The Month in Review - Back to School

Greetings from the Free Technology for Teachers world headquarters in Maine.

It's a sunny day here in Maine and great afternoon to soak up the last rays of summer sunshine. Leaves are starting to change color on some of the trees around here. The first red leaves of the year provide a small sense of normalcy as we start a new school year in a way that is definitely not normal.  I hope that all of you can also find some small sense of normalcy as your new school year begins too.

One of the normal things that I do every month is create a list of most popular posts of the month. Here's that list:

1. New Google Classroom and Google Meet Updates to Note
2. Use Whiteboards in Google Meet Without Screensharing
3. How to Use Grid View in Google Meet - No Chrome Extensions Required!
4. How to Make a Whiteboard Video in Flipgrid
5. What You Need to Know About the Latest Version of Flipgrid
6. All About Zoom Breakout Rooms
7. Seven Zoom Tutorials to Watch Before School Starts
8. Five Tips for Live Online Instruction
9. How to Direct Students to Videos Based on Answer Choices in Google Forms
10. Five Current Google Meet Features to Note

Thank You for Your Support!

• Hundreds of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been supporting this blog for many years.
• Pixton EDU offers a great way to create comics in your classroom. 
• Cloud Stop Motion provides a great way to make stop motion videos. 
• Find cool mugs and other swag in my YouTube store. 

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 it includes my tip of the week and a summary of the week's most popular posts from FreeTech4Teachers.com.
• My YouTube Channel - more than 28,000 people subscribe to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 400 Google tools tutorials.  
• Facebook - The FreeTech4Teachers.com Facebook page has more than 460,000 followers. 
• Twitter - I've been Tweeting away for the last thirteen years at twitter.com/rmbyrne
• Instagram - this is mostly pictures of my kids, my dogs, my bikes, my skis, and fly fishing.

How to Use Google Drive to Comment on Videos

One of the great "hidden" features of Google Drive that is often overlooked is that you can comment on almost any file that you upload to your Google Drive. This includes videos that you upload to Google Drive. That's exactly what I demonstrate in this new video.


Applications for Education
As I mentioned in the video above, using uploading videos and sharing them in Google Drive can be a good way for you to give students private feedback on videos that they make. You could also use commenting on videos to have students ask you questions about instructional videos you share with them.

Every U.S. Presidential Election Through 2012 Explained

Last week I featured a couple of videos about the Electoral College that Keith Hughes produced. Keith has many other excellent videos for U.S. Government and U.S. History students. One set of those videos is Presidential Elections Explained. In that set of videos Keith explains the outcomes and significance of every U.S. Presidential Election through 2012. I've embedded a few of those videos below.

The First Presidential Election


The Election of 1860


The Election of 1904


The Election of 2008

The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good evening from Maine where we had a cold and rainy late August day. It was a good day for making cookies (oatmeal chocolate chip) and watching Winnie the Pooh with my kids. After a long first week back at school, it was the kind of day that I needed.

I didn't have students in my classroom this week. This week was all about getting my classroom organized for social distancing, re-imaging computers, and rebuilding the network for my classroom. And we had a few meetings too. As I Tweeted earlier this week, our staff meetings are happening outside and some folks are bringing camp chairs to them. If there's an upside to our "new normal" it's that we're getting outside more often during the school day.

These were the most popular posts of the week:
1. Three Ways for Students to Join Google Classroom
2. Getting Started With Flipgrid - Teacher & Student Views
3. Tools for Displaying YouTube Videos Without Distractions
4. The Five Things I've Been Asked About the Most at the Start of the New School Year
5. ICYMI - Get Your Free Copy of the 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook
6. How to Use Remind to Send Messages to Multiple Classes at the Same Time
7. How to Use Nicknames in Google Meet - And Why You Should Try It

Thank You for Your Support!

• Hundreds of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been supporting this blog for many years.
• Pixton EDU offers a great way to create comics in your classroom. 
• Cloud Stop Motion provides a great way to make stop motion videos. 
• Find cool mugs and other swag in my YouTube store. 

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 it includes my tip of the week and a summary of the week's most popular posts from FreeTech4Teachers.com.
• My YouTube Channel - more than 28,000 people subscribe to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 400 Google tools tutorials.  
• Facebook - The FreeTech4Teachers.com Facebook page has more than 460,000 followers. 
• Twitter - I've been Tweeting away for the last thirteen years at twitter.com/rmbyrne
• Instagram - this is mostly pictures of my kids, my dogs, my bikes, my skis, and fly fishing.

