Rubrics, Whiteboards, and Phys Ed - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is a beautiful morning for a bike ride. That's what I'm going to do as soon as I finish writing this week-in-review.

This week I hosted a professional development webinar all about using Google Classroom, Calendar, and Keep. If you missed it, it will be available on-demand at the end of the month. Next week I'm hosting a webinar about making animated videos and green screen videos. You can learn more about that webinar right here.

This week I also restarted the Ed Tech Fitness newsletter. More than 300 of you have now joined that community to participate in little challenges to improve or maintain good health throughout the school year. You can join us here.

Have a great weekend!

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Two Important Changes Coming to Google Classroom
2. How to Use Flipgrid to Create Whiteboard Videos
3. Google Drive Priority Page Now Available for All G Suite Accounts
4. Five Google Product Updates for Teachers to Note
5. Create a Directory App for Your School
6. Dozens of Apps for Physical Education
7. How to Use Creative Commons Search

Live PD in August!
In August I'm hosting some new and updated professional development webinars through PracticalEdTech.com. Those webinars are:

• Intro to Animation and Green Screen Videos - August 15th
• Search Strategies Students Need to Know Now - August 22nd
• Intro to Using AR & VR in Your Classroom - August 29th

Other Places to Follow My Work

Besides FreeTech4Teachers.com and the daily email digest, there are other ways to keep up with what I'm publishing. 

• Practical Ed Tech Newsletter - This comes out once per week (Sunday night/ Monday morning) and includes my tip of the week and a summary of the week's most popular posts from FreeTech4Teachers.com.
• My YouTube Channel - More than 15,000 are subscribed to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 300 Google tools tutorials. 
• Facebook - The FreeTech4Teachers.com Facebook page has nearly 450,000 followers. 
• Twitter - I've been Tweeting away for the last twelve years at twitter.com/rmbyrne
• Instagram - this is mostly pictures of my kids, my dogs, my bikes, my skis, and fly fishing. 

Thank You for Your Support!

• More than 300 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
• Pixton is a fantastic tool for students to use to create digital stories. Get started by using their free "Truth or Lie" lesson plan. 
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been supporting this blog for many years. 

Try This! - A Series of Hands-on Science Lessons for Kids

Try This! is a series of videos produced by National Geographic Kids. Each of the videos in the series presents a hands-on science lesson or experiment that elementary school and middle school kids will enjoy.

Middle school students can probably do all of the experiments in the Try This! series on their own. Elementary school students will need some help from adults. As you can see in the couple of videos from the series that I have embedded below, each video states the concept that can be taught with the experiment and concludes with a brief explanation of what happened in the experiment.



Applications for Education
If you're elementary school teacher who is looking for some hands-on science lessons to do with your students, the Try This! series could be a good source of inspiration for you. This could also be a good resource to share with parents who are looking for fun and educational activities to do at home with their kids.