Last November I featured a series of videos from PBS Learning Channel that contained eight concise explanations of logical fallacies. This morning, thanks to Larry Ferlazzo, I learned about another series of video explanations of logical fallacies. Wireless Philosophy offers a playlist of twelve videos on logical fallacies. The playlist is embedded below. The fallacies covered in the PBS videos are Strawman, Ad Hominem, Black and White, Authority, and No True Scotsman. I have embedded the playlist below. Your Logical Fallacy Is is a website that provides short explanations and examples of twenty-four common logical fallacies. Visitors to the site can click through the gallery to read the examples. Your Logical Fallacy Is also provides free PDF poster files that you can download and print. Applications for Education When teaching current events courses, I always begin with lessons about about recognizing bias, propaganda, and logical fallacies. All three of the resources featured above can help students recognize logical fallacies and hopefully avoid using logical fallacies themselves. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesVideos and Poster Explaining Logical FallaciesWhy Are Airplane Engines so Big? - How Jet Engines Work #STEMAnimal Migrations in Yellowstone National Park 

Next Friday is Earth Day 2016. Discovery Education has a great Earth Day resource for you to use with your elementary and middle school students. Expedition Earth Day is a free set of resources for teaching students about the world's coral reefs. A 30 minute is the central aspect around which the lessons are designed. Through Expedition Earth Day students can learn about the biodiversity of oceans, ocean biodiversity preservation efforts, and threats to fish in the Atlantic Ocean. Students will also learn about the differences between coral reefs in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Register on Discovery's Eventbrite page to receive all of the Expedition Earth Day resources. Disclosure: Discovery Education is an advertiser on this blog.  This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesApply Soon for the Discovery Summer InstituteWhat Are You Doing Tomorrow? - Check Out the Discovery Virt ConDEN Fall VirtCon - A Great, Online PD Event 

This week Google rolled-out updates to Google Calendar, Google Drive for Mac & PC, and Google Drive for Android & iOS. The most exciting of the three updates this week is the addition of a goal setting and tracking feature in Google Calendar for Android and iOS. Earlier this week I wrote an extensive overview of this feature. The highlight of the goals feature in Google Calendar is that Calendar will help you identify times to work on your goals. The Google Drive desktop app for Mac & PC was updated this week to allow you to sync sub-folders instead of just top-level folders. You can now choose which sub-folders to sync so that you don't have to sync the entire contents of a folder if you don't need everything else that is within its parent folder. The Google Drive Android app had a couple of updates this week. First, now when you upload a file from your phone or tablet it will appear in your chosen folder instead of just a generic "uploads" folder. The second update added support for inserting Google Drive files into Whatsapp and or Yahoo Mail on your Android phone or iPhone. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesSet and Track Goals in Google CalendarHow to Make a Copy of a Public Google Drive FileHow to Use Google Slides to Crop and Filter Images 

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and the forecast calls for temperatures above 60f for the first time this year. One of the great things about Maine in the spring is that I can ski, bike, garden, and walk my dogs all in the same day without having to wear a heavy jacket. It's the end of the ski season here and we're going to close out the season with a tailgate party at the mountain. I hope that you too make time for something fun this weekend. This week the PracticalEdTech.com newsletter welcomed the 10,000th subscriber! That newsletter is sent out only once per week on Sunday evening. It contains my favorite tip of the week and a summary of the most popular posts of the week from Free Technology for Teachers. Subscribers to the newsletter get discounts on my online courses and in-person workshops too. Here are this week's most popular posts: 1. A Short Overview of 12 Tools for Creating Flipped Classroom Lessons 2. 5 Ideas for Using Google Sites in Your Classroom 3. Three Google Apps Updates You Might Have Missed Last Week 4. New Polling Feature Added to Google Classroom 5. Mozilla Releases an Interactive Web Literacy Map 6. How to Change Your Google Profile Image & Why You Should 7. Six Tools for Creating Videos on Chromebooks Spring and Summer PD Opportunities With MeDiscounted early registration for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps is available through the end of the month. 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. 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.  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.FrontRow offers adaptive online ELA and Math practice activities.  Teach n Go is a comprehensive platform for teaching online courses. 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. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesKahoot Adds a Team ModeThe Week in Review - A Walk in the WoodsThe Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts 

