers automatically graded for you in Google […]

Five Time-saving Ways for Teachers to Use Technology

Making time for yourself is one of the things that I talk about in my new keynote presentation titled Using Tech to Bring Joy Into Your Teaching. There are many ways that technology can help you get more time for taking care of yourself and doing the things you enjoy outside of professional responsibilities. To […]

The 2022-23 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Every year I publish an updated version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. This year it took me a bit longer than usual to get it done. That said, the 2022-23 version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook is now available for free to anyone who is subscribed to The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter or who […]

How to Find TED-Ed Lessons by Grade Level

Yesterday, I received an email from someone who saw my post about TED-Ed’s The Writer’s Workshop. She was wondering if there is a way to search TED-Ed videos by grade level. That’s not a function available on YouTube, but it is a function available on the TED-Ed lessons website. To sort TED-Ed lessons by grade level go […]

My Updated Big List of Tools for a Variety of Classroom Video Projects

Around this time last fall I published a big list of my go-to tools for creating videos with students. Since then some of the tools in the list were rebranded and or had some notable updates. This is my updated list of recommended video creation tools for classroom projects.  By the way, I created the […]

Three More Ways Focusable Can Help You Focus

Disclosure: Focusable is an advertiser on my websites.  Last week I wrote about how Focusable is helping me get things done more efficiently. That blog post featured how Focusable works once you start working. What that blog post left out was how Focusable can help you get started when you have a task to do […]

A Database of Solutions to Common Stains

Stain Solutions is a handy website developed by Susan Taylor at the University of Illinois Extension. The site is a database of dozens of common stains and the solutions to remove them. Click on a stain in the chart and you will be taken to a list of the ingredients needed to make a solution […]

Social Studies, Soccer, and Search – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it’s going to be a beautiful autumn weekend. As I write this I’m sipping my coffee while the sun is rising on what is going to be a fun and busy weekend for me and my little family. We have soccer practice, fishing, bike rides, and a trip to Storyland […]

43,000+ People Get Their Ed Tech Tips This Way

This morning when I logged into my YouTube account I noticed that my little channel now has more than 43,000 subscribers for the first time. I’ve never had a video go viral nor have I tried to make one for that purpose. Instead, all of my videos are just simple how-to videos about a wide […]

Is a Website Down or Is It You? Here’s How to Find Out

Earlier this week a reader emailed me looking for a video that I made a couple of years ago. The video she was looking for was this video that shows two ways to check if a website is down of if it’s just you. The first method demonstrated in the video uses a website called Down […]

A Helpful Sheet of Google Search Modifiers

A few days ago I highlighted five Google search products that students often overlook. While it is important for students to know about those tools, they first need to know some basics like how to modify their search terms to get different results.  Years ago Vicki Davis tipped me off to a search modifiers poster published by […]

Three Ways Focusable is Helping Me Be More Productive

Disclosure: Focusable is currently an advertiser on my websites. In the past I’ve used browser extensions to block websites that distract me from getting work done during my day, but eventually I would still find a way to distract myself. Recently, I started using a different approach thanks to the help of Focusable. Focusable is […]

Two Ways to Add an Image Search Tool to Your Website

In yesterday’s blog post about finding free images for school projects I mentioned that Photos for Class offers a free tool for adding their image search tool to your website. You can do a similar thing if you use Google’s Programmable Search tool to create your own image search engine. Both options enable you to […]

50 Ideas for Your Next Tech Tuesday

Are you a new tech coach, tech integrator, or media specialist who has been asked to run a little tech workshop? Do you need some ideas for it? If so, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips is for you!  50 Tech Tuesday Tips was curated from more than 400 editions of The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter. In 50 Tech Tuesday […]

A Great Place to Find Free Images for School Projects

Photos for Class is one of my favorite sites for students to use to find free images to use their projects. The best feature of Photos for Class is that it automatically adds attribution information to the footer of the images that students download. Recently, Photos for Class was updated to provide stricter image filtering. I thought […]

Five Google Search Products Students Overlook

The advanced search menu on Google.com offers some great search results refinement tools that students should know how to use. Once students have become familiar with those tools, they should start exploring some of the other search products that Google offers that aren’t found by just searching on Google.com. In this new compilation video I […]

My Top Ten Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students

A few years ago I published a list of my favorite tools for social studies teachers and students. Since then a few things have changed, namely Google has shuttered a couple of cool tools, so I think it’s time to update the list. In no particular order, here are my top ten tools for social […]

How to Create PDFs in Google Classroom

Last weekend a reader reached out to me to ask if I could create a video about the relatively new option to create PDFs in Google Classroom. I was happy to oblige.  In this new video I demonstrate how to use the Google Classroom mobile apps to create PDFs from scratch. As I demonstrate in […]

Branchiness, Videos, and Archives – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where I am not racing my bike this weekend and instead will be enjoying a nice early fall day by helping out at my daughters’ soccer practices. By the way, I finished last week’s race much better than I predicted and ended up fourth in my division despite a flat tire […]

Display Note Broadcast Adds Helpful Features to Improve Screen Sharing

Display Note Broadcast is a tool that I started using last spring as a means for broadcasting my screen to the screens of other people in the room. It provides a simple system in which you click a sharing button, display a join code for your audience, and then they enter it on their computers […]

Three Audio Slideshow Video Projects for Students of All Ages

Tools like Adobe Express, Canva, and good ol’ Animoto make it easy for students to quickly create videos. I often use these tools when introducing video production projects to teachers who have never attempted to have their students make videos. Here are three types of assignments that you can build around audio slideshow video tools. Biographical/ Autobiographical StoriesHave students […]

5 Little Things You Can Do To Improve Your Videos

Whether for it is for education or entertainment we are all watching more videos than ever before. We have more tools to record and share videos than ever before. With the tap of an app or click of a link, you and your students can be making videos to tell stories, teach lessons, or to […]

A Short Overview of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine – And How I Use It

The Internet Archive can be a great place to find all kinds of old videos, audio recordings (there’s a huge collection of Grateful Dead show recordings), pictures, and books. The Internet Archive also offers a tool called the Wayback Machine that you can use to see what a website looked like on a previous date.  […]

Two Tips to Make Chrome Run a Little Faster

There was a time when Google Chrome was the new kid on the block and promised faster browsing and faster page load time. That hasn’t been the case for many years now. In fact, now when I hear colleagues, students, or others complain about their computers or Chromebooks running slowly the first thing I do […]

Flashcards, Games, and Phys Ed – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is going to be a beautiful early fall day. By the time that most of you read this I’ll be racing my bike on some of the prettiest dirt roads in all of New England. I don’t harbor any illusions of winning the Northwoods Gravel Grind today, I just […]

ICYMI – Webinar Recording – Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions

A couple of nights ago Rushton Hurley and I resumed our Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions series. We were joined by a handful of fine folks and even more people were registered to join us. If you missed our live broadcast, you can now watch the recording and find all of the associated links […]

Three More Ways for Students to Create Flashcards Online

Writing yesterday’s blog post about my favorite alternative to Quizlet prompted me to look back at some other options for creating online flashcards. Should you find yourself looking for some free and easy ways for students to make online flashcards, give the following options a try.  Flippity’s flashcard template lets you create multimedia flashcards by […]

A Great Alternative to Quizlet

Three times in the last week I’ve answered emails from readers who were seeking suggestions for alternatives to Quizlet. Each time my answer was to try Knowt.  Knowt is a free tool that I’ve written about a few time in the last couple of years. It’s a tool that you can use to create flashcards […]

Turn Any Quiz Into a Game With Quizalize Games

Disclosure: Quizalize is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Last week I published a blog post about the new games feature of Quizalize. That feature enables you to take any quiz that you’ve written or any of the premade quizzes in Quizalize and turn it into one of six arcade-style games for your students to play individually […]

How to Include Video Feedback in Google Forms

Google Forms is a great platform for creating all kinds of simple quiz and review activities. One of the features of Google Forms that is often overlooked is the “go to section based on answer” setting. When you use that setting correctly you can send students to watch a review video when they answer a […]

A Quick and Easy Way to Distribute Contact Info During an Open House

I have an open house night coming up later this week. Thinking about that reminded me of the following that I wrote six years ago about using QR codes at open house night. The concept is the same now as it was then. The tools that I recommend for making QR codes have changed a […]

Fun With Soda Pop – A Nice Weekend Science Experiment

SciShow Kids recently published an updated video about a “classic” science experiment. That experiment is dropping Mentos candies into a bottle of soda pop. But before doing that and explaining what happens, the video briefly explains how beverages are carbonated and why the bubbles stick to some objects better than others. If you’re looking for […]

My Favorite Fall Video Project

It’s September and here in Maine the leaves on some of the maple trees are already starting to change color. This is my favorite time of year! And it’s time that once again I share my favorite fall video project. The project is to create a time-lapse video of autumn. The outline of my time-lapse […]

Two Search Refinement Tips for Every Teacher and Student

A couple of days ago I hosted a webinar for tech coaches. In the webinar I mentioned that teaching teachers just a couple of quick search refinement tips that they can pass on to students can help them stop feeling like their students are going to the same websites over and over. To that end, […]

Back to School – The Month in Review

The sun has set on the last day of August. Nearly every school in my area is now back in session. And those few that aren’t in session will be next week. So while calendar says that autumn doesn’t start for a few more weeks, it sure feels like fall around here. I hope that […]

Quizalize Games – Turn Any Quiz Into an Epic Game

Disclosure: Quizalize is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Quizalize is a great teaching tool that I’ve used and written about since 2015 when it differentiated itself from the market by being the first classroom quiz game tool that offered an option to have your students play your quiz game as an in-classroom group activity or at-home […]

Tract Now Offers Guides for Project-based Learning

Disclosure: Tract is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Tract is an online platform for engaging students with fun, project-based learning activities. I’ve written about it quite a bit over the last year as it has grown in popularity. Part of the reason for its popularity is that it can be used in a variety of settings […]

Spaces EDU Adds Easier Enrollment and Faster Sharing

Back in June Spaces announced a bunch of new features that they were working on getting ready for new school year. Those features are now available! Faster Enrollment and Easier Activity Sharing Nothing stops momentum in a classroom like having to go around to each student and say “click here” or respond to students saying […]

Schoolytics – Quickly Find the Information You Need to Help Your Students Succeed

Disclosure: Schoolytics is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com.  Schoolytics is a service that I’ve heard a lot about over the last few months. If you’re active on social media, you’ve probably seen a post or two about it too. Last week I finally got a chance to take a good look at it. To say […]

Two Alternatives to Kami for Annotating PDFs

Last week a reader emailed me to ask about some alternatives to Kami for annotating PDFs. She didn’t ask because she didn’t like Kami. She asked because her school was cutting back on what they would spend for software licensing. I gave her two suggestions which you might also consider if you find yourself looking […]

How to Use PowerPoint Cameo

Cameo is a relatively new feature in PowerPoint that lets you insert your live camera feed into any and all of the slides in your presentations. Cameo is a different feature from the video insertion option and the presentation recording options that you may have previously used in PowerPoint. Cameo displays your live camera feed […]

How to Add a Timer to Your PowerPoint Slides

One of the all-time most popular videos on my YouTube channel was about how to add a countdown timer to your PowerPoint slides. Unfortunately, the method used in that video no longer works. I was contacted earlier this week by someone who wanted to know if I could suggest another way to add a timer […]

Free PDFs for Lessons on Telling Time

A couple of days ago I shared a few resources for helping students learn to tell time. One of those resources that I mentioned, but didn’t demonstrate, was Canva’s templates for making clocks and their templates for making lessons about telling time. The templates can be used as is or you can modify them to […]

Webinar Recording – Get to Know Your Students With Tract

Disclosure: Tract is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Yesterday afternoon I hosted a webinar titled Get to Know Your Students With Tract. I was joined in the webinar by Tract’s co-founder Ari Memar. If you missed the webinar, you can now watch the recording of it. The recording is embedded below along with links to resources […]

ClassroomQ – A Neat Way to Keep Track of Who Asks for Help

ClassroomQ is a neat tool that solves a problem that anyone who has ever had a classroom full of students working on individual or small group projects at the same time has experienced. That problem is feeling like every student is asking for something at once and you’re not sure who asked for help first or […]

How to Create an Around the World With Google Earth Tour

The Amazing Race is the only reality game show that I’ve watched with interest for as long as it has been on television. Years ago I created a classroom game based on the same premise of the show. This spring I updated that game with some new graphics and new challenges and then published it […]

Worldle Daily – A Street View Game

The Wordle craze seems to have settled down a bit since its height earlier this year (or at least fewer people are sharing their scores on social media). That hasn’t stopped developers from creating many variations on the game. One such variation that I recently tried is Worldle Daily.  Worldle Daily is a combination of […]

Read Write Think Animal Inquiry

This morning I’m taking my daughters to a little petting zoo near our home. They love to pet the goats, sheep, ponies, horses, and bunnies. Both of my daughters love learning about animals and they are both learning to write right now. Thinking about those things reminded me of a writing template hosted by Read […]

A Simple Tool for Finding Related Search Keywords

Brainstorming lists of alternative words and phrases is one of the strategies that I have students use when conducting online research. Doing this before they start a search and or whenever they feel stuck can help them generate new search result pages that doesn’t duplicate the results of their previous queries. But sometimes our brainstorming […]

Searching is a Thinking Skill

Have you ever had a conversation with a student that went like this? Student: “Mr. Byrne, Google has nothing on my topic.” Mr. Byrne: “What is your topic?” Student: “The Civil War.” Mr. Byrne: “Are you sure that Google has nothing about the Civil War?” Student: “Well I looked at a bunch of links, but […]

Mailbag – Three Answers to Frequently Asked Reader Questions

I regularly invite readers of Free Technology for Teachers and subscribers to my newsletter to send me questions. Many of the questions that I receive are fairly similar and in my lane, but every once in a while I get some that are a little different. Here’s a smattering of questions that I’ve received this […]

DIY Tech Fixes for Teachers

The content of this post originally appeared on my other site, PracticalEdTech.com and subscribers to my newsletter got a copy of this poster sent to them as a high resolution PDF.  Many of the problems that people experience with their computers and with web-based tools, can be remedied through simple fixes like running updates and […]

Readlee Adds Support for More Languages

As I wrote last week, Readlee was one of my favorite new tools of the last school year. It’s a tool that you can use to gain great insight into how your students read. Readlee does that through the use of AI that provides you and your students with feedback about things like how many […]

Free Webinar – Get to Know Your Students Through Tract

Last year, Tract emerged as one of my favorite new edtech companies. Backed and co-founded by education pioneer Esther Wojcicki, the start-up enables busy teachers to transform what they teach in the classroom into interactive and fun educational projects created and led by kids. With Tract, students sharpen their critical thinking skills and solve real-world […]

Ten Popular Back-to-School Tutorials for Teachers

YouTube’s channel analytics provides a lot of useful insights for people like me who publish a lot of videos and write a lot of blog posts. Not only does my YouTube channel’s analytics page tell me how many people watch and like my videos, it also tells me things like when those videos were watched […]

How to Design and Print Classroom Posters Using a Standard Printer

Yesterday I published a blog post and video about the free email etiquette posters that I created and how you can have them professionally printed by Canva. Unfortunately, Canva’s free printing offer is only available to teachers in the United States who have Canva for Education accounts. Furthermore, it’s only valid for one day (August […]

An Old Story About Digital Badges and Why Kids Like Them

In the last two weeks since I published a video about creating a badge tracker in Google Sheets, I’ve told the following story from May of 2015 three times to people who have asked for my opinion about digital badges and whether or not they’re worthwhile. 

Free Email Etiquette Posters

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I shared a bunch of resources for teaching about digital citizenship. In that newsletter I included a link to two posters about email etiquette that I created last fall. I also mentioned that Canva is running a free poster printing promotion later this month.  You can get PDFs […]

Book Creator Now Offers Audio, Video, and Text Commenting

Last week Book Creator introduced a great new feature just in time for the start of the new school year. That feature is the option to add video, audio, text, and emoji comments to students’ books. The new feature is still in beta, but you can try it right now. You can add comments to […]

Kikori Offers Free Morning Meeting Planners and SEL Lessons for All Ages!

Disclosure: Kikori is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Kikori is an app and website that I first reviewed back in March shortly after its initial public launch. Since then it has become a popular resource for teachers looking for social emotional learning (SEL) lessons and activities for students of all ages.The free monthly SEL activity […]

New Readlee Features for the New School Year

Readlee was one of my favorite new tools in the last school year. The basic concept of Readlee is your students complete assignments by reading to their computers then Readlee uses artificial intelligence to provide you and your students will feedback on their reading. For the new school year Readlee has added some new features.  […]

NOAA Sea to Sky – 1000+ Resources for Science Teachers

Earlier this week I was checking my local weather forecast on NOAA.gov when I noticed a back-to-school announcement. The announcement highlighted some lesson plans and multimedia resources for teaching about things like hurricanes, changing sea levels, and climate resilience. The announcement also drew attention to an updated database of resources for teachers. That database is […]

How to Loop Videos in Google Slides

Yesterday I published a blog post about playing Google Slides on an automatically advancing loop. That blog post prompted a question from a reader about playing videos on a loop within a Google Slides presentation. Specifically, she wanted to know if she could have a video play on a loop. The answer is yes, and […]

Try Canva’s New Whiteboard Templates With Timers

I use Canva nearly every day of my work week. When I logged into my account a couple of days ago and saw a new whiteboard template option I had to give it a try. If you log into your Canva account today, you’ll probably notice the new whiteboard template options too.  The new whiteboard […]

New Microsoft Teams Features for the New School Year

Mike Tholfsen is a product manager at Microsoft he has early access to features that are rolling-out to users. That means his videos sometimes include overviews of new features before anyone else has used them. If you want to know about what’s new in Teams and other Microsoft products Mike’s YouTube channel is for you. In one […]

How to Play Google Slides on an Automatic Loop

The new school year is quickly approaching and you might be thinking about your first morning with staff or students. That first morning is often filled with information that needs to be repeated quite a bit. Things like the wi-fi network and code, lunch times, and other logistical information. You could make yourself hoarse by […]

Google Docs, Slides, and Forms Accessibility

As the new school year approaches and you start to update some of your old Google Docs, Slides, and Forms take a moment to assess the accessibility of those materials. And if necessary, it’s fairly easy to improve the accessibility of your Docs, Slides, and Forms.  Google DocumentsGoogle Documents has some built-in accessibility options that […]

How to Add Alt Text to Images in Google Forms

On Monday I answered a question from a reader who wanted to know if it was possible to add alt text to the images that she uses in Google Forms. My answer was, “yes, but not in the way you would in Google Docs or Slides.”  To add alt text to images Google Docs and […]

Blackbird Provides a Great Environment for Teaching Coding

Disclosure: Blackbird is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com.  Last week I wrote a lengthy blog post about how Blackbird can be used by anyone to teach coding. That post focused on how you can use Blackbird to teach coding even if you don’t have much or any coding experience and your students are new to […]

How to Quickly Broadcast Your Screen to Your Students’ Screens

A few months ago I published an overview of DisplayNote Broadcast. It’s a tool that you can use to broadcast your screen to your students’ laptop or tablet screens. Shortly after I published my initial overview DisplayNote Broadcast added a Google Slides and Classroom integration. The latest update is a Chrome extension that you can […]

Five Interesting Ways to Use Screencastify in Your Classroom

A couple of days ago I wrote a short post about the changes to Screencastify’s free plan. At the end of that post I included some ideas for using Screencastify in your classroom. If you missed that short list, here are the ideas in more detail.  Add Interactive Questions Into Your Videos Adding interactive questions […]

Google Search Tools Students Often Overlook

The default action for students to take when given a research task is to turn to Google. Unfortunately, many students won’t venture much beyond the first couple of pages of Google.com results pages before declaring, “I can’t find anything about this.” But as Dan Russell reminds us in The Joy of Search, good search often […]

How to Create a Badge Tracker in Google Sheets

A few days ago a reader reached out to me with a question about creating a badge tracking system to keep track of students’ progress toward various goals. While there are quite a few companies that offer badges as part of their systems, ClassDojo comes to mind, she was looking for something that was a […]

Significant Changes to Screencastify’s Free Plan

Screencastify is a versatile screencast recording tool that I’ve used over the years to create many kinds of instructional videos including Common Craft-style videos and virtual tours. As I write this blog post, I still prefer Screencastify to the new built-in recording option in Chromebooks. That said, it should be noted that Screencastify has just […]

