Don’t Rely Social Media for Distributing Important School Information
Last year I wrote about the qualities of a good school district website. Unfortunately, the school district in which my kids go to school didn’t read that blog post or didn’t take any action based on it. That was driven home this week as we attempted to find the school supply lists and the schedule […]
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 […]
Lesson Plan – How to Spot Fake Screenshots
In his recently published Next Vista for Learning newsletter Rushton Hurley mentioned a cool lesson plan from PBS Learning Media. That lesson plan is titled How to Spot Fake Screenshots on Social Media. It’s an important skill for all middle school and high school students who use social media to have and this lesson plan provides […]
Newsletters vs. Blogs and Social Media – Thoughts for Tech Coaches
A few weeks ago a reader reached out to me for advice on creating a tech tips newsletter for her staff. Specifically, she wanted to know if she should create a blog and then email the posts to staff or if just a newsletter would be enough. It was a question that I was happy […]
Spot the Troll – Can You Spot Fake Social Media Accounts?
Spot the Troll is a quiz game that I recently learned about from Lee LeFever at Common Craft. Spot the Troll was developed by Clemson University’s Media Forensics Lab as a way to educate people about deceptive social media accounts. Spot the Troll presents players with eight social media profiles. Based on the clues […]
5 Ways to Create Social Videos
Yesterday, I wrote about a new video creation tool called InVideo. InVideo is one of many tools to emerge in the last couple years that is designed to help users create eye-catching videos to post on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. These videos use a mix of images and text to grab your […]
Adobe Spark Adds a New Way to Manage Your Projects
Last year Adobe finally added a collaboration option to Adobe Spark. That enabled students to remotely work together on video projects and graphic design projects. Today, Adobe added a new feature that students who are working on group projects may benefit from using. Today, Adobe announced the option to create and manage multiple brands within […]
Multi.link – A Convenient Way to Share All Your Profiles
Multi.link is a new service that makes it easy to share all of your social media profiles, websites you own, videos you produce, and pictures on one simple page. To use Multi.link just head to the site, sign-up in a minute, then start adding links. You can link to just about anything that you want […]
How to Schedule Video Releases on YouTube
YouTube has a lot of helpful little features that are often overlooked. One of those features is the option to upload videos and schedule them to appear at a later time. This can be great if you have a YouTube channel that you want keep updated with a regular schedule of new releases, but only […]
Pros and Cons of Using Social Media for School Announcements
Today at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp I was asked for my opinion about using Facebook as the primary tool for posting information for the parents of your students. Answering that question reminded me of an article that I wrote a few years ago on the same topic. An updated version of that article […]
This Chrome Extension Helps You Tune Out Negativity on Social Media
I have long said (half jokingly) that YouTube comments are a lot like the graffiti you find on the walls of dive bar bathrooms. In other words, nothing good is found in them. There are some exceptions to that rule but they are few and far between. It seems that Google agrees with me because […]
How to Save Time When Posting Social Media Updates
Yesterday, I saw quite a few Tweets and Facebook posts along the lines of “I’ll just use social media updates now” in response to the news that Remind will no longer be able to deliver text messages to Verizon users for free. If that’s your plan or you currently use social media to share updates […]
Dear Colleagues, Can We Please Stop Sharing These Things?
Can we teach critical thinking and good digital citizenship practices if we don’t use them ourselves? I’m asking because every week I see another educator in my social networks share a Facebook scam. Here are the last two that I saw shared by people who have administrative roles in schools. A posting by a page […]
Three Ways to Make Social Media Profiles for Historical and Literary Characters
Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was looking for a way that her students could create fake Facebook and other social media profiles based on historical and literary characters. The tool that I used to recommend for creating that kind of fake Facebook profile hasn’t been reliable in recent years. […]
Social Media Scenarios for Teachers to Consider
This afternoon I facilitated a faculty meeting in which my goal was to get people thinking critically about how they are currently using social media. Rather than just talking at the faculty and telling them about some real life situations, I decided to create a little a game. To create the game I simply wrote […]
If You Manage a School Facebook Page, Watch Out for This Scam
I manage a handful of Facebook Pages. This morning when I logged into Facebook I had notifications that “Verified Facebook Page” had requested administrative access to those pages. This seemed phishy to me and so rather than just clicking “accept” I stopped and thought about it then did a little research before ultimately determining that […]
A Parent’s Guide to Instagram – Including a Glossary and Discussion Questions
Instagram recently released published a fairly comprehensive guide for parents. A Parent’s Guide to Instagram, available to read online as well as download as a PDF, is intended to help parents understand how kids are using Instagram and how they can help their children use Instagram in a responsible manner. To that end the guide […]
These Chrome Extensions Can Help You Stay On Task
In my previous post I shared a few tools that can help you save time on routine tasks. A related challenge is managing your time to be more productive. Both students and adults can struggle with resisting the urge to do things like checking Facebook or checking Amazon for a sale. During the course of […]
Where You Can Follow My Work
If you’re reading this, the numbers say that you found my blog through one of the following methods: Facebook referral – Here’s the Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page. Email referral – Join the daily email list. Organic search Twitter referral – Follow me on Twitter. Pinterest referral – Follow my primary board. There are […]
Quit Social Media – Do Deep Work
