The Month in Review - October's Most Popular Posts

Good evening from Maine where I'm getting ready to fly to the Georgia Educational Technology Conference tomorrow. I'll be speaking there on Wednesday and Thursday. If you're going too, please say hello. Next week I'll be speaking at an event near my hometown in Connecticut.

At the end of every month I post a list of the most frequently read posts of the previous 30 days. This gives me a chance to see what you're interested in and you a chance to see what's trending.

Here are this month's most popular posts:
1. Great Google Drive Add-ons for Teachers - An Updated Handout
2. 10 Important Google Search Strategies for Students - A PDF Handout
3. 10 Ideas for Using Comics In Your Classroom
4. Zing! - Thousands of Free eBooks for Students
5. How to Create Flashcards from a Google Spreadsheet
6. Goo.gl - Save Time, Shorten URLs, and Track Interactions
7. WriteReader - Collaborative Book Creation for Elementary School Classrooms
8. How JoeZoo Express Can Save You Tons of Time Grading in Google Documents
9. Click to Spin - A Fun and Free Random Name Picker
10. A Cute Video About Email Etiquette for Students

In November I'll be trying out a new way of offering professional development webinars. For the last few years I've offered them as three to five week courses. A lot of people have suggested offering each section of the courses as stand-alone webinars. So this month I'll be offering two one hour webinars. One on formative assessment and one on video creation. Registration will be available on Wednesday.

Need a keynote for your conference? 

Click here to learn about my keynotes and workshops.

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.

Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.

Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards.

Pixton provides a great way to create comics. 

QuickKey saves teachers tons of time when scoring formative assessments.

SeeSaw is the best platform for creating digital portfolios with K-8 students. 

Math Playground offers hundreds of math games and tutorial videos. 

Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.

PrepFactory offers a great place for students to prepare for SAT and ACT tests.

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.

My Simpleshow provides a great way to create explainer videos.

How to Share Rubrics in JoeZoo

Earlier today I received an email from a reader who was following up on my recent post about JoeZoo Express. She was asking if it was possible to browse existing rubrics in JoeZoo. Unfortunately, you can only share rubrics in JoeZoo if your school has the JoeZoo app installed domain-wide (it's free to do, ask your G Suite for Education administrator to do it). Once JoeZoo is installed across your your G Suite for Education domain, you will be able to share rubrics with your colleagues. The following video from JoeZoo explains how that works.


If you simply want to find publicly shared rubrics that were written in Google Docs or Google Sheets, you can do a Google search and refine your search to show results only from the domain docs.google.com or sheets.google.com. Here's how I structured a search for science project rubrics: science project rubric site:docs.google.com

A Thorough Video Overview of the French Revolution

In my previous post I shared the new TED-Ed lesson about the French Revolution. That video lesson is fine as an introduction in a middle school classroom. For a much more in-depth video lesson on the French Revolution students should turn to Tom Richey. Tom offers a thirteen part series on the French Revolution. The series was designed for students reviewing for the AP European History exam.


If you are going to share these videos with your students, I recommend also introducing them to either VideoNotes or Vialogues. VideoNotes and Vialogues let students take notes while watching a video. VideoNotes will integrate with G Suite for Education and allow students to share their notes through Google Drive.

A Short Introduction to the French Revolution

What Caused the French Revolution? is the title and topic of a new TED-Ed lesson. Like most TED-Ed lessons, the video provides a brief overview of the key points you'd find in a typical middle school or high school history textbook. The lesson introduces students to the three Estates of pre-revolution France, the National Assembly, and the storming of the Bastille. And, of course, the lesson introduces Napoleon. The video is embedded below.


Try Vizia or EDpuzzle to build interactive questions into this video lesson.