Something Fun I Learned About Myself Through Google Alerts

Like any good digital citizen I have Google Alerts set up for my name and related spellings of my name. Over the years I've learned through Google Alerts that there are karate experts, children's authors, voice coaches, and theater critics who are also named Richard Byrne. A few years ago through Google Alerts, I made a discovery about "myself." That discovery is that I was once a professional wrestler who lost a match to King Kong Bundy.

In the summary of Google Alerts that I received there was a link to an article about the passing of King Kong Bundy. The end of the article stated, "In his very last bout, he defeated Richard Byrne on Dec. 5, 2017." For the record, I have never set foot in a professional wrestling ring, but when I was a little kid I would have loved to.

Watch this video to learn how you can create Google Alerts and learn fun things about yourself.

Journey to Mars - A Collection of Resources for Teaching and Learning About Mars

Earlier this year SciShow Kids published a series of four videos all about Mars. To wrap-up that series SciShow Kids recently published a compilation of all of those videos in one video titled Journey to Mars. I've embedded that video below. 

Introduction to Classwork in Microsoft Teams

Teachers who use Microsoft Teams will have a convenient new feature to use this fall. That feature is called Classwork and it will enable you to create modules of resources drawn from assignments and OneNote notebook pages as well as web links, files, and Microsoft Forms quizzes. 

Last month at the ISTE conference I saw some live demonstrations of Microsoft Teams Classwork. It does seem to be relatively easy to use and is welcome improvement over the old ways of trying to organize materials for students in Teams. 

Mike Tholfsen recently published an overview of how to use Classwork in Teams. You can see that video here on Mike's YouTube channel or as embedded below. 

Math, Calories, and Copyright - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising over what should be a nice summer day to play outside. We're going to ride bikes and play outside at a friend's birthday party. I hope that you do something equally fun this weekend. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Using AI for Creating Formative Assessments
2. 71 Google Slides Tutorials
3. Five Resources for Teaching and Learning About Copyright
4. Use Wolfram Alpha to Estimate Calories Burned
5. Four Dozen Google Forms Tutorials
6. Five Wolfram Alpha Tutorials for Teachers
7. Try the Pairs Math Game in Your Library or Classroom

A New Google Classroom Control Over Assignment Submissions

When you return to school this fall Google Classroom will have some new features for you to try. One of those new features that was recently announced is more control over assignment submissions. And unlike some of the features announced earlier this summer, this update is one that will be available to all teachers regardless of which version of Google Workspaces their schools use. 

Latest feature added to Google Classroom is the ability to completely prevent assignment submissions after a set due date. Previously, students could submit an assignment after a due date and the assignment would simply be marked as late. Now, if you enable the setting, students won't be able to make a submission at all after a due date has passed. 

Applications for Education
I can see this feature being welcomed by some teachers and schools who have strict assignment deadlines. I can also see it being a hassle if you decide later in the semester to make an exception and allow students to submit late assignments. Either way, you'll soon be able to test the strict deadline feature for yourself.

How to Get in the Flow

In a world in which there is no shortage of digital distractions it can be hard to get into the flow of working a project, studying, or simply sitting and thinking for a while. That's why I like what Engageable is trying to do, why I appreciate the work of Cal Newport, and why I was happy to see a new TED-Ed video about entering a state of flow. 

TED-Ed's new lesson, How to Enter Flow State, explains why it can be difficult to enter a flow state, why sometimes it's easier than others to enter a flow state, and the mental effects of getting into a flow state. Interestingly, the video is actually fairly light on tips for how to to actually enter a flow state of mind. It provides the same tips that you've probably heard before. Those are things like setting small, achievable goals for a work session and work in a quiet, distraction-free environment. 

The video from the lesson is embedded below. 

Applications for Education
Last fall TED-Ed published a lesson that explains why people procrastinate even when it feels bad. I would show students the lesson about procrastination before showing them the one about how to get into a workflow. With the knowledge of why they procrastinate, students might be more interested in learning how to get into a workflow to get things done.

