Good evening from Woodstock, Maine where the last of the ice is melting from the pond near my house. My dogs and I had a full day of visiting the vet's office, walking in the woods, and doing some early spring landscaping. It was a relaxing way to spend the day. I hope that you had a relaxing weekend day too. More registrations for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps arrived this week. One month is left to grab your seat at the discounted rate. If coming to Maine isn't an option for you, take a look at the online workshops I'm hosting throughout the spring and summer. Here are this week's most popular posts: 1. Skip the Spreadsheet, Use This Add-on to Create Google Docs Word Clouds 2. Ten Things You Can Learn at the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp 3. By Search Request - Bibliography Tools for Students 4. Try the New Padlet Android App 5. A Mapped & Searchable Archive of American Newspapers 6. Six Tools for Creating Videos on Chromebooks 7. Storyboard That Offers Earth Day Lesson Plans Professional Development Opportunities!There will be two Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps this year. There will be one tailored to schools that have 1:1 Chromebook programs and one for everyone else. Both Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps will be held in July. You can learn more about them here. Discounted early registration is available now. The Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp has sold out every year for the last three years. Would you like to have me speak at your school or conference?Click here to learn about my professional development services.  Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.BoomWriter provides a fantastic tool for creating writing lessons. Cloudschool is a great online LMS and course creation tool. Google Forms in the Classroom is a good book on all things Google Forms.  Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards and cartoon stories.Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.PrepFactory offers a great place for students to prepare for SAT and ACT tests.The University of Maryland Baltimore County offers graduate programs for teachers.Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.EdTechTeacher is hosting host workshops in six cities in the U.S. in the summer. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesThe Month in Review - #MasonshomeThe Week in Review - 50 Million Page ViewsThe Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts of the Week 

As spring arrives in North America many of us are thinking about summer professional development opportunities. If you're looking for a great hands-on professional development opportunity, join me in beautiful Portland, Maine this summer. I am hosting two Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps in July in Portland, Maine just a few blocks from the ocean, lighthouses, and all the lobster you could ever want. The BYOD camp on July 11th and 12th and the Chromebook camp on July 18th and 19th have registrations starting to roll-in. Discounted early registration is available through the end of April. You can learn more about both Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps here. If you cannot make it to Maine this summer, I am offering a slate of online courses that could meet your professional development needs. Getting Going With GAFEGetting Going With GAFE is a webinar series designed for teachers and administrators who are new to using Google Apps for Education. Getting Going With GAFE is a five week course covering everything you need to know to integrate Google Drive, Google Classroom, Google Calendar, and Google Sites into your practice. Click here to learn more about the course including how to earn 3 graduate credits. Spring section I: April 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th, and May 3rd at 7pm Eastern Time. Click here to register. Spring section II: May 10th, 17th, 24th, 31st, and June 7th at 7pm Eastern Time. Click here to register.  Summer section: July 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th, and August 2nd at 7pm Eastern Time. Click here to register.  Click here to learn more about the course including how to earn 3 graduate credits. Blogs & Social Media for Teachers & School LeadersBlogs and Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders is a five week webinar series during which teachers and school administrators will learn the how to choose the best blogging platform for their situations, how to set-up a blog for classroom and school-wide use, and learn about strategies on how to manage blogs in classroom and school-wide settings. Participants will also learn how to avoid the mistakes that often lead to blogging endeavors being abandoned.  After establishing blogs we’ll jump into using social networks like Twitter, Google+, and Instagram to reach out to parents, students, and other members of school communities. Click here to learn more about the course including how to earn 3 graduate credits. Spring section dates:  April 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th, and May 5th at 7pm EST. Click here to register. Summer section dates: July 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th, and August 4th at 7pm EST. Click here to register.  Click here to learn more about the course including how to earn 3 graduate credits.   Teaching History With Technology In Teaching History With Technology you will learn how to develop engaging and challenging learning activities through the use tools like Google Earth and Maps, video production tools, primary source databases, and how to help your students become better researchers. This course features three interactive online meetings along with a discussion forum in which you can further interact with me and your classmates. See the course highlights here. Spring section dates: May 2nd, 9th, and 16th at 7pm EST. Click here to register. Summer section dates: July 11th, 18th, and 25th at 7pm EST. Click here to register. Discounts!Subscribers to the Practical Ed Tech Newsletter can receive a discount on the registration for any or all of these courses by using the code "subscriber" during online registration. If you have more than two people from the same school district attending either of the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps, send me an email richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com for details on group registration discounts. Schedule a private webinar for your school. If you have ten or more teachers from the same district interested in a webinar, I can schedule a course tailored to your needs. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesSkip the Spreadsheet, Use This Add-on to Create Google Docs Word CloudsHow to Use Google Slides to Crop and Filter ImagesGoogle's Guides to Apps Accessibility 