How to Increase the Chances of Your Students Actually Watching Your Instructional Videos

On Friday I gave a couple of presentations at my school about ways to improve the chances that students actually watch the entirety of the videos that we share with them. Some of the ideas that I shared apply to videos that you make and some of the ideas apply to videos that you find online. In total there were five key points in my presentation. Those points are outlined below.

1. Turn on your camera, elevate it, look at it. 
Even if it's subconsciously, students want to see your face and know that you're there. Turning on your camera, even when making a screencast video, can improve the chances that your students will watch your video and pay attention to it.

Put your camera at eye level or slightly higher. Doing this makes it easier to make eye contact with your camera which makes for a far better viewing experience than looking up at your face. A better viewing experience is going to increase the odds of students watching your video all the way through.

2. Include a call to action. 
At the end of your video, ask your students to do something. That something could be to write a response, record a response (Flipgrid is perfect for that), or to complete some kind of hands-on task. Whatever it is, give students something to do with the information that they've just received from your instructional video.

3. Make playlists in Google Slides/ PowerPoint/ Keynote. 
Whether you're sharing your own videos or videos that you've found online, consider putting them into slides and then sharing the slides with your students. This removes the distracting "related" content on YouTube.

Google Slides users can share their slides full of videos via Google Classroom. After students have the link to view the slides you can still add more videos to the slides and students will see those additions.

4. Use the "go to section based on answer" function in Google Forms. 
You can add videos into your Google Forms and then have students answer questions posted below those videos. If you use, "go to section based on answer" you can require students to answer questions about the videos correctly before moving on to the next section of the form. The process is outlined in this video.

5. Use EDpuzzle.
EDpuzzle is a tool that I used a lot last spring and will probably use a lot this fall to build questions into videos that I share with students. The best feature of EDpuzzle is the option to prevent students from fast-forwarding videos just to get to the questions. Here's an overview of how to use EDpuzzle.

The Science of Cycling and the Tour de France

The Tour de France begins tomorrow, about two months after it was scheduled to begin. As an avid cyclist I enjoy watching it and I find that it provides some neat opportunities for science, health, and physical education lessons. Here are some of my go-to resources for teaching and learning about the Tour de France.

The Science of Bicycles and Bicycling
There is a lot of physics involved in casual bike riding and in racing. Here's a selection of videos that explain the physics of bicycling.

The first time that you ride in a pack of experienced cyclists you'll feel the power of drafting. Besides their incredible fitness and bike handling skills, drafting helps cyclists in the Tour de France move quickly. The following video explains how drafting works.


Minute Physics offers two videos about the physics of bicycles. In How Do Bikes Stay Up? we learn how bikes stay upright, how design and weight influences balance, and why bicycles are difficult to balance in reverse. The Counterintuitive Physics of Turning a Bike explains how we turn bicycles.




The Diet of a Tour de France Racer
I've done some long days on my bike over the years including a double-century ride and at the end I've always felt like I could eat anything in sight. That's because I burned thousands of calories. But even then I didn't burn the 6,000-8,000+ calories that a typical Tour de France racer burns every day of the race.

What does it look like and feel like to eat like a professional cyclist? That's what the Wall Street Journal's Joshua Robinson set out to discover in his 6,000 calorie challenge. Take a look at the video below to see how he did it. Pay attention to the professional cyclist at the 2:40 mark in the video for commentary about energy gels because it surprise you and make you rethink the whether or not the average weekend warrior needs the expensive "sports energy" products for a simple hour workout.


If you want to get into a bit more of the science of nutrition of cyclists, take a look at this video featuring the team nutritionist for EF Education First's professional cycling team.

Back-to-School Email Tips & Reminders

Every year at this time I share some cute videos intended to help students understand proper email etiquette. This year those lessons are going to be more important than ever as we're all likely to get more email from students than ever before. Here are some tips and reminders to make everyone's use of email a little bit better.

IT Support is Done by Humans
I know that this fall many teachers are being forced to use technology in new ways that are pushing the boundaries of their comfort zones. That said, when you email your IT support person this fall remember that he or she is a real person who is probably grossly underpaid for his/her skill set. Say thank you when they fix your problem or otherwise help you, it goes a long way.