It is a beautiful spring day here in Maine which has me thinking about summer. The highlight of my last three summers has been hosting the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. This summer I'm hosting two of these events. Discounted early registration and discounted early group registration is available until the end of the month. Contact me for information on group rates richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com The Practical Ed Tech BYOD Camp is on July 11-12. This two day event is for people who work in schools that have BYOD programs and 1:1 laptop programs (Mac or Windows), iPads, Android tablets, Windows tablets, or who have shared computers in a classroom or lab setting. The Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp is on July 18-19. This two day workshop is based on my framework for using technology, specifically Chromebook-friendly tools, to help students discover new information, discuss their ideas, and demonstrate their knowledge. Additional attention will be given to Chromebook specific topics like Google Apps for Education, workflow, and data management. 16 hour professional development certificates will be given to participants at both events. Learn more about both events on the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp homepage. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesWhat is BYOD? And Why Do Schools Opt for It?9,500 Teachers Get Their Ed Tech Tips This WayFAQs About the 2016 Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps 

Plickers is my favorite student response tool for classrooms in which not every student has his or her own tablet or laptop. Plickers makes it easy to semi-anonymously gather feedback from students. Students simply hold up a card with a QR code to vote and you scan the cards with your phone or tablet. You can scan the whole room in one swoop and have results instantly appear on your screen. I've used the Plickers iOS app on my iPad for years now even though it wasn't optimized for iPad. Last week Plickers updated to be optimized for iPad. This is not a major update, but it is convenient for teachers who use Plickers on their iPads. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow to Make Your Google Sites Mobile FriendlyThe Hardest Type of Web Search for Students5 Online Activities for Teaching With Primary Sources 

