Mind Maps, Rubrics, and Cats - The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where the sun is setting on a busy month of September. Between webinars, working on a book, and taking over a computer science program the posting here was a little less frequent than usual. I still managed to publish more than 60 new posts. It will get back up to my usual 85-95 posts in October.

These were the most popular posts in September:
1. Ten Free Tools for Creating Mind Maps and Flowcharts - Updated for 2019-20
2. My Top Twelve Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students
3. How to Avoid the Google Calendar Scheduling Mistake I Keep Making
4. Ten Google Product Updates for Teachers to Note
5. Ten Sites & Apps to Help Students Learn New Vocabulary Words - Updated for 2019-20
6. My Top 5 Google Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students
7. How to Use Rubrics in Google Classroom
8. 15 Digital Citizenship Resources for K-12
9. Fraidy Cats' Book of Courage - An eBook of Writing Prompts
10. 5 Features of Google's Advanced Search Menu

Bring me to your school or conference. 
I'm already booking my 2020 workshop and conference schedule. This will be my tenth year of speaking at schools and conferences. Click here to learn how to bring me to your school or conference.

Thank You for Your Support!

• More than 400 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
• Book Creator is my favorite tool for making multimedia ebooks.  
• PrepFactory offers free, personalized SAT and ACT prep. 
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been supporting this blog for many years.

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. 

What's in Pumpkin Spice?

Walk into a Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, or Tim Horton's at this time of year and you're bombarded with offerings for pumpkin spice this and pumpkin spice that! According to this CNBC report pumpkin spice is a $600 million flavor.

What's in the pumpkin spice that so many people love? That question is in this SciShow Kids video. Before answering that question the video explains what spices and herbs are and how they are combined to create flavors. Click here to watch the video or watch it as embedded below.