Last week I had a conversation with ClassDojo's head of marketing, Manoj Lamba, about some of the new features they're rolling out before most teachers go back to school for the 2015-2016 school year. There are a few that I want to share with you, but I can only share one of them today (the others will be unveiled in early August). Beginning today you can create student groups in your ClassDojo account. ClassDojo Groups allow you to arrange groups of students within your ClassDojo classroom. You can put students into groups according to tables or by another criteria that you select. You can give points and recognition to the entire group for things like working together, group problem solving skills, and any other behavior that you want to reward. Group points are displayed in students' profiles along with the individual points they've earned. ClassDojo Groups work in your web browser as well as on the iOS and Android apps for ClassDojo. Applications for Education Check out the playlist embedded below for nine ideas on using ClassDojo. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesUse Your Google or Edmodo Account to Create HSTRY TimelineseduClipper Updates With New Tagging and Discovery FeaturesThree Registration-free Options for Collaboratively Taking Notes 

Disclosure: BoomWriter is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. WordWriter is a free service within the BoomWriter platform that enables you to build vocabulary lists that you want your students to use in writing. You can have students write fiction or non-fiction pieces in which they have to use words that you assign to them. As the teacher you can log-in and see your students' progress toward correctly using each of the words correctly. Toward the end of the last school year BoomWriter introduced a feature called Trending Words. Trending Words allows you to see the most frequently used vocabulary words across the WordWriter platform. You can filter the trending words list by grade level to find words that are appropriate for your students. You can select words from the Trending Words list to import into writing projects that you give to your students. In the video embedded below I provide a demonstration of this process. Check out the videos embedded below for a complete overview of BoomWriter and WordWriter. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesMay Flowers - A Writing LessonExplore History Through Project WriterHow to Create a Picture Book Online With Jellybean Writer 

A few weeks ago I shared a video of eduClipper's founder, Adam Bellow, talking about some new features being developed for the app. This morning those features went live. These are the new features of eduClipper that you'll see when you update the free iPad app.  1. eduClipper now has a new start-up tutorial for users. The tutorial makes it easier than ever before to start using the app efficiently. 2. The free eduClipper iPad app now has a featured content section showcasing the most popular content and content contributors on the service. 3. You can now add subject category tags to everything that you save in the app. The tags will make it easier to organize and find shared resources. 4. If you want to share content from your eduClipper account to Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest, you can now do that with the sharing function built into eduClipper. Disclosure: I have a small advisory role with eduClipper. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesNow You Can Play Videos Within Your Diigo GroupsUse Your Google or Edmodo Account to Create HSTRY TimelinesClassDojo Introduces Groups...More to Come 

Since the first time I tried it last fall I have been impressed with HSTRY. HSTRY is a great multimedia timeline creation tool. There are two features of HSTRY that make it stand-out from the crowd. First, as a teacher you can create an online classroom in which you can view all of your students' timelines. Second, as a teacher you can build questions into timelines that you share with your students. You can even insert explanations of the answers to your questions. This week HSTRY added two new log-in options for teachers and students. You can now use your Google Account (consumer or Google Apps for Education) or your Edmodo account to use HSTRY. HSTRY now has apps in the Edmodo store and the Chrome store. If you used HSTRY last year and you're planning to use it again this fall, you'll be happy to note that you can now archive your old HSTRY classrooms. Check out the video embedded below to learn how to make a HSTRY timeline. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesNow You Can Embed HSTRY Multimedia Timelines Into Your BlogThree Registration-free Options for Collaboratively Taking NoteseduClipper Updates With New Tagging and Discovery Features 