How to Use Virtual Backgrounds in Microsoft Flip

Virtual backgrounds and background blurring are features of Microsoft Flip that can be helpful to you and your students in a few ways. First, virtual backgrounds and blurring are useful in protecting student privacy when they are recording at home or anywhere else outside of your classroom. Second, you can use virtual backgrounds as a […]

How to Convert Word Documents and PDFs Into Microsoft Forms

There are many little features of Microsoft Forms that shouldn’t be overlooked. And there is a new big feature of Microsoft Forms that definitely shouldn’t be overlooked. That feature is the ability to import Word documents and PDFs into Microsoft Forms.  The import feature in Microsoft Forms makes it possible to quickly take a quiz […]

Google Classroom Now Has Add-ons – For Some Schools

Yesterday afternoon Google made an announcement that had some teachers on Twitter buzzing. That announcement was that Google Classroom now has add-ons for teachers to use. Those add-ons are supposed to make it easier to access popular tools like EdPuzzle, WeVideo, and Pear Deck from Google Classroom.  But before you get too excited, at the […]

Search Tip – How to Find Published Google Workspaces Files

Refining Google searches according to domain is one of my favorite ways to get students to look beyond the first couple of pages of their typical Google search queries. Students can specify site or domain in Google’s advanced search menu to limit results to those that are only from top-level domains like .edu. They can […]

Blackbird Provides an Innovative Way for Anyone to Teach Coding

Disclosure: Blackbird is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Around this time every year I get emails that go something like this, “Hi Richard, I have a new job this fall and I’ll be teaching coding for the first time. Do you have any resources you can share with me?” Usually these emails come from folks […]

How to Make Whiteboard Videos in Microsoft Flip

Last week’s most popular post was Getting Started With Microsoft Flip. To start this week let’s look at doing a little more than just a basic selfie video in Microsoft Flip. An additional way to use Microsoft Flip is to create whiteboard style videos.  When you open the recording tool in Microsoft Flip press record […]

July’s Most Popular Posts on Free Technology for Teachers

The sun is setting on what turned out to be a great last day of July. I spent the last day of the month hanging out at the lake with my kids and going for a little bike ride. I hope that you ended the month in a similarly relaxing way. I say that because, […]

More Video Editing Features Coming to Chromebooks This Fall

Earlier this summer Google launched a new built-in screencasting tool for Chromebooks. This week Google announced that more video features will be added to Chromebooks in the fall.  The new video editing features on Chromebooks will actually be found inside of Google Photos on Chromebooks (availability for other platforms seems to be coming later). These […]

How to Capture and Markup Web Pages in Microsoft Edge

This afternoon a reader of my weekly newsletter kindly pointed out that Microsoft removed the annotation tool that was in earlier versions of Microsoft Edge. However, there is still a built-in web page capture tool in Microsoft Edge. And that tool does include some basic markup capabilities.  In this new video I demonstrate how to […]

Getting Started With Microsoft Flip

Back in June Microsoft threw a big party to announce that they were rebranding Flipgrid. What was once called Flipgrid is now Microsoft Flip. Fortunately, not much else changed and all of my favorite Flipgrid features still work. That said, some people have already been asking me for tutorials about Microsoft Flip. That’s why I […]

Five Ways TARA Can Help You Save Time This Fall

Disclosure: TARA is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com At the end of the last school year I spent some time exploring a new edtech tool called TARA. It’s a service that solves problems for new teachers and veteran teachers. Those problems are having more time to do the parts of your job that you love […]

Two More Tools That Can Help Students Stay Focused on Online Tasks

On Friday morning I shared a browser extension called BeTimeful that limits your access to social media sites during your working hours. As I wrote in that blog post, there are similar tools worth noting. Here’s a short overview of some tools that can help students remove distractions and stay focused while working online. StayFocusd […]

PhET Virtual Workshops for Teachers

PhET is one of my top resource recommendations for math and science teachers. PhET offers more than one hundred online, interactive simulations for teaching concepts in mathematics, physics, chemistry, earth science, and biology. Those simulations can be used on PhET’s website and they can be embedded into your website for your students to use.  If […]

How to Move Bookmarks Between Chrome Profiles

I was recently contacted by a teacher who was leaving her current school district and wanted to know what would happen to all of the bookmarks she had stored in her Chrome profile. Her Chrome profile was tied to her school-issued Google account which was going to be closed when she left the school.  The […]

New Text Formatting Options in Google Forms

At the end of June Google added some new text formatting options to Google Forms. Those options enable you customize the fonts used for titles, section headers, and questions within your Google Forms. Last week Google added even more text formatting options to Google Forms.  The latest update to Google Forms gives you rich text […]

Create and Share Collections in Bing Maps

Google Maps is one of my favorite tools for geography lessons and for some elementary school math lessons. In fact, next month I’m hosting a webinar all about using Google Maps in your classroom. That said, there are some alternatives to Google Maps that I do use from time-to-time. Bing Maps is one of those […]

Try the Fact Check Explorer

Fact Check Explorer is a free tool from Google that anyone can use to explore the veracity of claims made on the Internet. As you can see in my brief video embedded below, on Fact Check Explorer you can enter a topic or name then see a list of articles accompanied by notations about the […]

A Founder’s Day Search Lesson – A Classic from my Archives

Tomorrow I am spending the day helping at one of our local Founder’s Day events. Our Founder’s Day is in celebration of Hannibal Hamlin. Hamlin was one of Abraham Lincoln’s Vice Presidents. The picture in this blog post is of his house. If you have followed my blog for a long time and or participated in […]

DIY Maps of Bird Migration Patterns

Over the last handful of years I’ve become more and more fascinated with birds. I think that’s due in part to my daughters’ enjoyment of watching the many interesting birds that come to the feeders around our house. We’ve even taken to naming some of the birds that visit the feeders. For example, Hans is […]

How to Change Map Styles in Google Earth – And Why

The web version of Google Earth has improved a lot since its launch five years ago. One of those improvements is found in the number of ways that you can customize the map style displayed when you are viewing and creating projects in Google Earth.  In this new video I demonstrate how to change the […]

New Certify’em Tutorial – Automatically Send Certificates from Google Forms

For the last five or so years I’ve used Certify’em to automatically send certificates to students when they successfully complete a quiz in Google Forms. I also use it to issue certificates to participants in my workshops, webinars, and self-paced courses. There have been some changes to Certify’em since the last time I published a […]

How to Restore the Windows 11 Taskbar

Last week I took some time off which included shutting down my primary work computer. When I restarted it, my Windows 11 taskbar was gone! I know I’m not the only one to experience this problem because I got an email from a reader who had the same problem. I sought a solution to this […]

Five Google Forms Features Overlooked by New Users

Every year at about this time I start to get emails from people who are transitioning into using Google Workspace for Education for the first time. In fact, I got one of those emails last week from a tech coach who wanted to know if I had a list of helpful “hidden” Google Forms features […]

Reminder – Two-Factor Authentication Saves Frustration

I’ve noticed a pattern lately that whenever I don’t check my Facebook account for more than a day, I get notifications that someone is trying to access my account via password reset. Fortunately, I use two-factor authentication on all of my accounts. (In the case of Facebook I’m forced to use two-factor because of the […]

Best of 2022 So Far – Custom USGS Maps

I’m taking the weekend off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far.  Earlier this year I highlighted the galleries of free to use and re-use media that the USGS hosts. Earlier this week I was back on the USGS site looking in those galleries when […]

Best of 2022 So Far – Brush Ninja Updates

I’m taking the weekend off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far.  Brush Ninja is a tool that I’ve been using and recommending for a few years now. Brush Ninja makes it incredibly easy to draw a series of images and quickly turn them into […]

Best of 2022 So Far – Smithsonian Canvas

I’m taking the rest of the week off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far.  This week the Smithsonian Learning Lab released a new tool that could be very helpful to history and art teachers. The tool is simply called Canvas (no connection to the […]

Best of 2022 So Far – Chrome Settings You Need to Know

I’m taking the rest of the week off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far.  Google Chrome is far and away the most popular web browser amongst readers of this blog (68% of you use Chrome, the next most popular choice is Safari at 20%). […]

Best of 2022 So Far – Readlee

I’m taking the rest of the week off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far.  Every once in a while a new edtech service comes along that as soon as I try it I know that it’s going to be a hit. That’s exactly how […]

Best of 2022 So Far – PhET

With the exception of the webinar I’m hosting today, I’m taking the rest of the week off. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year so far.  PhET is a great resource that I’ve shared a bunch of times over the years. Recently, I was looking through the […]

What I Do When a Website Steals My Work

I’ve been writing this blog for fifteen years this year. For most of those years I have been battling with people about copyright. Some people think that because it says “Free Technology for Teachers” that they can take anything they want and republish it wherever they want. Other people have a misunderstanding of what fair […]

Geo Artwork – A Fun Game About Geography and Art

If you and or your students enjoy online geography games like GeoGuessr, you need to try Geo Artwork from Google Arts & Culture.  Geo Artwork is a game in which you view an image of an artwork and then have to guess where in the world that artwork belongs. There are categories for visual arts, sculpture, […]

A Good Place to Find Free Images and Music for Classroom Projects

In my guide to finding media for classroom projects I provide a list and description of my favorite resources. The next time I update that guide I’ll include Openverse.  Openverse is the replacement for the old CreativeCommons.org search tool. The Creative Commons organization has handed-off oversight of Creative Commons search to WordPress. WordPress now operates Creative […]

Seven Summer Webinars With Me!

As I announced last week on Practical Ed Tech, starting on July 6th and running through August I’m hosting a series of webinars on a wide range of edtech topics.  All of the webinars will be held live and will also be recorded for those who register in advance. You can register for one, two, […]

How to Use Custom Fonts in Google Forms to Improve Readability

One of last week’s most popular posts was about the news of Google adding new font customization options to Google Forms. Like all updates to Google Workspace tools, the new font customization options were immediately available to some users and not others. It took about a week for the new options to appear in my […]

A Google Maps and Earth Activity for Art Classes

When I conduct workshops on Google Maps and Google Earth I always point out that the uses for those tools extend beyond the realm of geography and history. One example of using Google Maps and Earth outside of the typical geography setting is using Google Maps and Earth to have students place art and artists on an interactive […]

Two Ways to Make Your Own Classroom App This Summer

Summer is here in the northern hemisphere and for many of us it’s a time to work on things that we’d like to use in our classrooms when school resumes in the fall. One of those things could be developing a mobile app specifically for your classroom or courses you teach. It might sound like […]

25 Ideas for Whiteboard Videos

Years ago apps like ShowMe and Educreations helped to popularize creating whiteboard-style instructional videos. Today, screencasting tools like Screencastify and Google’s Chrome screencast tool along with Flipgrid’s whiteboard tool make it easy to create a whiteboard style video in your web browser. Regardless of the tool used, the basic premise is to draw on blank screen while talking at the […]

Automatically Forward Important Google Workspace Email to Secondary Email Address

It’s summer (in the northern hemisphere) and for many people reading this blog that means it’s time to cut back on reading work email. Some folks simply turn on a vacation responder for the summer and come back to a pile of email in late August. Others like to occasionally check their email during the […]

Ten Good Templates for Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts Activities

At the start of this year ReadWriteThink re-released all of their popular interactive templates for creating all kinds of things including poems, story plots, timelines, compare & contrast maps, and much more. If you haven’t looked at ReadWriteThink in a while, take a look at these updated templates that can be used for lessons in […]

Stories, Studios, and Smoke – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising on what is going to be a warm and sunny summer day. It was a busy week here that started with Father’s Day for which my family gave me a smoker! Then in the middle of the week we had preschool graduation. And finally I wrapped-up […]

Spaces Adds New Features for Creating Better Digital Portfolios!

Disclosure: Spaces is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Spaces is a great digital portfolio service that I’ve been using and recommending for the last couple of years. Like all good edtech tools, it started with a handful of really good and unique features. Since then it has steadily added more features based on feedback from […]

A New Limit on Zoom Meetings

Most readers of Free Technology for Teachers who are hosting Zoom meetings on a regular basis are probably using a Zoom subscription through a school account. If that isn’t the case for you and you’re using a free Zoom account, there is a change coming that you need to note.  All Zoom meetings, regardless of […]

A Quick and Easy Way to Make Printable Mazes

Maze Generator is a free site that does exactly what it says on the tin, it generates mazes. To make a printable maze on Maze Generator just select the shape, size, and style you want your maze to have. The shape options are rectangle, triangle, circle, and hexagon. You can also choose the level of difficulty […]

New Google Forms Customization Options

There is good news for those who are tired of the same old font choices in Google Forms. Starting today (for some users) you can now mix and match font styles in the Google Forms that you create. On Tuesday Google announced the release of new font options. These options include using different fonts for […]

My Three Favorite Google Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students

As longtime readers of this blog know, my background is largely in social studies with a smattering of teaching computer science and doing some corporate training. It’s teaching social studies that will always be my first professional love. I’ve also been using Google Workspace tools with students (previously G Suite, previously Google Apps, previously Google […]

Tools for Asynchronously Collecting Stories

Nearly fifteen years ago I used VoiceThread to have my students collect stories from their parents about changes in the community since their time in high school. VoiceThread is still available today although it costs a lot more than it did when I used it (it was free back then). There are other free tools […]

A Short Explanation of Book Creator in the Classroom

Just in time for the annual ISTE conference the folks at Book Creator have released a new video highlighting how their multimedia ebook tool can be used in classrooms. If you’re a regular user of Book Creator, the video won’t reveal to you anything you don’t already know (I think some new things will be […]

Two Ways to Make Your Own Wordle-style Games

Last week I wrote about Strive Math’s new Custom Wordle game creator. That little tool can be used to create Wordle-style games based on words of any length. Flippity.net also offers a free template for making your own Wordle-style games for students to play online. Both are easy to use and don’t require registration in […]

Five Ways to Work With PDFs in Google Drive

Some of the questions that receive more than frequently than others revolve around working with PDFs. The answers that people are looking for are often “hidden” in plain sight. Case in point, just uploading a PDF to Google Drive gives you a handful of ways that you can work with it.  In this new video […]

How to Record a Video Lesson in PowerPoint

A few years ago I published a video about how to create a video by using the recording tool built into PowerPoint. Since then Microsoft has added more features to the recording tools in PowerPoint. So last week I recorded a new tutorial on how to record a video lesson in PowerPoint.  In this short […]

Ten Google Sites Tutorials for New and Experienced Users

Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere) and it’s a great time to casually work on things that we don’t always have time for during the school year. One of those things could be creating a new class website or revamping an existing site. Those who work in school districts that use Google Workspace already […]

Conclusion to the Arthur Davidson Email Scam – Lessons in Context Clues and Motorcycles

Back in March I got an email from someone claiming to be a Boston-based intellectual property attorney working for the law firm of Arthur Davidson. The email was poorly formatted and had some other errors that made me think the email might not be from a legitimate attorney’s office. The email also happened to arrive on […]

Five Things I Like About the New Chromebook Screencast Recorder

Last week Google introduced a new way to record screencasts on your Chromebook. You can watch my tutorial about how to use it right here or as embedded at the end of this blog post. After a week of using it, here are five things that I like about it and I think will be […]

Three Ideas for Telling Stories With Pictures

This is an excerpt from this week’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week newsletter. This week, subscribers to the newsletter received a PDF that outlined ten ideas and tools for telling stories with pictures.  Create Picture Books WriteReader is a good tool for elementary school students to use to create image-based stories. WriteReader has […]

A Quick and Easy Way to Make Your Own Wordle-like Game

A few months ago I published a video about how to make your own Wordle-style games. Since then Wordle craze has not shown any signs of slowing down (at least amongst my network of friends and colleagues). New DIY tools for making your own Wordle-style games seem to pop-up every week. The latest one that […]

A Giraffe in Our House – More Fun With Augmented Reality

Tomorrow we’re going to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. My daughters have been looking forward to it for weeks! The giraffes are what they are most excited to see. This morning my youngest daughter asked to see pictures of giraffes. What she really meant was that she wanted to see augmented reality giraffes in […]

How to Embed Full Page Content Into Google Sites

The design options in Google Sites have come a long way in the last decade. In the early days Google Sites had lots of functionality, but little in the way of design options. Today, there are not only lots of great themes and templates, there are also many ways to customize the layout of every […]

Bicycles, Chrome, and Science – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and it’s going to be a nice day for outdoor play. Earlier this week we rode our bikes to a little public field near our house and found a bunch of wild strawberries. My daughters want to go back and look for more strawberries so that’s […]

45 Canva Tutorials for Teachers and Students

Aside from Google Workspace, Canva is the tool that I’ve published the most tutorials about on my YouTube channel. In fact, with the publication of my latest video I’ve now published 45 tutorials about using Canva’s many features for making videos, presentations, timelines, posters, greeting cards, worksheets, and many other graphics. This morning I finally put all of […]

How to Add Narration to Canva Presentations

Earlier this week I published a video titled What’s the Best Way to Share Tech Tips With Staff? That video was based on my blog post about newsletters, blogs, and social media for tech coaches. One astute viewer noticed that I used a slightly different format for that video than I usually use. That’s because […]

How to Take a Screenshot on a Chromebook

Yesterday I shared directions about using the new screencast recording tool that is built into the latest Chromebooks. While screencast videos are great for providing directions and teaching lessons, sometimes all you really need to is just an annotated screenshot to make your point. Fortunately, taking a screenshot and editing it on a Chromebook is […]

How to Record Screencasts on Chromebooks Without Extensions

A couple of days ago Google announced some new Chromebook features for teachers and students. One of those features is a new screencast recording tool that is built into the latest version of Chrome OS.  The new screencast recording tool built into Chromebook OS removes the need to use third-party extensions like Screencastify or Loom […]

Science Fun in the Sun – Free Science Lesson Plan

As I write this it’s a cloudy and relatively cold June day here in Maine. The sunshine will return and with it there will be some opportunities for fun outdoor learning activities. One such activity is building a solar oven and trying to cook something like s’mores in it. 4H offers free instructions on how […]

Ten Ways to Use Adobe Creative Cloud Express in School

While watching the NBA Finals a couple of nights ago I saw a commercial for Adobe Creative Cloud Express. In that commercial they said something to the effect of “even Kindergarteners can use it.” That inspired me to create this list of ten ways that Adobe Creative Cloud Express can be used in K-12 schools.  […]

Five Great Chrome Extensions for Teachers

After seeing my browser in one of my tutorial videos or one of my presentations, people often ask me about the extensions that I have installed. Here are five Chrome extensions that teachers should try. 1. Nimbus screenshot – I use this to create annotated screenshots. It can also be used to make screencast videos, […]

How to Share Photo Albums in Google Sites

At this time of year I field a lot of questions about sharing photographs from school events like field trips, graduations, and concerts. Late last week one person who emailed me with that kind of question wanted to know what I thought about just creating a Google Drive folder and inviting parents to be viewers […]

Lessons for World Bicycle Day

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you probably know that I love to go for long bike rides. That’s why I’m excited that today is World Bicycle Day! To celebrate World Bicycle Day I have some bicycle-related lessons to share with you.  Planning Safe Biking RoutesYou don’t have to go far to […]

Use Google Drive to Comment on PDFs, Images, and Videos

Google Drive can be used to store just about any kind of file that you have. What a lot of people overlook is that you can use Google Drive to comment on those files without converting them into Google Docs or other Google Workspace formats. For example, you can upload a PDF to your Google […]

Games for Students to Play to Improve Their Typing Skills

A few days ago I published a short video about an interesting way to improve your typing skills while reading classic literature. That video prompted one reader to send me an email this morning to ask if I had suggestions for typing practice sites for elementary school students. The following are the things that I […]

How to Quickly Remove and Replace Image Backgrounds

At the start of the month I featured four tools for removing image backgrounds. To end this month I have one more cool tool to share with you. That tool is called Strip Background. It does exactly what the name implies and a little more.  Strip Background lets you quickly remove the background from any […]

How to Archive Google Classroom

The end of the school year is here or at least very near for most of us. Google Classroom users will probably want to archive their classes at the end of the year. Archiving a class prevents students from accessing it so that you can go on summer vacation without any worry that a student […]

Two Ways to Quickly Turn Writing Into Videos

Last week I shared some observations from evaluating the websites of a handful of relatively large school districts. In that blog post I mentioned that the better websites put recent and relevant information on the homepage and don’t rely solely on social media to disseminate news about their schools and their districts. That’s because when […]

