February's Most Popular Posts on Free Technology for Teachers

Good evening from Woodstock, Maine where my dogs and I enjoyed the first day of March by spending some time in the snowy woods. All three of us are tired from our time in the fresh air. I hope you all had a great weekend too.

As I do at the end of every month I've compiled a list of the most popular posts of the month. This list is ranked according to the number of views that each post received during the month.

Here are the most popular posts in February, 2015:
1. 10 Good Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms Add-ons for Teachers
2. How to Create Online Collaborative Whiteboards
3. CK-12 Launches a New Collection of Elementary School Math Resources
4. More Fun With Math in Pictures
5. 5 TED-Ed Lessons on How the Human Body Works
6. Insert Graphs and Equations Into Google Docs and Forms
7. Speech to Text in Google Documents
8. 5 Videos on Making Flipped Video Lessons
9. 5 Browser-based Tools for Creating Audio Recordings
10. How to Create Flashcards from a Google Spreadsheet

Registration is open for the spring and summer sections of my popular online courses Getting Going With GAFE and Blogs & Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders. Graduate credits are available for both courses. People who are subscribed to the PracticalEdTech.com newsletter receive a discount on registration.

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.
Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.
BoomWriter provides a fantastic tool for creating writing lessons. 
Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards and cartoon stories.
Versal is a great tool for building interactive online course components.
MidWest Teachers Institute offers online graduate courses for teachers.
PresentationTube provides a good way to use PowerPoint to create flipped lessons.
Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.
MasteryConnect provides a network for teachers to share and discover Common Core assessments.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County offers graduate programs for teachers.
Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.
EdTechTeacher is hosting host workshops in six cities in the U.S. in the summer.
SeeSaw is a great iPad app for creating digital portfolios.

How to Search Google Books, Scholar, and News Archive

Last week in my post about the Google News Newspaper Archive I mentioned the value of getting students to use search tools other than Google.com. By using search tools like Google Books and Google Scholar students often find resources that they wouldn't have discovered had they simply used Google.com for their searches. The three videos embedded below provide overviews of how to use Google Books, Google Scholar, and the Google News Newspaper Archive.

OnGuard Online - Concise Internet Safety Videos from the FTC

OnGuard Online is a series of sixteen videos from the Federal Trade Commission. The videos provide concise lessons about topics in Internet Safety. I discovered the series while looking for a video about public wi-fi security (or lack thereof) to share with a friend of mine who spends a lot of time on a local coffee shop's wi-fi network. Besides wi-fi network security OnGuard Online covers topics like avoiding malware, recognizing phishing scams, and responsible sharing on social media. The video is embedded below.


Applications for Education
The OnGuard Online video about wi-fi security is a good one for students who are taking school-issued laptops, Chromebooks, or tablets home with them and eventually using them on public wi-fi networks.