Whether it is to collaborate with colleagues or to talk with parents about their children, from time to time you could find yourself in need of a free conference call service. At MindRocket Media Group we've been using FreeConferenceCall.com for our meetings and it has worked out well. FreeConferenceCall.com makes it easy for anyone to quickly create a free and private conference call number. To create your account simply visit the site, enter your email address and choose a password. The service will then generate a phone number and an access code for you. Give that number and access code to your attendees and you're ready to start hosting conference calls. FreeConferenceCall.com does offer some paid upgrades like custom greetings and hold music, but the core service is completely free. Google Calendar users who want to organize conference calls can put their FreeConferenceCall.com numbers and access codes into the invitations that they send out as Google Calendar events. Click here to learn how to create Google Calendar events and invite people to them. Applications for Education Skype and Google+ Hangouts can be great ways to host virtual meetings with parents. However, if the parents you're trying to invite to a virtual meeting don't have Skype or Google accounts, you have put up an obstacle to meeting. Dialing a phone number and entering an access code when prompted is a much easier way to get parents into a virtual meeting. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesUse Your Google or Edmodo Account to Create HSTRY TimelineseduClipper Updates With New Tagging and Discovery FeaturesClassDojo Introduces Groups...More to Come 

Earlier today I conducted three webinars about various Google tools for teachers. Each of those webinars was only thirty minutes long so there wasn't a lot of time for individual questions. Since the webinars ended I've had a bunch of emails from folks looking for more instruction. My playlist of Google tools tutorials currently has more than 50 videos covering topics like Google Sites, Blogger, YouTube tricks, Google Calendar settings, and Google Drive features. The playlist can be found here or you can view it as embedded below. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow to Prevent Downloading of Shared Google DocsUse Your Google or Edmodo Account to Create HSTRY Timelines3 Helpful Google Drive Settings You Should Know 

Riddle is a nice quiz creation service that launched back in May of this year. Since its launch the developers have steadily added new features. The latest update introduced the option to collect the names and email addresses of people who complete one of your Riddle quizzes. Riddle quizzes and surveys can be image-based or simply text-based. You can add links to your Riddle quizzes and surveys. Those links could be to sources of information, to videos, or to an online audio recording like those you can find on SoundCloud. In the video embedded below I provide a demonstration of how to use Riddle to create a quiz. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesRiddle - Create Image-based Polls and QuizzesHow to Organize Free Conference CallsUse Your Google or Edmodo Account to Create HSTRY Timelines 

One of the webinars that I did yesterday for Simple K12 was about useful YouTube features for teachers and students. If you couldn't attend the webinar you can still get the handout that I shared during the webinar. 8 Overlooked Useful YouTube Tools is embedded below as a PDF. You can also click here to grab it from Box.com. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesUse Your Google or Edmodo Account to Create HSTRY TimelinesCollect Names on Image-based Riddle Quizzes50+ Google Tools Tutorial Videos 

Next month I am leading a short workshop on building digital portfolios. In preparation for that workshop, like every workshop I lead, I created a short PDF summarizing the tools that we will explore. For the benefit of those who cannot attend my workshop I'm making the handout available here on FreeTech4Teachers.com. You can view it as embedded below and or grab a copy by clicking here. Within the PDF you will find links to tutorials on how to use some of the featured tools. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StorieseduClipper Updates With New Tagging and Discovery FeaturesOne Strategy for Keeping Track of Students' Google SitesFrequently Overlooked Useful YouTube Features - A PDF Handout 

The history and culture of Mongolia has fascinated me since I first read about in high school. It's one of the places on my not-a-bucket-list list (h/t Gillian Duffy for that phrase) that I want to visit. I'm not going be able to visit anytime soon, but I can virtually explore it Google Maps Street View imagery. Google recently added Street View and off-Street Views to Google Maps of Mongolia. Through the Street View imagery of Mongolia you can virtually tour mountains, frozen lakes, desserts, and the streets of Ulaanbaatar. Applications for Education I love Google Maps Street View because it allows students to see and virtually explore places in ways that geography textbooks simply cannot support. If you find a specific image or view in Google Maps Street View, you can embed it into a blog post or webpage. Click here for a tutorial on how to do that. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow to Embed Google Street View Imagery Into Your Blog PostsUse Your Google or Edmodo Account to Create HSTRY TimelinesProjection Wizard - Which Kind of Map is Best for Your Project? 