Emailing Your Teacher, With Captain Communicator is my favorite video about email etiquette. The short video features two students demonstrating how to write an email to a teacher. The students remind viewers of the importance of using a proper greeting and closing. It's cute and well worth 90 seconds of your time.

Email Etiquette for Students was made by a teacher. I've used and shared this video for years.



Common Craft offers a video titled Clear Communication in Email. It is a good video about how to get a recipient's attention and get a recipient to reply. A couple of small things go a long way toward getting better responses or even a response at all.



This week's Practical Ed Tech Newsletter featured a bunch of time-saving tips for the new school year. One of those tips included using smart replies and email templates. Watch this video to learn how to do those things and more.

Getting Started With Flipgrid - Teacher & Student Views

In the last month I've shared videos about how to make split screen videos in Flipgrid and how to make whiteboard videos in Flipgrid. It was pointed out to me, in the form of a reader request, that those are great features once you know how to use the basics of Flipgrid. To help people get started with Flipgrid, I made the following video.

I think it's important to understand what students see when they use a tool that you've assigned to them. For that reason I've included the teacher and student views of Flipgrid in my getting started video that is embedded below.


What is Flipgrid?
In a nutshell, it's a free tool for posting discussion prompts for your students to respond to with short videos that they record directly in the Flipgrid website or Flipgrid app.

How to Use Remind to Send Messages to Multiple Classes at the Same Time

Yesterday I posted a video about how to get started using Remind to send text messages from your computer to students and their parents. This morning a high school teacher asked me if it would be better to have just one large class in Remind or multiple classes in Remind representative of her schedule with multiple classes. My suggestion is to have a Remind class for each actual class. Then you can use the option to send the same message to all classes or choose to send it to just one class. That's what I demonstrate in this new video.


Applications for Education
Creating multiple classes in Remind is a great way to organize all of the classes that you teach. If you, like I did for years, have multiple sections of the same course you know that it's almost impossible to keep them on the same schedule throughout the semester. That's why I'd have a different Remind class for each class I taught. Then I could easily send the same message to all classes when necessary and send differentiated messages when necessary.

How to Use Remind to Send Text Messages from Your Computer

Remind is a service for sending text messages to your students without having to reveal your real phone number. I've been recommending and using it for years. One of my favorite aspects of Remind is that I can schedule and send messages from my computer and respond to messages from my computer.

In the following video I demonstrate the basics of getting started with Remind to send text messages to students and their parents from your computer.


It should be noted that if your school or school district subscribes to a school-wide paid Remind plan then the process of setting up your classroom and importing students is slightly different. However, the process of sending messages is the same whether you use an individual Remind plan (free) or a school plan.

Free Webinar Tomorrow - Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff

Every week Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I host Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. The next episode is tomorrow at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT and you can sign up here to join us for the live broadcast.

The webinar is exactly what the name implies plus a little more. In addition to answering the technical questions that you might expect us to get, we'll also get into questions around pedagogy and planning. And we've been known to recommend a book or two during the webinar. For example, last week I mentioned re-reading Seymour Papert's Mindstorms. And we always recommend Rushton's books like Technology, Teamwork, and Excellence.

Watch the recording of one of the previous episodes of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff to get a sense of what the show is all about.

The Five Things I've Been Asked About the Most at the Start of the New School Year

Every week I receive dozens of emails from teachers asking me for advice on all kinds of things related to education and technology. Many of those questions get answered during Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff on Thursday afternoons. Many of the questions I answer directly via email. As many of the questions I'm receiving lately are similar in nature, I thought that I'd address them broadly in a blog post.

Timed Quizzes/ Cheating Prevention
I've received a lot of questions along the lines of "how do I make sure my students are looking up answers for quizzes?" and "how can I give a timed quiz online?"

Back in April I published this video on how to give a timed quiz with Google Forms and Classroom. On the question of preventing cheating when students are taking online quizzes at home, I have a couple of significant concerns. First, if your quiz or assessment is easily aced by students Googling the answers, you might want to reconsider the questions that you're asking. Second, without installing monitoring software on students' computers and requiring webcams to be on (and opening up a whole can of worms regarding privacy) there isn't a way to force students to stay in one browser tab while taking your quiz.

Microphones
Like many of you, this fall I'll have some students in my classroom and some joining remotely. For the times that I can be at my desk I'll be using my Blue Snowball microphone that I've had for years. When I'm not at my desk I'll be using this handy wireless mic and receiver combination hooked up to my computer.