Last summer I published The Practical Ed Tech Handbook. Since its initial release more than 10,000 educators have downloaded it for free. If you haven't downloaded it, you can do so here. In the free document I outline seven categories of ed tech tools and share my favorite tools in each category. A preview of each section is outlined below. 1. Communication with students and parents. Remind, formerly known as Remind 101, is a great tool for sending important reminders to students and their parents. Through Remind students and their parents can sign-up to receive text messages on their mobile devices. You send the messages from your computer or mobile device without students or parents seeing your personal cell phone number. Like regular text messages that you might send to friends, you can attach files to messages that you send through Remind. Messages can be sent to individuals or to groups that you create in your Remind account. In addition to text messages Remind offers the option to send audio messages up to fifteen seconds in length. Just like text messages, voice messages can be sent to individuals or to groups. Stamps is one of the two options that Remind offers for students and parents to use to interact with the messages that you send to them. Students and parents can reply to your Remind messages by selecting one of four stamps to indicate that they have received your message and indicate if they need further clarification about your message. Chat is the other option that Remind offers to students and parents to communicate with you. Remind Chat allows students and parents to reply with text to a teacher's messages. When I first heard about Remind Chat I was leery of it because I was concerned that students and parents would be messaging teachers at all hours of the day and expecting rapid responses. Remind alleviated that concern when I saw the "office hours" setting in the Remind chat service. "Office hours" allows teachers to specify when they will allow chat messages to be sent and received. Teachers can also pause or stop chat exchanges at any time. 2. Web search strategies. Remind students that not every question needs to be Googled. One of the bad habits that I see many students fall into when it comes to research is simply entering into Google the first thing that comes to mind. While this strategy can work, it often leads to a lot of time wasted on searches for information that students already have. Before embarking on a research project ask students to make a list of the things they already know about the topic they plan to research. Have them look in their notes to see if they already have information on the topic. 3. Digital citizenship. PBS Kids offers the Webonauts Academy in which elementary school students can learn about safe online behaviors. When students have completed all of the Webonauts missions they will graduate from the Webonauts Academy. The educators tips page offers some practical suggestions for using Webonauts in the classroom or in a school library. Own Your Space is a free ebook designed to educate tweens and teens about protecting themselves and their stuff online. This ebook isn't a fluffy, general overview book. Each chapter goes into great detail explaining the technical threats that students' computers face online as well as the personal threats to data that students can face online. For example, in the first chapter students learn about different types of malware and the importance of installing security patches to prevent malware infections. The fourteenth chapter explains the differences between secured and unsecured wireless networks, the potential dangers of an unsecured network, and how to lock-down a network. 4. Video creation. Tellagami is an iPad app that is a lot of fun to use to create narrated animations. Tellagami allows you to create customized animated scenes in a matter of minutes. To create a narrated, animated scene simply open Tellagami and tap "create." After opening the create menu you will see a default character and background scene. The characters can be altered by selecting from a big menu of customization options. The background scenes can be changed by selecting from a menu or by inserting a picture from your iPad's camera roll. To add your voice to your animations simply tap "record" and start talking. Completed animations are stored on the camera roll of your iPad. Tellagami does not require students to create accounts or have an email address. 5. Audio recording and publishing. TwistedWave is an audio recording tool through which you can create and edit spoken audio recordings from scratch. Your completed tracks can be exported to Google Drive and SoundCloud. If you have existing audio tracks in your SoundCloud or Google Drive account you can also import it into TwistedWave to edit those audio tracks. TwistedWave's audio editing tools include options for fade-in, fade-out, looping, sound normalization, and pitch adjustments. The editor also includes the typical track clipping tools that you would expect to see in an audio editing tool. Watch a demonstration of TwistedWave at http://bitly.com/twistedwave 6. Backchannels & informal assessment. Formative provides you with a place to create online classrooms. Your students join your classroom by entering the assigned class code after registering on the Formative website. Once your classroom is established you can begin distributing assignments to students. Assignments can be as simple as one question exit tickets like "what did you learn today?" to complex quizzes that use a combination of multiple choice, short answer, and true/false questions. You can assign point values to questions or leave them as ungraded questions. You can also enable or disable instant feedback for students. When you give an assignment to students through Formative you can watch their responses in realtime. The best feature of Formative is the option to create "show your work" questions. "Show your work" questions enables students to draw responses and or upload pictures as responses to your questions. When you use this question type students will see a blank canvas directly below the question. On that canvas they can draw and or type responses. 7. Digital portfolios. Google Sites is a good platform on which students and teachers that have Google Apps for Education accounts can build digital portfolios. Page-level permissions in Google Sites allows the creator of a site to share and give editing access to specific pages within a site rather than giving access to edit the entire site. To use page-level permissions open your Google Site editor then click "enable page-level permissions." With page-level permissions activated you can share and allow editing for each page individually. A video tutorial on using page-level permissions can be found here. A 47 page guide to Google Sites can be seen here. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesTen Things You Can Learn at the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook CampThe Week in Review - The Most Popular PostsTry the Google Newspaper Archive to Locate Old Articles and Images 

