The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good evening from Maine where today was a great day for a walk in the woods. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope that you also have time for fun and relaxation.



Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. 5 Ways to Show YouTube Videos Without Related Content
2. Google Team Drives Now Available
3. 7 Great Tools for Creating Flipped Lessons from Existing Videos
4. How to Use Zero Noise Classroom
5. Formatically Helps Students Properly Format Essays
6. Create Screencast Videos on Chromebooks - Three Good Options
7. Thunkable - Design and Publish Your Own Apps

Join me this summer for the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp or the Practical Ed Tech BYOD Camp. Early registration and group discounts are available.

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.

QuickKey saves teachers tons of time when scoring formative assessments.

WriteReader is a fantastic multimedia writing tool for elementary school students.

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 hosts workshops in six cities in the U.S. in the summer.

My Simpleshow provides a great way to create explanatory videos.

YouTube Is Removing Annotations Option - Try This Instead

Earlier this week Google announced that the option to add annotations to your YouTube videos will be going away on May 2nd. This is sad news for many of us who used annotations to create interactive videos through the use of YouTube annotations.

Fortunately, the option to link your videos to other videos isn't completely disappearing from YouTube. You will still be able to use "end screens" to link to other videos and playlists within YouTube.

To use the end screen options in YouTube you must first select "end screen" on one your own YouTube uploads. Then you can choose "add element" followed by "video or playlist" to link your first video to a subsequent video. The steps for this process are outlined in my screenshots included below. (Click the images to view them in full size).

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Yes, You Can Restrict Messages in G Suite

Earlier this week I received an email from a reader who was wondering if it was possible to activate Gmail in G Suite for Education while also restricting who students can or cannot send messages to. The answer to that question was, "yes, you can." The G Suite Administrator help pages outline how a domain administrator can restrict outgoing email messages.


Applications for Education
As is outlined in the help page referenced above, it is possible to set different restrictions for each user group within a G Suite organization. In other words, you could allow school staff members to email anyone they want while restricting students to only sending email messages to other members of the school's domain.