Five Concepts You Can Teach Through Geocaching

Geocaching is one of the things that I spend a good bit of time talking about in both my workshop and in my webinar about blending technology into outdoor learning. Geocaching is a great activity to do to get kids outside for hands-on learning experiences. Here are five things that you can teach through geocaching […]

How to Create a Custom Theme for Your Google Site

Do you use Google Sites for your classroom website? Do you have students use it for classroom projects like making digital portfolios? Are you tired of using the same stock themes that Google provides? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you need to watch my new video about creating custom themes for […]

How to Make a Google Form

YouTube Studio has an interesting analytics feature that shows you what people are searching for on your YouTube channel. It will also show you something called a “content gap.” Content gaps are terms that people have searched for but haven’t found good content to match their searches. “How to make a Google Form” was a […]

Getting Started With Jamboard – And Ideas for Using It In Your Classroom

This morning I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if I had a video about the basics of using Google Jamboard. While I’ve made a bunch about various uses of Jamboard, I didn’t have a current one about just the basics of Jamboard (my previous one is a little outdated). So […]

A Teacher’s Guide to Creating Common Craft Style Videos

Yesterday, I published a post about a live course that I’m teaching in June. If you’re looking for something that is self-paced, Common Craft offers an interesting course about making videos.  For years Common Craft videos have been used by teachers to help students understand topics including digital citizenship, personal finance, and many big technology concepts. One […]

Alternatives to Book Reports – A Post Inspired By My Daughter

My five-year-old daughter has a healthy obsession with the According to Humphrey the Hamster series of books. She got one of the books for Christmas and we’ve been reading through the entire series since then. Last week I came home from a bike ride and she couldn’t wait to show me her latest art project! […]

Teaching History With Technology – Online Course Starting in June

This summer I’m not hosting the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. I am, however, hosting a some online courses for those who are interested. The first one that I’m hosting starts in June. That course is Teaching History With Technology. Teaching History With Technology is a five-part course that will meet via Zoom at 4pm […]

Five Google Earth Activities to Get Kids Interested in the Outdoors

In last week’s Week in Review I mentioned a new book titled Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. In the book Steven Rinella presents a lot of ideas for getting kids interested and involved in learning about nature. In the first chapter he presents a big list of ideas for things that you can do […]

Broadcast Google Slides Directly to Your Students’ Computers

A few weeks ago I wrote about and published a video about using Display Note to broadcast your computer screen directly to your students’ screens. This week Display Note published some updates that teachers who use Google Classroom and Google Slides are sure to appreciate.  Display Note now offers a free Chrome extension that you […]

An Interactive Map of the Roman Empire

A few years ago I wrote about a must-bookmark resource from Stanford University for history teachers and students. That resource is called ORBIS and it has been updated since the last time that I wrote about it. ORBIS is Stanford University’s Geospatial Network Model of the Roman Empire.  On ORBIS students can calculate the distance and travel times between […]

New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed

This spring (fall for my friends in the southern hemisphere) Google has added some new features to Google Docs. I’ve written about a couple of them in the last month. There are others that I haven’t covered until I published this new video.  Watch Five New Google Docs Features You Might Have Missed to learn […]

Ziplet Now Integrates With Microsoft Teams

Ziplet was one of my favorite tools in 2021. Ziplet has a few features that make it an outstanding tool for conducting online exit ticket activities. First, there is a large library of premade exit ticket questions that you can use. Second, students can respond in a variety of ways including with a just an […]

How to Use Google Maps and Street View in Canva Presentations

This blog post and video is the result of my failure to get another service, that won’t be named, to do what I hoped it would. I was trying to come up with a way for students to create online, interactive atlases. After banging my head against my keyboard for a while I finally said […]

Add Dropdown Menus Into Sentences In Google Docs

A couple of weeks ago I shared some information about the new project planning templates in Google Docs that include dropdown menus. Today, I’d like to share how you can also insert dropdown menus into any part of a Google Document without using a template.  It is possible to add a dropdown menu into any […]

WeVideo and Vimeo Offer Great Tips for Recording and Editing Videos

Thanks to mobile devices and wealth of video editing tools we can all be video producers today. But creating a good video requires more than just having access to the tools of production. Creating good videos begins with some basic steps like holding your phone or camera the right way and knowing when to zoom […]

A Good Place to Find Old Maps Online

Old Maps Online is an online map that you can browse and search to find historical maps to view online, to download, and to print. You can search the map by entering a location or you can just pan and zoom around the world to find historical maps. In the video embedded below I demonstrate […]

How to Create an Online Course With Three Simple Tools

Summer is coming (in the northern hemisphere) and for many of us that means spending some time participating in professional development activities as a leader, learner, or both. If you find yourself trying to create some online professional development courses for the summer, I have a new video just for you.  In this video I […]

How to Create and Send Personalized Certificates in Google Workspace

As we get close to the end of the school year you may find yourself needing to create and distribute certificates to students. These could be for recognition of any number of things from honor roll to volunteer work. It used to be that giving certificates for these occasions required buying ream of pre-printed certificates […]

Another Easy Way to Create End-of-Year Slideshow Videos

Yesterday I shared three quick and easy ways to create end-of-year slideshow videos. Shortly after I hit publish on that blog post I realized that there was another great option that I’ve been overlooking for a few years. That option is built right into Google Photos.  In Google Photos there is a section called “utilities.” […]

Three Tools for Quickly & Easily Creating End-of-Year Slideshow Videos

In my weekly newsletter I mentioned that a sure sign that the end of the school year is near always lands in my inbox as an uptick in the number of questions I get about saving and moving files. Another sign that the end of the school year is near is an increase in questions […]

How to Create Your Own Virtual Reality Tours

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about and gave a video demonstration of how to lead students on virtual reality tours with Expeditions Pro. In that video I mentioned that Expeditions Pro can also be used to create your own virtual reality tours. This morning I recorded a video about how do that. Watch […]

Create Location-based Reminders in Google Keep

Other than the Chrome web browser, Google Keep is the app that I use more than any other on my Pixel 5 phone (a phone I like, but don’t love). I use it for bookmarking websites, creating to-do lists and shopping lists, and to set reminders for myself throughout the day. My favorite aspect of Google […]

Two Webinars Coming Up This Week

The sun is shining, summer is so close, but there’s still time to learn some new things to try in your classroom before the end of the school year. This week I’m hosting or co-hosting two opportunities to learn directly from me in live webinars. First, on Tuesday I’m hosting Blending Technology Into Outdoor Learning. […]

Drawings, Templates, and Deer – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re recovering from the destruction of our tulip garden at the hooves and teeth of some whitetail deer. We’ll be spending part of the day working on the gardens including planting some marigolds and other plants that are reported to be deer repellents (we’ll see).  Tomorrow is Mother’s Day so […]

Gmail Settings to Avoid Embarrassment

We’ve all done it, you hit “send” on an email then realize you misspelled an important word or you click send and realize that you replied to all instead of just to the original sender. These situations can be either fairly innocuous or downright embarrassing depending upon who the email was sent to and or […]

New Google Docs Templates for Project Management

For years I’ve used tables in Google Documents to help students organize group notes and to keep track of who is doing what in group projects. On Monday Google introduced some new table templates that can be used for those same purposes. The new table templates in Google Docs appear to have been developed with […]

How Not to Cite an Image Source – Eight Years Later

I originally wrote this blog post eight years ago. I was reminded of it yesterday when I saw a similar top ten list to the one mentioned below shared by a former colleague with whom I’m Facebook friends. This morning one of my Facebook friends posted one of those “ten signs you’re from…” Buzzfeed-like articles […]

Quick and Easy Ways to Remove Image Backgrounds

Removing the background from an image is a good way to protect your privacy and that of people who might unintentionally be in the background of your pictures. Remove image backgrounds is also a good way to get a stand-alone image of yourself to then place in front of a different background. For example, I […]

Book Widgets Now Offers Digital Rubrics

BookWidgets is a service that I wrote about back in October. When I wrote about it then, it offered dozens of templates for creating interactive lesson activities that you can see your students complete online. Recently, BookWidgets added a new rubrics function that you can use to score your students online and offline work.  The […]

Badges, Takeout, and Dubbing – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and it might get above 60F for the first time in a long time. We’re going to play outside with our Tinkergarten class, ride bikes, and probably do a bit of garden work as well. Our dogs will enjoy lounging in the sun. I hope that […]

Mentimeter – Share Slides and Poll Your Class on One Screen

Mentimeter is an online polling and quiz tool that I’ve used since its launch over a decade ago. In that time it has evolved and added lots of helpful features for teachers. One of those features is the ability to broadcast your slides to your students’ computers, tablets, and phones. Doing that makes it easy […]

50 Ideas for Summer Workshop Sessions

Are you a tech coach, tech integrator, or media specialist who has been asked to run some summer workshops for your staff? If so, I have a resource for you! I created 50 Tech Tuesday Tips with you in mind.  50 Tech Tuesday Tips was curated from more than 400 editions of The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter. […]

DisplayNote – Broadcast Your Screen to Your Students’ Computers

DisplayNote Broadcast is a free tool for broadcasting whatever is on your screen to the screens on your students’ laptops, iPads, and phones. One of the best things about DisplayNote Broadcast is that it works on any computers and you don’t have to install any software in order to use it. Additionally, your students don’t […]

How to Download and Reuse Google Drive Files

Yesterday I published a post about using Google Takeout to download the contents of your Google Workspace account before leaving a job. If you only want or need a handful of files, there is an easier option than using Google Takeout. That option is to simply download the individual files in your Google Drive account […]

How I Dubbed My Video About Creating a Professional Development Series

If you’re subscribed to my YouTube channel, you probably noticed that my latest video was dubbed into Spanish. No, I didn’t suddenly become fluent in Spanish (Clinton was in office during my last attempts at speaking in Spanish). I was able to dub the video into Spanish by using a new service called Aloud.  Aloud […]

Changing Schools After This Year? Use Google Takeout Before You Go

In the last week I’ve had a couple of people reach out to me for advice on what to do with their Google Drive files when they leave their current jobs at the end of the school year. My answer was to use Google Takeout to create zip files that they can re-use when they […]

How to Use Calendly and Zoom Together

A few days ago I published a blog post about how I was able to streamline my appointment scheduling process. In that post I wrote about using Calendly’s free appointment booking tool and its integration with Zoom. A long-time reader of my blog asked if I could make a video about that process. I was […]

A New PowerPoint Recording Option

For a couple of years now I’ve been using and recommending Canva’s presentation recording tool because it has a built-in teleprompter. That feature lets you record your video while viewing your speaker notes, but the speaker notes don’t appear in the final recording. The latest version of PowerPoint now includes that same capability.  Mike Tholfsen […]

Five Videos to Build a Google Forms Course

Yesterday I published a blog post about creating an online course with ConvertKit. A couple of weeks ago I published a blog post about building a professional development course and distributing it via Gmail. In those posts I gave the example of distributing a series of tutorial videos about topics like using Google Forms. If […]

Three Great Ways to Create Online Exit Ticket Activities

This morning I received a question from a reader of my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter. She wanted to know what I would suggest as an alternative to Google Forms and Google Classroom for conducting exit ticket activities in her biology class. I quickly replied with three options that I really like.  The first option that […]

How to Create an Online Course With ConvertKit

A couple of weeks ago I published a video and blog post about how to create a professional development series in Gmail. The method that I outlined in that post works well if you use Gmail, use Google Forms, and aren’t particularly interested in the aesthetics of what you publish. But if you don’t use […]

More Adobe Spark Alternatives

The Best Adobe Spark Alternative was one of last week’s most popular posts here on Free Technology for Teachers. The alternative that I recommended in that post was Adobe Creative Cloud Express which is the new name for Adobe Spark. If you’re looking for other alternatives to Adobe Spark for creating audio slideshow videos, here […]

One Simple Tool Streamlined My Appointment Scheduling Process

For as long as it has been available I’ve used appointment slots in Google Calendar when scheduling meetings with colleagues and or students. That works very well when everyone is in the same Google Workspace domain, but it gets a little quirky when you try to use it with people who are outside of your […]

Snow, Turtles, and Maps – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining, the grass is starting to turn green, and spring feels like it’s here to stay. It didn’t feel that way a few days ago when we had snow the day after a beautiful Patriots’ Day Monday during which I saw turtles sunning themselves for the first […]

Pickles, Popcorn, and More Food Science

Like many four-year-old children, one of my daughters is a picky eater. Cucumbers are one of the only vegetables that she’ll eat these days. She’ll also eat pickles. In fact, she loves pickles! That’s why I was happy to see SciShow Kids release a new video all about pickles.   What Are Pickles? is the latest […]

An Update to Unraveling an Email Scam

About a month ago I published a video and blog post in which I explained the process that I used to unravel an email scam in which someone claimed to be an intellectual property attorney pursuing a case against me. That blog post turned out to be one the most popular things that I’ve published […]

How to Create an Online Yearbook

Earlier this week a reader sent me an email asking for suggestions for free tools that she can use to create an online yearbook. I had two suggestions for her. The first was to use Book Creator. The second was to use one of Canva’s yearbook templates then export the finished product to Heyzine to […]

The Best Adobe Spark Alternative

In the last two weeks I’ve had a handful of people email me to ask for alternatives to Adobe Spark for creating videos. I’m taking that as a sign that Adobe didn’t go a great job communicating that they simply rebranded Adobe Spark as Adobe Creative Cloud Express. It has all of the same tools […]

How to Mirror an Android Phone to a PC or Mac

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I included a video in which I simultaneously displayed my Android phone’s screen and iPad’s screen on my Windows desktop. A few folks have emailed me to ask how I did that. If you’re curious about the process I used, here it is.  The Problem My usual method […]

How to Create a Custom Map on an iPad

Yesterday morning I answered an email from a reader who wanted to know if it was possible to create Google Earth projects on an iPad. Unfortunately, the iPad version of Google Earth allows you to view existing projects, but doesn’t allow you to create new projects. Fortunately, there are other ways to create custom maps […]

Ten Fun Things for Students to Map

Last week I published a video about how to record a Google Earth tour in your web browser. That’s just one of many tools that students can use to create multimedia maps. A few other options include using Scribble Maps, Padlet maps, and Google’s My Maps tool. Creating a map with one of these tools […]

Expeditions Pro – Guide Students on Virtual Reality Tours

Last year many of us were disappointed when Google announced the closure of their Expeditions program. Shortly after that announcement a new company popped-up to offer an alternative to Google Expeditions. That alternative is called Expeditions Pro. It launched in beta last June and is now available for anyone to install on iOS and Android […]

How to Record a Google Earth Tour in Your Web Browser

The online version of Google Earth has improved a lot since it was first launched back in 2017. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t have a built-in recording tool like the one found in the desktop version of Google Earth. The solution to that problem is to create a project in the web version of Google Earth […]

Eight Good Tools for Hosting Online Brainstorming Sessions

Earlier this week I shared a new video that I made about hosting online brainstorming sessions on Padlet. Of course, there are other good tools for hosting collaborative brainstorming sessions including physical sticky notes. Here are some other tools that I’ve used to facilitate and record group brainstorming sessions over the years.  Canva offers a selection […]

Create Audio Slideshow Videos With Phideo – No Registration Required

Phideo is a new online tool for creating audio slideshow videos. As the title of this post states, registration is not required in order to use Phideo to create and save your video. Using Phideo to make your own audio slideshow video is quick and easy.  To create a video on Phideo simply head to […]

Three Good Tools for Creating Infographics

Yesterday morning I got an email from a reader who was looking for some suggestions for tools that her eighth grade students could use to create infographics. Specifically, she wanted them to create infographics about data the class collected in a survey of their peers’ thoughts about a variety of news topics. I thought it […]

How to Host Online Brainstorming Sessions on Padlet

Padlet is a tool that I’ve used for well over a decade to conduct all kinds of online activities including making digital KWL charts, hosting backchannel discussions, building multimedia maps, and holding online brainstorming sessions. The “like” function is one of the aspects of Padlet that I like to use when hosting online brainstorming sessions […]

Four Convenient Classroom Timers

I’ve always taught in schools that use a block schedule. The shortest blocks being 80 minutes and the longest ones being 240 minutes! Therefore, I’ve always used some type of timer to keep track of how long students were working on an activity and to keep track of break times between activities. When I first […]

Let Me Host Your Next Professional Development Session

Later this month I’m hosting webinars for two organizations that purchased a bunch of copies of my 50 Tech Tuesday Tips eBook. I would be happy to do the same for your school, department, or organization.  If you purchase ten or more copies of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips I’ll host a custom, one hour webinar for your school […]

How to Create a Professional Development Series in Gmail

As we head into the last part of the school year some of us are starting to think about and plan professional development activities for the summer and the following school year. It’s nice to be able to offer in-person PD sessions again and I’m looking forward to facilitating a few of those this summer. […]

ICYMI – Two EdTech Guys Take Questions

Last week Rushton Hurley and I hosted another episode of our Two EdTech Guys Take Questions webinar series. If you missed it, you can watch the recording right here or as embedded below. Rushton does a great job of sharing links to all of the resources that we mention in the webinar. That list of resources can along with […]

Tract Offers Fun Ways to Wrap-up the School Year

Disclosure: Tract is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com At this time last year my students were starting to get antsy and I was starting to think of some fun ways to keep them excited about learning even as they were starting to get excited about the end of the school year. One of the things that […]

A Free Design Skills Course for Students

As you probably know, I am a huge fan of Canva. I use it on a daily basis to create YouTube thumbnails, presentations, and teaching materials like my new Around the World With Google Earth activity. The great thing about Canva is that enables people like me who don’t have an eye for design to […]

Five Image Editing Features Built Into Google Slides

Regular readers of my blog probably know that I’m a big fan of using tools like Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud Express, and Pixlr to edit and enhance pictures. But sometimes those tools feel like they have almost too many options. Furthermore, some schools don’t allow access to those tools because they would prefer that students […]

Three Ways to Create Simple Portfolio Websites

We’re nearing the point in the school year that many of us start to think about activities for students to do to summarize their highlights of the school year. One way to do that is to create simple portfolio websites. These are sites that have just one page that features only the best work that […]

Create Your Own USGS Maps

Earlier this year I highlighted the galleries of free to use and re-use media that the USGS hosts. Earlier this week I was back on the USGS site looking in those galleries when I noticed something new to me. That something is the USGS National Map Viewer.  Don’t the name fool you, the USGS National […]

50 Tech Tips and a Tech Tuesday Webinar

Every month this year I’ve hosted a webinar for people who have purchased a copy of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. I’m doing the same again next week.  On April 12th at 4pm ET I’m hosting A Framework for Technology Integration. Anyone who purchases a copy of my eBook between now and midnight (Eastern Time) on April 11th […]

Annotate PDFs With Lumin PDF – Free for Teachers

Lumin PDF is a neat tool that I wrote about a couple of years ago when one of my colleagues needed a way for her math students to draw on PDFs that she sent to them in Google Classroom. You can read more about that situation right here.  I just received an email from Lumin […]

My Updated Guide to Finding Media for Classroom Projects

Two Sundays ago my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter was all about finding pictures, videos, and sounds for classroom projects. As a part of that newsletter I included my updated guide to finding media for classroom projects.  In my guide to finding media for classroom projects I provide overviews of my favorite places for students and […]

Five Helpful WriteReader Features for Teachers and Students

Disclosure: WriteReader is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. WriteReader is a great platform for online creative writing projects. It has many features that make it great for elementary school use. Some of those features include how students access it, the library of artwork, and audio support for students.  In this new video I demonstrate how […]

Using Branching Logic in Microsoft Forms to Provide Directions

Branching logic is a great feature in Microsoft Forms that can be used to direct people to specific questions or further information based on how they answer an initial question. I’ve used branching logic to differentiate quizzes that I’ve created. I’ve also used it to create self-guided help resources for students. In this new video […]

Thank Your School Librarians! And Ask Them for Help!

