The Practical Ed Tech Podcast is Now on Apple Podcasts

I recently started the Practical Ed Tech Podcast. So far I have published six episodes including a recent conversation that I had with Dr. Scott McLeod. Some of you have asked when it would be available on Apple Podcasts. The answer is, now. The Practical Ed Tech Podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts as well as a handful of other platforms including Google Podcasts, RadioPublic, and Spotify. Please give it a listen and let me know what you think about it.


Moving forward the Practical Ed Tech Podcast will be a mix of episodes recorded with guests and episodes of just me sharing news and notes about educational technology while answering questions from readers and listeners.

TeachPhysEd- A Great Library of Videos Demonstrating Phys Ed Lessons

TeachPhysEd is a website and YouTube channel maintained by Coach Benjamin Pirillo. On his YouTube channel Coach Pirillo demonstrates and explains activities for physical education teachers to use in their classrooms. I've watched half a dozen of the videos and have been impressed by his explanations of the rationale for the formatting of the activities and cross-curricular inclusion. Embedded below you can see the latest TeachPhysEd video and my favorite cross-curricular TeachPhysEd activity (yes, the choice reveals my social studies background).

Diving Into Google - Learn Search Techniques from Dan Russell

Longtime followers of this blog may have picked up on my appreciation for Dan Russell's excellent Search ReSearch blog where he posts interesting search challenges designed to help readers become better web researchers. His forthcoming book, The Joy of Search, is sure to be excellent too. If you're not familiar with Dan's work or you are and you want to learn more search techniques, check out this video that he recently posted on his YouTube channel.

Diving into Google: An advanced search methods tutorial is a video of a presentation that he gave at the National Geographic Society back in 2014. The strategies and techniques he covers in the presentation are as useful today as they were five years ago. The best part of the video is that because it is the recording of a live presentation, there is time for you to try some of the techniques while you're watching the video.


On a related note, here's a challenge that I created using the framework that Dan employs: In July my three-year-old daughter found this mushroom (picture below) while we were walking in the woods near our home in Paris, Maine. I initially thought that it might be a Lobster Mushroom but it didn't look quite right so I took a picture of it with my phone so that I could look it up later. What kind of mushroom is it? (I'll post the answer later this week).

Dozens of Constitution Day Activities and Resources

Next Tuesday is Constitution Day in the United States. According to federal law all schools that receive federal funding have to teach some type of lesson about the Constitution on this day. C-SPAN, DocsTeach, and the National Constitution Center all offer either lesson plans or resources for building your own Constitution Day lesson plans.

25 Constitution Day Lesson Plans from C-SPAN Classroom
C-SPAN Classroom offers 25 lesson plans that were either designed for Constitution Day or can be used to meet the requirements of Constitution Day. All of the lesson plans incorporate short video clips addressing topics like enumerated and implied powers of Congress, interpretation of the Constitution, and checks and balances. You can find all of the lesson plans and additional resources in this Google Doc.

Constitution Hall Pass
The National Constitution Center offers an online program called the Constitution Hall Pass. The Constitution Hall Pass is a series of videos mostly featuring scholars discussing elements of the Constitution and issues relating to it. There are also a few "discussion starter" videos that are intended to get students thinking about how the Constitution can have a direct impact on their lives. I know from experience that this Freedom of Expression video and accompanying questions will get high school students talking.

DocsTeach
DocsTeach is a National Archives website that all middle school and high school U.S. History teachers should have in their bookmarks. DocsTeach lets you build online activities based upon curated collections of primary source documents. DocsTeach also provides some pre-made activities that you can give to your students. DocsTeach has sixteen pre-made Constitution Day activities that you can use today. An additional 35 documents and artifacts about the Constitution can be found through a quick search on DocsTeach.