Earbuds/ AirPods
Related to questions about microphones, I've had a bunch of questions about using earbuds or AirPods instead of dedicated microphone. Rushton and I addressed this issue in the last episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. The short answer is it will work, but there are better options. One of the key points to consider is that if you are wearing earbuds/ AirPods to broadcast to a remote audience while also trying to teach students in your classroom, will you be able to accurately hear the kids in your classroom? I know that I can't.

Video Lesson Production
I use Screencast-o-matic Deluxe on my desktop to produce most of my videos. If you're looking for a browser-based video creation tool, Loom is a solid choice. One easy way to make short instructional videos is to record a screencast over an existing set of slides. Another easy method is recording over a white background and drawing on the screen.

Flipgrid is quickly becoming a go-to tool for making screencast and whiteboard videos. Here's a quick overview of how to make a whiteboard video with Flipgrid.



Zoom vs. Google Meet
Many of us are not getting a choice of Zoom or Google Meet. Instead, we're just told by the IT department which one we have to use. If you do have a choice, here are a few things to consider.

At this time Zoom has more meeting controls and options than Google Meet offers for free. Google does appear to be trying to catch up in that regard, but it's still a long way off. For example, green screen and virtual backgrounds are still not possible in Google Meet. At this time, breakout rooms are a great Zoom feature that Google Meet doesn't have. And while you can use meeting nicknames to control the start of a Google Meet, it's still a clunkier process than using waiting rooms in Zoom.

The one slight advantage I'd give to Google Meet over Zoom is the option to have an assigned Meet link readily displayed and re-usable in Google Classroom.

A Handful of Videos to Help Students Understand the Electoral College

You can't go to a news site today and not see something about the upcoming U.S. Presidential election. When you do go to those sites you'll often find current polling data about the popularity of a given candidate and or the probability of a candidate winning. Those polls don't always predict who will win because the most popular (nationwide) candidate doesn't always win. That's due to the Electoral College system that we use to pick a president in the U.S. This is a concept that baffles a lot of students. Should you find yourself looking for some videos to help students understand how the Electoral College works, consider one of the following.

Does Your Vote Counts? is a TED-Ed lesson that offers a short explanation of the Electoral College by answering the question, "does your vote count?" The video for the lesson is embedded below.


How the Electoral College Works from C.G.P. Grey gives a nice overview of the Electoral College. The video isn't perfect, I wish the producer had included that the number of Electoral votes a state receives is tied to the number of Senators and Representative it has. Instead the video simply stated that the number of Electoral votes is tied to population. Overall, it's not a bad summary of the Electoral College.


Electing a US President produced by Common Craft provides a concise overview of the election process. The version embedded below is an update to the original that Common Craft released and I used in my classroom during the 2008 election.


Keith Hughes produced two videos about how the Electoral College was developed and how it works. The first video below is just one minute long. The second video, The Electoral College for Dummies, goes into much more depth.



Disclosure: I have a long-standing, in-kind relationship with Common Craft.

Tools for Displaying YouTube Videos Without Distractions

On Monday I answered a question from a reader who was looking for some recommendations for tools to show YouTube videos without displaying the "related" content that appears next to and below videos on YouTube. The first two tools that came to mind were Watchkin and SafeShare.tv. Another option is to put the video into Google Slides or PowerPoint to display. And a fourth option is to use the browser extension called Quietube. I demonstrate all four of those methods in the following short video.


To be clear, none of these tools are for downloading videos. Doing that would be a violation of YouTube's terms of service and quite possibly infringe on the video creator's copyright. It should also be noted that these tools may not block all pre-roll advertising.

Certify'em Introduces New Features

Certify'em is a Google Forms add-on that I've been using and recommending for the last few years. Certify'em makes it quick and easy to send personalized certificates to students who pass a quiz in Google Forms. I've also used Certify'em to distribute certificates to people who participate in my webinars and workshops. Last spring the developer of Certify'em added a couple of new features. And for this fall another batch of features is available in Certify'em.

Certify'em now offers gold and platinum plans to go along with the standard free plan. The free plan will continue to allow you to do everything you've been doing with Certify'em including using custom certificates, use in an unlimited amount of Forms, and set minimum passing scores. The only change to the free plan will be the addition of a small "made with Certify'em" mark in the lower, right corner of the certificate. That marking won't start appearing until October 26th.