While looking at the Kikori SEL calendar I noticed that today is National School Librarian Day! Many of you who read this blog are school librarians, thank you! Thank you for the work that you do in schools to help students (and staff) become better researchers, discover new and exciting books, and generally just being […]

My Five Favorite Flipgrid Video Features

Over the last few years Flipgrid has added so many great features that it has evolved beyond being just a platform for teachers to ask questions and have students record selfie videos in response. Now you can use it to create video lessons, to create audio-only conversations, and much more. In this new video I […]

Paper, Programming, and Games – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it feels like spring this morning. The wind is blowing away the clouds of yesterday and it should be a sunny day to play outside. We’re going to put on our boots and go for a little hike this today. I hope that you do something fun outside today too.  […]

Five Random Name Pickers to Use in Your Classroom

From creating groups to choosing a line leader to establishing the order of presenters there are plenty of times that a random name picker can be helpful in your classroom. I’ve tried dozens of them over the years. In this new video I highlight my five favorite name pickers, how they work, and what I […]

My Three Favorite Tools for Creating QR Codes

There are lots of practical and clever uses for QR codes in schools. Over the years I’ve used them to make sign-in/sign-out sheets easily accessible, to distribute contact information to parents, and to create digital scavenger hunts. And on a fairly regular basis I get questions from teachers who want to know how to make […]

Reading and Games – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on the last day of March, 2022. The old saying of “March comes in like a lion and leaves like a lamb” does not really apply to life in Maine. In our case March came in like a lion, briefly acted like a lamb, and now […]

How to Create B-roll Media Galleries to Share With Students

In last Sunday’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I wrote about the idea of creating a b-roll media gallery to share with your students. The idea of creating a b-roll media gallery is to compile a collection of image, video, and audio files that your students can use in their multimedia projects. By doing this your […]

Seven Sites and Apps to Help Students Learn Coding and Programming

The other day I was in a Zoom meeting with someone who is relatively new to field of educational technology. I was asked about any “must read” books or sites. The first thing that came to mind was Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms. Mentioning Mindstorms then took me down the path of talking about Logo and its […]

How to Use Google Slides in Canva

This is an update to a blog post that I published a couple of weeks ago about the same topic. In that blog post I outlined how to use PowerPoint and Google Slides in Canva. I’ve since learned a couple of things that warrant publishing an update.  First, a lot of Google Slides users ignored my […]

A Huge Collection of Resources for Fun Phys Ed Activities

OPEN Phys Ed is an organization that hosts tons of great resources for physical education teachers. Additionally, OPEN organizes initiatives to encourage students to participate in physical education activities. One of those initiatives is National Field Day.  OPEN National Field Day is an initiative that runs through May and June. It has a social media […]

Make a Word Game With Google Sheets – A Fun Way to Learn About Formulas

Google’s Applied Digital Skills website is a good place to find lesson plans and activities that you can use to help students learn how to use many features of Google Workspace tools. To capitalize on the recent trend of word games like Wordle, Google recently published a new Applied Digital Skills lesson called Make a […]

ICYMI – How to Create & Sell Your Own Digital Products

Last week I hosted a live webinar titled How to Create & Sell Your Own Digital Products. Since then a bunch of people have reached out to me to say that they wanted to attend, but couldn’t because of the timing. Therefore, I’ve now made the recording available on-demand right here. Bonus Live Q&A People […]

More Easy Ways to Save Paper & Ink When Printing

Last week I published a blog post titled Stop Printing the Internet in which I shared some ways to limit the amount of ink and paper you use when printing and also encourage others to do the same. There are even more easy ways to limit the amount of paper and ink you use when […]

Chronicling America – A Great Place to Find Historic Newspapers

Chronicling America is digitized newspaper archive hosted by the Library of Congress. The Chronicling America collection contains millions of copies of newspaper pages printed in the United States between 1789 and 1963. You can search through the collection according to date, state in which the newspaper was published, and keyword. You can read, download, and print […]

Try This New Google Chrome Feature

Those of you who subscribe to my YouTube channel might have seen me share this yesterday. There’s a handy new feature in Chrome that appears when update to the latest version. The new feature is a side panel reading list that could prove to be very helpful to those of us who tend to have […]

How to Edit Your Videos in YouTube Studio

A couple of days ago a reader emailed me to ask for help cropping a video. Specifically, he wanted to know what I thought would be the simplest online tool for cropping the recording of a livestream. My suggestion was to use the editing tools that are built right into YouTube Studio (the place where […]

Newspaper Map – Find and Read Newspapers Published Around the World

Newspaper Map is a neat tool for locating and reading newspapers from locations all around the world. Newspaper Map claims to have geolocated 10,000 newspapers. To find a newspaper you can browse the map then click on a placemark to open the link within to read a newspaper. You can also locate newspapers by using the […]

Kikori App – Social Emotional Learning Activities for All Ages

Kikori App is a new mobile app and website that offers a large library of social emotional learning activities for students of all ages. The mobile app (Android and iOS) and the web versions of Kikori work the same way. On Kikori you can search for social emotional learning activities according to age, energy level, […]

Three Ways to Share Videos Without Using YouTube

The days of heated arguments about whether or not YouTube should be accessible in school seem to be behind us. That doesn’t mean that YouTube is always the best option for hosting and sharing videos in your school. In fact, just yesterday someone emailed me to ask for suggestions on how her students can share […]

New Whiteboard Features in Microsoft Teams and New Excel Formulas

If you regularly use Microsoft Teams or any component of Office 365 and you’re not subscribed to Mike Tholfsen’s YouTube channel, you need to subscribe to it. That’s where I learn about all of the latest features available for Teams, Reading Progress, Immersive Reader, Word, OneNote, and many other Office 365 tools. Mike’s latest videos […]

How to Add Videos to Google Earth Projects

I’m currently developing a lesson plan that is loosely based on the reality television show, The Amazing Race. In my lesson students have to use a series of clues to find locations in Google Earth and then complete a task or challenge before adding a placemark to their Google Earth projects (tours). They have to […]

Stop Printing the Internet

Last weekend I got a new television (our old one died) just in time to watch some great NCAA basketball games. While watching one of the games on Saturday evening I saw a new Progressive Insurance commercial. The premise of the commercial is that Progressive can’t prevent us from becoming our parents but can save […]

Last Call – Webinar – How to Create & Sell Your Own Digital Products

This afternoon at 4pm ET I’m hosting a new webinar titled How to Create & Sell Your Own Digital Products. Register by 3pm to join me! If you have ever thought about trying to create and sell things like an eBooks, lesson plans and teaching materials, or online courses, this webinar is for you! In […]

Alternatives to Vialogues for Annotating Videos

Yesterday morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for some alternatives to Vialogues for annotating videos. Vialogues has been one of my go-to tools for students to use to take notes and share notes while watching a video that you share with them. Unfortunately, Vialogues is shutting down in May. If […]

Try Choice Eliminator Lite for Removing Choices from Google Forms

Twice in the last 24 hours I’ve been asked about options for removing choices from Google Forms as they get used up. The tool that I used to recommend was Choice Eliminator (the original and version 2). It seems that add-on has been removed from the Google Workspace Marketplace. Fortunately, Choice Eliminator Lite is still […]

Use Canva’s Design and Recording Tools With Your PowerPoint and Google Slides

The other day a reader sent me an interesting question that I hadn’t thought about before. That was whether or not you can use Canva’s recording studio with Google Slides. At first I thought to myself, “why not just make a screen recording of the slides with something like Screencastify?” Then I thought about it […]

How to Change Google Calendar Notifications

I have some good news for you if, like another reader who emailed me this morning, you are trying to keep Google Calendar notifications flooding your inbox. It’s easy to adjust the frequency with which you receive email, desktop, and mobile notifications from Google Calendar. To do that simply go into the settings menu for […]

Join Me Next Week for a Webinar About Creating Digital Products and More

Creating and selling digital products like webinars, on-demand courses, and eBooks is one of the ways that I’ve been able to keep this site going and keep a roof over my head for the last decade. And I’ve done it without using any of the big marketplaces like Teachers Pay Teachers that take a substantial […]

My Five Favorite Canva Features

Canva is a tool that I use nearly every day of my working life. Like some of the other tools in my daily work life, there are some features of Canva that I use far more than others. Canva seems to be constantly adding new features so my favorite ones might be a little different […]

Readlee – Know How Your Students Read Online Assignments

Every once in a while a new edtech service comes along that as soon as I try it I know that it’s going to be a hit. That’s exactly how I felt when I tried Readlee for the first time last month. Readlee is a new service that lets you create online reading assignments for […]

How I Created Outdoor Bingo Boards

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I highlighted some templates for creating in-person educational games. One of the templates that I featured was Flippity’s updated bingo board template. The updated template doesn’t require you to use a spreadsheet in order to create your bingo board. The removal of the spreadsheet requirement makes it easier […]

Five Chrome Settings You Need to Know

Google Chrome is far and away the most popular web browser amongst readers of this blog (68% of you use Chrome, the next most popular choice is Safari at 20%). If you’re using Chrome and or your students use Chrome, there are some helpful settings that you should know how to use. Knowing what these […]

How to Manage Browser Pop-ups – Not All of Them Are Bad

Yesterday morning I answered a question from a reader who was having a little trouble accessing the sharing function on a website. From the description she gave me, the solution was to enable to pop-ups for that particular website. I sent her a screenshot of how to enable pop-ups and then created this short demonstration […]

Actionable Insights for Reading Progress in Microsoft Teams

Last week Microsoft added some new aspects to the Reading Progress tools in Microsoft Teams. One of those new features is called Actionable Insights. As the name implies, it provides you with information about your students’ reading progress and lets you create assignments based on those insights. The means that after you have reviewed the […]

How to Share Your TinyTap Courses

Disclosure: TinyTap is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Earlier this week I published a lengthy blog post and video about creating and selling TinyTap courses. It has been pointed out to me that there was one thing missing from that post and video. That was how to share your courses. Whether you create a free […]

How to Quickly Create and Share Narrated Presentations

Yesterday afternoon I published a video highlighting my five favorite features of Canva. After I published it I thought about it some more and decided that one of the features needed to be explained a bit more. That’s why I created this video to demonstrate how to create a narrated presentation by using Canva’s built-in […]

A Short Overview of Library of Congress Digital Collections

I reference the Library of Congress nearly every time that I talk or write about searching for historical maps and images. If you know where to look on LOC.gov and how to filter a search, you can find some amazing resources to use in all kinds of history lessons including overlaying historical maps onto current […]

How to Add Narration to Google Slides Without Add-ons

Earlier this week someone replied to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter with a question about narrating Google Slides. Specifically, she wanted to know about options for adding narration to Google Slides that didn’t require installing Google Slides add-ons or Chrome extensions. My immediate suggestion was to try using Vocaroo to record the audio then upload […]

How to Suppress Background Noise in Loom Recordings

If you use Loom to create screencast videos, there’s a new feature that you should be aware of. That feature is an option to have background noise automatically suppressed when you publish your videos. You’ll find this option under “video preferences” after you have finished recording your video. In this short video I demonstrate where […]

Creating and Marketing Online Courses With TinyTap

Disclosure: TinyTap is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com In last week’s post about using TinyTap to create your own online courses I mentioned that there is an option to sell your courses for use beyond your classroom. That’s what today’s post is all about. In this post I’ll outline why you would want to create […]

How to Make Your Own Wordle-style Game

I’ve yet to play Wordle and by the time I do the fad will probably be over. That said, I know a lot of people enjoy the game and are looking for ways to bring it into their classrooms. If that describes you, this blog post is for you.  Flippity.net offers more than two dozen […]

PowerPoint Cameo Looks Cool and Could be Useful

On the heels of yesterday’s post about making better Zoom presentations here’s another post about a tool that could improve your online presentations. Microsoft recently added a new feature to PowerPoint. That feature is called Cameo.  Cameo is a PowerPoint feature that lets you import a live stream of your webcam into your slides. In […]

Try These Zoom Presentation Tips from Garr Reynolds

Garr Reynolds is one of the world’s foremost experts on presentation design. If you haven’t seen any of his TED Talks or read Presentation Zen, put it on your to-do list. I follow Garr Reynolds on Twitter and this morning he Tweeted a link to a new video of his in which he explains why […]

How to Create and Share Clips of YouTube Videos

Over the years there have been many third-party tools that offered ways to clip and share portions of YouTube videos. Most of those don’t last too long before Google/ YouTube changes something that renders those tools useless. Now YouTube offers its own integrated tool for creating and sharing short clips of videos.  You’ll find YouTube’s […]

A Better Way to Update Charts in Google Slides and Docs

Google Forms provides handy charts and graphs summarizing responses to the questions within your form. Those charts and graphs can be embedded into Google Slides, Google Docs, and Google Drawings. This week Google made it easier to make sure you have the latest version of those embedded charts and graphs in your Slides, Docs, or […]

eStory – A New Multimedia Timeline Creation Tool

Whenever I see a new timeline creation tool appear on the Internet, I can’t resist giving it a try. So when eStory appeared on Product Hunt a few days ago, I had to sign-up and test it out.  eStory is a free tool that you can use to quickly create multimedia timelines. There are some […]

Create Drag and Drop Activities With TeacherMade

Disclosure: TeacherMade is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com At the end of January TeacherMade added a bunch of new features to their popular platform for creating online activities for students. Last week they added perhaps the best feature yet, that is the ability to create  drag-and-drop activities with your existing PDFs and Word docs. Additionally, […]

New Spaces Digital Portfolio Features

Spaces is a digital portfolio tool that I first covered around this time last year. Since then it has steadily grown in popularity. As it has grown in popularity it has steadily responded to teachers’ feedback and suggestions for improvement. The latest example of that is found in the latest batch of updates.  In the […]

Try the Game Templates in Canva

Last week I was recording a demo of how to use existing slides to make video lessons when I came across a neat slide template in Canva. That template was for a game called This or That. The game is a simple icebreaker type of game that gets people talking to each other. The reason […]

An eBook and a Webinar – 50 Tech Tuesday Tips

Back in January I hosted a webinar for those who had purchased a copy of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. That webinar proved to be popular so I’m going to host it again on March 9th at 4pm ET.  On March 9th at 4pm ET I’m hosting A Framework for Technology Integration. Anyone who purchases a […]

Now You Can Schedule Exit Tickets in Ziplet

Ziplet is one of my favorite tools for hosting online exit ticket activities. There are two features of it that make it great in my book. The first is a large catalog of interesting, premade questions that you can select and use in your activities. Second, Ziplet lets you toggle between having students respond anonymously […]

Three Ways to Create Video Lessons With Your Existing Slides

Last week I hosted a webinar about creating videos for asynchronous instruction. One of the points that I made in the webinar was that you don’t need to start from scratch every time you want to record a new lesson. In fact, one of the easiest ways to get started is to record over a […]

Five Frequently Forgotten Google Docs Features

Perhaps it’s just me, but do you ever feel like you’ve been using Google Docs for so long that you forget about the basics until you need them? For example, the other day when a friend asked me about options for sharing a Google Doc with someone who didn’t use Google Docs I completely blanked […]

Brush Ninja – Make Animated GIFs, Emoji Art, and More!

Brush Ninja is a tool that I’ve been using and recommending for a few years now. Brush Ninja makes it incredibly easy to draw a series of images and quickly turn them into animated GIFs. In the fall of 2018 I used Brush Ninja with some middle school students to create animations to illustrate their […]

How to Record Screencasts in Gmail

Nimbus Screenshot is a Chrome extension that I’ve featured in the past as a good tool for creating annotated, scrolling screenshots and for creating screencast videos on Chromebooks. The latest update to Nimbus Screenshot added the ability to record screencast videos directly from your Gmail inbox.  With Nimbus Screenshot installed in Chrome you will see […]

How to Link Within Google Earth Projects

Google Earth in all its forms has been one of my favorite educational technology tools for well over a decade. The web version of Google Earth has improved significantly since its launch five years ago. One of the relatively new features of the web version of Google Earth is the ability to link to places […]

An Often Overlooked Flipgrid Option for Starting Conversations

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I shared some tools and ideas to use to try to make sure that students actually watch the instructional videos that you create for them. One of my suggestions was to try an option in Flipgrid that is hiding in plain sight.  When you post a new topic […]

What is Sub-image Search? – And Why Would Your Students Would Use It?

Sub-image search is one of the search strategies that I use a lot when trying to find out what an unfamiliar object is. I’ve used it to identify some old farm equipment, to find the origins of some flea market pottery, and to identify types of plants whose names I don’t know. It’s that last […]

Create TinyTap Educational Games With Houdini Effects, Videos, and More

Disclosure: TinyTap is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com  TinyTap is an educational game creation tool that I’ve been using and writing about since its launch as a free iPad app many years ago. In my recent series about creating games with TinyTap I’ve focused on using the web-based game creation tools. Today, I’m going to […]

How to Use Canva Designs in Google Slides

Last week a reader sent me a question asking if it was possible to use Canva design templates in Google Slides. The short answer is yes, you can use Canva designs in Google Slides. The longer answer involves taking a couple of steps to get there.  To use a Canva design template in Google Slides […]

I’ll Host Your Next Professional Development Session

Yesterday afternoon I hosted a webinar for an organization that had purchased a bunch of copies of my 50 Tech Tuesday Tips ebook. I would be happy to do the same for your school, department, or organization.  If you purchase ten or more copies of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips I’ll host a custom, one hour webinar for your […]

Watch Out for These Common Google Slides Audio Errors

Last year I wrote quite a few blog posts about a Chrome extension called Mote that lets you record and add audio to almost anything in Google Workspace. As great as that extension is, it’s not for everyone. In fact, earlier this week I got an email from a reader who was looking for some […]

Three Great Google Maps Features for Teachers

Google Maps is one of my favorite tools to use in history and geography lessons. I’ve been using it for at least as long as I’ve been writing this blog (15 years). Like all Google products it has evolved over time and some features have gone away while others have been added. And there are […]

Take Flight With This Library of Congress Image Collection

The Library of Congress is a great place to find historical pictures, drawings, and maps to use in lesson plans and classroom projects. Finding things on the Library of Congress’ website isn’t always easy if you only use the search function. But the LOC’s Free to Use and Reuse Sets make it much easier to find […]

My Big Playlist of Canva Tutorials

Other than Google Workspace tools, Canva is the tool that I’ve published the most tutorials about on my YouTube channel. In fact, I’ve published at least 36 tutorials about using Canva’s many features for making videos, presentations, timelines, posters, greeting cards, worksheets, and many other graphics. This morning I finally put all of those tutorials […]

Say Something – A Fun and Easy TinyTap Activity

Disclosure: TinyTap is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Last week I wrote about using TinyTap soundboards to create interactive games and lessons. This week we’ll continue with the theme of sound and make a Say Something activity on TinyTap. TinyTap’s Say Something activity type lets you record your voice to accompany anything and everything that […]

How Graphs Can Be Misleading

Tools like Canva and even good ol’ PowerPoint make it incredibly easy to quickly create good looking graphs. But as Randy Krum points out in his book, Cool Infographics, a graphic that looks good isn’t necessarily a good graphic. In fact, many times a graphic is made to look good in order to distract from […]

Join Me on Tuesday for Search Strategies for History Students and Teachers

This Tuesday at 4pm ET I’m hosting a Practical Ed Tech webinar titled Search Strategies for History Students and Teachers. If a student has ever said to you, “I can’t find anything about this,” this webinar is for you! In this one hour webinar I’ll share the strategies and techniques that I’ve used with my […]

Puzzles, Hearts, and Sounds – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is going to a relatively warm (35f) and sunny day. In fact, it’s going to be almost spring-like today before the cold returns tomorrow. We’re looking forward to a fun weekend of skiing and playing outside. I hope that you also have some fun things that you’re looking forward […]

A Neat Site for Comparisons of Economic Information Between Countries

Seven years ago I wrote about a neat site called If It Were My Home. I came across it again while looking for something else in my archives earlier this week. It still works and still does the same interesting thing that it did when I first tried it.   If It Were My Home will show you […]

Three Common Google Forms Mistakes – And How to Avoid Them

I’ve been helping teachers create quizzes with Google Forms for well over a decade. And over that time there’s a pattern to the Google Forms problems that teachers bring to me. My completely unscientific data on this tells me that about 90% of all problems with Google Forms quizzes come down to one of three […]

A New Academic Feature in YouTube Studio

Yesterday morning I uploaded a new video to my YouTube account and noticed a new set of options that appeared when I selected the education category. Now when you upload a video to your YouTube account and select the education category you can also add additional subcategory labels to your video. Those options include academic […]

Ten Overlooked Google Docs Features for Students and Teachers

As Google Docs has improved and added more features over the years some of those features get forgotten or just plain overlooked. Just because those features don’t jump out, doesn’t mean they’re not helpful to students and teachers. In this new video I highlight ten of my favorite “overlooked” Google Docs features for students and […]

