Rate Some Educational Videos and Inspire Your Students

Next Vista for Learning is my favorite place for students and teachers to share the educational videos that they create. Throughout the year Next Vista hosts a number of video creation contests for students and teachers. The latest contest just wrapped-up and now Next Vista is looking for a little help in picking the winners.

The latest Next Vista contest has ten finalists spread across two categories; student submissions and teacher-student collaborative submissions. If you have some time to watch the finalists in one or all three categories, please do so. Consider watching the videos with your students and asking them to vote for their favorite videos. Judging the finalists could be a great way to inspire your students to create their own videos. Similarly, watching the finalist videos might give you some ideas for a video project of your own. Click here for the judging form and list of finalist videos. All votes are due by midnight on February 14, 2016.

How to Resize Videos in Google Forms

Shortly after I published a post about the recent changes to Google Forms I received an email from someone who wanted to know if there is an easy way to change the size of video embedded into a Google Form. There is an easy way to resize videos embedded into your Google Forms. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to do that.


The video above is the 88th in my playlist of Google Tools Tutorials.

Why Do We Love? - One More Valentine's Day Lesson

Earlier this week I shared some resources for teaching about science and statistics related to Valentine's Day. This morning I noticed a new TED-Ed lesson that is appropriate for the last school day before Valentine's Day, 2016.

Why Do We Love? is a TED-Ed lesson that explores some philosophies on why people love. The lesson won't provide you with any clear answers, but it will make you think. And isn't that what philosophers want you to do?

Quizlet's Practice Mode Now Works on Mobile Devices

The popular flashcard and test-prep service, Quizlet, has added a much-requested feature to their mobile app. You've long been able to review flashcards on Quizlet's mobile apps. Now you can take practice tests on the Quizlet mobile app. According to Quizlet's corporate blog, the practice test mode is available now on iOS and will be available for Android by the end of the month.

Applications for Education
Through the Quizlet mobile apps students can access their flashcards used even when they don’t have an internet connection. Quizlet flashcards can include audio elements in eighteen languages. Audio support is available for Quizlet flashcards. This new practice test mode will give students a better sense of how prepared they are for a particular test.