The gold and platinum plans for Certify'em will remove the Certify'em watermark and give you access to many new features including the ability to edit responses to Google Forms (helpful if a student makes a typo), save copies of all certificates in Google Drive, customize the certificate ID prefix, and provide direct customer support via email.

To be clear, everything that you currently do with Certify'em is still available for free, but you can do even more with the gold and platinum plans.

Watch my video below to learn how to use Certify'em to send personalized certificates to students.

How to Use Nicknames in Google Meet - And Why You Should Try It

One of the best features of Google Meet is one that is front and center at meet.google.com but is often overlooked or misunderstood. That feature is the option to give your meeting a nickname.

Using a meeting nickname in G Suite for Education is an excellent alternative to displaying and using the Google Meet link that is assigned to your Google Classroom. You can choose a nickname in advance and tell your students what that nickname is, but they can't join your meeting until you start the meeting. You can re-use your nickname for multiple meetings.

In the following video I demonstrate and explain how to use nicknames in Google Meet and why you might want to try using them yourself.



On a related note, here's how to use grid view in Google Meet.

Three Ways for Students to Join Google Classroom

A few weeks ago Google announced the addition of some new features to Google Classroom. One of the features teased in that announcement was an option to distribute a "join link" that can be used in place of sending an email invitation or having students use a "join code" to join your Google Classroom. The option to use "join links" is now widely available in G Suite for Education.

The new "join link" feature and two other options for students to join your Google Classroom are demonstrated in my new video that is embedded below.


Applications for Education
Depending upon the age and skill of your students, the "join link" might be the quickest way to get students into your Google Classroom. You can distribute the link through a variety of means including texting it via Remind for students and or parents to use at home.

ICYMI - Get Your Free Copy of the 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Last week I published the sixth edition of my free Practical Ed Tech Handbook. This year's edition includes new sections on accessibility and remote instruction as well as updates to eleven other sections. I'm particularly happy with the updates that I made to the section on teaching search strategies.

In total there are thirteen big topics covered in this year's Practical Ed Tech Handbook. Throughout the handbook you will find descriptions of a variety of free tech tools and videos on how to use them. If you haven't gotten your copy of the 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook, you can get it for free right here!

Webinar Recording - Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions

Every week Rushton Hurley and I sit down to answer questions and share cool stuff that we've found on the web. We do this in a free webinar that is simply titled Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. The most recent episode was recording on Thursday afternoon. If you missed it, you can watch the recording right here on the Next Vista for Learning website or as embedded below.



Join Us for the Next One!
We'd love to have you join us for the next live webinar which will be this coming Thursday at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT. Register here to join us for our free webinar Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff. We're going to have a special guest joining us in the next episode. Read about that on the registration page.

The Week in Review - Where Did the Time Go?

Good morning from Maine where the air feels cool and crisp this morning. We had a couple of similar mornings earlier this week. And I spotted my first red leaves this week! School starts on Monday. Where did the time go?

I'm also asking myself, "where did the time go?" this weekend because my oldest daughter turns four on Sunday. It still feels like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital. Now she's in pre-K and "rockin' in her school shoes," as Pete the Cat would say. While we can't have a big party for her, we are going to have cake and ice cream and do a bunch of her favorite fun things. I hope that all of you have a fun weekend too.

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. How to Use Grid View in Google Meet - No Chrome Extensions Required!
2. How to Create Split Screen Videos in Flipgrid
3. Five Current Google Meet Features to Note
4. Five Tips for Live Online Instruction
5. How to Direct Students to Videos Based on Answer Choices in Google Forms
6. Five Zoom Features You Need to Know
7. Factitious 2020 - Can You Spot Fake News Stories?

Online Back to School PD Opportunities
Two weeks ago I hosted Get Organized With Google Classroom, Meet, and Calendar. You can access the recording an associated materials here. This week I hosted A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video. Next week I'll be hosting a webinar on search strategies. Details for that webinar will appear on Monday on PracticalEdTech.com.

Thank You for Your Support!

• Hundreds of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been supporting this blog for many years.
• Pixton EDU offers a great way to create comics in your classroom. 
• Cloud Stop Motion provides a great way to make stop motion videos. 
• Find cool mugs and other swag in my YouTube store. 