A few weeks ago I shared some educational resources related to the Tour de France. Tomorrow, the Tour de France concludes in Paris. To mark the tour's conclusion I have two more educational resources about bicycles to share. Minute Physics offers two videos about the physics of bicycles. In How Do Bikes Stay Up? we learn how bikes stay upright, how design and weight influences balance, and why bicycles are difficult to balance in reverse. The Counterintuitive Physics of Turning a Bike explains how we turn bicycles. Applications for Education Both videos provide physics lessons based around an activity with which most students are familiar. Before letting students watch the videos ask them to try to explain how bikes stay up and turn. The first of the two videos could also provide inspiration for an outdoor physics lesson. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow X-rays and CT Scans WorkThe Physics of Soccer (Football) Banana KicksFrequently Overlooked Useful YouTube Features - A PDF Handout 

Last week ClassDojo introduced the option to create student groups within your ClassDojo classrooms. This morning I received an email from someone who was curious about how to change the student avatar pictures within ClassDojo. That's a question that I often receive in my workshops too. To answer that question I created the short video that you see embedded below. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesMore Physics Lessons About Bikes7 Good Options for Building Digital Portfolios - A PDF HandoutFrequently Overlooked Useful YouTube Features - A PDF Handout 

This post comes from the "in case you missed it department." Last week the Associated Press announced the publication of more than one million minutes of archival footage on YouTube. That footage is being published in collaboration with British Movietone. A sample playlist is embedded below. Applications for Education Much of the footage in the AP and British Movietone archives is under two minutes. The short clips could be good as supporting material to add to a reference page for students. In general, students will need the larger historical context in order to appreciate the video clips. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesHow to Apply Custom Avatars to ClassDojo ProfilesMore Physics Lessons About BikesUse Your Google or Edmodo Account to Create HSTRY Timelines 

Last week I presented three webinars on behalf of Simple K12 (the recordings will be available later this week). The third of those webinars was all about Google Drive Add-ons and Chrome extensions for teachers. If you couldn't attend the live webinar, you can still grab the handout here or view it as embedded below. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related Stories50+ Google Tools Tutorial VideosTry the Office Compatibility Extension to Open & Edit Files in ChromeHow to Prevent Downloading of Shared Google Docs 

edCircuit is one of the platforms that I am occasionally publishing through as a member of the MindRocket Rocket Media Group. edCircuit, managed by Donna Krache, is currently looking for guest columnists for the fall. Topics of interest include teaching as a second (or third...) career, facilitating effective professional development, and curriculum development. Donna is also looking to interview retiring or retired teachers. If you have an interest in sharing your voice on edCircuit, please get in touch with Donna Krache through this form or by emailing her at donna (at) edcircuit.com This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesCreating Concrete and Shape Poems on iPadsTeaching Mathematics With a Surface Pro TabletWanted! Guest Bloggers 

This is a guest post from Beth Holland (@brholland) of EdTechTeacher - an advertiser on this site. VideoNot.es allows students to take notes while watching videos. This tool is fantastic in a flipped, blended, or online classroom as students can have their typed notes automatically time-stamped to the video. Because VideoNot.es can be tied to a Google Drive account, all notes can also be saved and shared with others. As described in previous posts on this site, VideoNot.es works with YouTube, Vimeo, Coursera, Udacity, Khan Academy, and EdX videos. However, for many schools, these are not sufficient options because of content filtering, and teachers have always asked if it could be possible for students to take notes on videos shared through Drive. Until last week, my answer had been "no." But now, thanks to one of my EdTechTeacher Summer Workshop participants - Bill Melville (@bmelvillehwrhs) from Hamilton Wenham Regional High School - there is a solution. By manually changing the URL, students can now take notes on Google Drive videos! The screencast below walks through this process. Thanks again to Bill for this discovery! To learn more about working with Google Apps and Web Tools, EdTechTeacher provides FREE resources on their website.  This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesGreat Google Drive Add-ons for Teachers - A PDF HandoutMore Than 500,000 Historical Video ClipsHow to Apply Custom Avatars to ClassDojo Profiles 