Earth Day 2016 is on Friday. As I've done in the past, I've compiled a list of resources for teaching about Earth Day and environmental science in general. As was featured yesterday, Discovery Education offers a nice set of resources for teaching about the world's coral reefs and biodiversity of the oceans. Expedition Earth Day is a free set of resources for teaching students about the world's coral reefs. A 30 minute is the central aspect around which the lessons are designed. Through Expedition Earth Day students can learn about the biodiversity of oceans, ocean biodiversity preservation efforts, and threats to fish in the Atlantic Ocean. Students will also learn about the differences between coral reefs in the Caribbean and the Pacific. EcoKids is a Canadian organization that provides free resources for teaching and learning about topics in environmental science. The resources designed for teachers require registration, but the resources for students can be accessed without registration. The games and activities section for kids offers dozens of online games across eight categories. Within each of the eight categories the games and activities are again categorized according to age appropriateness. The eight games and activities categories are: wildlife, climate change, energy, water, waste, land use, the North, and First Nations & Inuit.  How Much Have We Polluted? is an interactive heat map that displays the per capita and yearly total of CO2 emissions for individual countries. The map contains data dating back to 1960. Move the time slider to the heat map change. You can use the map to compare the emissions of two countries year-by-year. Storyboard That's Earth Day Activities page offers eleven lesson plan ideas appropriate for elementary school and middle school classrooms. Some of the featured plans on Storyboard That's Earth Day Activity page include creating "cool Earth facts" storyboards, creating comics about how to help the Earth, and creating public service announcements about pollution and pollution prevention. NOAA View is a project from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. On NOAA View you can explore visualizations of data sets in the categories of Ocean, Land, Atmosphere, Cryosphere, and Climate. Each category has multiple subsets of data from which to choose. The data sets can be displayed in weekly, monthly, and yearly units. A basic explanation of each data set is available. Glacier Works is a non-profit organization studying the shrinking glaciers of the Himalaya and the impact of glacier melt on the people of the region. One of the neat features of the Glacier Works website is the panoramic before and after images. The panoramas show images of the glaciers from the 1920's side-by-side with recent images. You can quickly compare the two views by sliding your cursor across the panoramas. Dangers of Fracking is a beautifully designed site that tells the story of the dangers of fracking. As you scroll down the page, you learn more about the fracking process. The story starts out with a definition of fracking before moving to explaining the raw materials that have to be trucked to the fracking site. After the raw materials arrive the story takes us underground to frack and the dangers associated with the process. ARMAP is a comprehensive resource of interactive, online maps of Arctic research. ARMAP's resources include files for use in Google Earth as well as ArcGIS explorer. You can also access 2D maps directly on the ARMAP website. ARMAP provides map layers and placemarks about a wide range of topics related to Arctic research. Before opening the general ARMAP map, visit the map gallery for a primer on the type of resources that can found on ARMAP. You should also check out the links section of ARMAP to visit the sources of much of the ARMAP content. The Earth Day Network is a good place to start your search for Earth Day information. The Earth Day Network offers nine lesson plans about preserving the environment. This year the Earth Day Network is looking for people to share stories of climate change by uploading pictures that represent "the faces of climate change." National Geographic has some other great resources for learning about environmental science and Earth  Day. On the National Geographic website students can learn about the Green House Effect through an interactive lesson. After learning about global warming in the Green House Effect interactive lesson, students can learn about alternative energy through the Wind Power interactive lesson. Breathing Earth is an interactive map demonstrating CO2 emissions, birth rates, and death rates globally and by individual countries. From the moment that you first visit Breathing Earth it starts counting the number of births occurring worldwide. Placing your cursor over any country on the map reveals information about birthrate, death rate, and rate of CO2 emissions. One of the additional resources linked to Breathing Earth is an ecological footprint calculator. Using this calculator students can calculate their personal footprints, take quizzes, and learn about the ecological footprints of various businesses. Google offers tours in its Explore Climate Change series. The tours explore the actions of organizations to prevent or adapt to climate change in different parts of the world. These tours include the World Wildlife Foundation's efforts in the peatland swamps of Borneo, Greenpeace's actions to prevent deforestation of the Amazon, and Conservation International's efforts to reduce deforestation in Madagascar. The tours can be viewed three ways, in Google Earth, in the Google Browser plug-in, or through YouTube. ArkGIS is a customizable map developed by the World Wildlife Fund for the purpose of visualizing historical data about sea ice, marine life, and oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. To create custom visualizations of data layers on the ArkGIS map simply select a data category then select data layers to display. For example, I chose the "marine mammals" category then selected the "beluga whales" and "walrus" to view their distributions. The BBC News offers this short overview of the history of the Earth's climate changes. The two and a half minute animation does a nice job of combining graphs and images along with narration to explain three major eras of the Earth's climate. My Garbology, produced by Nature Bridge, is an interactive game that teaches students about sorting garbage for recycling, reusing, and composting. Students sort garbage into four bins according to where they think each piece of garbage should go. When a piece of garbage is sorted correctly a series of short animations explains why it should be there.  For example, a banana peel should be sorted into the compost bin. When the banana peel is placed into the compost bin students watch and hear a series of animations explaining how composting works. The Great Energy Challenge is a National Geographic feature that offers some nice interactive posters for evaluating personal and global energy consumption. Global Electricity Outlook is an interactive display of electricity consumption across the globe. You can view the global picture or click on the map to view regional consumption. The display shows the means of electricity production globally and regionally. To see how shifting production sources would impact the world or a region use the sliders below the map. The Personal Energy Meter is a tool for evaluating your personal carbon footprint. The meter asks for your location then asks a series of questions about your energy consumption. The result compares you to the average person in your region. I was below average in my footprint until I entered the number of flights I take every year. Wow! Flying leaves a huge carbon footprint. Disclosure: Storyboard That and Discovery Education are advertisers on this blog.  This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesExpedition Earth Day - An Exploration of Coral ReefsAnimal Migrations in Yellowstone National ParkThe Week in Review - Transitions 