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 it includes my tip of the week and a summary of the week's most popular posts from FreeTech4Teachers.com.
• My YouTube Channel - more than 28,000 people subscribe to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 400 Google tools tutorials.  
• Facebook - The FreeTech4Teachers.com Facebook page has more than 450,000 followers. 
• Twitter - I've been Tweeting away for the last thirteen years at twitter.com/rmbyrne
• Instagram - this is mostly pictures of my kids, my dogs, my bikes, my skis, and fly fishing.

A Comics Activity as an Icebreaker

Disclosure: Pixton EDU is currently an advertiser on this blog. 

As the new school year begins you may find yourself looking for some new ways to conduct icebreaker activities. One thing you can try is having students create avatars for themselves then talk about their designs. Then after making those avatars you might have them design a little comic to tell a story. Pixton EDU offers tools for doing both of those things.

In Pixton EDU you and your students can create characters to represent yourselves. Once you've done that you can use Pixton EDU's free Truth-or-Lie activity. Truth-or-Lie is designed as an ice-breaker or familiarization activity for your class. In the activity students create a short comic strip in which they tell a truth or a lie. They then share those comics with  you and their classmates who have to guess if the comic represents a truth or a lie.



Pixton EDU is currently running a back-to-school offer. That offer gives you 15% off their annual premium plan with this link. To be clear, everything in this blog post can be done without the premium plan.

Factitious 2020 - Can You Spot Fake News Stories?

In yesterday's episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff I shared some information about an update to a favorite resource of mine, Factitious. Factitious is a game that is designed to help students practice identifying real and fake news stories. The 2020 version of the game features stories about COVID-19.

To play Factitious simply go to the site and select start. You'll then see an article appear on the screen. Read through the article, click the source listed at the bottom, and then select either the green check mark or red X to indicate whether or not you think the article is a real news story. After you make your selection you'll get instant feedback and an explanation of how you can tell if the article was a real or fake news story.

Points are awarded in Factitious based on accuracy, speed, and whether or not you viewed the source link before making a guess at the legitimacy of the story. The 2020 version of Factitious contains three rounds with five stories in each round.

Applications for Education
Factitious is a good game for students to play after you've taught a lesson or two about how to recognize signs of misleading or false information. Alternatively, you might choose a story or two from the game to build a lesson around.

How to Include Videos in Microsoft Forms Response Feedback

Last week I shared directions on how to include videos in the answer feedback on questions in Google Forms. Microsoft Forms users can do a similar thing. When you create a quiz with Microsoft Forms there is an option to include messages to display when students view their answer summaries. Those messages can include video links.

In the following video I demonstrate how to include videos in the answer feedback in Microsoft Forms.


Applications for Education
Including videos in the answer feedback can be a good way to provide students with explanations of correct answers or incorrect answers on a quiz. You could include links to videos that you've made or links to good videos made by others.

Five Zoom Features You Need to Know

As the new school year gets going there is going to be a lot more Zoom calls in our future. At my school students are going to be on Zoom or Google Meet for at least two days of every week to start the year. If that sounds like you, here is a handful of reminders about Zoom features and how to use them.

Virtual Backgrounds:
This is an option available to Mac, Windows, and some Chromebook users. This option allows you to place any picture of your choosing in place of the background that is in your default webcam view. It’s possible to use the virtual background as a means for making a green screen video. Here’s a video on how to make a green screen video with Zoom.

Whiteboards: 
Zoom has an integrated whiteboard that you can use at any time during a meeting. You’ll find the whiteboard function in the screen-sharing menu during your Zoom call. This video shows you how to use the whiteboard in Zoom.

Breakout Rooms: 
During a Zoom call you can divide participants into groups for small group discussion then bring them back into one large group. In order to use breakout rooms in Zoom you must have the breakout room function enabled in your account settings. For a detailed overview of how to use Zoom’s breakout rooms function, watch this recorded webinar hosted by Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning.

Waiting Rooms: 
Enable the waiting room function in your Zoom account settings to prevent students from joining your Zoom meeting before you get there. Waiting rooms also allows you to make sure that no one joins your meeting without your approval. Watch this video to see how to enable the waiting room function.

Recording: 
If you plan to record your Zoom meetings, enable recording by default in your account settings. Doing this will ensure that you never forget to hit the record button at the start of your meeting.

Five Tips for Live Online Instruction

Whether you use Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams for online class meetings there are some universal things that you can do to make the experience better for you and your students. The following five tips for live online instruction are an excerpt from my recently published 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook.