How to Annotate Images on Google Jamboard

Even though it's not as popular as it was a couple of years ago, Google Jamboard is still a great tool for conducting a variety of online activities including collaborative brainstorming sessions, creating word mover activities, and annotating images. It's the annotating images use case that I demonstrate in this new video. 

Annotating images in Jamboard is a great way for students to ask you questions about things they've noticed. Likewise, as demonstrated in the video above, it's a good way to pose questions to your students or to simply draw their attention to an important element of an image.

To learn more about Jamboard watch How to Use Google Jamboard in Google Classroom and Getting Started With Jamboard.

Canva, Pictures, and Micro:bits - The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine were the sun has set on the month of July, 2023. This month I hosted a course on search strategies for teachers and students. If you missed it, I'll be offering it again soon. Look for an announcement in the next couple of days about that. 

Great Debates and Taylor Swift

EconEdLink is a resource that I've recommended to social studies teachers for many years now. In addition to great economics lesson plans like this one about lemonade stands and this one about owning your first car, EconEdLink provides professional development opportunities throughout the year.

Five Tools for Creating Automatically Scored Formative Assessments

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was asked to teach additional classes this fall. She reached out to me for suggestions on tools to create self-grading formative assessments to save her time this fall. I'd bet that there are many other teachers in the same situation and wondering the same thing. Here are some of my suggestions for creating automatically scored formative assessments. 

Formative
Formative, which was recently acquired by Newsela, is a great tool for creating formative assessments that can be automatically scored. I've been using it for the last half-dozen years to create formative assessments that include labeling diagrams, handwriting and drawing, and multiple choice questions. Formative recently added an AI component that can be helpful in creating assessments. You can see a demo of that feature here and a demo of some of Formative's other great features here.

Plickers
Plickers is another formative assessment platform that I've been using for years. It's a great option for conducting formative assessment activities when not all of your students have laptops or you would simply prefer an assessment activity that doesn't require them to use their laptops, tablets, or phones. My most recent blog post about using Plickers can be read here. A demo of how to get started using the Plickers platform is included in the video that is embedded below.



TeacherMade
TeacherMade is a tool that you can use to turn your existing documents (Word, PDF, or Google Doc) into online, self-grading assignments. You can also create activities from scratch in TeacherMade. But perhaps my favorite way to use TeacherMade is to grab a Canva template and turn that into an online, self-grading assignment. How to use Canva templates in TeacherMade is demonstrated in this short video.

Google Forms
Google Forms is the tool that I've used for more years than anything else to create self-grading assessments. In fact, I was using it for that purpose back when you had to write a spreadsheet script to have Forms responses automatically graded. Fortunately, today it is is very easy to use Google Forms to create automatically graded assessments. Watch this video to learn how to get started and then head here for dozens of more Google Forms tutorials.



Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms is every bit as good as Google Forms is for creating self-grading assessments. In fact, there are some features of Microsoft Forms that I wish Google Forms had. One of those is the new live presentation mode in Microsoft Forms. Learn more about that feature in this video and then head here for a dozen more Microsoft Forms tutorials.

How to Scan and Search Handwritten Notes in Google Keep and Docs

In this week's Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I shared a couple of studies that support the benefits of handwriting notes over typing notes. In the newsletter I also shared a couple of tips for digitizing handwritten notes. One of the things that I mentioned was using Google Keep to digitize handwritten notes. 

Google Keep's free mobile apps for iOS and Android let you snap a picture of a handwritten note and then convert the handwriting into a text note. The text can shared directly to Google Documents. And if you don't share the note to Google Docs, you can still easily search through your notes in Google Keep. 

In this new video I demonstrate how to use Google Keep to scan handwritten notes, convert the notes to text, share the notes to Google Docs, and search for your notes in Google Keep and in Google Docs. 

