How to Privately Share Media from Your iPad via Google Drive

I recently had someone ask me how her students could privately share videos they made on their iPads. My suggestion was to use the Google Drive iPad app to upload and share their videos. In the video below I offer a demonstration and explanation of this process.

The Benefits of Subscribing to Blogs

Earlier this week I posted an announcement about moving my RSS delivery service from FeedBurner to FeedBlitz. This is probably a good time take a look at the benefits of subscribing to blogs compared to simply bookmarking them and visiting them on a regular basis.

Subscription Options and Their Benefits
Most blogs have at least two methods of subscribing to updates; RSS and email. Subscribing via RSS through a reader app like Feedly or Flipboard will put the latest updates on that app in near real-time. In both of those RSS reader apps you can create categories of feeds from your favorite blogs and read them all in one place. Feedly and Flipboard don't display advertising next to articles while you're reading.

Subscribing via email will send you an email when new content is posted on a blog. In many cases you can read the full blog entry without leaving your email client. The emails from Free Technology for Teachers come out once a day and include all of the posts from the previous 24 hour period. In the emails that come from this blog, advertising has been removed too (there was a small glitch with that earlier this week, but it have been fixed).

Why not just follow a blog through social media?
I know folks who have abandoned RSS and email subscriptions all together in favor of just relying on social media updates. I haven't taken that plunge yet because social media updates move faster than I can keep up.

Options for subscribing to this blog
RSS feed
Email subscription
Twitter (I put personal updates in this as well as ed tech updates)
Google+ (I share everything from blog posts to interesting pictures that I find)

Using Internet Explorer 9 and Google Apps? It's Time to Update Your Browser

If your school's tech department insists on making you and your students use Internet Explorer and you use Google Apps (Drive, Gmail, Calendar, etc) it's time to make sure that you're using IE 10 or above. Yesterday, Google announced that they are ceasing support of IE 9 (support for all previous versions ceased a while ago). If you're not sure what browser you are using you can visit WhatBrowser.org to find out.


Thanks to Jen Deyenberg for sharing the announcement on Twitter.

Edsavr - Collect, Save, and Share

Edsavr is a new Chrome extension developed by the team at An Estuary (a start-up founded by teachers in the Baltimore area). Edsavr is a bookmarking tool that you can use to send your favorite links to Edmodo, eduClipper, and Sanderling (a field journal service still in beta).

Applications for Education
If you and your students are using Edmodo and eduClipper to share resources that you find on the web, Edsavr could be a time saver for you.

Planet Nutshell Presents Math Shorts

I became a big fan of Planet Nutshell the first time that I saw their series of videos on Internet Safety. They've also produced great videos on Financial Aid and Climate Science. Math Shorts is the latest addition to Planet Nutshell's line-up of  animated educational videos.

Math Shorts will eventually have twenty videos in the series. Right now the series contains four animated videos for elementary school and middle school students. Each of the videos has a Common Core standard aligned to it. All of the videos have supporting materials from PBS Learning Media attached to them. The first video in the series is embedded below.

How Many Countries Are There? - Borders and More Explained

CGPGrey recently released a new video tackling the question, "how many countries are there?" In the video he explains how countries are defined and recognized by various international organizations including the UN and the IOC. He also jumps into a brief commentary about the relationship between China and Taiwan. The video is embedded below.


After watching How Many Countries Are There? you might want to have students watch CGPGrey's explanation of borders and landlocked countries.


Finally, have your students explore some historical maps to see how borders and country names have changed throughout history.