Blurred Backgrounds and More Microsoft Teams Updates

I’m not a daily user of Microsoft Teams so I rely on Mike Tholfsen’s excellent YouTube channel to stay abreast of the latest features added to Microsoft Teams. It was through his recent video Top 5 New Features in Microsoft Teams that I learned about blurring backgrounds in Teams. I had assumed that the web […]

New Lesson Plans from DocsTeach

DocsTeach is one of my favorite resources for U.S. History teachers and students. The platform makes it easy to find curated collections of primary source documents and offers great templates for creating online lessons based on those documents. And if you don’t have time to make a new activity, DocsTeach offers hundreds of premade primary […]

40,000 People Get Their Ed Tech Tips This Way

Yesterday morning I logged into my YouTube studio dashboard and saw that my little channel of screencast videos now has 40,000 subscribers! My videos aren’t anything fancy. I just write some bullet points on a notepad then record using Screencast-o-matic. I do some light editing (blurring, trimming, and occasionally adding text overlays) and then hit […]

How to Create VR Tours of Local Landmarks

I live near a little ski mountain called Mount Abram that is totally geared toward being family-friendly, affordable (seriously, my kids ski the whole season for $20!), and community-oriented. During the weekends when my kids are in lessons I like to skin up the mountain. By skinning I burn a lot calories and I get […]

How to Create Collaborative To-do Lists in OneNote

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I featured some tools and ideas for students to use to manage group projects. OneNote was one of the tools that I mentioned using for that purpose. It’s a good option for students who are already using OneNote because they don’t have to learn a whole new tool […]

Use TinyTap to Create Interactive Lessons and Games With Soundboards

Disclosure: TinyTap is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Over the last four weeks I’ve highlighted different ways to use TinyTap to create educational games for your students. This week I’m going to take a slightly different approach and share ideas for using TinyTap’s soundboard option to make interactive lessons and games. What is a TinyTap […]

Try Tract to Find Inspiration for Fun Lessons

Disclosure: Tract is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Last fall I introduced many of you to Tract as a platform for Genius Hour activities, for PBL, and for remote learning. Many of you have reported that it has been great for all of those things. Now I’d like to suggest another way to think about using […]

Math, Science, and Philosophy Lessons for Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is next Monday. My daughters’ preschool is having a little celebration during which little cards will be exchanged. They are very excited about it! I used Canva to make some cards for them to write their names and their classmates’ names on. If you’re looking to incorporate Valentine’s Day into some lessons this […]

Map Puzzle – Test Your Knowledge of World Geography

MapPuzzle is a simple online geography game that I recently learned about through the Maps Mania blog. The game is based on the premise of political boundaries being the lines in a jigsaw puzzle. You have to drag the countries, states, or provinces into their proper places on the map.  MapPuzzle offers a dozen puzzles […]

Groundhogs, Hamsters, and Snowcats – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where more than a foot of fresh snow has fallen in the last 24 hours. According to the snowcat, we have at least 20″ of snow in our yard. What’s a snowcat? It’s a board that has a ruler on it and has been cut to look like the silhouette of […]

Search Strategies for History Students and Teachers

If a student has ever said to you, “I can’t find anything about this,” the webinar that I’m hosting on February 15th is for you. On February 15th at 4pm ET I’m hosting Search Strategies for History Students and Teachers. In this one hour webinar I’ll share the strategies and techniques that I’ve used with […]

Experiment and Create New Sounds on WolframTones

Wolfram Tones is a neat offering from Wolfram that students can use to can play with sample sounds and rhythms to create new own sounds. Wolfram Tones uses algorithms, music theory, and sound samples to generate new collections of sounds. Wolfram Tones allows visitors to choose samples from fifteen different genres of music on which to build their own sounds. Once […]

Prompt Conversations With Google Drawings

One of the lesser-utilized features of Google Drawings is the ability to comment on images. Drawings allows you to collaboratively create drawings from scratch and or alter images that you upload to Drawings. By uploading an image you can draw on it and write on it to add labels. Google Drive Drawings supports commenting just […]

Citing Sources in Google Docs and Word Docs

The other day I sarcastically Tweeted, “can you imagine if we let students cite sources the way that ESPN lets reporters name anonymous sources?” My Tweet was in response to ESPN’s somewhat botched reporting of Tom Brady’s retirement from playing in the NFL. Tweeting that question did prompt me to dig up some tutorials on […]

How to Create Custom Valentine’s Day Cards for Kids to Share

On Monday afternoon my daughters came home from preschool super excited because they learned that Valentine’s Day is just two weeks away! Their class will be practicing writing and reading their classmates’ names by filling out little Valentine’s Day cards. That news inspired me to open my Canva account and look around for some Valentine’s […]

How to Prevent Printing of Shared Google Documents

At the end of yesterday’s post about adding watermarks to Google Docs I included a reminder that you can disable printing options for when you share a Google Document. Disabling the printing option is helpful when you want to improve the security of a document that you share with someone else for review. For example, […]

How to Add Watermarks to Google Docs

Late last year Google finally added a built-in option for adding watermarks to Google Documents. Unfortunately, that option only allowed you to use images as watermarks and the implementation of those watermarks was a bit clunky. Thankfully, last week Google added a new option for using text as the watermark in Google Documents.  The new […]

What is a MAC Address? – Here’s a Concise Explanation

PowerCert Animated Videos offer clear and concise explanations of big concepts in computer hardware and networking. I referred to them fairly often when I was teaching an introduction to networking course last year.  The latest PowerCert video is MAC Address Explained. As the title states, the video explains what a MAC address is, how it’s written, […]

The Month in Review Featuring the Revival of Some Classics

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on the month of January. I hope that the first month of the year was a good one for you and that all of your New Year’s resolutions are still on track.  The first month of the year saw the return or revival of some “classic” […]

Build Talk or Type Educational Games on TinyTap

Disclosure: TinyTap is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Throughout January I wrote about creating your own educational games with TinyTap’s web-based game creation tool. I’ve covered creating a basic identification game, making your games look good, and making puzzle games. To end the month, I’m going to dive into making a game that doesn’t rely […]

Three Ways to Use Lumio for Collaborative Learning Right Now

Disclosure: Lumio is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Now more than ever many students are suffering from “device-o-lation.” “What is that?” you ask. It’s what happens when students are given an activity to do on a computer, phone, or tablet and while they may be physically in a room with other people, they’re actually isolated […]

Last Call! – 50 Tech Tuesday Tips and a Webinar

Tomorrow (January 31st) at 4pm ET I’m going to host a webinar just for those who have purchased a copy of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. If you’ve already purchased a copy, thank you! You’ll be getting an email with webinar information soon if you haven’t already gotten it. If you haven’t yet purchased a copy, […]

Wordle, Puzzles, and Snow – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we’re looking forward to a big snowstorm today. Depending on which forecast you believe we’re going to get anywhere from ten inches to ten feet of snow today! I’ll be happy either amount as will my daughters who want to make snowmen, sled, and ski this weekend. So that’s what […]

How to Create QR Codes for Audio Files in Google Drive

Earlier this week a reader reached out to me for advice about creating QR codes for audio recordings made by her students. Her students had made recordings using Vocaroo and then used Vocaroo’s built-in QR code generator to share the recordings. The problem they ran into is that Vocaroo deletes the recordings after a few […]

How to Copy Images from Google Docs to Slides and Back

When you upload an image and insert it into a Google Document, it should then also be available through Google Drive to insert into future documents and into Google Slides. However, in practice it’s rarely that quick and simple. There is an easier option if you want to copy an image from a Google Document […]

Try Screencastify & Google Keep for Adding Comments to Google Docs

On Sunday evening I got an email from someone who had seen my videos about Mote and wondered if there was something similar for adding video comments to Google Docs. One of my suggestions was to try the e-Comments Chrome extension which I reviewed last spring. Another option is to use a combination of Screencastify […]

ICYMI – Webinar Recording – Two EdTech Guys Take Questions

Last week Rushton Hurley and I resumed our Two EdTech Guys Take Questions webinar series. If you missed it, you can watch the recording right here or as embedded below. Rushton does a great job of sharing links to all of the resources that we mention in the webinar. That list of resources can along […]

Create a Teacher Report Card With Google Forms

Last week a teacher emailed me looking for suggestions on how to create a teacher report card that her students can complete anonymously. One of the things that I suggested was to create a Google Form that doesn’t require students to sign into their Google accounts. Google Forms includes a course evaluation template. I would […]

50 Tech Tech Tuesday Tips and a Webinar

As I announced last week, on January 31st at 4pm ET I’m going to host a webinar just for those who have purchased a copy of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. If you’ve already purchased a copy, thank you! You’ll be getting an email with webinar information soon if you haven’t already gotten it. If you […]

Ten Cool Things You (And Your Students) Can Do With Lumio

Disclosure: Lumio is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Advertisers help keep the lights on here. Lumio was one of my favorite new tools in 2021. I wrote about it back in November, but I don’t think I fully captured everything that makes Lumio great. And since Google Analytics tells me that people prefer articles that […]

Create an Educational Puzzle Game With TinyTap

Disclosure: TinyTap is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Over the last two weeks I covered the basics of creating an educational game with TinyTap and how to make it look good. This week I’m going to start diving into some of the more interesting game types and formats available in TinyTap. The first of those […]

Making Snowflakes and Sundials

Last week I shared a couple of good places to find ideas and plans for at-home, hands-on science lessons. Here’s a couple more ideas to try courtesy of SciShow Kids.  In this SciShow Kids video students learn how a sundial works and how they can make their own sundials. The video could be the basis for […]

Five Tools for Making Wordle Word Clouds

Do you remember when Wordle was a word cloud generator that was taking the Web 2.0/ edtech world by storm? I do and lately I can’t help but think of it whenever I see people post their Wordle scores on social media. For those who don’t remember those days, Wordle was originally a word cloud […]

Math, Science, and QR Codes – The Week in Review

Good morning from frozen Maine. It’s -5F as I write this. The snow in my yard is so frozen that my dogs and my kids don’t break through the when walking on it. It should warm up a bit today and we’ll go outside to play for a bit. Part of being a Mainer is […]

Easy Ways to Create Voice Recordings – No Account Required

The post that published on Wednesday about adding bird sounds to Google Slides prompted a couple of people to ask me about other tools for quickly recording audio files. There are three tools that I typically recommend to those who are looking to just record short spoken audio tracks and don’t require additional editing functions. […]

Roles in Group Video Projects

This is an excerpt from the most recent issue of my weekly Practical Ed Tech Newsletter.  Video projects provide a great opportunity for students to work together to create something all team members can be proud of. But for any good project to come together, students need to have a plan and need to have […]

Three Alternatives to ViewPure for Distraction-free YouTube Viewing

Earlier this week a reader reached out to me with a concern about ViewPure. For many years ViewPure has been a popular tool for teachers to use to hide distracting sidebar and “related” content when playing YouTube videos in their classrooms. There are other tools like it. If you find yourself looking for alternatives to […]

Ten Updated OneNote Features to Note

Mike Tholfsen is a product manager for Microsoft Education and the producer of some excellent Microsoft product tutorial videos for teachers. I frequently reference his videos in my weekly newsletter and when answering readers’ questions about Microsoft products.  This week Mike released a new video about the latest updates to OneNote. OneNote is the Microsoft tool that […]

Top Tools and Activities for Collaborative Learning in 2022

This blog post was sponsored by Lumio, but it features a bunch of other great tools as well.  At this point in the school year and our second school year in a pandemic, we’ve all become familiar with the nuts and bolts of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or whatever other platform your school uses […]

Classwork Adds New Feedback Types and Makes Pro Features Free!

Classwork (formally TeacherMade) is a platform for creating online, interactive assignments for your students. I first covered it in the fall of 2020 and since then it has rapidly grown in popularity. One reason for that growth is that Classwork lets you take your existing favorite documents and turn them into automatically graded online assignments. […]

Adding Bird Calls to Google Slides – Answering a Reader’s Question

Yesterday I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a little help with her students’ Google Slides projects. The students were creating slideshows about birds and wanted to add some audio to the slides. Using Mote wasn’t an option for her students. So my suggestion was to find or record audio outside […]

Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions – Live at 4pm ET Tomorrow

Tomorrow at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I are hosting the next episode of the second season of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff! We’d love to have you join us! You can register for the session right here.  In every episode we answer questions from readers and […]

Making Your Educational Games Look Good With TinyTap

Last week I introduced you to the basics of creating your own educational games with TinyTap’s web-based educational game creation tool. In case you missed it, in that post I outlined how you can create an educational game in which students hear you reading questions aloud and then have to identify objects on the screen. […]

50 Tech Tech Tuesday Tips – And a Free Webinar

At the end of 2021 I released a new ebook for tech coaches, media specialists, and anyone else who is responsible for delivering short professional development sessions in their schools. The ebook is called 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. It was curated from more than 400 editions of The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter.  On January 31st at […]

Five Uses for QR Codes in School Settings

Over the weekend I shared a neat QR code generator called QRToon that lets you create a QR code that includes a cartoon version of yourself in it. Writing that post got me thinking about how far QR codes have come since I first saw them while working for Roadway Package Systems (now called FedEx […]

QRToon – Cartoons in Your QR Codes

QR codes are handy for making long URLs easy to access on mobile devices. Last year I used QR codes to make my classroom sign-in/sign-out forms easy for students to access on their phones. I typically use either QRCode Monkey or the QR code generator built into Chrome. Recently, I discovered another neat QR code […]

Good Resources for Remote Math & Science Lessons

PhET is a great resource that I’ve shared a bunch of times over the years. Recently, I was looking through the site when I noticed that its activity search tool now includes a filter for remote activities. Through this search tool you can locate lesson plans designed for remote instruction and learning. You can combine […]

Create an Alphabet Book on ReadWriteThink

This week Larry Ferlazzo shared the exciting news that ReadWriteThink relaunched all of their popular interactive student writing templates. The templates now work without Flash. One of my favorite templates that has been relaunched by RWT is the Alphabet Organizer template.  Alphabet Organizer is a great little tool from Read Write Think that students can use […]

Make Math Flashcards on Canva

Canva is my go-to recommendation whenever someone asks me for help with anything requiring a bit of an eye for design. So on Wednesday when a reader asked me for a tool to create printable flashcards Canva was my recommendation. There are more than 300 flashcard templates in Canva’s design gallery. In that gallery you’ll […]

How to Enable Spell Check in Blogger

Yesterday afternoon I answered an email from an old colleague who needed a little help with a frustrating little setting in Blogger. She wanted her students to be able to spell check their weekly reflection blog posts before they published them. Her frustration was caused by the fact that Blogger doesn’t have a built-in spell […]

Understanding Negative Temperatures

It is a very cold day here in Maine. It’s not the coldest that I’ve experienced in Maine, but it’s still not a pleasant day outside. When I let my dogs out at 5am it was -9F and when I took my daughters to school it was -1F. It was on the way to school […]

How to Create Your Own Educational Games With TinyTap – Getting Started

Disclosure: This is sponsored content.  TinyTap is a great platform that I’ve been sharing with teachers since 2012, a full decade this fall. In that time I’ve seen it evolve from an iPad app for creating simple games to a full suite of tools for creating educational games to play on iPads, on Android devices, […]

Read Aloud in Edge and Other Immersive Reader Uses

Yesterday morning I published a blog post about using the Read Aloud Chrome extension. In the introduction to that post I mentioned that I usually recommend using Immersive Reader in Microsoft Edge if you need to regularly have webpages read aloud. A reader emailed me this morning to ask why I prefer Immersive Reader. Here’s […]

Old School Meets New School in Volley for Education

Last week I wrote a lengthy blog post and shared a few videos about an exciting new messaging platform called Volley. Even though I spent a long time dabling in Volley and setting up some spaces in it, I never really settled on a great, quick description of it. Then on Friday afternoon as I […]

Audio, Buffalo, and Skiing – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we have a fresh layer of snow on the ground. It’s going to be a great weekend for skiing at our favorite little ski mountain, Mt. Abram. One of the things that I like about Mt. Abram is that when it’s closed during the week I can still skin up […]

Two Ways to Create Virtual Manipulatives for Elementary School Math Lessons

Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was looking for some ideas for creating virtual manipulatives she and her elementary school students to use during remote instruction days. I had two ideas immediately come to mind that I shared with her and I’ll share with you.  The first idea I shared […]

StoryMap JS – A Nice Alternative to Tour Builder

Like many teachers, I was disappointed when Google deprecated Tour Builder and Tour Creator last year. Since then in my webinar series with Rushton Hurley and on social media I’ve answered a lot of questions from teachers about alternatives to Tour Builder. StoryMap JS is one of the tools that I’ve been suggesting when asked […]

Volley – Video, Audio, and Text Messaging for Learning

Disclosure: Volley is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.comAt the end of 2021 an old friend from the early days of Free Technology for Teachers introduced me to a new conversation platform called Volley. I liked it so much that I included Volley in my Best of the Web 2021 webinar. So now that you know I’m […]

Consider This Tech Tuesday Planned! – And the Next One and the Next One…

I’m clearly not good at self-promotion otherwise I wouldn’t have released an ebook right before the winter break when most people aren’t thinking about everything but professional learning opportunities. But I did it anyway. So if you missed it in the last couple weeks of December, my new ebook is titled 50 Tech Tuesday Tips […]

How to Create and Publish Your First Podcast

If you’re looking for a new classroom project to try in 2022, give podcasting a try. Recording and publishing podcasts is an activity that can be done equally well in in-person, online, and hybrid classrooms. And thanks to tools like Anchor, it is easier than ever to record and publish your first podcast.  In this […]

How to Record and Embed Audio in Google Docs

Last Friday I published a video about all of the things that can be done in Google Workspace when you have the Mote Chrome extension installed. The latest of those things is the ability to record audio and embed it directly into your Google Documents. When you do this you’re able to play the audio […]

Add Audio to Almost Anything in Google Workspace

One of my absolute favorite new tools in 2021 was a Chrome extension called Mote. With Mote installed you can add audio comments to Google Docs, Google Classroom, and Google Slides. You can also use Mote to add audio to Google Forms and insert audio into Google Slides with just one click. Mote also lets […]

How to Blur Backgrounds in Flipgrid Videos

One of my favorite new things in 2021 was Flipgrid’s addition of a background blurring tool. With this feature enabled everything behind you is heavily blurred when you’re recording a video in Flipgrid. A related feature is the option to use virtual backgrounds in Flipgrid. The virtual background can be an image that you choose […]

Chrome, Canva, and Code – The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where it is not only the end of the month, it’s the end of the year! Here’s to a better year in 2022!  In December I released a new ebook titled 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. I created it with busy tech coaches and media specialists in mind. You can get a […]

Best of 2021 – See What’s Behind Bitly and TinyURL Without Clicking

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from April. Bitly is a handy URL shortener that I’ve used for many years. As a registered user I can create custom, shortened […]

Best of 2021 – Ziplet Exit Tickets

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from September.  Ziplet is a service for gathering feedback from your students in a variety of ways. The simplest way is to create […]

50 Tech Tuesday Tips – My eBook for Busy Tech Coaches

I interupt this week’s “best of series” to bring you something from the shameless commerce division of my life… Are you a tech coach, a tech integrator, a media specialist, or a teacher who gets asked to put on workshops after school or on staff development days? Do you need ideas for what to do […]

Best of 2021 – Five Helpful PowerPoint Features You Might Be Overlooking

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from November.  PowerPoint isn’t the flashiest ed tech tool on the block and it certainly isn’t the newest. In fact, you might have […]

Best of 2021 – Fling the Teacher!