Video - How to Scan and Search Handwritten Notes in Google Keep and Docs. 

How to Create and Share Google Photos Albums

A couple of days ago a reader emailed me to ask for suggestions on how to share pictures with her students' parents without having to send the pictures as email attachments every day or every week. I was happy to provide a couple of suggestions. 

My first idea was to use a service like Seesaw to share pictures with students' parents. I've done that in the past in my own classroom and now my kids' teachers do the same. My other suggestion was to create a Google Photos album that is shared with parents. How to do that is demonstrated in my new video that is embedded below. 

Video - How to Create & Share Albums in Google Photos

Applications for Education
The benefit of creating and sharing a Google Photos album is that its URL stays the same no matter how many times you update the contents of the album. Theoretically, you could share the album' URL with parents at the start of the school year and they can simply revisit it whenever they want throughout the school year to see the latest updates you've made. Of course, you should always check your school's policy about sharing pictures that have students' faces in them before you publish a photo album. You might find that you have some parents who don't want their children to appear in photographs that other parents can see.

Three Self-Paced Courses for the Start of the School Year

If you're interested in a professional development course that you can do while sitting outside before the summer ends, take a look at the courses I offer through PracticalEdTech.com. 

Animated Explanations!
This five-part course teaches you everything you need to know to create and teach with your own animated explanations. In the course you’ll learn why the process of creating animated explanations is valuable to your students and to you. You’ll learn how to make everything from a simple one-frame animation to a complete animated video. Click here to learn more and get started today!

How to Create & Sell Your Own Digital Products
In this four-part course you’ll learn how to create and sell eBooks, webinars, video courses, lesson plans, and more! And I’ll help you promote your new products! All of the course material is delivered in a series of four weekly emails. Each lesson includes written materials, templates, and video tutorials. You can email me all of your questions as you go through the course. And at the end you can book a one-on-one Zoom call with me! Learn more here and get started here!

Five Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom
In this five-part course you’ll learn how to create and conduct video projects in almost any K-12 classroom! You can do these projects on Chromebooks, iPads, Mac, and Windows computers. Highlights of this course include making green screen videos, creating animated videos, and a variety of ways to create instructional videos. Learn more here and get started here.

If you’ve already taken one of these courses, thank you! Your support makes it possible for me to keep creating resources for teachers.

Seven ClassTools Templates to Try This Year

ClassTools has long been a favorite resource of mine for creating all kinds of fun, online activities for social studies classes. As the new school year approaches it's a good time to take a look at seven of my favorite ClassTools games and activities templates. 

Play Your Dates Right is one of the templates that I like to use to create a game that is focused on helping students recall the sequence of historical events. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to create a simple timeline-based game with the Play Your Dates Right template from ClassTools.net.



The Dust Bin game template from ClassTools lets you create a review game in which students sort answer choices into four categories. It's a template that is easy to follow to quickly make a review game for your students to play. In the following video I demonstrate how to use the Dust Bin game template from ClassTools.



The Connect Fours template on ClassTools.net lets you create a Connect Four game that provides students with instant feedback. To create your own Connect Fours game head to the game page and select "create new game." On the next screen enter the terms that you want displayed on your game along with the title for the groupings of terms. Your game will be assigned its own URL that you can distribute however you see fit. Watch my video below to see how it works.



The ClassTools Hexagons Generator lets you create an online hexagonal learning activity to share with your students. To use the template just enter a topic then a minimum of five terms related to that topic. For example, I entered the topic of "American Revolution" then entered the terms "Stamp Act," "Sugar Act," "Boston Tea Party," "Intolerable Acts," and "Olive Branch Petition." The generator then created five hexagons that my students can arrange online to show the connections between the topics. Students can also edit the hexagons to add explanations to the connections.



The Classtools Fake SMS Generator is free to use and does not require students to register to use it. In the video below I demonstrate how to create a fictitious text message exchange between historical characters. As I mention in the video below, the Fake SMS Generator could also be used to create visuals for lessons on cyber-safety and etiquette.