This is a guest post from Avra Robinson (@AvraRachel) of EdTechTeacher, an advertiser on this site. If you’ve used VideoNot.es, you know that it is a powerful application that allows users to take time-stamped, synchronized notes alongside a YouTube, Vimeo, Khan Academy, edX, Udacity or Coursera video.  Students using this app can record their thoughts and ideas to share with their peers, their teacher, or to refer to later as they review concepts.  Teachers can use VideoNot.es to gain a glimpse into their students’ thinking as well as to ensure that they have actively engaged with video content. But what if teachers are using Google Classroom?  Do the two programs work together?   A few days ago, a participants from our EdTechTeacher T21 cohort raised that question.  After some exploring, here’s what I discovered: Teachers who are using Google Classroom can push videos out through Classroom with a few easy steps.  First, students and teachers connect the VideoNot.es app to their Google Drive.  Next, teachers select the video that they want their students to watch and import it into VideoNot.es. Teachers can also add their own annotations or notes in the form of statements or questions to guide student learning.  This teacher-annotated copy of the VideoNot.es file gets automatically saved in the teacher’s Google Drive. Because VideoNot.es are saved in Google Drive, when teachers create the assignment in Google Classroom, they can pull the VideoNot.es file from their Google Drive.  As demonstrated in this animation, teachers can simply select the Google Drive icon, navigate to the VideoNot.es folder, and select the VideoNot.es file.  The best part is that teachers can then assign an individual copy to each student using Google Classroom’s "Make a copy for each student" option in the drop-down menu. Once teachers push out the VideoNot.es file, students will open it in Google Classroom much like they would open a Google Doc. Tech Tip: If students encounter the Google Drive preview screen that seems to indicate that Drive is unsure of which program to use to open the file, they should use the Open With drop-down menu, select VideoNot.es, and use it to open the file. Upon taking notes and completing the assignment, students will "Turn in" their VideoNot.es file in a similar fashion as other assignments--using the Turn In button in Google Classroom. Upon receiving the completed assignment, the teacher can then open it to see their writing.  After opening the file, teachers can review the student’s notes, get a snapshot into their learning, and formatively assess comprehension of the material set forth in the video. Looking to learn more about Google Apps and Chromebooks this summer? Avra Robinson will be leading a number of workshops this summer with EdTechTeacher. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHighlights from the Practical Ed Tech Handbook - Download Your Free CopyThe Week in Review - The Most Popular PostsTry the Google Newspaper Archive to Locate Old Articles and Images 

Quizzy is a free tool that allows you to quickly create and publish self-paced review quizzes for your students. After I reviewed it last week I received a few emails from folks who had some questions about how it works. I created the following video to answer those questions and more. The nice thing about Quizzy is that your students don't need to create usernames and passwords to take your practice quizzes. The downside to that is you don't have a good way to see which students have used your review quizzes and which students haven't used your review quiz. Applications for Education As you may have noticed in the video, you can print Quizzy quizzes with just one click in your Quizzy account. Quizzy could be a good tool for creating practice quizzes for your students. At this time Quizzy doesn't have a mechanism for you to record students' scores on the quizzes that they take. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHighlights from the Practical Ed Tech Handbook - Download Your Free CopyTen Things You Can Learn at the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook CampQuizzy Offers a Quick Way to Create Online Quizzes 

What Would Happen if You Didn't Drink Water? is the title of latest TED-Ed lesson. The lesson addresses items like how much water should a person drink, how much water a body loses during an average day, and the effects of dehydration. The lesson also addresses what can happen when you consume too much water. This lesson is the latest that I've added to a playlist that I call TED-Ed Human Body. Some of the other lessons in the playlist cover blood pressure, kidney function, and liver function. The entire playlist is embedded below. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesThree TED-Ed Lessons About StressHow Does Anesthesia Work? - A New TED-Ed LessonXtraMath Helps Teachers Help Students Learn Math in ASL 

When it launched in 2014, I raved about Poetica's capacity to help you give feedback on digital documents in a manner very similar to writing on paper. Unfortunately, this week the Poetica team announced that they've been acquired by another company. At the end of May the service will close entirely. Poetica was great because it allowed you to write comments in the margins of a document and have them directly attached and or inserted into document. A couple of alternative services that perform similar functions are Kaizena, Annotation Studio, and JoeZoo Express.  Kaizena is a Google Docs Add-on that allows you to add voice comments and written comments to Google Documents.  Annotation Studio is a platform on which you can create a classroom in which you share documents. You can create documents from scratch by using the Annotation Studio text editor or you can import a Word document or a PDF. Once you have created a document you can share it with your class or you can make it public for anyone to comment on. The best aspect of Annotation Studio is that every annotation you add to a document can include videos, pictures, text, and hyperlinks. JoeZoo Express enables you to give feedback on students' Google Documents by simply highlighting text then selecting feedback statements from a huge menu of options. For example, in my sample document I highlighted text then chose the category of "structure" within the structure category I then chose to tag the sentence with the comment "awkward." When a student sees the feedback he or she will also see an explanation of "awkward" and how he or she can fix it. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesThe Week in Review - The Most Popular PostsThe Month in Review - #MasonshomeEarn PD Hours and Graduate Credit While Learning About Google Apps 

Starting tonight and throughout the next few months I will be teaching three sections my online course Getting Going With GAFE. This five week course is designed to help teachers, teacher-librarians, and school administrators learn best practices for using Google Apps for Education. Through my partnership with the Midwest Teachers Institute you can earn three graduate credits for completing the course. The next class begins tonight at 7pm Eastern Time. There is still some space available. Getting Going With GAFE is a five week course covering everything you need to know to integrate Google Drive, Google Classroom, Google Calendar, and Google Sites into your practice. The Midwest Teachers Institute offers more information about the course and graduate credit options. Spring section I: April 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th, and May 3rd at 7pm Eastern Time. Register for the April session. Spring section II: May 10th, 17th, 24th, 31st, and June 7th at 7pm Eastern Time. Register for the May session. Summer section: July 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th, and August 2nd at 7pm Eastern Time. Register for the July session. Learn more about the course and the graduate credit options. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow to Create Self-paced Review Quizzes on QuizzyHighlights from the Practical Ed Tech Handbook - Download Your Free CopySkip the Spreadsheet, Use This Add-on to Create Google Docs Word Clouds 

A few months ago ClassDojo published a series of videos about growth mindset. Those video, produced in association with Stanford University’s Project for Education Research That Scales, were accompanied by discussion guides to use with students and their parents. The series proved to be popular so ClassDojo has announced the launch of a second series of videos and discussions about growth mindset. The second Big Ideas series produced by ClassDojo continues with the theme of growth mindset. In the first episode of the new series we see the main characters Katie and Mojo tackle the problem of the "the dip." The video aims to teach students how to identify a "dip" and what to do about it. The video is embedded below. Discussion questions can be found in this PDF. Applications for Education ClassDojo's Big Ideas video series can be used in any K-12 classroom. The discussion guides that accompany each episode are suitable for K-6 students. When you download the discussion guide (PDF) you will also download a sheet of "tear away" questions that you can send home with your students to discuss with their parents. For resources to use with older students, take a look at the Mindset Kit produced by PERTS at Stanford University. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesPoetica is Shutting Down - Try These Alternatives for Delivering Document FeedbackEarn PD Hours and Graduate Credit While Learning About Google AppsHow to Create Self-paced Review Quizzes on Quizzy 

Online videos can be quite useful for reiterating a lesson to your students, for inspiring thought and conversation, and for introducing a new concept to your students. The struggle we have sometimes is finding a video that gets to the point quickly. And sometimes we don't need students to watch all of a TED Talk or other lecture in order to get them thinking about a concept. That's when a tool for sharing a portion of a video is handy to have. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use TubeChop to clip and share a portion of a YouTube video. Join me in July for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps. Discounted early registration is available now. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesEarn PD Hours and Graduate Credit While Learning About Google AppsHow to Create Self-paced Review Quizzes on QuizzyHighlights from the Practical Ed Tech Handbook - Download Your Free Copy