Get Inspiration for Video Projects and Help a Non-profit at the Same Time

Over the weekend I featured a new video submission to Next Vista for Learning. That video was a submission for the latest Next Vista video contest. The contest is called Creative Sprouts. The submission period is closed and voting is now open. Next Vista, a non-profit, is looking for some help with the judging of videos. If you have a few minutes to watch the videos, Next Vista would appreciate your help. Even better, if you have time to watch the videos with your students you can vote for your favorites as a class.

Applications for Education
Watching the finalist videos in the Creative Sprouts contest can be a good way to get ideas for your own classroom video projects. There are three finalist categories; student, student & teacher collaboration, and teacher.

Next Vista is a non-profit video sharing site developed by Rushton Hurley. If you get a chance to see Rushton present at conference, take it! You won't be disappointed. 

More Than 100 Sets of Primary Source Documents for Students

A few years ago I wrote a post about searching through the Digital Public Library of America to locate primary source documents to use with students. At that point the DPLA had relatively few, loosely organized collections. Yesterday, I received an email from DPLA informing me that they now have more than 100 primary source document sets for students.

The DPLA's primary source document sets are organized by subject and time period in United States history. Depending upon the time period the DPLA primary source sets include documents, drawings, maps, photographs, and film clips. A list of points to consider accompanies each artifact in each set. Teachers should scroll to the bottom of the page on each artifact to find a teaching guide related to the primary source set.

Applications for Education
The DPLA's primary source sets provide teachers and students with a convenient way to find primary source documents. For teachers it can be a good way to locate resources to use in a lesson plan. For students the sets can provide a good start to a research project.

On the topic of primary sources, this video provides students with a great explanation of the differences between primary and secondary sources.

Last month I outlined five good activities for teaching with primary sources. My favorite on that list is layering old maps on top of current maps in Google Earth.

Places We Can Connect

Over the weekend I received an email from a reader who requested more pictures of my dogs. The email simply read, "more dog pictures, please! Are you on Instagram?" Yes, I am on Instagram. My Instagram profile is public so that everyone can enjoy pictures of my dogs, scenery around western Maine, and any other random things that I photograph.

Other places that you can find me online:
Twitter - I Tweet my blog posts, links to the blog posts of others, and answer questions as best as I can. Occasionally, I'll share a picture or two on Twitter.

Facebook - The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page has about 428,000 likes right now. I have a personal Facebook page that I use only for friends and family. My rule of thumb on accepting friend requests on my personal Facebook page is that we have to have shared some kind of meaningful in-person experience like working together, eating together, playing sports together, or being from the same gene pool.

YouTube - My YouTube channel now has more than 300 tutorial videos that I've created.

LinkedIn - I'm on it, but I'm rarely on it more than once a week.

Pinterest - I have some Pinterest boards. Admittedly, I stopped using it for a while and now I'm back on it.

Email - you can always email me at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com I do my best to respond quickly. I do appreciate being addressed by name in an email instead of just "hey" or "hi" (pro tip for PR people, using an spelling my name correctly drastically increases your odds of me opening and reading your email).

Let's connect offline:
In June I'll be at a bunch of events, please say hello if you see me. Or Tweet me to meet up with you. This is where I'll be in June in this order:
Glendale, AZ
Abilene, TX
Amarillo, TX
Topeka, KS
Flagstaff, AZ
St. Joseph, MO
Nashville, TN
Denver, CO - ISTE Conference

How to Download Your Remind Message History

This morning I received an email from Remind (formerly Remind 101) that reminded that I can download my message history. The history option lets me choose a range of dates in which messages were sent and then save those messages in PDF format. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how easy it is to download a history of Remind messages.


Applications for Education
As I mentioned in the video above, downloading a message history can be a good way to keep a physical record of messages sent and received. For teachers and or student teachers who are trying to demonstrate their efforts to communicate with parents, a copy of Remind message history could be useful in that endeavor.

This video is one of more than 200 practical ed tech tips and tutorials that you can find on my YouTube channel.