Often when I'm stuck on a technical problem all I need to get myself over the hurdle is just a quick tip. That's why when I started making ed tech tutorial videos I made a conscious effort to keep them short and sweet. My YouTube channel now has more than 400 tutorial videos including 100 Google Apps tutorial videos organized into a playlist for you. The topics covered in my Google Apps tutorials video playlist include features within Google Maps, Blogger, Google Sites, Google Classroom, Google Forms, Gmail, domain admin, Google Sheets, and Google Docs. My entire Google Tools Tutorials playlist is embedded below. Join one of my online classes or come to the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp to receive direct instruction on how to use Google Apps in your school.  This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow to Distribute Add-ons to an Entire Google Apps DomainThree Google Apps Updates You Might Have Missed This WeekHow to Make Your Google Sites Mobile Friendly 

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 Audio Creation with SoundTrapSoundTrap allows teachers and students to collaboratively create audio from any device. In the video below, Greg Kulowiec (@gregkulowiec) showcases how this tool can allow students to collaborate, provide audio feedback, and share their learning. Learn more about SoundTrap and other apps for creating audio on the EdTechTeacher web site. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related Stories100 Google Apps Tutorial Videos16 Educational Resources for Earth Day 2016A Nice Little Update to the Plickers iOS App 

Today is Patriots' Day in Massachusetts and Maine. The day commemorates the anniversary of the first battles of the American Revolutionary War, The Battles of Lexington and Concord. As a New Englander this is a good day to review some good resources for teaching and learning about the American Revolution. Revolutionary War Animated is a great place to find nice animated maps of troop movements throughout the Revolutionary War. Despite looking rather web 1.0, this resource is one that I continue to return to because it does a great job of illustrating the movement of battles. The National Archives Digital Vaults has a Revolutionary War pathway challenge for students. In the challenge students have to connect primary sources around the topic of Revolutionary War. America, A Narrative History is a text published by WW Norton. As a free supplement to the book, Norton has published ten Google Earth tours. These tours include major themes and events in US History. The list includes the Revolutionary War, the path to the Civil War, WWII, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Lewis & Clark's expedition, the Indian Removal Act, Pre-Columbian North America, the national parks system, and the 20th Century power grid. All of the tours include multiple images and references. Some of the tours also have "tour questions" for students to answer. Teaching American History has a series of interactive lessons about the American Revolution that are suitable for middle school and elementary school use. The lessons are divided into three chronological sections; 1775-1778, 1778-1781, and Treaty of Paris 1783. All of the lessons in the first two sections ask students to locate a place on a map. Students then answer a question about that place. After answering the question students are given a short text lesson. The lessons appear in chronological order. In the section on the Treaty of Paris students move through a series of placemarks on a map to learn about the terms of the Treaty of Paris. Pictures of the Revolutionary War is a compilation of images about the Revolutionary War. The images in the collection chronicle the stirrings of rebellion in the pre-revolution years, the war from both American and British perspectives, and events following the Revolutionary War. Liberty, The American Revolution is a feature on PBS.org. There are a couple of resources in this feature that are worth noting. First, and probably the most useful, is The Chronicle of Revolution. The Chronicle of Revolution provides a timeline of events that contributed to the start of the American Revolution. Students can read newspaper accounts as they go through the chronicles. Within each newspaper account there are links to further reading about important people and places mentioned in the articles. The second item of interest in Liberty, The American Revolution is the Road to Revolution game. The game isn't really a game, it's more like a quiz with some graphics added to it. The game is designed to quiz students on the information in The Chronicle of Revolution. The Revolution: Interactive Guide is a free iPad app about the American Revolution. The video embedded below provides a detailed overview of the app. Here are a few of the highlights of the app: Narration of text. Quizzes after each section. Interactive images. Flashcards Comparisons to other revolutions. Mission U.S. offers an interactive journey through Boston in 1770 (five years before the Battles of Lexington and Concord) through the perspective of a 14 year old boy who has to choose sides. The game can be played entirely online or downloaded for play on your PC or Mac (you do need an Internet connection to save a game in progress). Crash Course has a ten part series on U.S. History. Included in that series is Taxes & Smuggling - Prelude to Revolution. Keith Hughes offers Colonialism for Dummies as part of his series on U.S. History for Dummies. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related Stories20 Videos and a Poster Explaining Logical FallaciesAnother Great Resource for Learning About Mount EverestWho Owns Antarctica? - A Political Geography Lesson 