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one about a fun game created by Russel Tarr.  Fling the Teacher is a game that I mentioned briefly in this week’s Practical Ed […]

Best of 2021 – Combine Canva and Classwork to Create Online Activities

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from May.  Canva offers nearly two thousand worksheet templates for teachers to copy and modify. All of the templates can be downloaded as […]

Best of 2021 – How to Make Chrome Run Faster

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from September. There was a time when Google Chrome was the new kid on the block and promised faster browsing and faster page […]

Best of 2021 – How to Find Public Google Workspace Files

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here’s one from May.  Last week I published an animated GIF of how to search by domain to find publicly shared Google Workspaces files. Over […]

Best of 2021 – Three Good Options for Annotating PDFs

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. New blog posts will resume on January 1st.  In last week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I shared three good options for adding audio comments to […]

Best of 2021 – Interactive Checklists in Google Docs

As I do every year, I’m taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. New blog posts will resume on January 1st.  This week Google announced more than a dozen updates to Google Workspace products. Included in those updates […]

Winter, Animals, and Fun – The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where my daughters are eagerly anticipating Santa’s arrival. Tomorrow morning I won’t be in the mood to write blog posts or even think about my blog. That’s why I’m breaking from my pattern and writing the week-in-review on a Friday evening.  As I look toward the end of the year I’d […]

4,000+ Maps of Military Battles and Campaigns

The Library of Congress housed hundreds of thousands of maps covering a huge array of topics from maps used by fire insurance companies to population density to maps of military battles and campaigns.  The LOC’s collection of maps of military battles and campaigns contains more than 4,000 maps that are free to view, download, and […]

How to Create Videos of Augmented Reality Animals

During my Best of the Web webinar on Tuesday afternoon someone asked me how I made the videos of the augmented reality animals in my house and in my yard. The answer is that I simply used the augmented reality tools that are built into Google’s mobile search on Android (also available on iOS).  To […]

How to Create Google Docs and PDFs With Hyperlinked Chapters

A kind reader who purchased my new ebook asked me how I was able to create the hyperlinked sections within the ebook. There are a couple of ways that it can be done, but the way that I did it is built into Google Documents.  Like nearly every document that I create, I created 50 […]

How to Embed Blog Posts Into Canva Designs

A few weeks ago I discovered that you can embed Google Forms and Microsoft Forms into Canva designs including website design templates. Then yesterday, as I was putting together my Best of the Web presentation slides, I accidentally discovered that you can embed blog posts into Canva designs.  The process for embedding blog posts into […]

Best of the Web 2021 – Webinar Recording and Slides

Yesterday afternoon I hosted my annual Best of the Web webinar. More than 100 people attended the live session and even more asked to view the recording and slides. As promised, you anyone can now watch the recording right here on my YouTube channel. The slides can be seen here or as embedded below as […]

A Platypus in My House! Fun and Learning Through Augmented Reality

My four-year-old loves Gus the Platypus in the Pete the Cat series. A couple of weeks ago that led to her asking questions like “can we get a platypus?” and “what’s a platypus sound like?” My answers were “no” and “I don’t know.” I did, however, put an augmented reality platypus in our house.  Through […]

How to Use Google Keep as a Comment Bank

Last week I had a reader ask me if there was a way to have a comment bank in Google Documents without using Chrome extensions or Google Classroom. My suggestion was to try using Google Keep as a comment bank in Google Documents.  To use Google Keep as a comment bank in Google Keep you […]

Voices, Keyboards, and Birds – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is chilly and we’re expecting our first real snowstorm of the year! That means that tomorrow I’ll be shoveling snow and my kids will be making snowmen. We’ll probably do a bit of sledding as well. I hope that you have some equally fun things planned for your weekend.  […]

A New Way to Add Students to Flipgrid

This week Flipgrid released a bunch of helpful updates. My favorite of those updates is a new way to invite students to join your Flipgrid groups. Now you can invite them by simply sharing a link to your group. You can share that link in your LMS of choice, post it on your blog, or […]

Six Reasons to Try Tract for Remote & Hybrid Learning

Disclosure: Tract is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com As we head into winter (in the northern hemisphere) there may be more opportunities to try new approaches to online and hybrid learning. One of those new approaches to try is using Tract. Tract is a service that I wish I had access to last year when my […]

How to Create a Simple Website With Adobe Express

For that last five or so years Adobe Spark has been one of my top recommendations for creating simple, focused websites. This week Adobe rebranded Adobe Spark as Adobe Creative Cloud Express or Adobe Express for short. It still offers all of the same great tools for making videos, building simple websites, and creating graphics. And […]

How to Create Videos With Adobe Express

Earlier this week Adobe Spark was renamed Adobe Express. It still offers all of the great creation tools that made it one of my go-to video creation tools for the last half-decade. A couple of helpful updates were also included when Adobe Spark was relaunched as Adobe Express. Those updates include a new icon library, […]

How to Modify & Share Canva Templates

On Sunday I published a blog post about the winter bird survey we’re doing at my house. In that blog post I included a link to the observation journal template that I created by modifying a design I found in Canva. That blog post prompted one reader to ask me how I shared the template. As […]

An Easy Way to Quickly Add Voice Notes to Google Docs

Yesterday morning I published The Easiest Way to Add Narration to Google Slides. In that blog post I featured a Chrome extension called Mote. Mote, as I’ve mentioned in the past, can be used for adding audio to a bunch of Google Workspace tools including the comments on Google Documents.  In this short video I […]

Add Comments to Word Docs to Spark Discussion

Last Monday I shared directions for using Google Drive to add comments to PDF and directions for using Formative to add questions into primary source documents. The idea in both cases is to use those tools to spark dicussion and inquiry when reading primary source documents with students. This can also be done by adding […]

The Easiest Way to Add Narration to Google Slides

When Google finally added native support for audio in Google Slides people were excited until they found out how clunky the process is. You have to first record the audio outside of Google Slides, then upload it your Google Drive, and then insert it into your slides. Fortunately, the Mote Chrome extension streamlines that whole […]

Use Google Drive to Add Questions and Comments to PDFs

In my previous post I shared directions for using Formative to add questions to PDFs. Another option is to use Google Drive to add questions and comments to PDFs.  Adding comments to PDFs in Google Drive is one of those little features that is quite handy but is often overlooked. To add a comment to […]

Use Formative to Build Questions Into Primary Source Documents

Formative is a great tool for creating all kinds of online activities from simple multiple choice quizzes to in-depth examinations for documents. One of the ways that I like to use it is to upload a document and then build questions into the document for students to answer while reading. In this new video I […]

We’re Counting Birds! – A Lesson in Citizen Science and Canva Template Creation

Here in Maine the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is conducting a survey of birds in our state. This is known as a bird atlas. This includes counting birds all across the state in all seasons. There’s an opportunity for citizens to participate. Since we put out bird feeders at our house year-round, we’re […]

Chrome, Wheels, and Voices – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where snow is covering the ground as the sun rises. The snow might not last much longer though as we’re expecting sleet and rain today. Rain is a bad word for folks like me who like to ski. On the upside, it’s a great day to make and eat more Christmas […]

How to Use Seesaw to Annotate Historical Images

In my previous post I wrote about and shared a video about using Jamboard to annotate historical images. Another way have students annotate historical images is by adding their voice comments to the images. That can be done through the use of Seesaw.  In Seesaw students can upload images then draw and type on the […]

How to Annotate Historical Images on Jamboard

From magnetic poetry to collaborative brainstorming sessions to mapping activities, there are lots of ways to use Google’s Jamboard in online and in-person classes. One way that I like to use Jamboard is to have students annotate images that I share with them. In particular, I like to do this to have them add commentary […]

How to Embed Google Sheets Into Websites

Earlier this week a loyal reader named Judith sent me a question about embedding Google Sheets into websites. I was happy to answer her question and made this short video to explain how to include a Google Sheet in Google Sites and in Blogger.  In the video I include instructions for resizing the spreadsheet when […]

Google’s Favorite Chrome Extensions of the Year

On The Keyword Google has announced their favorite Chrome extensions of the year. I have no idea what the criteria was to be included in the list. That said, I took a look at the list and noticed that some of Google’s favorite Chrome extensions are also some of my favorite Chrome extensions. Those favorites […]

Vocabulary Video Challenge

The 9th annual vocabulary video challenge hosted by The New York Times Learning Network is underway. The challenge asks middle school and high school students to create fifteen second videos about any of the nearly 2400 words on The New York Times Learning Network’s Word of the Day list (link opens a PDF). In their videos […]

Add Voice Recordings to Google Forms Questions, Answer Choices, and Feedback

Mote is a Chrome extension that became popular this year because it made it easy for teachers and students to add voice recordings to Google Slides, Google Classroom, and Google Forms. The latest update to Mote, released today, lets you add voice recordings not only to the questions in your Google Forms but also to […]

Webinar Recording – Two EdTech Guys Take Questions for the Last Time in 2021

Last Thursday evening Rushton Hurley and I hosted our last 2021 episode of Two EdTech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. We’ll be back in January to answer more questions and share more cool stuff. In the meantime, you can watch last week’s episode here and all previous episodes right here. In last week’s […]

Try Virtual Backgrounds and Immersive Views for Virtual Events

This afternoon I was asked to help organize a virtual holiday concert for my daughters’ preschool. The event is going to happen in Zoom and there will be ten children (plus parents) performing together. I might be making things a little more difficult on myself, but I plan to try to put all of the […]

Classroomscreen – Timers, Names, and Noise Meters

A couple of weeks ago my Practical Ed Tech weekly newsletter was all about timers and random selectors. A reader named Erin replied to the newsletter with a suggestion to try a tool called Classroomscreen. I’m so glad that she suggested it beccause Classroomscreen is fantastic!  Classroomscreen is a service that lets you create a […]

Seven Ideas for Crafting Comics in History Classes

My first teaching position was as a mid-year replacement for a literature teacher who left to become the head of an ESL/ELL program in another school district. That teacher left behind a stack of comic book versions of Romeo and Juliet along with a note along the lines of “these might help with your reluctant […]

SpinnerWheel – A Great Random Name, Number, and Word Picker

SpinnerWheel is a new-to-me site that provides an easy way to create custom spinners for random name selection, random number selection, and even random image selection. What’s great about SpinnerWheel is that in addition to customizing the names, words, numbers, and pictures that appear in the spinner, you can also customize the sound and visual […]

Germs, Math, and Videos – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it’s a clear and cold morning. Earlier this week we had our first real accumulation of snow. That snow covering will make it easier for me to drag our Christmas tree to the house later this morning. My daughters are excited to help decorate the Christmas tree this weekend. I […]

Two Options for Automatically Removing Choices from Google Forms

Earlier this week a reader of my newsletter sent me a question looking for a way to limit the number of times that an answer choice could be used on a Google Form. My first suggestion was to try the Google Forms add-on called Choice Eliminator 2.  Choice Eliminator 2 is a Google Forms add-on […]

View What’s Behind a Website With Mouse X-Ray Goggles

Mozilla used to offer a great little tool called X-Ray Goggles that let you view and modify the code behind any webpage. Unfortunately, they shut it down a couple of years ago and since then I’ve been recommending that people simply use Chrome’s inspect tool to view the code behind a webpage. In fact, I […]

A Science Lesson for Winter Application

Winter temperatures have arrived in Maine. There’s a light coating of snow on the ground. And my daughters and I are excited about the start of ski season! While we like all of these things about winter, there is one thing we don’t like. That thing is dealing with cracked, chapped, and dry lips. During […]

What You Should Know About Pings and Traceroutes

As I wrote in my recent weekly newsletter, using the ping command on your computer is an easy way to check if a website is down or if the problem is with your computer. Using the ping command in the command prompt window on your computer might seem like something only computer science teachers and […]

Two Easy Ways to Make Your Own Mobile App

On Monday morning I answered a question from a reader of my newsletter who wanted to know if there was a way for someone who wasn’t “techy” to create her own iPhone app. My immediate response was to say yes and suggest giving Glide Apps a try. I’ve been using Glide Apps for almost three […]

A Fun and Educational Use of Chrome’s Inspect Tool

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I shared some of my favorite “techy” tricks to impress your students and colleagues. One of those tricks is to use the inspect tool in Chrome to view the code behind any webpage and then modify it to change what appears on the page on your computer.  The […]

All About Tract – PBL, Peer-to-Peer Learning, and More!

Disclosure: Tract is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Tract is a service that launched a few months ago and is quickly becoming a hit in schools because of its format and its flexibility. The format is a relatively simple one of students teaching students. The flexibility is that it can be used across grade levels […]

Create and Publish a Multimedia Timeline With Canva

Last week a reader emailed me looking for a suggestion for making multimedia timelines with her middle school students. My usual suggestion of Timeline JS was ruled out because her school use Office 365 and the kids can’t access Google Sheets with school accounts. My other suggestion was to try using Canva to create multimedia […]

Link to Sections Within the Pages of Google Sites

The current version of Google Sites has come a long way in the last year or so. It now includes almost every feature that the old version of Google Sites offered (good thing, because the old version is scheduled for deprecation soon). One of those features is the ability to link to a specific section […]

Turkey, Docs, and Teams – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where a little dusting of snow and a temperature of 23F makes it feel like winter has arrived. I hope that all of you who celebrated Thanksgiving this week had an enjoyable and restful holiday.  All of the leaves have finally fallen off the trees in my yard and I’ve cleaned […]

Free Webinar Next Thursday

Next Thursday at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I are hosting the sixth episode of the second season of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff! We’d love to have you join us! You can register for the session right here.  In every episode we answer questions from readers […]

My Big List of Tools for a Variety of Classroom Video Projects

Other than questions about Google Workspace tools, I get asked more questions about making videos than any other three topics combined. Over the years I’ve used dozens and dozens of video creation tools. This is my current list of recommended video creation tools for classroom projects.  Video Reflections/ One-take Videos These are videos that require […]

A Tip for Finding and Reading Thanksgiving Leftovers Recipes

One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is eating the leftovers the next day. I enjoy a good turkey sandwich almost as much as Ross, but I do like to mix it up a bit and try other ways to use leftovers. In fact, I was doing that earlier this week (yes, I was planning […]

Display a Timer With a Google Document

Earlier this week a reader of my weekly newsletter emailed me to ask for advice on how to display a document and countdown timer on the same screen. The idea being that the document is displayed on a large screen via an LCD projector or Chromecast and a small timer is also displayed. The document […]

Ten Updated Microsoft Teams Features for Teachers to Note

Mike Tholfsen is my go-to person for all things related to Microsoft Education products. He regularly updates his YouTube channel with informative videos about the latest features added to Microsoft Teams, Word, PowerPoint, Immersive Reader, and more. And as a product manager at Microsoft he has early access to features that are rolling-out to users. […]

A Thanksgiving Special!

As many of you know, the primary means of support for Free Technology for Teachers comes through the sales of my Practical Ed Tech courses and professional development services.  This week and through next Tuesday all of my Practical Ed Tech self-paced courses are on sale for 33% off the regular price. You can register […]

Copy Specific Pages in Google Sites

Google Sites (the new, current version) has a new feature that could be helpful to those people who make a lot of variations of the same website. That new feature is the ability to copy specific pages from one site into a new site.  The new page copying option lets you select a specific page […]

How to Create Filters and Labels in Gmail

Last week I answered an email from a reader who wanted to make sure that email from specific senders always ended up in a priority folder in her Gmail account. My suggestion was to create a filter for the sender’s email address and then apply a label to the email. I’ve done this for years […]

How to Create Re-usable Daily Check-in Forms

Last week a reader emailed me with a question about creating a form that could be used many times over for things like daily check-in or exit ticket questions. He wanted to be able to have all responses in one place where responses could easily be sorted according to date or name. My suggestion was […]

Three Updated Google Docs Features

Over the last month or so Google has added some handy new features to Google Docs. I’ve written about them as they were announced by Google. But if you would like to see how they work, watch this new short video.  In the video you will see the following Google Docs features that have been […]

Scribble Maps – Draw on Google Maps and More Without an Account

To close out Geography Awareness Week 2021 I have one more cool tool to share. Scribble Maps is a tool that I’ve used and recommended for years. As the name implies, you can use it to draw on maps. You can also use it to create multimedia map markers. The best part is that you […]

How to Blur Faces in Videos With Screencastify

Screencastify is an excellent tool for quickly creating screencast videos. What you might not know is that you can also use Screencastify’s free video editor to edit videos that you’ve recorded with other tools. For example, I recorded a video on my phone then transferred it to my laptop where I used Screencastify’s free video […]

Five Helpful PowerPoint Features You Might Be Overlooking

PowerPoint isn’t the flashiest ed tech tool on the block and it certainly isn’t the newest. In fact, you might have read “PowerPoint” and thought “old.” But as old as it is (34 years) there are new things added to it and hidden gems within it that keep it going strong. If it has been […]

How to Create Digital Thankfulness Turkeys

Last fall the switch to online and hybrid classes presented lots of challenges and required changing the way that we have done some of our “old standby” activities. For example, last fall I received a few emails from readers looking for some ideas on how to do a digital version of the classic Thanksgiving Thankfulness […]

Three Ways to Make Green Screen Videos

Making a green screen video can be a lot of fun for students and also a lot of fun for peers, parents, and teachers to watch. Ten years later I still occasionally refere to this video from Greg Kulowiec’s middle school class as an example of a fun green screen project. Making a green screen video […]

Seven Good Tools for Making Animations

Making animations is a great way for students to bring their written stories to life on screen. Depending upon the story, the animation could be as short frame or two that plays for twenty seconds or it could be a five minute story.   Making animations can also be a good way for students to explain […]

Three Random Name Pickers

From picking a line leader, to calling on a student during a discussion, to drawing a prize-winner there are plenty of times when we all need an unbiased random name selector. Over the years I’ve tried a lot of random name selector tools. I keep coming back to the following three options.  Flippity.net offers a […]

How to Overlay Historical Maps on Current Maps

Next week is Geography Awareness Week. Google Earth is my favorite educational technology tool to use to teach history and geography lessons. And one of my favorite things to do with Google Earth is to overlay historic maps onto current maps. It’s a great way for students to see how borders have changed over time, […]

How to Use ClassPoint – Teacher and Student Views

Disclosure: ClassPoint is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Earlier this week I published a written overview of a new-to-me PowerPoint tool called ClassPoint. It’s a great little tool that you can use to build interactive quizzes and polls into your PowerPoint presentations. You can also use it to annotate slides, create whiteboards on the fly, and […]

A Geography Awareness Week Special

Next week is my favorite academic week of the year. It’s Geography Awareness Week! On Sunday I’ll be publishing a big list of resources for teaching and learning about geography. In that list you’ll see me mention some uses Google Earth and Google Maps. If you want to really dive into Google Earth and Google […]

See What’s Behind a Bitly Link Without Clicking On It

Bitly is a convenient tool for creating short URLs to share in place of long URLs. I’ve used it for years to create customized URLs that are easy for my students to type. Unfortunately, some people use Bitly to try to mask URLs to try to get you to click on nefarious links. Fortunately, there […]

How to Create Live, Subtitled Translations of Presentations

One of the questions we answered during this afternoon’s session of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions was, “I want to be able to translate my class discussions into Spanish in real-time and project that to a small group of students in my music class that do not speak English. Is that possible?” The answer […]

Take a Look at Your Google Docs Activity Dashboard

The activity dashboard is one of the “hidden” or overlooked features of Google Docs that I use on a fairly regular basis. It’s a handy little feature to use whenever you’re sharing a document, but is particularly useful when sharing with more than one other person. Through the activity dashboard you can see who the […]

How to Create Multimedia Maps in Padlet

Padlet is one of the most versatile ed tech tools you can put in your digital toolbox. Creating multimedia maps is one of the many things that you can do with Padlet. In fact, there are two ways that you can create multimedia maps in Padlet. The first method is to use the built-in base […]

Three Tools for Adding Must-Answer Questions to Videos

This post was inspired by an old colleague who sent me a note on a couple of days ago seeking some advice about getting his students to watch the videos he shares with them. It’s a topic that I’m asked about fairly regularly so I was happy to suggest a few tools. These are the […]

Try Tract for PBL and Win Prizes

Disclosure: Tract is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com “Real world projects have to be projects that matter to kids” is something that I say whenever I give my presentation, Connecting Kids With Projects That Matter to Them. When the problem they’re tackling matters to them, students feel ownership of the project process. Even a cursory […]

Free Webinar This Thursday – Two EdTech Guys Take Questions

This Thursday at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I are hosting the fifth episode of the second season of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff! We’d love to have you join us! You can register for the session right here.  In every episode we answer questions from readers […]

Lumio – Connect With Your Class

Disclosure: Lumio is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Lumio is a new online learning platform that you can use to create and deliver engaging lessons wherever you are and wherever students are. I’ve spent the last two weeks testing it out and I can confidently say that I haven’t been this excited about a service […]

ClassPoint – Turn PowerPoint Into an Interactive Teaching Tool

Disclosure: ClassPoint is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com ClassPoint is a new-to-me PowerPoint tool that I’m excited to see used in online and in-person classroom and conference settings. At first glance you might think it’s just a poll and quiz tool. However, when you look a little deeper you’ll see that ClassPoint is more than just […]

How to Hyperlink PowerPoint Slides for Choose-Your-Own Adventure Stories

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I shared five uses for PowerPoint and Google Slides besides making presentations. One of those uses is to create choose-your-own adventure stories. To do that students have to know how to link slides together. In this short tutorial I demonstrate how to do that in the Windows 10 […]

How to Create a Random Name and Group Picker

Flippity has gone through some changes over the last few months that were frustrating for users (and the developer). Fortunately, it seems that almost all of the kinks have been worked out and the current version of Flippity is in some ways easier to use than ever before. For example, the random name picker tool […]

Engineering, Games, and Puns – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it’s a brisk 24F while I wait for the sun to rise. After the sun rises and it warms up a bit, I’m going on my favorite bike route for one last time before cold and snow make it unpleasant, if not impossible, to ride again until spring. If you’re […]

Webinar Recording and Next Live Webinar – Two EdTech Guys Take Questions

Last week Rushton Hurley and I hosted the fourth fall installment of our Two EdTech Guys Take Questions series. In the episode we answered questions about making green screen videos, questions about collecting audio-only responses from students, and questions about making ebooks. We also answered a few Google Workspace-related questions. You can watch the full […]

NatGeo MapMaker – Create, Share, and Print Custom Maps

National Geographic MapMaker is a nice mapping tool that I’ve been using and recommending for years. It was recently updated with an improved user interface, additional data sets, and more annotation tools.  With NatGeo MapMaker you can create custom maps to display datasets, to compare datasets, to illustrate collerelations, and to illustrate points. National Geographic […]

Google Docs Gets an Improved Citation Option

For a few years I recommended EasyBib’s Google Docs add-on for creating citations and bibliographies in Google Documents. I got away from it when it started to get glitchy. What I always liked about it was that it had an integrated resource search that made it easy to quickly look up books and websites then […]

Reading Progress + ReadWorks in Microsoft Teams = Awesome!