Elevate your camera and plug in a mic: 
Besides the obvious, “no one wants to look up your nose” reason, elevating your webcam makes it easier for students to see your eyes during a live meeting. And you should keep your webcam on because students want to see you and make a connection with you and not just your voice whenever it is possible.

If you have one, use an external microphone for your live classes in Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams. Using an external microphone, especially one with a USB connection will improve the quality of your audio. Even pairing Bluetooth earbuds to your computer can improve the audio quality of your online meeting.

If you're looking to purchase an external microphone, for years I've used and recommended the Snowball iCE microphones made by Blue. For those who would prefer not to have another thing on their desks or are looking for a microphone that works with smartphones, try this lapel microphone.

Share an outline:
Just like you would put a daily agenda on the board in your physical classroom, share an agenda with your students at the start of each online class meeting. It gives students a sense of what to expect during the class and how the meeting will last. Don’t forget to give kids a break during the meeting if you’re going to have them on for more than twenty or thirty minutes.

Assign roles: 
Kids want something to do during a class meeting besides just listening to you drone on. Consider assigning roles like meeting secretary, fact-checker, or even co-moderator in your online meetings.

Silence is okay: 
It’s natural to want to fill every moment of an online class meeting with your voice or your students’ voices. You don’t have to do that. You can give students a task to work on during the meeting then just leave your webcam on and the call going to support them if they have questions while working on the task. Zoom’s breakout rooms function can be useful for this kind of meeting structure.

Announce recordings: 
If you plan to record a meeting, let your students and their parents know at the outset of the class.

Five Features of Microsoft Teams to Note

This year I added a section on remote teaching to the Practical Ed Tech Handbook. What follows here is an excerpt from that section.

Whiteboards: To use the whiteboard in Microsoft Teams meetings simply open the screen sharing menu then choose “whiteboard.” You can turn the whiteboard on or off at any time during your meeting.

Grid View: An option to see all of your students in a grid display in a Microsoft Teams call was released in July of 2020. As of this writing (August, 2020) it is available for some, but not all users. Additionally, it only works in the desktop version of Teams. Here’s a short video demo of how it works.


Custom and Blurred Backgrounds: This is another feature only available in the desktop version of Teams. With this feature enabled you can insert a custom image to use as your background or simply blur your background. Find this function in the ellipsis menu next to the screen sharing and recording options in a meeting.

Attendance Reports: This is a relatively new feature that must be enabled by your IT administrator before you can use it. Once enabled, you can download a record of who attended your meeting. Mike Tholfsen, Microsoft EDU project manager, offers this video tutorial on how to use attendance reports in Microsoft Teams.



Recording: To record a meeting in Microsoft Teams your IT administrator has to enable that function. Once it is enabled you’ll see a small recording icon within the ellipsis (more actions) menu during your meeting. It’s important to note that the recording will not capture shared notes or a whiteboard. Learn more about recording here.

13 Big Topics in the 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook

Earlier this week subscribers to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter received notice that the 2020-21 version of my Practical Ed Tech Handbook is now available to download for free. This year's version of this annual publication contains 64 pages of information on a wide range of educational technology tools. The table of contents for the 2020-21 Practical Ed Tech Handbook is copied below. To get your copy, head to this page on PracticalEdTech.com.


1. Communication with students and parents - page 5

2. Creating Blogs & Websites - page 9

3. Web search strategies - page 17

4. Digital citizenship - page 24

5. Video creation and flipped lessons - page 26

6. Audio recording and publishing - page 37

7. Backchannels and informal assessment - page 39

8. Digital portfolios - page 42

9. Augmented and Virtual Reality - page 44

10. Intro to Programming and Makerspaces - page 47

11. Accessibility Tools - page 51

12. Ten Time-saving ways for teachers to use tech - page 57

13. Remote Instruction Tools and Strategies - page 59

How to Use Grid View in Google Meet - No Chrome Extensions Required!

For months teachers have asked for a grid view option in Google Classroom without having to use a Chrome extension. That wish is starting to be granted. In Google Meet there is now an option to display all meeting participants in a grid view. The grid can be up to a 7x7 display.

Enabling the grid view in Google Meet is super easy. All you have to do is start your Google Meet then once people have joined you can open the "more options" menu in the bottom, right corner of your screen to change the layout. In the layout options you'll see a grid. Watch my short video that is embedded below to see how to use grid view in Google Meet.