Last night I watched Dr. Cal Newport‘s TEDx Talk titled Quit Social Media. In this thought-provoking talk Dr. Newport presents the case for quitting social media. He presents the case from the standpoint that social media fragments our attention and prevents us from doing deep work. To help people come to grips with the idea […]
Promoting School Events Through Social Media
My personal Facebook and Instagram feeds are starting to be filled up with pictures from holiday concerts that my friends’ kids are performing in. Seeing those pictures reminded me of a blog post that I wrote a couple of years ago in which I outlined strategies for promoting and sharing school events through social media. […]
How to Block an Instagram Account
Tweens and teens love Instagram. Common Sense Media recommends that teens and tweens use the privacy setting to restrict who can follow them on Instagram. I agree with that recommendation. But if you have teens who doesn’t listen to you (who hasn’t?) and lets anyone follow them, make sure that they and you know how […]
This is Your Brain on Snapchat
Do you spend a lot of time on Facebook? Do your students spend every spare minute on Snapchat? Have you wondered how this affects your mood or your students’ moods? If so, KQED and PBS Learning Media have a resource that you should share with your students. How Do Different Social Media Platforms Affect Your […]
The Half-life of Links and School Social Media Plans
In Randy Krum’s book, Cool Infographics (disclosure, he gave me a copy) he shares that according to research done by Bitly, the half-life of a link on Twitter and Facebook is 2.8 and 3.2 hours respectively. The half-life of a link refers to the amount of time it takes for a link to reach one-half […]
More Than 40 Examples of Classroom & School Blogs
Earlier this week at the Upstate Technology Conference in South Carolina I gave a couple of presentations about using blogs and social media in school. One of the best ways to learn about using blogs in school is to see how others are doing it. That’s why a few years ago I put together a […]
5 Handy Twitter Tips
In my previous post I shared the Classtools.net list of teachers on Twitter. Writing that post prompted me to put together a playlist of the videos that I have made to demonstrate various Twitter tips and tricks. In the playlist embedded below you can learn how to search for educational content, how to embed Tweets, […]
Classtools Offers a Good Way to Find Teachers on Twitter
Finding people to connect with is one of the most common challenges for teachers who are new to using Twitter. Classtools.net has a free service that can help teachers find other teachers to connect with on Twitter. Teachers on Twitter is a series of lists of teachers who are active on Twitter. The lists are […]
Practical Ed Tech Webinar FAQs
Starting in May and running through the end of August I will be hosting five different professional development webinars for teachers and school administrators. I recorded the video embedded below to answer some of the questions that are most frequently asked about my Practical Ed Tech webinars. Watch the video and you’ll get the discount code […]
Canva Can Help You Increase Your School’s Social Media Reach
One of the things that I always talk about in my workshop on Blog & Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders is using high resolution graphics to draw attention to your blog posts and social media posts. Canva is a free tool that can help you create high quality, high resolution graphics to make your posts […]
How to Create Twitter Moments
A few weeks ago Twitter started to allow anyone to create what Twitter calls Moments. Moments are collections of Tweets organized around a hashtag, an event, or a theme. When you create a Moment you can share it on Twitter account for others to see the Tweets that you’ve included in the Moment. In the […]
Blogs & Social Media Course for Teachers & Principals Starts Tonight
Have you ever started a classroom blog with the best of intentions only to see it fall by the wayside after a couple of months? Are you wondering, “what’s the big deal about Twitter?” Would you like to engage your students, their parents, and your community as a whole in more consistent and efficient manner? […]
Spend a Few Fall Evenings Learning New Tech Skills To Use In Your Classroom
Next week I’m starting three sections of my popular Practical Ed Tech online courses. On Monday Blogs & Social Media for Teachers & School Leaders begins. On Tuesday Getting Going With GAFE begins. Graduate credits are available for completing both of those five week courses. Teaching History With Technology is a three week course that […]
The Problem With Automating Your Blog
The web is great. Everyday a new tool appears that makes some task easier than ever to accomplish. But not every task that can be automated should be automated. For example, let’s say you decide that your organization (perhaps SETDA) needs a blog, but you cannot find time to have someone actually write blog posts […]
Beware of the Copycat Trap!
On Tuesday afternoon in Dickson, Tennessee I delivered a new version of my popular talk Ten Common Challenges Facing Educators (learn how to bring me to your conference). In my new version of the talk I include the warning to “beware of the copycat trap.” The “copycat trap” refers to the scenario in which you […]
Three Things That Get People to Read Your School or Classroom Blog
I run a lot of workshops for teachers and school administrators about using blogs and social media to connect with students and their parents. At the beginning of those workshops I almost always ask some variation of the question, “have you ever started a blog and then stopped using it?” Most of the time many […]
5 Settings You Should Know for School or Classroom Facebook Pages
As I mentioned yesterday, maintaining a Facebook fan page for your school or classroom can be a good way to keep parents informed of upcoming events. When you create a Facebook fan page for your school or classroom there are some default settings that you will want to change in order to keep the page […]
How to Use Canva to Promote School Events
One of the things that I always talk about in my workshop on Blog & Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders is using regular Facebook page updates to keep parents informed about school and classroom events. One of the things that you can do to help your Facebook posts reach more people is to […]
Tagboard Offers New Features for Following Hashtags Across Multiple Networks
Tagboard is a tool that allows you follow a hashtag and see all of the Tweets, Instagram, Facebook, and Google+ posts about it in one place. Last year I created a tutorial video about Tagboard in which I demonstrated its primary features. Today, Tagboard added some new features that teachers will probably appreciate. Tagboard now […]