This fall I’ve been seeing a lot of people Tweet about how much they like the new Reading Progress feature in Microsoft Teams. Not being a regular Teams user myself, I didn’t give it a good look until this week. I wish I had looked at it sooner!  Reading Progress in Microsoft Teams gives you […]

TinyTap – Create Your Own Educational Games in Your Browser

TinyTap is a company that is best known for its iPad app that lets teachers create educational games to share with their students. I’ve used it and written about it for almost a decade. Recently, TinyTap made a fantastic update. You can now use TinyTap to create your own educational games in the web browser […]

Certify’em – Send Personalized Certificates via Google Forms

Certify’em is a Google Forms add-on that I’ve been using for the last few years whenever I need to distribute personalized certificates. Certify’em will automatically send certificates to students when they get a minimum score on a quiz conducted with Google Forms. You set the minimum passing score that triggers the delivery of the certificate. […]

How to Use Google Books

Google Books is one of my favorite search tools. Unfortunately, students often overlook it as a research tool unless they’ve been shown how it works. In this short video I provide a demonstrate of the key features of the current version of Google Books.  In the video you’ll see how to: Search for a book.  […]

Embed Google Forms & Microsoft Forms into Canva Designs

It seem like every week I find something new and interesting that can be done with Canva. Last Friday I discovered that you can embed working Google Forms and Microsoft Forms into your Canva designs. This works with Canva’s website templates as well as presentation and infographic templates.  In this short video I demonstrate how […]

The Most Popular Posts in October

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on the month of  October. Some of the colorful leaves of autumn are still clinging to the trees, but more are on the ground than in the trees now. Hopefully, I’ll get them cleaned up before the snow flies (that could be any day now). But […]

Widgets, Videos, and Maps – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where my kids are eagerly anticipating Halloween! They had a little celebration at their preschool on Friday and now they can’t wait to put on their costumes tomorrow. It’s kind of a bleak and rainy day here so we just might let them wear their costumes for fun today as well. […]

How to Use Canva’s Image Background Remover

It’s not a secret that I really like the many ways that Canva can be used to create graphics, videos, presentations, and simple websites. Within any Canva template there are lots of neat editing tools including an image background remover. It’s available to anyone who has a free Canva for Education account.  Canva’s image background […]

A Good Source of Last-minute Halloween Games

I mentioned this in the list of Halloween-themed resources that I shared a few weeks ago, but I thought it would be worth reminding you that Kahoot has a huge gallery of Halloween-themed games. You can find those games by clicking the “Discover” tab in your Kahoot dashboard and then entering the search term “Halloween” […]

An Easy Way to Remove Things from Pictures

CleanUp.Pictures is a new online tool for quickly editing your pictures. With CleanUp.Pictures you can selectively remove objects and imperfections from your pictures. You can also use it to blur faces in your pictures. To use CleanUp.Pictures all that you need to do is go to the site, upload the picture you want to edit, […]

How to Share Specific Google Earth Views and Turn Them Into Assignments

Google Earth has a lot of great little features that sometimes get overlooked. One of those features is the ability to share a specific location and view of that location. In fact, you can share a specific location and view directly into your Google Classroom. When you share it you can share it as an […]

Accessible Online Physics Simulations

PhET is a service that provides free interactive math and science simulations covering topics in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. It has been popular with science and math teachers for many years. Recently, I learned that PhET has been developing some simulations that offer online accessibility features including alternative inputs for navigation and […]

Free Webinar on Thursday – Two EdTech Guys Take Questions

This Thursday at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I are hosting the second episode of the second season of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff! We’d love to have you join us! You can register for the session right here.  In every episode we answer questions from readers […]

BookWidgets – Create Unique Online Activities for Your Students

BookWidgets is a service for creating interactive online activities. It has been on my radar for a while and last week I finally gave it a try. I wish I had tried it sooner. BookWidgets lets you create online interactive activities for your students to complete on any device. One of the best things about […]

Accessibility in Google Docs and Slides

On Saturday morning I published a video about word art, fonts, and special characters in Google Docs and Slides. Later in the day someone Tweeted at me to “make sure the fonts are accessible.” I replied with a section of my free Practical Ed Tech Handbook that is dedicated to accessibility. An excerpt of that […]

Tips on Word Art, Fonts, and Special Characters in Google Docs and Slides

Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who wanted some advice to pass along to colleagues about using custom fonts in Google Docs. I made this short video to lend some assistance. Before you watch the video there are a few things to note about fonts in Google Docs and Slides.  Unfortunately, […]

Create a Portfolio With Carrd.co

I often get asked for recommendations for simple website builders that teachers and students can use to create small websites. Google Sites is fine, but the aesthetics still have a long way to go. Services like WordPress and Weebly are great, but have way more menus and options than what’s needed for a quick and […]

Google Adds More Audio and Video Controls to Google Meet

This week Google announced a new feature that will be welcomed by any teacher who regularly uses Google Meet to host online classes. That feature is the ability to selectively mute participant audio and video. For quite a while you’ve been able to mute all participants and turn off their webcams. The new feature prevents […]

Reminder – Old Google Sites are Going Away!

After five years of warnings, Google is finally ending support for the old version of Google Sites on December 1st. If you’ve been clinging to the hope that Google wouldn’t force you to transition to the current version of Google Sites, it’s time to give up that hope and convert your old site to the […]

I’m Feeling Lucky – A Google Earth Lesson

From voyages to games to simple measuring tools, the web version of Google Earth has a lot of neat features that can help students learn about the world. One of those neat features is the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button that is found on the left hand toolbar in Google Earth. Clicking that button will take […]

Five Ways to Use Wakelet in Your Classroom

Yesterday’s blog post about using Wakelet to create instructional videos got me thinking about other ways that Wakelet can be used in classrooms. Here’s an overview of five ways to think about using Wakelet in your classroom.  Create an Instructional Video Prompt of the Day.If you’re not using a learning management system that contains an […]

How to Record an Instructional Video in Wakelet

Wakelet is an excellent tool for creating collections of bookmarks, notes, and files to share with your students. It has has a built-in video creation tool in the form of a Flipgrid integration. That integration allows you to create videos with your webcam, by recording your screen, by recording on a virtual whiteboard, or a […]

An Easy Way to Make an Animated Video in Canva

Last week Canva launched a new online video editing studio. I gave it a try last week and recorded a short overview of the basics of how it works. Yesterday, I spent more time diving into all of the features within Canva’s video editor and found some gems. One of those gems is the ability […]

An Overview of Google Forms Quiz Settings

Back in July I published a series of videos and blog posts detailing what you need to know to get started using Google Classroom, Drive, Docs, Slides, and Forms in your classroom (those are linked below). Of course, Google had to make some updates to Google Forms right at the start of the new school […]

How to Share Google Arts & Culture Experiences in Google Classroom

Last week Google Arts & Culture published a great online exhibit titled Walk the Great Wall. It’s a fantastic colleciton of Street View imagery and multimedia stories about the Great Wall of China. As I wrote last week, Walk the Great Wall includes detailed imagery of the bricks of the wall, short lessons about the […]

Self-Paced Professional Development

The primary means through which I am able to keep Free Technology for Teachers going is through consulting and speaking engagements along with the sales of my live and on-demand Practical Ed Tech courses.  The latest addition to my catalog of on-demand courses was made last month when I released Search Strategies Students Need to […]

How to Create a Video in Canva

Yesterday, Canva released a new video editor. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about it, Canva has had some video creation tools for a couple of years, but this is a new option that can be used to create anything from a thirty second personal introduction clip to a long documentary-style video and anything in […]

A New Video Editing Tool from Canva

Over the years I’ve used Canva to create everything from simple social media graphics to websites and dozens of things in between including making short video presentations. Today, Canva introduced a new video editor that goes beyond the basics of the previous video creation options available in Canva.  Canva’s new video editor includes hundreds of […]

Blackbird – Coding as a Conduit

Last spring I trialed a new learn-to-code platform called Blackbird. As I wrote in May, I liked it and most of my students liked it. This fall Blackbird introduced an updated user interface and a new slogan of “Coding as a Conduit.” The mission of Blackbird remains the same as before. That mission being to […]

Ten Skills Students Can Learn from Google’s Applied Digital Skills Lessons

Disclosure: this article was written as a paid partnership with Google for Education.  Over the years I’ve always recommended creating your own lesson plans as much as possible. However, the reality is that sometimes we just run out of ideas and need to borrow some inspiration from others. That is why, after more than a […]

My Updated List of Halloween-themed Activities and Resources

Halloween is just a couple of weeks away. My daughters are getting excited to wear their costumes (they’re going to be Winnie the Pooh and Tigger). Their excitement reminded me that it’s time for me to publish my annual list of Halloween-themed lesson activities and resources. This year’s list includes some of my old favorites […]

How to Combine Multiple Google Forms Questions in One New Form

One of my top time-savers when creating a new Google Form is to import questions from other forms that I’ve previously created. For example, if I’m making a quiz for my current students I will import questions from quizzes that I made the year before. I don’t re-use the entire quiz from the previous. I […]

How to Schedule Re-use of Google Forms

Earlier this week a reader sent me a question about re-using the same Google Form multiple times per week or month. The idea being that students would answer the same questions multiple times throughout the week or month and the teacher would be able to see all of the responses in the same Google Sheet.  […]

Cybersecurity Awareness Month – Safety Tips Sheets, Posters, and Lesson Plans

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Stop.Think.Connect. has a large collection of posters, tip sheets, and videos that you can use to promote good online safety practices in your school or office. You can find all of them in this gallery which can be sorted according to resource type (poster, tip sheet, video, meme). The Stop.Think.Connect. tip sheets can be previewed […]

Webinar Recording – Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions – Season 2, Episode 3

Last Thursday Rushton Hurley and I hosted the third episode of this season of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. As we alway do we answered a some interesting questions from readers and viewers including questions about Google Slides add-ons, finding copyright-friendly and classroom-friendly pictures, and connecting classrooms. We also shared […]

Resources for Connecting Classrooms

Yesterday, during Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions Rushton and I answered a question about how teachers can find other classroom to connect with for collaborative learning. We came up with three suggestions. Those suggestions are explained below.  GridPals Flipgrid’s GridPals is available to any teacher who has a Flipgrid account. Through Gridpals you can […]

How to Find and Manage Google Slides Add-ons

One of the questions that I received this week for Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions was a rather broad question of, “do you have any favorite Google Slides add-ons for high school students?” That’s kind of a hard question to answer without having more context of what you want students to accomplish in Google […]

Free Writing Prompts Ebooks

Disclosure: Make Beliefs Comix is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Developing an idea for what to write about is often a hard first step for student writers. Fortunately, there are resources like the Make Beliefs Comix journaling ebooks filled with ideas for students to write about. Many of those ebooks are excellent for social emotional learning […]

How to Create Comics – A Four-Part MOMA Series

From telling personal stories to summarizing historical events to illustrating creating writing over the years I’ve shared a bunch of ideas for using comics in classrooms. And I’ve shared a bunch of tools for creating comics (resources linked at the bottom of this post). While I enjoy the process of creating comics, I am not […]

Spaces – Capturing & Celebrating Student Growth

Disclosure: Spaces is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Spaces is a free digital portfolio tool that launched earlier this year and has quickly become one of my top recommendations for teachers and students who want to bring Portfolio-based assessment into their classrooms. Since it came to my attention in the middle of the last school […]

40 OneNote and Outlook Tips for Teachers and Students

Mike Tholfsen is a product manager for Microsoft Education and the producer of some excellent Microsoft product tutorial videos for teachers. I recently mentioned one of his videos in my weekly newsletter. For those who missed it, the video I mentioned was 20 Outlook Web Tips and Tricks 2021.  In 20 Outlook Web Tips and […]

New Google Meet Settings for Google Classroom Users

For many of us virtual meetings and online classes aren’t going away anytime soon. Google has responded to that by steadily adding more features to Google Meet over the last eighteen months. The latest features improve handling of Google Meet within Google Classroom.  Now when you use the Meet link within Google Classroom students will […]

Taskade – A Complete Project Planning Solution for Teachers and Students

Disclosure: Taskade is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com.  Taskade is a flexible, collaborative project planning and task management tool. The thing that I appreciate about Taskade is that it can be used for things as simple as a daily, personal to-do list or as complex as collaboratively planning a year-long curriculum writing project.   Like […]

A Solution When Google Forms or Microsoft Forms Won’t Do What You Need

Google Forms and Microsoft Forms can be used to accomplish a lot of common school tasks like creating self-grading quizzes, managing sign-out/sign-in sheets, and collecting survey data. But there are some tasks that Google Forms and Microsoft Forms can’t do or can only do in a rather convoluted way. I was reminded of this when […]

A Small, Helpful Change to Google Slides

Last week I shared a couple of updates to Google Docs, including watermarking documents, that teachers and students should find helpful. There was also a small update made to Google Slides last week. That update was to replace the “Present” button with a “Slideshow” button.  If you don’t already see it, in the next week or […]

Supreme Court Lesson Plans

C-SPAN Classroom is a must-bookmark for anyone who teaches U.S. History. The large collection of free lesson plans is one of the things that keeps C-SPAN Classroom on the top of my list of go-to resources for more than a decade. And if you’re a member of C-SPAN Classroom (membership is free) you’ll get regular […]

Docs, Guesses, and Hats – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it definitely feels like Fall. This week I had to break out my stash of winter hats (my Canadian friends would call them toques). It’s cheaper to put on a hat and sweater than it is to turn on the furnace. Before I had kids I always tried to make […]

How to Add Watermarks to Google Documents

Earlier this week Google announced that a new watermark feature would soon be added to Google Documents. That new feature appeared in one of my Google accounts this morning so I immediately gave it a try. The new watermark feature in Google Docs is very easy to use. In this short video I demonstrate how […]

How to Turn a Spreadsheet Into Multimedia Flashcards

This fall I’ve answered more questions about creating flashcards than I have in the previous few years. In almost every instance Flippity has been my suggestion for a free tool to create sets of multimedia flashcards.  Flippity’s flashcard template lets you create multimedia flashcards by simply entering terms into a Google Sheet. Your flashcards can […]

Getting Started With Padlet – What You Need to Know

Padlet is a tool that I’ve been using and recommending to others for more than a decade. I started using it back when it was known as Wall Wisher. I often used it to create digital KLW charts with my U.S. History students. Over the years Padlet has evolved by adding more features, updates to […]

My Top Five Productivity Tips

This is an excerpt from my weekly Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week Newsletter. The newsletter is sent out every Sunday evening (Eastern Time). In my newsletter you’ll find my favorite tip of the week as well as a list of my most popular posts of the week. You can register for the newsletter […]

Five Google Calendar Features You Should Know How to Use

It has been a while since I made any tutorials about Google Calendar. The user interface, particulary the user interface for background settings, has changed a bit since the last time I published a tutorial about Google Calendar. So when a reader sent me a question about calendar sharing, I was prompted to create a […]

Two New Google Docs Features to Note

This week Google announced the addition of two new features in Google Docs. Both new features will be welcomed by teachers and students.  The first new feature is an increase in the size of the comments box in Google Docs. Currently, the comments box accomodates 35 characters before a new line is created. The new […]

Two More Helpful YouTube Features for Teachers

Last week I published a video in which I detailed five helpful YouTube features for teachers. After I recorded that video I thought of two more features that I should have included. Therefore, I recorded another video that is simply titled Two More Helpful YouTube Features for Teachers.  In this short video I demonstrate how […]

City Guesser 3.0 – More Maps and More Modes

About six months ago City Guesser 2.0 was released. The big news then was a switch from being based on street-level imagery to street-level video clips. Now City Guesser 3.0 is out and it still uses street-level video clips but now offers more games and more game modes than before.  City Guesser 3.0 is played […]

Five Google Earth Features for Teachers

Google Earth has been one of my favorite ed tech tools for more than a decade. Over the years it has evolved as a desktop application and as a browser-based application. The web browser version of Google Earth seems to be getting the bulk of development attention from Google these days so I’ve created a […]

Family Fun With Make Beliefs Comix

Disclosure: Make Beliefs Comix is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Last month I outlined five ideas for using comics in your classroom. One of those ideas included having students tell stories from their lives outside of school. Continuing on that train of thought, Make Beliefs Comix has a new page of resources designed for families.  […]

Thinking, Blurring, and Coloring – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the humidity is making everything feel wet. That’s okay because I’m going fishing and will get wet anyway. It’s the last weekend of the fishing season on my favorite river and I’m hoping to catch a few landlocked salmon to end the year. I hope that you have something fun […]

Five Helpful YouTube Features for Teachers

YouTube offers a bunch of features that are sometimes overlooked or under-utilized despite being quite helpful when sharing videos in your classroom. In this new video I demonstrate five of those features.  Playlists By default your Google/ YouTube account has a playlist titled “watch later.” That’s a private playlist to which you can save any […]

What Would We Eat on Mars? And Other Fun Science Questions

Long-time followers of my blog have probably noticed that I really like the videos produced by SciShow Kids. Their videos cover a wide range of science topics and almost all of them answer questions that elementary school students are apt to ask. For example, one of the recent releases from SciShow Kids asks, “what would […]

Create Your Own Breakout EDU Games

Disclosure: Breakout EDU is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com A week ago I shared a handful of fun Breakout EDU games for in-person and online classrooms. A couple of those games were actually designed, built, and shared by teachers and not by Breakout EDU staff. In fact, Breakout EDU encourages teachers to create a Breakout […]

How to Create Custom Coloring Maps

There are plenty of places on the Internet to find free outline maps of states, provinces, countries, and regions of the world. Finding blank outline maps of cities, small towns, or neighborhoods is a little harder to do. If you’re looking for a blank map of a city, town, or neighborhood for your students to […]

An Easy Way to Find Movie Clips to Include in Your Lessons

ClassHook is a service that I’ve been using and recommending for the last few years. It provides a good way to find clips from movies and television shows to use in your lessons. You can search it according Common Core standard, recommended grade level, and subject area. Recently, ClassHook added another search option. ClassHook’s new […]

Two Easy Ways to Blur Faces and Objects in Your Videos

Recording short video clips and posting them on your classroom or school website is a great way for parents and other community members to learn about the great things that are happening in your classroom and school. When you do that you wan to make sure that you’re not accidentally sharing something that shouldn’t be […]

Two Ways to Make Timelines Based on Books

On Sunday evening a reader of my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter replied with a question about creating timelines. She was looking for suggestions for a timeline tool that her tenth grade students can use to create a timeline based on books they’ve read. This is something that I’ve done in the past with some of […]

Tract – Project-based, Peer-to-Peer Learning

Disclosure: Tract is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Tract is a new service that offers fun lessons for elementary school and middle school students taught by high school and college students. The lessons and corresponding activities cover a wide array of fun and interesting topics. On Tract you will find lessons about photography, gaming, cooking, music, […]

