by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 16, 2019 | Academic Technology
The BBC’s Skillswise website offers many good activities for learning and practicing skills in language arts and mathematics. A section of the site that could be useful in a lot of classrooms is the speaking and listening section. The speaking and listening...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 16, 2019 | Academic Technology
Random Name Picker is a free tool from Russel Tarr at Classtools.net. Random Name Picker lets you input names and spin a virtual wheel to have a name randomly selected from the list. After a name is selected you can remove it from the wheel so that it is not selected...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 14, 2019 | Academic Technology
In my previous post I shared some information about the upcoming Edublogs Student Blogging Challenge. If you’re new to blogging or it has been a long time since you did any blogging, it can be helpful to have a glossary of terms that are frequently used when...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 14, 2019 | Academic Technology
Blogging can be a great way to get students interested in writing and publishing their work for an audience. The challenges of classroom blogging have always been coming up with things for kids to write about and building an audience for your students’ work. The...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 14, 2019 | Academic Technology
How Do Ocean Currents Work? is a TED-Ed lesson that makes a fantastic addition to TED-Ed’s list of lessons about oceans. The list now has 25 lessons covering a range of ocean-related topics including how waves are formed, the depths of oceans, and lessons about...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 14, 2019 | Academic Technology
ReadWorks, a fantastic free service for ELA teachers, recently added new illustrated ebooks to their library. These illustrated ebooks can be used in the same way that all other ReadWorks ebooks can be used by you and your students. That includes distributing ebooks...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 13, 2019 | Academic Technology
Earlier this week I sent out an email about super-early registration for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. Some people have already jumped on that offer and others have emailed me with questions about the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. Here’s a short list of...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 13, 2019 | Academic Technology
Valentine’s Day is only a couple of days away. If you’re looking for some last minute activities to do in your classroom, take a look at these resources. Why Do We Love? is a TED-Ed lesson that explores some philosophies on why people love. The lesson...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 13, 2019 | Academic Technology
Last year Google added Smart Replies to all Gmail accounts including those of G Suite for Education users. The Smart Replies feature has become quite the time-saver in my busy day. This week Google announced a new Gmail feature that could also prove to be a time-saver...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 13, 2019 | Academic Technology
In the last week I’ve fielded a half-dozen emails from readers who were experiencing problems with web tools not working as they expected. This seems like a good time to revisit six things that you should check when a website doesn’t work as you expected...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 11, 2019 | Academic Technology
Last week I published a video about using Google Slides to create choose your own adventure stories. That prompted a couple of people to ask if Keynote and or PowerPoint can be used in the same manner. The answer to that question is yes. In the following video I...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 9, 2019 | Academic Technology
Thanks to an email from a reader I was alerted that a few of the online whiteboard tools that I have reviewed in the past are no longer working. Here’s an updated list of online whiteboard tools that you and your students can use for free. Scratchwork is an...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 9, 2019 | Academic Technology
Good morning from cold and windy Maine. How windy? In the words of my two-year-old, “soooo windy!” Before sharing the list of the week’s most popular posts, I have an update about Free Technology for Teachers that will answer some of the questions...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 8, 2019 | Academic Technology
Google Slides has lots of little hidden features and overlooked tools that students can use to make all kinds creative presentations. One of those overlooked features is linking slides to other slides. If used correctly and with a little planning students can create...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 8, 2019 | Academic Technology
I’m still working through many of the notes that I took during the 2019 BETT Show that wrapped up in a London a couple of weeks ago. One of the new things that I saw there was a new Hacking STEM project called Building Models to Understand and Mitigate Brain...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 7, 2019 | Academic Technology
Go to any educational technology conference or ed tech blog today and you are bound to encounter augmented reality and virtual reality products. They’re the hot topics of the day in the educational technology industry. Every week I answer questions from readers about...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 7, 2019 | Academic Technology
Anchor, one of the best new podcast creation tools to emerge in the last few years, has been acquired by Spotify. In an email sent to users and in this blog post Anchor’s founders announced the acquisition. According to Anchor’s announcement the...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 7, 2019 | Academic Technology
I started this year with a goal of improving my fitness. As I wrote on January 2nd, I use Google Keep to set reminders to do things that will help me reach my goals. I use Google Keep to get reminders on my phone at various points in my day. Those reminders are...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 7, 2019 | Academic Technology
On Monday I wrote about a couple of image-based search challenges that I do with students. I use those challenges as a way to get students to think about all of the search tools and search strategies that they have at their disposal. To solve the challenges students...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 5, 2019 | Academic Technology
On Monday someone Tweeted at me a request for an alternative to Audacity that his students could use online to record and edit audio tracks. My first thought was to try SoundTrap, but they no longer offer a free version of their product. So my next suggestion was to...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 5, 2019 | Academic Technology
Google Scholar can be an excellent place to find articles from academic journals. Articles from academic journals aren’t the only things that students can search for on Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides search tools for locating court decisions and tools for...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 4, 2019 | Academic Technology
One of my favorite ways to reinforce the use of good search strategies to students is to show interesting pictures and have students try to make a long list of questions about what they see. Then I let the students try to find the answers to those questions. When they...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 2, 2019 | Academic Technology
Good morning from Maine where I’m not doing anything particularly exciting other than brewing up a batch of chili to have during the Super Bowl tomorrow night. Between stirs of the chili I’m working on materials for a bunch of workshops and keynotes that I...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Feb 1, 2019 | Academic Technology
Students often think that because they can type a phrase into Google or saying something aloud to Siri they know how to search. Of course, any teacher who has heard a student say “Google has nothing on this” or “there’s no information about my...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Jan 31, 2019 | Academic Technology
Taskade is a task management tool that you can use on your computer, phone, or tablet. The service is collaborative because you can invite other people to join you to work on lists and notes in the same online space. The best part of Taskade is the selection of...
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