The Random Name Picker and the Fruit Machine are two tools that can be used in almost every classroom setting. Both tools can be used to select names or numbers at random. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use both of those tools.



The Wikipedia Timeline Generator will take a Wikipedia article and generate a timeline based on that article. That's not all it does. You can edit the entries on the timeline to correct dates, to edit the information associated with the dates, delete entries on the timeline, and add new dates to the timeline. Timelines created with the Wikipedia Timeline Generator can be embedded into web pages and or shared with the unique URL assigned to your timeline. In the short video embedded below I demonstrate how to use the Wikipedia Timeline Generator hosted by ClassTools.

An eBook for History Teachers and History Students

At the start of every school year I like to review search strategies with students. If you like to do the same and want some new ideas to try this fall, take a look at my eBook Teaching Search Strategies to History Students. 

In Teaching Search Strategies to History Students I outline activities that you can use in middle school and high school classrooms (grades 5-12). When you purchase a copy of the e-book you can use the activities exactly as written (you have permission to use the images I've included) or modify them to meet your students' needs.

I wrote Teaching Search Strategies to History Students to help you help your students go beyond the first page of search results. To that end, I provide guidance on using search tools and databases that students often overlook. These include tools like Google Scholar's patent and court search, Get The Research, and myriad of online archives and databases.

Teaching Search Strategies to History Students was written for middle school and high school social studies teachers who have heard students say, "I can't find anything on this."

Write Out - Poetry, Prose, and Parks!

A couple of years ago one of Kevin Hodgson's blog posts introduced me to the national Write Out project. This is a two week, online event held every October.

This year's NWP Write Out begins on October 8th and runs through October 22nd. The idea of the project is to inspire writers through outdoor settings, particularly National Parks settings, but I think I any outdoor setting will suffice. Write Out 2021 is a combined effort of the National Writing Project and the National Parks Service. The theme of the project, beyond inspiration from the outdoors, is "Poetry, Prose, and Parks."

If you want your students to participate in Write Out 2023 head to the website and sign-up to receive writing prompts, activities, and events to support work in the classroom.  

All About Batteries - And How to Preserve Your Laptop's Battery Life

This week TED-Ed published a new lesson that addresses a topic that just about everyone who owns a cell phone has wondered about at one time or another. That question is "why do phone batteries get worse over time?"  

Why Your Phone Battery Gets Worse Over Time explains how lithium ion batteries work, why they hold less energy over time, and how batteries are recycled. The end of the video dives into the topic of lithium supply and why not all batteries are recycled. Watch the lesson on the TED-Ed YouTube channel or as embedded below. 

The new TED-Ed lesson about batteries is a good companion to an earlier TED-Ed lesson on the same topic. In How Batteries Work students learn about the origins of batteries, how batteries work, the differences between disposable and rechargeable batteries, and why rechargeable batteries eventually cannot be recharged any more. Students watching the video will also see the difference between dry cell and wet cell batteries.



Use This Setting to Preserve Laptop Battery Life
Even though it has improved in recent years, Google Chrome is still notorious for draining laptop batteries. This is particularly true when you have many extensions installed. You can preserve some of your battery's life by opening the advanced settings menu in Chrome and choosing to disable the option to "continue running background apps when Chrome is closed." Watch this video to learn how to enable this setting.

One Good Way to Record a Video in Gmail

Sometimes it is easier to reply to an email with a video than it is to write out a reply. For example, when a colleague asks me for help with Google Classroom I could write step-by-step directions or I could record a short screencast that would accomplish the same thing. Loom's Chrome extension makes it easy to do that. 

With Loom's Chrome extension Gmail users can reply to email by simply clicking the Loom icon and recording a video. The video is then instantly uploaded to your Loom account and inserted into the body of your email. In this short video I demonstrate how to record a video right from your Gmail inbox. 

Slides, Assessments, and Bikes - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we've finally had a nice stretch of summer weather, if you ignore yesterday's rain. This week was full of bike rides, a backyard camping trip with my daughters, and general summer fun. I hope that you've had an equally great week. 

Besides the fun mentioned above, I spent a lot of time working on the backend of PracticalEdTech.com to get it ready to load my courses into a new format that will truly be on-demand. In the meantime, you can still access all of the courses in their current version right here. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Five Wolfram Alpha Tutorials for Teachers
2. A New Google Classroom Control Over Assignment Submissions
3. Using AI for Creating Formative Assessments
4. 71 Google Slides Tutorials
5. Five Resources for Teaching and Learning About Copyright
6. Four Dozen Google Forms Tutorials
7. Five Tools for Creating Automatically Scored Formative Assessments

A New Accessible PhET Simulation

PhET is a free resource that I've been recommending for many years. It now offers more than 100 math, physics, chemistry, and biology simulations that you can use in your classroom for free. About two years ago PhET started creating new simulation and editing existing ones to add accessibility features. Last week PhET released the latest simulation to include accessibility features. Now there are now 46 PhET simulations that include accessibility features.  

Quadrilaterals is the latest PhET simulation. With this simulation students can move the sides of quadrilaterals to see how that effects the shape. The simulation can also be used in lessons about classifying quadrilaterals. 

Like almost all PhET simulations this new one can be used online and offline. You can share it in Google Classroom or in your favorite LMS. The simulation can be embedded into a web page as I've done below. 

How to Add Audio to Almost Anything in Google Workspace

Mote is a great tool for adding audio comments to Google Docs, Google Classroom, and Google Slides. You can also use Mote to add audio to Google Forms and insert audio into Google Slides with just one click. Mote also lets you record audio messages to share directly in Gmail and or via QR codes. All of those things are featured in this Mote compilation video that I put together. 

Staying Organized With Google Drive Folder Descriptions

At the start of every new school year I have high hopes for doing a better job of staying organized than I did the previous year. This year is no exception to that rule. One area in which I hope to improve my organization is in Google Drive. For years I've simply relied on the search function to find files and folders. That's all well and good, but it could be better. One way I hope to improve upon that system is by adding descriptions to my Google Drive folders.  

When you right-click on a folder in your Google Drive account a new menu appears. All the way at the bottom of that menu there is a little description field in which you can write up to 25,000 characters. Watch this short video for a demonstration of how to add a description to your Google Drive folders. 

Applications for Education
Adding a description to your Google Drive folders can be helpful to you. It can be even more helpful to the people with whom you have shared a Google Drive folder. For example, you may want to write a description of the contents of a folder full of review materials that you share with your students or a folder full of lesson materials that you share with your colleagues.

Two Ways to Create Simple and Focused Websites

How to Create a Reservation System in Google Calendar

This morning I answered an email from a reader who was looking for a suggestion for an alternative to using Google Forms for letting students book time in the library during the school day. Since the school was already using Google Workspace, my first suggestion was to try using Google Calendar with the appointment slots feature enabled. 

Using appointment slots in Google Calendar makes scheduling very easy compared to trying to use email, a spreadsheet, or even a shared Google Calendar. Watch the video that I've embedded below to learn how you can make appointment slots in your Google Calendar.

How to Embed Videos Into Book Creator Pages

Book Creator is a tool that I've been using and recommending for many years. It provides a great way for you and your students to create all kinds of multimedia books. In the pages of Book Creator books you can include text, comics, pictures, audio, maps, and videos. The process of including YouTube videos in Book Creator books is demonstrated in my new video that is embedded below. 

Video - How to Embed Videos Into Book Creator

About this time last year Book Creator added the option to leave audio comments on your students' work. Watch the video below to see how that is done (yes, I was wearing the same shirt in both videos one year apart).

Video - How to Use the Commenting Function in Book Creator