Share Voice Notes via Mote QR Codes

Earlier this year Mote emerged as one of my favorite new tools of the year. Mote is a Chrome extension that works with all of the core products in Google Workspace. With it you can add voice comments to Google Classroom, Google Docs, and Slides. You can also use it to add voice notes to Google […]

Forms, Games, and Files – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is going to be a great early fall weekend for apple picking, bike riding, and enjoying the great outdoors. I hope that wherever you are this weekend that you also have some fun things planned.  This week I hosted a webinar all about search strategies for students. If you […]

Two EdTech Guys Take Questions – Recording and Next Webinar Registration

Last week Rushton Hurley and I resumed our regular series of free webinars plainly titled Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. If you missed it, you can watch the recording right here and view all of the associated resources here.  The next live episode will be on Thursday, September 23rd at […]

Ziplet – A Good Way to Share Digital Exit Tickets

Ziplet is a service for gathering feedback from your students in a variety of ways. The simplest way is to create an exit ticket by using one of the dozens of pre-written questions provided by Ziplet. Back in July I published a video about how to use Ziplet. Since then it has been updated to […]

Five Helpful Google Keep Features for Students

Google Keep is a great tool for middle school and high school students to use to create assignment reminders, bookmark important research findings, organize information, save images, and re-use notes in their research documents. All of those features and more are demonstrated in my new video, Five Google Keep Features for Students.  Five features of […]

An Idea for Using Padlet for Self Reflection in K-2

I get a lot of questions sent to me throughout the week. Some of them are very specific and the answers only apply to one person. Others have the potential for a broader appeal. One of those came to me earlier this week when a reader asked,  “What’s the best interactive tool that we can […]

It’s the Last Year for Weebly for Education

More than a decade ago Weebly was one of the first DIY website builders that recommended to teachers. I helped countless teachers and their students create classroom websites with Weebly for Education. This morning I got the news via email that Weebly (now owned by Square) has decided to shutter Weebly for Education in 2022. […]

Five Fun Breakout Games for Online and In-person Classrooms

Disclosure: Breakout EDU is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com.  Like a lot of teachers, one of my biggest challenges last year was building a sense of community in my classroom. Without having more than half of my students in my physical classroom for more than a few days before we went back to online or hybrid […]

Make Multimedia Mind Maps in Padlet

A few weeks ago I published a list of fifteen tools for creating mind maps and flowcharts. Padlet was one of the tools that I mentioned in that list. Since then Padlet’s user interface was updated. The update makes it even easier than before to create a mind map or flowchart in Padlet. In this […]

Webinar This Thursday – Search Strategies Students Need to Know

This Thursday at 4pm ET I’m hosting the new version of my most popular Practical Ed Tech webinar, Search Strategies Students Need to Know.  The updated version of this webinar includes new handouts for you and your students. These include templates for formulating lessons to teach search strategies and templates for students to follow when […]

A Simple Trick to Make Audio Editing Easier

In this week’s Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I featured five podcasting tips for students and teachers. One of those tips was to “clap and pause.” That tip is demonstrated in the short video that is embedded below.  Editing an audio recording is much easier if you make a loud clap before a brief pause and […]

How to Find Image Metadata

Behind every digital image that you capture there is a bunch of information that isn’t visible to the naked eye. That information is called metadata and it includes information like when and where the image was taken, what kind of camera was used, and the original size and color scheme of the image. Much of […]

Student Video Project – Timelapse of Fall

The fall is my favorite season of the year. I love waking up to cold, crisp mornings then enjoying mild days outside. In fact, that’s what I’m planning to do tomorrow morning. This time of year always reminds me of one of my favorite uses for time-lapse video creation tools. The outline of my time-lapse […]

How to Make Chrome Run a Little Faster

There was a time when Google Chrome was the new kid on the block and promised faster browsing and faster page load time. That hasn’t been the case for many years now. In fact, now when I hear colleagues, students, or others complain about their computers or Chromebooks running slowly the first thing I do […]

Typing, Blurring, and Captioning – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining on what should be a gorgeous early autumn day. I would be remiss not to mention that today is the 20th anniversary of terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I remember it like it was yesterday, part of what I remember is that the weather was […]

Save Google Forms Responses in Progress

About a month ago Google announced that they were finally adding an autosave option to Google Forms. This new features lets students leave a Google Form and then come back to it later to finish answering the questions on it. The option to save work in progress in Google Forms is rolling out to all […]

Create, Reflect, Outline, Create – A Video Creation Process

On page 76 of Invent To Learn Stager and Martinez write, “The movie can be done without a storyboard or script, the 3D object may not be the most precisely planned out, but the point is to create something that can be shared and talked about.” Later in the same chapter they advise avoiding overteaching […]

Tinkering With Arduino in Tinkercad

Tinkercad is a free service that I used for the last two years to introduce my students to designing and building Arduino-powered circuits, cars, and simple machines. As I wrote back in January, Tinkercad was great for introdcuing Arduino in a pandemic. Besides the Arduino aspect, Tinkercad is also a great place to find inspiration […]

Blur Faces and Objects in Screencastify Videos

Disclosure: Screencastify is currently an advertiser on my sites.  Earlier this week I published a post about Screencastify’s new feature for adding interactive questions into your videos. That’s not the only new thing that Screencastify offers in its updated video editor. Another great feature is the option to blur faces and objects in your Screencastify […]

How to Quickly Create a Bibliography in Word

In my previous post I wrote about why every fall I revisit how to cite sources and create bibliographies. In that post I also included directions for using inline citation and bibliography generator in Google Docs. Microsoft Word has a very similar tool that students can use.  In this short video I demonstrate how to […]

How to Cite Sources in Google Docs

At the beginning of every school year I like to revisit some topics with my students to which they always say, “we learned this last year.” One of those topics is citing the sources of the information that they use in their writing and in their presentations. It never hurts to review this information with […]

How to Generate Captions for Any Video

YouTube will automatically generate captions for almost any video that you find. Likewise, it will automatically generate captions for videos that you upload to your account. That’s great if you want to use YouTube. But if you have a video that isn’t on YouTube and you need to display captions with it, there is a […]

How to Quickly Create Comics With Make Beliefs Comix

Disclosure: Make Beliefs Comix is currently an advertiser on this site.  Make Beliefs Comix is a good tool for creating comic strips for all kinds of purposes including teaching empathy, practicing writing in a new language, and telling fun stories. Last week I outlined those ideas and more in this blog post.  The best thing […]

Combine Canva and Google Drawings to Make Graphic Organizer Activities

Last fall I published some videos about using Google Drawings and Google Jamboard to create labeling activities, mapping activities, and some graphic organizer activities. Those all relied on using the drawing tools built into Google Drawings and Jamboard. The aesthetics of the activities was limited by your imagination and what you could do with the […]

Two Ed Tech Guys Return! – Free Webinar This Thursday

My pal Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I are starting the second season of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff! The first episode of the new season is this Thursday at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT. We’d love to have you join us! You can register for the session […]

The Difference Between a Chrome Profile and a Google Account

This morning as I was starting to get caught up on a backlog of email I answered a question from a reader who wanted to know if I had a video about Chrome profiles that she could share with her staff. I do, here it is. In the video I demonstrate and explain the difference […]

How to Build Questions Into Screencastify Videos

Disclosure: Screencastify is currently an advertiser on my sites.  A couple of weeks ago Screencastify announced the launch of some new features in their video editor. One of those new features is the ability to add interactive questions into your videos. You can do this with videos that you record with the Screencastify Chrome extension […]

21 Canva Tutorials for Teachers

This is an update to a post that I published earlier this year. Since the original publication I’ve created a couple more Canva tutorials to bring the list to 21.  I’ve been using Canva to make all kinds of graphics and presentations almost since the day it was first available to the public. Over the […]

Three Good Places to Find Ideas for Makerspaces

Makerspaces can be a great place for students to tinker and experiment with desgins for all kinds of things from 3D printed objects to wind-powered model cars to cardboard robots. The possibilities seem limited only by the budget and materials you have available. However, while some students are naturally inclined to come up with all […]

Three Good Tools for Recording and Publishing Audio Conversations

This is an excerpt from the latest version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. You can get your own copy for free when you sign-up for my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter.  Synth is a free service that was designed for classroom use. It has had some significant updates in 2021. Originally, Synth limited recordings to […]

Add Your Voice to Google Forms

Yesterday I shared five Google Forms refreshers for the new school year. That post focused on settings that are built into Google Forms. You can do even more with Google Forms when you install Google Forms add-ons and or Chrome extensions. For example, you can add voice recordings to your Google Forms through the use […]

Five Google Forms Refreshers for the New School Year

Answering a reader’s question about Google Jamboard ideas that she should pass along to her colleagues prompted me to think about some “need to know” features of other Google Workspace tools for teachers. My mind turned to Google Forms as it is a tool that when used correctly can help be a huge time-saver for […]

11 Search Tips and Tools for Teachers and Students

As some of you have noticed, I wrote quite a bit about search tools and search strategies in July and early August. What you saw in those posts were excerpts from two projects that I’ve been working on. The first was The Practical Ed Tech Handbook (available to subscribers to my newsletter). The second is […]

Five Ideas for Using Google Jamboard This Fall

A couple of weeks ago I published an excerpt from The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. That excerpt mentioned a couple of ways to use Google Jamboard in online and in-person classroom settings. This morning I had a reader reach out to me to ask if I had any other suggestions that she could pass along […]

Five Ways to Use Comics in Your Classroom This Fall

Disclosure: Make Beliefs Comix is a new advertiser on this site.  Creating comics is one of my favorite creativity exercises.When I was a kid I loved flipping through books of Peanuts comics. Unfortunately, I could never draw as well as Charles Schultz. Today, thanks to tools like Make Beliefs Comix, you don’t have to be […]

7 Tools for Teaching Programming

This is an excerpt from the 2021-22 version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. Two weeks ago a copy was sent to everyone who is subscribed to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter. If you’re not subscribed, you can do so here.  For some of us of a certain age, Logo was our introduction to computers […]

Five Benefits of Conducting Mind Mapping Activities

On Wednesday morning I published a long list of tools that students can use to create mind maps, concept maps, and flowcharts. What I didn’t include in that blog post was a description of the differences between the those three things. I also didn’t outline the benefits of mind mapping that students can experience. The […]

Five Ideas for Using Google Drawings This Fall

A couple of weeks ago I shared directions for an icebreaker activity that can be done in Jamboard or Google Drawings. Jamboard and Google Drawings have a lot of similarities. There are some differences between the two that can make one better than the other depending upon the use case. Here are five ways to […]

An Important Update About Flippity

Flippity is one of my go-to resources for making fun things like games and random name pickers with Google Sheets. Recently, some of the Flippity templates stopped working as they originally did. I first experienced this during a live webinar earlier this month. At first I thought it was just a quirk and it would […]

Fifteen Tools for Creating Mind Maps and Flowcharts

Earlier this year I published some reviews and videos about a few new mind mapping tools. As the new school year begins I think it’s time that I add those new tools my list of mind mapping creation tools for students and teachers. Here’s my updated list of mind mapping and flowchart creation tools. Gitmind […]

Five Ideas for Using Google Earth & Maps for More Than Social Studies Lessons

Later this week I’m conducting an online professional development workshop about Google Earth and Maps. One of my goals for the workshop is to help participants develop ideas for using Google Earth and Google Maps for more than just geography and history lessons. To that end I’ve put together a short list of ideas and […]

Five Ideas for Using 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 […]

A Good Model for Audio Slideshow Video Projects

This morning I was looking for some short videos about the history of Labor Day. In doing so I came across The History of Labor Day as produced by TAPintoTV. The content of the video was accurate and it provided a nice summary of origins of Labor Day. That’s not what made me bookmark it. […]

An Update to Google Meet Call Quality

One of the most annoying things to start any video call is the process of resolving sound quality issues like a persistent echo. Google recently announced an update to Google Meet to address that problem.  Google Meet will now notify you when your audio is causing an echo for others. In other words, even though […]

How I Created “Vintage” Travel Posters With Canva

In the past I’ve written about using the Library of Congress vintage travel posters collection in Google Earth. Last week I read a new Library of Congress blog post the vintage travel posters collection. Reading that post inspired me try my hand at creating a “vintage” travel poster of my own. Drawing is not a […]

Five Google Docs Activities Besides Just Writing Essays

Over the last fourteen years I’ve used Google Docs and had students use Google Docs for lots of activities besides just writing essays. I’ve used Google Documents to facilitate analysis of primary sources, to create charts and diagrams, to facilitate group note-taking, to publish simple webpages, and to make collaborative task lists. All of those […]

A Tip for Structuring Group Notes in Google Docs

Fourteen years ago when I first started using Google Docs with students I got the idea to have my whole class take notes on the same document. It sounded good in my head on my drive to school. In practice it was a disaster as my students were quickly frustrated by accidentally writing over each […]

Images, Inquiry, and Virtual Backgrounds – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising on what should be a great weekend to celebrate my oldest daughter’s fifth birthday! I’m sure every parent says the same, but I can’t believe how fast she’s growing. It seems like just yesterday I was holding her in the hospital and now she’s asking me […]

Five Things To Make With Google Slides Besides Standard Presentations

Based on the initial view count, yesterday’s post about creating interactive diagrams in Google Slides seems to be fairly popular. That’s inspired me to put together a list of other ways to use Google Slides besides just making standard slideshow presentations. I’ve made videos about all of the following ideas and those videos are included […]

The 2021-22 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Earlier this week subscribers to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter received their free copies of the 2021-22 edition of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. It’s a 75 page PDF that features my favorite tools, tips, and strategies for using a wide variety of educational technology tools in your classroom. If you’re not subscribed to my […]

How to Create Interactive Charts and Diagrams in Google Slides

Google Slides is full of little “hidden” features that are good to know how to use after you’ve covered the basics of using Google Slides. One of those little features is the ability to hyperlink any text or object within a slide. Another handy feature is a selection of premade charts and diagrams that you […]

Birds, Fish, and a Search Tip for Science Students

Some of you may recall from my posts earlier this year that my family and I have a lot of birds that nest around our house. We put out lots of bird feeders and hanging plants which attract all kinds of birds. Some of our favorites are Orioles and Yellow Finches. Recently, I learned that […]

Last Chance! Update Your Old Google Sites

Google is finally closing the book on the old “Classic” version of Google Sites on September 1st. They’ve been threatening to do this for almost five years and now the sun will set on Classic Google Sites at the end of this month. If you haven’t converted your old Google Sites to the current version […]

Flipgrid Virtual Backgrounds – How and Why

Last week Flipgrid unveiled a list of features for the 2021-22 school year. One of those new features is an updated menu virtual background options called backdrops. In the latest version of Flipgrid you can choose from a large selection of virtual background images or upload your own. Additionally, you can reposition yourself in front […]

Three Audio Slideshow Projects for Students to Try

Tools like Adobe Spark, Typito, Shadow Puppet Edu, and old-standby Animoto make it easy for students to quickly create videos. I often use these tools when introducing video production projects to teachers or students who have never attempted make videos in their classrooms. Here are three types of assignments that you can build around audio slideshow video tools. Biographical/ […]

Five Good Tools for Making Your Own Educational Games and Practice Activities

Making online educational games used to be the domain of those with specialized coding and programming skills. Today, there are free tools that anyone can use to create their own educational games for students. Likewise, there are now some excellent free tools for creating online skills practice and knowledge recall activities to share with your […]

Two Ed Tech Guys are Returning This Fall!

Throughout the 2020-21 school year Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I hosted a series of webinars titled Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff. We’re going to do it again this year! We’ve settled on hosting the webinars on Thursdays, but we need a little help picking the best […]

How to Create a Random Question Generator

Earlier this week I shared directions for an icebreaker activity in which students complete the sentence, “where I’d like to go…” with a picture of themselves in front of a place they’d like to visit. That’s a great activity, but it’s not necessarily a quick activity. If you’re looking for a quick icebreaker activity, having […]

Poetry, Maps, and Templates – Google Jamboard Activities to Try

This is an excerpt from the 2021-22 version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook which will be released on Sunday evening (Eastern Time). If you’re subscribed to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter, a copy of the handbook will be sent to you on Sunday.   Google’s Jamboard became wildly popular during the 2020-21 school year and […]

Ideas for Blogging With K-12 Students This Year

This blog post is an excerpt from the updated 2021-22 version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook which will available this weekend. Subscribe to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter to have a PDF copy sent directly to you on August 15th. Whether your students are just learning how to type or they’re aspiring journalists, there […]

Coming Soon! The 2021-22 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Seven years ago I published the first version of The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. Every year since then I’ve published an updated version. The new version for the 2021-22 school year is almost done. It’s free and will be sent to everyone who subscribes to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter.  The 2021-22 version of The […]

Where I’d Like to Go – An Icebreaker With Google Drawings

As the new school year starts many you may find yourself looking for some new ideas to break the ice and get to know your new students while they also get to know each other. One thing that I’ve always asked my students is “where in the world would you go if you could go […]

Image Search and Autodraw – My Favorite Book Creator Design Tools

Disclosure: Book Creator is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. This post was written by me, Richard Byrne.  In yesterday’s post about Book Creator’s back-to-school resources I mentioned the integrated image search and the autodraw feature that students can use on every page of their books. Those are probably my favorite design tools incorporated into Book […]

Zoom Tip – Screen Share Zoom Windows

If you have recently updated the desktop version of Zoom you may have noticed a new option in your “in meeting” settings. That option is “show Zoom windows during screen share.” By enabling that option your screen shares will include the webcam or profile picture windows of the people who are in your meeting. See […]

How to Set Google Scholar Alerts – Two Options

I’ve published a few posts about Google Scholar lately because I think it’s a valuable research tool that students often overlook or haven’t been introduced to. It can be used to conduct research on court cases, inventions and inventors, and all kinds of academic topics. There’s one more feature of Google Scholar that students should […]

Great Book Creator Resources to Start the New School Year

Disclosure: Book Creator is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. This blog post was written by me, Richard Byrne. Book Creator is a versatile digital publishing tool that I’ve been using and recommending for years. And every school year it seems to get better. This year is not an exception to that pattern as they’ve just launched […]

How to Create Task Reminders in Gmail and Google Keep

 As the new school year approaches we’ll all, teachers and students, have goals to do something better this year. If one of those goals is to do a better job of keeping track of homework assignments and other tasks, Google Keep and Gmail have some built-in tools that can help you reach that goal. Add […]

How to Use Google Drive to Create a B-Roll Gallery for Your Classroom

The best way to have students avoid accidentally using copyrighted images or videos in their own projects is to use media that they’ve created themselves. One of the strategies that I frequently recommend to teachers as a way to help students avoid any copyright issues in their work is to use media from a classroom […]

Three Time-saving Email Tips for Teachers

Like most people I have a love-hate relationship with my email inbox. Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of tricks and tools to try to handle my inbox more efficiently. What I’ve found is that those tricks and tools only work if I also use a time-blocking strategy to decide to clear my inbox […]

Nimbus Screenshot – Scrolling Annotated Screen Captures

Nimbus Screenshot is a free Chrome extension that I’ve been using and recommending for the last half-decade. It offers tools for creating screencast videos and annotated screen capture images. Nimbus Screenshot includes a feature called Select & Scroll that proved to be very handy to me last week. Select & Scroll lets you capture not […]

Forms, Books, and Red Leaves – The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the first signs of fall appeared this week. Yesterday, while walking past my neighbor’s house I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of two red maple leaves on his lawn. Despite it being 82F and humid while I was walking, those two maple leaves made me think of […]

Add Google’s Ngram Viewer to Your List of Research Tools

Google’s Ngram Viewer is a search tool that students can use to explore the use of words and names in books published between 1800 and 2019. The Ngram Viewer shows users a graph illustrating the first appearance of a word or name in literature and the frequency with which that word or name appears in […]

How to Find the New Autosave Feature in Google Forms

Earlier this week Google announced the launch of a new autosave feature in Google Forms. As I wrote on Tuesday, teachers and students have been asking for this feature for years. That’s why I haven’t been surprised by the number of emails that I’ve gotten this week from teachers asking if they need to do […]

15 New Primary Source Activities from DocsTeach

DocsTeach has been one of my go-to places for U.S. History lessons since the day that I first discovered it years ago. Not only does DocsTeach host a large, curated collection of primary source documents it also offers templates for developing online activities about those documents. Additionally, DocsTeach offers hundreds of premade primary source lesson […]