How to Create Split Screen Videos in Flipgrid

A couple of weeks ago Flipgrid introduced some new features and product changes for the 2020-21 school year. One of those changes was a slight relocation of the whiteboard recording tool. At the same time a new whiteboard option was added. That option is to have a split screen while recording your whiteboard videos in Flipgrid. This option allows you to display your webcam on half of your screen while the other half is used as a whiteboard. But it doesn't have to be a 50/50 split. You can choose how you want to divide your screen. You can see how that's done by watching my short video embedded below.


Applications for Education
Keeping your face in the video is one of the things that I always recommend to teachers who are making instructional videos for their students. Putting your face in the video helps students connect to you which in turn can get them to pay attention to your video just a little bit longer. Using the split screen option in Flipgrid is one convenient way to keep your face in your whiteboard instructional videos.

ICYMI - Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff

Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff is a weekly webinar series that I do with Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning. As the name implies, in the 30 minute webinar we answer your questions (you can email them in advance or ask them live) and we share a few cool or interesting free resources that we've found. If you miss an episode, you can watch the replay right here on the Next Vista site.

The next episode will be this Thursday at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT. You can register here to join us for this fun and free webinar.

Five Current Google Meet Features to Note

Last week Google announced a bunch of additional features that will be coming to Google Meet later this fall. Before those appear in your Google account, here are five other features of Google Meet that you should how to use.

Meeting Nicknames:
This feature allows you to choose a nickname for your meeting in place of using the default code that Google assigns to it. An obvious benefit of using a meeting nickname is that it’s easier to spell, remember, and share than a default meeting code. Another benefit is that you can give out the nickname to your students but they can’t join the meeting until you start it at meetings.google.com Learn more about meeting nicknames and all features of Google Meet in this recorded webinar.

Captions:
You and or your students can turn on captions at any point during a Google Meet session. Simply click the captions button and all spoken words will appear below the camera view in the meeting.

Classroom Link: 
Within the class settings for every Google Classroom there is an option to enable a permanent Google Meet link. That link can be re-used for all meetings held for that class. You can choose to display that link to your students or keep it hidden. Either way, the link is always the same for meetings directly associated with that Classroom. Here's a video that shows you how to use this feature.


Calendar Integration: 
In addition to using the Google Classroom integration and going directly to meet.google.com there is a third option for scheduling meetings. When you create an event in a Google Calendar that you own or have edit access on, you can have Google Calendar create a Google Meet link for you.

Recording: 
Your G Suite for Education domain administrator has to enable the recording option for you. After September 30, 2020 the native recording feature will only be available to G Suite for Education Enterprise Edition users. In other words, after September 30th it will only be available to those who have the paid version of G Suite. A possible work-around for this is to record your calls with a desktop recording tool like Screencast-o-matic or Camtasia.

How to Create, Share, and Collaborate on YouTube Playlists

As the school year begins you might find yourself looking through a lot of YouTube videos that you'll share with your students throughout the coming months. Creating playlists on is a great way to organize those videos and share them with your students. Once you've created a playlist you can continue to update it to share more videos with your students. You can also invite a colleague to collaborate and contribute your playlist. All of those functions are demonstrated in the following short video.

The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where our recent heatwave has broken and it's going to be a great weekend to enjoy the great outdoors. I'm planning to have a little backyard camping adventure with my toddlers. I hope that you also have something fun on your weekend schedule.

This week I hosted Get Organized With Google Classroom, Meet, and Calendar. That was the first of a few webinars that I'm running this month to help people develop new skills and brush-up on old ones as we embark on the new school year (mine begins in nine days). The next one is Monday at 4pm ET and it's a crash course on making and teaching with videos. You can register here.

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. New Google Classroom and Google Meet Updates to Note
2. How to Make a Whiteboard Video in Flipgrid
3. All About Zoom Breakout Rooms
4. Seven Zoom Tutorials to Watch Before School Starts
5. Two Ways to Quickly Create Transcripts of YouTube Videos
6. What You Need to Know About the Latest Version of Flipgrid
7. DIY Smithsonian Mini Exhibits

Online Back to School PD Opportunities
As mentioned above, this week I hosted Get Organized With Google Classroom, Meet, and Calendar. You can access the recording an associated materials here. On Monday I'm hosting A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video. