Inspiring, informative, useful, or just plain fun tweets posted on Twitter over this past week … collected here to share with our blog readers. This week … teachers can try the Minecraft... [Please click on the post title to continue reading the full post. Thanks (and thanks for subscribing)!]

District’s Professional Learning Community Chooses the itslearning Platform to Gain Efficiencies, Consistency School districts around the nation are being asked to do more with less these days.... [Please click on the post title to continue reading the full post. Thanks (and thanks for subscribing)!]

Image Source These Books Would Make Outstanding Additions to Every Educator’s Book Shelf Books have been one of the enablers of lifelong learning that have existed since long before the Web... [Please click on the post title to continue reading the full post. Thanks (and thanks for subscribing)!]

The Vital Need for Public and Private Collaboration to Move Education Towards new Learning Modalities "Nothing that happens is without effect. If you throw a stone in a pond, the universe... [Please click on the post title to continue reading the full post. Thanks (and thanks for subscribing)!]

The weekend is here and hopefully you have some relaxing things planned for yourself. Taking time to reduce stress has many benefits to our health. From zits to headaches to colds TED-Ed has three lessons about how stress can affect your body. How stress can make you sick. Does stress cause pimples? How stress affects your brain. 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 StoriesWho Owns Antarctica? - A Political Geography Lesson5 Tips to Improve Critical Thinking Skills - A TED-Ed LessonWhy Do We Love? - One More Valentine's Day Lesson 

StoryTop is a good web-based tool for creating digital stories and comics. StoryTop features an easy-to-use drag and drop tool for creating your story. To use Story Top simply select your background, characters, and text bubbles from the menu and drag them into your story box. After selecting the basic story elements you can then add additional elements like plants, animals, and vehicles. When your story is complete you can save it in your Story Top account or send it to friend. Applications for EducationStory Top is a good tool for getting students online and creating stories quickly. The user interface is easy to use and offers just enough features to allow students to create digital comics that they can be proud of. 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 Stories3 Tools for Creating Comics on iPads5 Great Writing Activities from Read Write ThinkComic Writing Prompts for Students 

Earth Day is a little less than a month away. This year Buncee wants to see what you and your students are doing to recognize Earth Day. Buncee Buddies is a free service that connects classrooms to Skype and or share messages through Buncee cards. Buncee Buddies: Earth Day 2016 aims to connect classrooms around the world to explore how they celebrate Earth Day in their parts of the world. Teachers worldwide can register their classes for the project and create Buncees about the importance of environmental protection, methods of execution, and what the local environment is like in their corner of the world. Click here to register your classroom for Buncee Buddies: Earth Day 2016. Disclosure: Buncee is a client of MindRocket Media Group. I am a partner in MindRocket Media Group. 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 StoriesStoryTop Story Maker - Create Simple Image Based Stories3 Tools for Creating Comics on iPadsMoveIt - A Chrome Extension to Keep You Active 

Good afternoon from sunny Woodstock, Maine where my dogs and I have just returned from a great morning of walking in the woods. The end of winter and beginning of spring is referred to as "mud season" around here and my boys made sure to find all the mud that they could walk and roll in. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope that you make time for some fun things too. This week FreeTech4Teachers.com reached a new milestone. I only look at the blog traffic on Saturday so it was a surprise to me to see that at some point in the last week FreeTech4Teachers.com passed 50 million all-time page views. It still boggles my mind that so many people have visited and continue to visit this blog that I started as a side project nearly nine years ago. Thank you to everyone that has visited, followed, and referred your friends over the years. This would keep going without you. Here are this week's most popular posts: 1. Six Tools for Creating Videos on Chromebooks 2. 5 Ideas for Using Google Sites in Your Classroom 3. A Nice Set of Animated Science Lessons for Children 4. JoeZoo Express Makes It Easy to Grade in Google Docs 5. More Than 40 Alternatives to YouTube 6. Gauging Your Distraction - A Game to Show Students the Dangers of Texting While Driving 7. 5 Great Writing Activities from Read Write Think 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 Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts of the WeekThe Week in Review - A New Family Member3 Tools for Creating Comics on iPads 

This week Google made the Nik collection free to all users. The Nik collection is a set of plug-ins for desktop editing tools like Photoshop and Aperture. While those tools are powerful they are probably more than most of need for editing images that we'll put into slideshows, collages, or documents. Google Slides and Google Documents have image editing tools built into them. Those tools are more than adequate for most classroom uses of images. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use the image cropping and filter tools in Google Slides. Learn more Google Drive tips and tricks in the new section of Getting Going With GAFE starting on April 5th. H/T to Lifehacker for the news about Nik. 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 StoriesJoeZoo Express Makes It Easy to Grade in Google Docs5 Ideas for Using Google Sites in Your ClassroomCheck Out the New Google Docs & Slides Templates 

Quick Key is a free app that turns your iPhone or Android phone into a bubble sheet scanner. It has two parts to it that when combined make it very easy for you to quickly grade multiple choice and true/false quizzes. This week Quick Key introduced the option to sync your Google Classroom rosters to your Quick Key account. Here are the basics of how Quick Key works; create your quiz on the Quick Key website then print and distribute a bubble sheet. After your students have completed the bubble sheet you simply scan the sheets with your iPhone or Android phone and the grading is done for you. From the app you can send grades to the classes that you have created on the Quick Key website. If you enter students’ email addresses into your class rosters on Quick Key, you can have grades emailed to students. Google Classroom users can sync their rosters with Quick Key for distribution of grades. Watch the video below to learn more about Quick Key's Google Classroom integration. Quick Key: Sync Rosters with Google Classroom from Quick Key on Vimeo. Applications for Education Tools like Quick Key don't directly change the way that we teach, but they can give us more time to actually teach and build relationships with students instead of spending time manually grading tests and quizzes. 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 Stories3 Tools for Creating Comics on iPadsNew Commenting Options in Google Slides, Sheets, Docs Mobile AppsHow Do We Know What Color Dinosaurs Were? 

Whenever I run a workshop that is longer than an hour I use Google's built-in timer function to time breaks. All I have to do is type "set timer 5 minutes" into a Google search and a timer appears and starts counting down. You can enter any amount of time after set timer and you can pause the timer if you need to. Watch the video below to see how that works. A new to me feature of Google search is the option to use a metronome. To access a metronome in Google search simply type "metronome" into your search and the metronome appears. You can adjust the tempo of the metronome by dragging the slider below the tempo display. Thanks to Lifehacker for the metronome tip. 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 StoriesNow You Can Sync Your Google Classroom Roster With Quick KeyHow to Use Google Slides to Crop and Filter ImagesThe Week in Review - 50 Million Page Views 

Quizzy is a free service that enables you to quickly make and publish online quizzes. To get started simply register for a Quizzy account then title your quiz and start writing multiple choice questions. When you have finished writing your questions you can publish your quiz publicly or keep it private. Quizzes that you mark as public can be shared with others by simply directing them to the URL assigned to your quiz. People taking your Quizzy quiz online receive a score as soon as they complete all of the questions. You can try my sample quiz here. At this time Quizzy quizzes are entirely text-based without any options for inserting images or videos. Applications for Education 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. If you don't work in a 1:1 environment you can print Quizzy quizzes with just one click in your Quizzy account. 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 - 50 Million Page ViewsBuncee Buddies Connects Classrooms for Earth DayStoryTop Story Maker - Create Simple Image Based Stories 

ClassTag is a new service that aims to help you organize parent-teacher conference, classroom volunteer requests, and school events. The highlight of ClassTag is the option to create appointment slots that parents can reserve to meet with you. To get started on ClassTag create an account and enter some basic information about your classroom or classes that you teach. To get the full benefit of ClassTag you will need to enter the email addresses of your students' parents. Once those steps are completed you can create a parent-teacher conference schedule. You can create time slots as short as 15 minutes or as long as an hour. Once a parent reserves a slot no one else can grab it. The other core aspects of ClassTag are a requests feature and an event scheduler. The requests feature in ClassTag allows you to send out notes requesting things like field trip chaperones or material donations to your classroom. Parents can volunteer to fulfill the requests through the note that you send via ClassTag and ClassTag will keep track of the responses for you. If you have a school event coming up, you can promote that event through ClassTag. Your ClassTag event page can include information about times, things you should bring to the event, or event costs. ClassTag will also keep track of RSVPs for you. Overall ClassTag does offer a nice set of features of teachers. Many of the features can be found in other tools, but ClassTag does a good job of putting them all into one place for you. 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 StoriesQuizzy Offers a Quick Way to Create Online QuizzesNeed a Metronome or Timer - Just Google ItNow You Can Sync Your Google Classroom Roster With Quick Key 

EdTechTeacher, an advertiser on this site, has launched a new FREE video series called #ETTchat. Each week, one of their instructors posts a new video with ideas using technology in the service of learning.  Collaborative Crowd-Sourced Reading with PrismThe Prism Scholar Lab is an experimental tool from the University of Virgina. Teachers can create a free account and then paste any text into Prism for their students to then annotate using various facets. In this video, Greg Kulowiec (@gregkulowiec) shows the potential for using this tool in classrooms as a way to quickly assess for comprehension, encourage class discussion, and scaffold analytical reading.  Learn more about collaborative tools and ePub creation on the EdTechTeacher web site. 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 StoriesClassTag Streamlines Scheduling of Parent Teacher ConferencesQuizzy Offers a Quick Way to Create Online QuizzesNeed a Metronome or Timer - Just Google It 

Tap to Learn produces a bunch of educational apps for Android and iOS. The Tap to Learn Grammar app for Android offers more than 200 self-paced grammar lessons. The lessons don't have videos embedded in them, but there are links to external videos hosted on YouTube. After working through a lesson students can test their new skills in a series of quizzes. Instant feedback is provided in the skills quizzes within Tap to Learn Grammar. The free app records and tracks students' progress for them. Applications for Education Using Tap to Learn's Grammar app isn't a revolutionary approach to learning. That said, if you're looking for an Android app that your students can use to practice and track their progress in developing their grammar skills. 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 StoriesNow You Can Sync Your Google Classroom Roster With Quick KeyStoryTop Story Maker - Create Simple Image Based StoriesFreshGrade Now Offers an Android App for Teachers 

This morning I received an email from a reader who had heard that there was a way to create word clouds in a Google Spreadsheet, but needed a little help doing that. She was worried about how to get all of the words in a document into a spreadsheet in an easy manner. My suggestion was to skip the spreadsheet and just use the Tag Cloud Generator Add-on for Google Documents. My video embedded below demonstrates how to create a word cloud within Google Documents. Applications for Education Word clouds can help students analyze documents written by others as well as documents of their own creation. By copying the text of a document into a word cloud generator your students can quickly see the words that appear most frequently in that document. Word clouds can also be used to help students see which words that they have frequently used in their own works. Have your students create word clouds of their work during the revision process of writing a story or essay. The word cloud will quickly show students which words they have used the most. Then ask them to think about synonyms for the words that they have used most often in their writings. Topics like this one and many others will be covered in depth during my spring and summer offerings of Getting Going With GAFE.  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 Use Google Slides to Crop and Filter ImagesJoeZoo Express Makes It Easy to Grade in Google DocsImproved Voice Commands and More New Google Apps Features Released This Week 

Zaption is a popular tool for creating video-based lessons and quizzes. The service operates on a freemium model in which they offer a mix of free and paid options. Last week Zaption announced that the free options have been expanded. Teachers can now utilize all of the video lesson creation tools that Zaption offers. Those tools include adding required questions that students must answer before moving forward in a video lesson. The other enhancement to the free version of Zaption is the removal of the limitation on the number of viewers your lessons can have. To create a quiz on Zaption you start by creating a "tour" in your account. A tour is a combination of videos, images, and text arranged into a sequence. To add a video to a tour you can search and select one within Zaption. Zaption pulls videos from YouTube, Vimeo, PBS, or National Geographic. After choosing your video, start watching it then pause it when you want to add a question. You can add questions in the form of multiple choice, open response, or check box response. When students watch the video they will see your questions appear in the context in which you set them. Applications for Education Zaption can be a great tool for creating flipped lessons to share with your students. Students do not have to have Zaption accounts in order to use the tours that you create. The free version of the service used to only allow only one video per tour/ lesson, but it now allows you to include multiple videos within a lesson/ tour. 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 - 50 Million Page ViewsVibby - Annotate YouTube & Vimeo Videos on Your Own SiteThe Instructional Technology Tool I Recommend in Email More Than Any Other 

Over the weekend I was looking at the Google Analytics for FreeTech4Teachers.com and noticed that last week one of the most frequently searched terms that directed people to this blog is "bibliography generators." I took that as a clue that more than a few people are interested in that topic. To that end, here are the tools that I frequently recommend for creating bibliographies. As with any tool that automates a process, teach your students to check the accuracy of the citations created by any of these tools. For Google Docs users the EasyBib Bibliography Creator is my go-to tool for creating bibliographies. The EasyBib Bibliography Creator makes it easy to properly cite resources and format a bibliography in APA, MLA, or Chicago style. Click here for directions for the process of using this add-on. RefMe is currently my favorite tool for creating bibliographies outside of the Google Docs environment. RefMe offers browser extensions, a free Android, and a free iPad app for saving resources and generating bibliographies from your collection of resources. Watch my video embedded below to learn more about how to use RefMe in your web browser. 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 StoriesRefME in Safari - Cite Sources With a Click or TapNew Features Coming Soon to RefME - A Great Tool for Creating BibliographiesZaption Expands Free Options for Creating Flipped Lessons 

Just a little more than twelve hours ago I received an exciting email from Padlet in which they announced the launch of their new Android app. Padlet has long worked well in the web browser  on Android phones and tablets, but this is the first time that there has been a dedicated Padlet Android app. The new Padlet Android app does everything that makes me love Padlet. From the app I can create new Padlet walls, share walls with my students, customize the background, change the layout, and even moderate notes appearing on my Padlet wall. I can use the Padlet Android app to post notes containing pictures and videos that are saved on my phone and tablet. The sharing features of Padlet are extended on the Android platform as you can quickly share your walls through a variety of social apps including Twitter, WhatsApp, and Google+. Students can use the app's QR code option to scan QR codes for my Padlet wall and instantly join my wall in the Padlet Android app. My favorite ways to use Padlet with students: Padlet as a simple blogging platform: Padlet walls can be arranged in free-form, grid, or stream layouts. Creating a Padlet page in the stream format could be a good way to create a simple, collaborative blog for students. You could create the page, select "stream" format, and make the page accessible for students to write short posts on. Their posts could include images and videos. If you want to, you can password protect your Padlet pages and moderate messages before they appear on your Padlet page. Padlet Mini as a bookmarking tool: Padlet Mini is a Chrome extension that you can use to bookmark websites. When you click the Padlet Mini extension in your browser you will be presented with the option to save to one of your existing walls or create a new Padlet wall. Click here for a video on using Padlet Mini. Padlet as a KWL chart: Padlet can be used to create a KWL chart that students can contribute to anonymously (or not anonymously if you want them to sign-in). Create a wall, make it public, and ask students to share what they know and what they want to know about a topic. If you allow anonymous posting you might get contributions from shy students who might not otherwise speak-up in class. Of course, if you allow anonymous commenting you should have a conversation with your students about what an appropriate comment looks like. (You could also turn on moderation and approve all notes before they appear). Padlet works well when projected on an interactive whiteboard. Padlet for group research and discussion: A few years ago I showed my special education students a short (18 minutes) video about cultural changes that took place in the US during the 1920's. After the video we discussed what they saw. Then I had students search online for other examples of cultural change in the 1920's. When they found examples they put them onto a Wallwisher (Padlet's previous name) wall that I projected onto a wall in my classroom. The wall started with just text being added to the wall and quickly progressed to YouTube videos being added to the wall. Once every student had added a video to the wall we stopped, watched the videos, and discussed them. Padlet as a showcase of your students’ work: If your students are creating digital portfolios, creating slideshows, or producing videos you could use Padlet to display all of your students’ best work on one page. Create the wall, call it something like "my best work this year," and have your students post links to their works. 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 - 50 Million Page ViewsJoeZoo Express Makes It Easy to Grade in Google Docs5 Settings You Should Know for School or Classroom Facebook Pages 

Posting new content on a regular basis is one of the best ways to get parents to frequently check your school, library, or classroom blog. Coming up with blog post topics is the struggle that many people have in attempting to regularly update their blogs. At times, I have that problem too. I have three things that I do when I'm struggling to come up with a topic for a blog post. Three things you can do to generate blog post topics: 1. Look at your email. Scroll through your email to take a look back at some of the questions that you're asking on a regular basis. Write a post or two or three that answer those questions. 2. Look at Google Analytics. If you have Google Analytics installed in your blog or website you can glean a lot of useful information from what is reported about visitors to your blog or website. One of the sections of Google Analytics that is particularly helpful is the section that shows you the keywords people use in searches before landing on your blog or website. Write a post or two related to those keywords. 3. Update old posts. Everything changes in time. What you wrote twelve months ago or even six months ago might need an update. Take a look at some of your old posts and see if any of them need updating. Bonus tip: When you find yourself writing a particularly long post, consider breaking into a series of posts. Your one 1000 word post could probably become a two or three part series. Like an 80's sitcom, "a to be continued" can keep people coming back. Topics like this one and many others will be covered in depth during my spring and summer offerings of Blogs & Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders.  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 StoriesTry the New Padlet Android AppHow to Create a Classroom Blog on SeeSawThree Customizations You Should Know How to Apply to Your Classroom Blog 

The U.S. News Map is a great resource produced by Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia. The U.S. New Map is an archive of American newspapers printed between 1836 and 1925. You can search the archive by entering a keyword or phrase. The results of your search will be displayed on an interactive map. Click on any of the markers on the map and you'll be shown a list of newspaper articles related to your search term. Click on a listed article to read it on the Library of Congress' Chronicling America website. Applications for Education The U.S. News Map has a neat playback feature that you can use to see the frequency with which a term or topic appeared in newspapers between 1836 and 1925. That playback feature could be a nice way to show students developments in technology. For example, search the term "telephone" and you'll see peaks and valleys in the frequency with which articles were written about telephones. H/T to Google Maps Mania and Larry Ferlazzo.  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 StoriesLiberty - The Chronicle of the American RevolutionPowerPoint Playbook - Animating Numbered ListsThe First Presidential Election - A Hip Hughes History Lesson 

Chromebooks are quickly becoming the preferred choice of computer for 1:1 programs in schools. Chromebooks are reliable, inexpensive, and versatile tools. That said, teaching with Chromebooks may require you to learn some new tricks to make the experience great for you and your students. At the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp on July 18th and 19th we will take an in-depth look at how to effectively integrate Chromebooks into your practice. Ten things you can learn at the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp: 1. How to use Chromebooks effectively even when the wi-fi fails. 2. Efficient workflow processes on Chromebooks. 3. Everything you could ever want to know about Google Apps for Education. 4. Fun and clever ways to teach search skills. 5. Create and manage digital portfolios. 6. Develop engaging video and audio creation projects. 7. Get parents involved with your students' projects in a meaningful way. 8. Digital storytelling with Google Maps. 9. Fun ways to conduct assessment exercises. 10. Anything you've ever wondered about blogging with students. Register for the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp by April 30th and you can save $50 off standard registration. Subscribers to the PracticalEdTech.com newsletter can save an additional $25 by entering the code "subscriber" at checkout. Have a colleague or two who wants to join you? Special rates are available for two or more people registering from the same school district. Email me richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com for details. Powered by Eventbrite 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 StoriesTry the New Padlet Android AppFAQs About the 2016 Practical Ed Tech Summer CampsJoeZoo Express Makes It Easy to Grade in Google Docs 

Flipping your classroom with video lessons can be a good thing in the right situation. Before you decide to completely flip your classroom there are a few things that you should consider. 1. Do the majority of your students complete their homework assignments on time on a consistent basis? If not, there may be a larger issue of student engagement and motivation to investigate. Furthermore, if you flip the classroom and students come to class having not watched the video lessons, how do you spend your classroom time the next day? Do you let students watch the videos in class? Do you reteach the lesson that they should have watched for homework? 2. Do all of your students have access to the web at home? If not, how are you going to address that? Will you distribute copies of your video files to students before they leave your classroom? Do you all of your students have computers or tablets to use at home? If the answer is "no" to one or all of these questions, are you setting up an inequitable learning environment? 3. Do you have time to create quality videos? If not, will you create some and then source the rest of from the web? For the record, I'm not against flipping the classroom in the right situation. I just don't want to rush into a model that might not be the best solution for all situations. 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 StoriesZaption Expands Free Options for Creating Flipped LessonsThe Month in Review - #MasonshomeTen Things You Can Learn at the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp 

Family Shield, powered by OpenDNS, is a service that can be used to filter the content accessed by anyone on your home network. Family Shield is designed to filter adult websites, proxy and anonymizer websites, and phishing websites. Step-by-step directions are provided for setting-up Family Shield on your home computer(s) and router(s). Applications for Education While I generally prefer to emphasize education about the Internet over blocking access to the Internet  I also understand that a lot of parents would still prefer to have a way to restrict the content their children can access from home. If you're asked by a parent for advice on Internet filtering at home, consider referring that person to Family Shield. 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 CampThree Ways to Generate Topics for Your School's BlogTry the New Padlet Android App