by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 5, 2018 | Academic Technology
This morning I received an email from a reader who wanted to know if it was possible for his students to add their personal videos to Google Slides presentations without having to use YouTube. His plan is for students to collaborate to create a Google Slides...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 5, 2018 | Academic Technology
ReadWorks is an excellent service that provides teachers with free reading lesson plans. ReadWorks offers lesson plans that can be used in classrooms from Kindergarten through 12th grade. All of the lessons are standards-aligned. And if you don’t want to use...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 5, 2018 | Academic Technology
Earlier this year Google added automatic captioning to Google Slides. This week, via The Verge, I learned that Microsoft is adding automatic captioning and translation to PowerPoint starting in January. The automatic captioning will work when you are displaying your...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 5, 2018 | Academic Technology
This week is the 77th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That wasn’t the first military action of the Japanese during WWII. It’s just the event that finally got the U.S. to join the war. If you’re looking from some resources to use...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 5, 2018 | Academic Technology
About six weeks ago I published a post about TED-Ed’s series of videos that explain why students should read the classics. When I published that post there were five videos in the series. The series is now up to seven videos. Those videos are listed and embedded...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 4, 2018 | Academic Technology
Flipgrid is a great video response tool that can be used by students of almost any age including those under age 13 who often don’t have email addresses. If your students don’t have email addresses you can create student IDs for them to use on Flipgrid....
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 4, 2018 | Academic Technology
I love Flipgrid for the ease with which students can record videos with their webcams to reply to prompts that you give them. But not every student likes to appear on camera. And not every Flipgrid topic has to be a free-form response. It is in those instances that...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 3, 2018 | Academic Technology
A couple of weeks ago I posted a short review of a site called Bensound that hosts about 175 free instrumental music tracks that you can download for free. You can down the music for free and re-use it in classroom video projects provided that you follow the...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 1, 2018 | Academic Technology
Good morning from Maine where this morning we’re going to get a Christmas tree from a friend’s tree farm. A few years ago this is not something that I would get excited about, but having kids has changed my perspective on so many things including Christmas...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 1, 2018 | Academic Technology
Earlier this week I published a post about Gmail’s Smart Reply feature. A few people emailed to ask if I had a video about how to use it. I didn’t have one so last night I made one. In the following video you can see how to use Smart Reply in Gmail as well...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Dec 1, 2018 | Academic Technology
As I write this What is Federal Land? is the #49 trending video on YouTube. It’s nice to see an educational video trending that high on YouTube. The video was produced by CGP Grey who has produced some other fantastic educational videos over the years....
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 30, 2018 | Academic Technology
Good evening from Maine where I’m home after a great few days at the LACUE conference in New Orleans. November was a busy month as I hosted three professional development courses through Practical Ed Tech and was a featured presenter at two conferences. Thank...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 30, 2018 | Academic Technology
A couple of months ago I discovered a new text to speech tool called Voicepods. When I first tried it and wrote about it Voicepods would only create voice recordings based on text that you wrote. This week Voicepods launched a free Chrome extension that will let you...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 30, 2018 | Academic Technology
DocsTeach is one of my favorite tools for building history lessons centered around primary source documents, pictures, maps, and drawings. DocsTeach contains an integrated search tool for finding artifacts from the U.S. National Archives. You can use that search tool...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 29, 2018 | Academic Technology
Can we teach critical thinking and good digital citizenship practices if we don’t use them ourselves? I’m asking because every week I see another educator in my social networks share a Facebook scam. Here are the last two that I saw shared by people who...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 29, 2018 | Academic Technology
One of the long-running complaints about Google Classroom that I and many others have had is about the nearly featureless gradebook. It appears that Google has heard those complaints and is taking some steps to improve the Google Classroom gradebook. The first step...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 29, 2018 | Academic Technology
Back in June Google teased us with an announcement about a locked mode for Google Forms. All summer and fall I got questions about when it would be available. Today, Google announced that G Suite for Education users can now sign-up for early access to Google Forms...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 29, 2018 | Academic Technology
I’ve just wrapped-up two days of giving presentations at the LACUE conference in New Orleans. A huge thank you to the conference organizers for inviting me and to everyone who came to my presentations. If you’re curious about what I spoke about at the...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 29, 2018 | Academic Technology
Sites in VR is a free Android and iOS app that provides a 1700 virtual reality views of significant landmarks around the world. The app is a good one for those who would like to experience a bit of virtual reality without having to use a virtual reality headset. Sites...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 28, 2018 | Academic Technology
Today, Google announced that Google Classroom is now available to all G Suite domains including non-profit and business domains. This follows last year’s addition of Google Classroom to personal Google accounts. Today’s announcement essentially makes...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 28, 2018 | Academic Technology
Eighteen months ago Google removed the annotations editor from YouTube. Today, I logged into the YouTube editor and saw an announcement that Google is going to remove all existing annotations from YouTube videos on January 15th. Google states that viewers don’t...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 28, 2018 | Academic Technology
On this day eleven years I published my first blog post here on Free Technology for Teachers. I had a little bit of an idea of what I wanted to do and no idea that eleven years and nearly 14,000 posts later I would still be doing it. Some of you have been with me for...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 27, 2018 | Academic Technology
For many people the biggest challenge in maintaining a blog has nothing to do with the technical aspects. It’s coming up with ideas for blog posts that often proves to be the biggest challenge to keeping a blog going. This is true whether you’re running a...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 27, 2018 | Academic Technology
As you may know, I offer professional development webinars through PracticalEdTech.com. But that’s not the only thing that I do with that site. I also use it to publish my tip of the week newsletter. That is a once-per-week mailing that contains my favorite tip...
by Free Technology for Teachers | Nov 27, 2018 | Academic Technology
Smart Reply is one of my favorite features to come with the “new” Gmail that was thrust upon all users earlier this year. Smart Reply takes the context of the email message to which you are replying and what you have already typed to form a suggested...
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