Quizlet has long been a great website and app for students to use to create and review flashcards. Teachers can also use it to create flashcards to share with students. Last week Quizlet added a great new feature called Quizlet Live. Quizlet Live allows teachers to select a set of vocabulary words in Quizlet and that set as the basis of a review game that students play in teams. Much like Kahoot and other multiplayer review games controlled by teachers, in Quizlet Live students go to a dedicated webpage (Quizlet.live) then they have to enter a game pin. As soon as your students have entered the correct game pin they will be randomly assigned to teams (teachers can reshuffle teams). The game aspect is that students have to work in teams to sort vocabulary terms to their matching definitions (you can also create vocabulary sets that feature math problems or other questions). Teams earn points by making correct matches quickly, but their progress is reset to zero if they make a mistake so they need to focus on accuracy more than speed. How to Play Quizlet Live from Quizlet on Vimeo. Applications for Education Quizlet Live could provide you with an easy way to turn existing review materials into a fun review activity. I do wonder if the "all or nothing" aspect of the progress meter will be discouraging for some teams of students. (Thanks to all of the folks on Facebook and Twitter who encouraged me to try Quizlet Live after I published my post about Kahoot's new team mode). 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 - Transitions16 Educational Resources for Earth Day 2016Kahoot Adds a Team Mode 

ReadWorks is one of my favorite nonprofit services for teachers. ReadWorks offers hundreds of lesson plans and thousands of non-fiction and fiction passages aligned to Common Core standards. Additionally, each article is listed with a Lexile score and suggested grade level. ReadWorks recently released a new set of poems and guided reading questions. The collection has poems appropriate for students in middle school and high school. Each poem in the collection comes with a set of questions that you can give to students to answer individually or simply use as a group discussion guide. Applications for Education One of the aspects of ReadWorks that I like is that lexile scores are listed for each article. ReadWorks makes it easy to find fiction and non-fiction articles that are appropriate for your students. With a free ReadWorks account you can search for lessons and reading passages by grade level, lexile score, reading skill, subject area, and text type (fiction or non-fiction). In your ReadWorks account you can create digital binders of the lesson plans and reading passages that you want to use. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesPoetry Vocabulary Sheets Containing Examples16 Educational Resources for Earth Day 2016Expedition Earth Day - An Exploration of Coral Reefs 

GeoGebra, a free mathematics modeling tool, seems to be continuously improving and in the process becoming more and more popular with teachers. Thanks to Guillermo at Math and Multimedia, last weekend I learned about GeoGebra's exam mode. GeoGebra's exam mode allows you to specify which GeoGebra tools can and cannot be used during an exam. Exam mode runs in full screen so that students cannot access other browser tabs while using GeoGebra during an exam. If a student does exit the full screen the top of the screen turns to make it easy for a teacher to spot when a student has exited full screen mode.  GeoGebra keeps a log of when students start using exam mode, when the exit full screen, and when the re-enter exam mode. Applications for Education GeoGebra offers an extensive set of suggestions and guidelines for using exam mode. One of the suggestions that stood out to me was the idea of coming up with an "emergency protocol" with your students in case they accidentally leave exam mode or their computers freeze. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesWhy Are Airplane Engines so Big? - How Jet Engines Work #STEMRiddle Me This - 7 TED-Ed Lessons Based on RiddlesXtraMath Helps Teachers Help Students Learn Math in ASL 

Scrible is a free service that offers a nice tool to help students organize their online research efforts. Scrible offers a Chrome extension that includes tools for highlighting, creating sticky notes, and altering the font on any webpage that you save in your Scrible account. Scrible also offers an option for formatting bibliographies while you bookmark. And to help you organize your favorite parts of articles Scrible allows you to compile your article clippings into one package accessible through your Google Account. Scrible's Google Docs Add-on provides students with access to all of their saved resources. From the Add-on students can insert inline citations into their documents. Scrible also formats a bibliography for students based upon the citations that they insert into their documents. MLA, APA, and Chicago style bibliography formatting is available through Scrible's Google Docs Add-on. As many teachers have pointed out over the years, automated bibliography generators don't always format citations with 100% accuracy. That's why Scrible's Google Docs Add-on lets students edit the formatting of a citation. Applications for Education Scrible's Google Docs Add-on could prove to helpful to students who are writing research papers that are primarily based upon online research. Scrible's Google Docs Add-on does not support book or periodical citations unless students are subscribed to one of Scrible's paid plans. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesQuizlet Live Offers an Easy Way to Turn Vocabulary Lists Into Team GamesThe Week in Review - Transitions100 Google Apps Tutorial Videos 

A recent conversation with a friend about black bears in our neighborhood (neighborhood is a relative term as I live on a six acre woodlot) reminded me about a neat National Geographic article that I read about five years ago. Back then National Geographic magazine had a cover story about the "Spirit Bears" of British Columbia. "Spirit Bear" refers to the Black Bears that are white in color due to a recessive trait called Kermodism. As always the National Geographic website has some neat resources to support the main article. One of the online resources for the Spirit Bear article is a Punnett Square that explains how two black Black Bears can produce a white Black Bear. On a related note, National Geographic has a short video about photographing Polar Bears in their natural environments that you might find interesting. The video is embedded below. Applications for Education The story of the Spirit Bear could provide a good backdrop to an introductory lesson in genetics. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesAnimal Migrations in Yellowstone National Park16 Educational Resources for Earth Day 2016Expedition Earth Day - An Exploration of Coral Reefs 

For years now we have been able to sync Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets for offline access on our laptops and Chromebooks (learn how). That was great, but it didn't typically sync your all of your older files. Soon that will change as Google has announced an update to Google Drive that will allow you to specify which files you want to sync for offline access. To do this you will simply open a file's overflow menu (that little three dot icon to the far right of your file) and toggle the "available online" switch. This feature will roll out over the next few days. The feature is only available if you are using the Chrome web browser. Users in a Google Apps for Education domain will also need to make sure that their domain administrators have enabled offline access for Google Drive. Learn more about using Google Apps for Education in my online course (graduate credit available) or at the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related Stories100 Google Apps Tutorial VideosHow to Change Your Google Profile Image & Why You ShouldScrible Edu Helps Students Organize Research 

This post originally appeared on one of my other blogs, Android4Schools.com. More schools are allowing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) now than even just a few years ago. As a teacher BYOD can be a good thing as it allows students to work with a computer, tablet, or phone with which they are familiar. At the same time, BYOD can be a bad thing if you or the school leadership hasn't thought through all of the implications and ramifications of BYOD. To that end, here are five things that should be thoughtfully considered as you move to BYOD. 1. Can you find apps and sites suitable for all students' devices? When every student uses the same school-provided computer or tablet you don't have to worry about this question too much because you simply pick a site or app that works on one device and you're all set. In a BYOD environment you will have a variety of operating systems, versions of operating systems, and display sizes. For BYOD environments I always try to find web apps that are coded in HTML5 so that I have the best chance of the app or site working on all devices. 2. Can your network handle the number of devices that will be added to it? This is a question for the IT department to answer. Once you allow students to add their devices to your wireless network you're going to have a massive uptick in traffic. Are you prepared? Along the same line, are you ready to support helping students figure out how to add a myriad of devices to your network. 3. Are you going BYOD to save money by not providing computers to students? If so, you're missing the point of BYOD. Using BYOD as a reason to not provide students with computers creates an unequal environment for students. BYOD should be a supplement, not a replacement for a 1:1 program. 4. How are your students going to share files and or print files? As a classroom teacher who will be collecting assignments from students think about the way in which you want to collect those assignments. In a Google Apps for Education environment you might use Google Classroom or Google Drive. In other settings you might need to create a Dropbox or Box folder to which students submit files. If it's printed work that you need, are your students going to be able to connect to a network printer or will you have to do all of the printing from a school-issued computer? If you're not sure, ask a member of your IT staff before those printed assignments are due. 5. How will you handle inappropriate use of mobile phones? In the 8th grade I got in trouble for reading a Field & Stream article that I had stuffed inside my Algebra textbook. My point being that students texting in class is a classroom management issue, it's not the fault of the device being present in the classroom any more than Field & Stream was to blame for me not paying attention to my Algebra teacher, Mr. Dorsey. We'll be talking about this topic and many others during the Practical Ed Tech BYOD Camp this summer. Early discounted registration is on sale now. Powered by Eventbrite This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesFAQs About the 2016 Practical Ed Tech Summer CampsWhat is BYOD? And Why Do Schools Opt for It?Now You Can Choose Which Google Drive Files Are Synced for Offline Access 

Watchkin is a free service that allows you to watch and project YouTube videos without seeing the related sidebar content typically seen on YouTube.com. Watchkin can be used in a few ways. You can enter the direct URL of a video into Watchkin to have the sidebar content removed. You can search for videos through Watchkin and have family-friendly results displayed (if a video appears that is not family-friendly Watchkin has a mechanism for flagging it as inappropriate). Watchkin also offers a browser bookmarklet tool that you can click while on YouTube.com to have the related content disappear from the page. In the video below I demonstrate how Watchkin works. Applications for Education The Watchkin website and browser bookmarklet are great tools for teachers who want to show a YouTube video in their classrooms without risking displaying "related" sidebar content. To be clear, Watchkin is not a work-around if your school blocks YouTube and it is not a tool for downloading YouTube videos. (Downloading YouTube videos is a violation of the YouTube terms of service). This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related Stories10 Educational Resources About the American RevolutionScrible Edu Helps Students Organize Research20 Videos and a Poster Explaining Logical Fallacies 

Geopedia is a nice combination of a map and Wikipedia entries. Search for a location on the Geopedia map and you will be shown a bunch of map placemarks around that location. Click on any of the displayed placmarks and you will see a corresponding image and Wikipedia entry. To change locations you can either right-click on a new area of the map or enter a new search term. Applications for Education Google Earth has a Wikipedia layer that does essentially the same thing as Geopedia. Unfortunately, Google Earth will only work on a Windows or Mac computer. Geopedia provides a nice browser-based alternative to the Google Earth Wikipedia layer. The Geopedia map offers students a good way to see the correlation between places and events. H/T to Maps Mania.  This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow to Find Google Earth Files That Aren't in the Google Earth GalleryHow to Compare Maps Side-by-Side in GE TeachSanta Tracker and Related Google Maps & Earth Features 

This coming Monday evening (April 25) I will be hosting a free webinar sponsored by Storyboard That. The webinar will focus on using storyboards to tell stories. In particular, we'll be spending time looking at using storyboards to have students show what they have learned in your classroom during the school year. These stories could be academic lessons that your students learned or they could be life lessons that your students learned during the course of the school year. Storyboard That has rolled-out a bunch of new features during the 2015-2016 school year. So if it has been a while since you tried Storyboard That, join us on Monday evening at 7pm to see the new features in action. Register for the live webinar.The webinar will be recorded. If you cannot attend the live webinar, you can still get the recording by completing this short form.  This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesNow You Can Choose Which Google Drive Files Are Synced for Offline AccessReadWorks Offers a Nice Set of Poems and Guiding Questions for Poetry Month100 Google Apps Tutorial Videos 

VideoNot.es is a great tool to connect to your Google Drive account. With VideoNot.es you can take notes on one side of your screen while watching a video on the other side. Your notes are automatically synchronized with the timestamps in the video. You can share your notes just like you share any other file within Google Drive. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how VideoNot.es works. The screencast video above was recorded on a Chromebook. Creating videos on Chromebooks is one of the topics we'll cover in-depth during the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp, I hope that you can join us. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesNow You Can Choose Which Google Drive Files Are Synced for Offline AccessAurasma Studio - Create Augmented Reality In Your Web BrowserHow to Create Bookmarks & Reminders With the New Google Keep Extension 

CaptureCast is a free Chrome extension that enables you to create screencast videos on your Chromebook. With CaptureCast installed you can record everything that you display on your Chromebook's screen. The CaptureCast extension gives you the option to record your sound. An option to record yourself through your webcam is also offered in CaptureCast. In fact, you could choose to just record your webcam and sound to make a video blog entry. Recordings made with CaptureCast are saved on your Chromebook under the "manage media" tab in CaptureCast. From there you can upload your video directly to YouTube or save it to Google Drive. Applications for Education I used CaptureCast to create the video in my earlier post about VideoNot.es. CaptureCast is good for that kind of tutorial video. You might also use it to record a short lecture over slides that are in your Google Drive account. As I mentioned above, CaptureCast could be used to create video blog entries by just selecting the webcam and sound options instead of the desktop recording option. Video blogging can be a good way to get students to share observations about what they have learned in your classroom without the pressure of having to write. Creating screencasts and flipped lessons is one of the topics that will be covered during the Practical Ed Tech BYOD Camp and the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp. I hope that you can join us this summer.  This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow to Use VideoNot.es With Google DriveNow You Can Choose Which Google Drive Files Are Synced for Offline AccessHow to Create Bookmarks & Reminders With the New Google Keep Extension 

National Geographic's YouTube channel includes a fun playlist of short videos about interesting science facts. The playlist is called Today I Learned or TIL for short. In the playlist you will find videos that answer questions like "why is the ocean salty?" and "why do some birds eat dirt?" The answer to "why do some birds eat dirt?" is provided in the video below. It's a short explanation of why macaws seek salt and other minerals found in dirt. Applications for Education The videos in Today I Learned aren't long enough to be full flipped lessons, but they could be useful as warm-up material to spark your students' curiosities about a topic. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesAnimal Migrations in Yellowstone National ParkA Lesson on Bears and Punnett SquaresWhy Are Airplane Engines so Big? - How Jet Engines Work #STEM 

Take a stroll through any supermarket or browse your favorite online retailer and you'll see prices ending in .99 more often than not. Why is that? What's the psychology behind that kind of pricing? BrainStuff has the answers to those questions and more in a new video Why Do Price Tags End in .99? The video introduces viewers to the retail psychology concepts of bargain signalling and rounding off. Check out the notes on YouTube below BrainStuff's video to see the sources and studies they used in making the video. This video is a good companion to The TED-Ed lesson Why do competitors open their stores next to one another? in which students learn why retail stores are found next to each other. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesWhy Do Some Birds Eat Dirt? - National Geographic Explains20 Videos and a Poster Explaining Logical FallaciesWhy Are Airplane Engines so Big? - How Jet Engines Work #STEM