Make Beliefs Comix is a multilingual comic strip creation service that I've featured a few times in the past. Through Make Beliefs Comix students can create comic strips online without needing to register on the site. Make Beliefs Comix also provides teachers with a wealth of printable templates to use in classrooms that do not have enough computers or tablets for every student to use. In the video embedded below I provide an overview of how to create comic strips on Make Beliefs Comix. Applications for Education Make Beliefs Comix and other services like it provide students with a fun and familiar format for creative writing. Sometimes a little visual prompt provided by a gallery of cartoon characters can inspire students to start writing a story. 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 Posts7 Good Options for Building Digital Portfolios - A PDF HandoutFrequently Overlooked Useful YouTube Features - A PDF Handout 

Last month I shared an outline for distributing your school and classroom messages to as many people as possible. Hootsuite is one of the tools that I mentioned, briefly, in that outline. Hootsuite allows you to schedule Tweets and Facebook posts to appear on a schedule of your choosing. Reasons for scheduling Tweets and Facebook posts:  1. You're busy and might not have time to log-in and post on a daily basis. 2. You want to repeat your Tweets and Facebook posts. 3. You want to populate your Twitter feed with messages related to a school event. Use the hashtag you've chosen for the event in your Tweets. This could encourage parents and students to use the same hashtag in their Tweets. Why you want to repeat Tweets and Facebook posts: Twitter and Facebook updates stream past most of us at a pace that is faster than we can follow. If you post your message only once, you have only one opportunity to grab the attention of students and parents who are following your classroom or school Tweets and Facebook posts. Use Hootsuite to schedule your messages to appear in the morning and the evening. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesCreate Short Stories and More on Make Beliefs ComixNow Take Notes on Drive Videos with VideoNot.esGreat Google Drive Add-ons for Teachers - A PDF Handout 

On Tuesday afternoon I met with the instructional technology facilitators in Mooresville, North Carolina. They are a great group of people doing excellent work with teachers and students. One of the things that we talked about during our meeting was how to share our ideas for using educational technology with the people that we serve. And, of course, we talked about how to support those people once we’ve shared our ideas with them. One of the suggestions that I made to the group was to develop a four part messaging system to support the ideas we share with teachers. The system starts with a post on your blog in which you introduce a tool or strategy. That post should also be sent as an email. Then for the next couple of weeks write follow-up posts that support the implementation of the idea in the first post. These follow-up posts could be along the lines of "five ways to use X," "five teachers who have used X," "five things you might not have thought about regarding X." These follow-up posts can also be sent as emails. The overall purpose of this strategy is to remind and provide reinforcement for your ideas about educational technology. Here’s how I have implemented this strategy in the past when introducing people to Thinglink. Introductory post that includes an explanation of what Thinglink does and how it works.A post about five ways to use Thinglink. A reference back to the introductory post is included for the folks who missed it the first time.A post with examples of Thinglink projects completed by students. Again, a link to the introductory post is included for the folks who missed it the first time.A post introducing some less-obvious uses of Thinglink including some examples of app-smashing with Thinglink. For example, I often combine the use of PicMonkey and Thinglink. As with the two previous posts I include a link back to the introductory post that offers instruction on how to use Thinglink. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related Stories7 Good Options for Building Digital Portfolios - A PDF HandoutFrequently Overlooked Useful YouTube Features - A PDF HandoutCreate Short Stories and More on Make Beliefs Comix 

A few years ago when I published my guide to using Blogger in the classroom I included a glossary of terms in it. That same glossary was also published as a stand-alone document that I often distribute when I lead webinars and workshops about blogging. I created that glossary and others like it because I found that people in my workshops often had questions about the vocabulary that I and others were using. Distributing the glossary provides everyone in the workshop with a common vocabulary to use. Using that common vocabulary gives people a higher level of comfort in asking questions and more precision in articulating what they need from me. We give students vocabulary lists and glossaries in our classrooms. We should do the same in professional development settings. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesSupporting Teachers With Four Blog PostsCreate Short Stories and More on Make Beliefs ComixThe Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts 

1. Just ship it. Don’t spend too much time worrying about how the blog looks from a design standpoint because you can always tweak it later. When you’re getting started, any of the standard templates from Blogger, WordPress.com, KidBlog, Edublogs, or Weebly will do. The important thing is to get the blog started. As one of my bosses at FedEx used to say, "don’t let perfect be the enemy of good." 2. Send out a blogging mission and permission notice to parents. Your school may not have a policy about student blogging, but it’s still a good idea to send a notice to parents about why their children are blogging. If you work with students under 13, you will want to explain how their privacy will be protected (no faces posted, no last names, pen names, etc). Jen Deyenberg shared a good blogging permission form here. A quick Google search for "blogging permission slips" will generate a bunch of other samples to evaluate. 3. Review Internet safety and etiquette protocols with your students. Planet Nutshell offers an excellent set of cartoon videos on Internet safety. 4. Create guidelines for how the classroom blog is to be used by students. If you’re planning to use the blog for active discussions with students, talk with them about tone. You might make it a classroom activity to develop online discussion norms. If you’re planning to use the blog as place for students to showcase their work, talk with students about how to offer constructive criticism. If the blog is going to include a widget through which students submit assignments, talk about file types and formatting so that you don’t pull your hair out converting a myriad submitted file types. 5. Expect that something will go wrong. You can plan until the cows come home, but there is always something that doesn’t go according to plan. In the case of classroom blogs that could be a mistake you make in posting a link or an inappropriate comment that a student writes. Treat these mistakes like any other mistake that happens in a classroom and turn them into teaching opportunities. If you made a mistake in posting a link or you posted a video that didn’t play correctly, explain what happened to the students so that you can all learn together. If a student posts an inappropriate comment (you should have comment moderation enabled to grab it before it goes live) use that opportunity to review Internet safety and etiquette with the student. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.                

Last week I presented three webinars on behalf of Simple K12. If you couldn't attend the live sessions, you can now access the recordings through Simple K12. Click the links below to access the webinar recordings and hand-outs. Blogging With Blogger. Hand-out. 10 Best Google Drive Add-ons. Hand-out. The YouTube You Don't Know. Hand-out. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesGreat Google Drive Add-ons for Teachers - A PDF HandoutJoin Me for a Morning and Afternoon of Free WebinarsThe Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts 

Earlier today one of my former colleagues sent me a Facebook message with questions about using Remind this fall. To help her get started I created the following playlist of tutorial videos. Nine of the videos in the playlist were produced by Remind the others were created by me. The full playlist is embedded below. Applications for Education Using text messaging services like Remind is an important part of a larger strategy for delivering your school and classroom announcements to as many people as possible. Email is great for longer messages, but it's hard to beat the efficiency of text messages for short reminder notes. And when you need to say more than can fit in a typical text message, try attaching a file to your Remind messages. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StoriesRemind Opens a New Chat Feature For TeachersCelly - Create, Send, and Archive Group Text MessagesHow to Adjust the Chat Settings in Remind 

On Wednesday morning in Mooresville, North Carolina I presented an updated version of my popular best of the web slides. Those slides are embedded below. I try to provide something for everyone in the slides. This post originally appeared on Free Technology for Teachers if you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.              Related StorieseduClipper Updates With New Tagging and Discovery FeaturesA Short Interview With the Founder of Shadow Puppet Edu & SeeSawThis Playlist Will Help You Learn How to Use Remind to Send Messages to Students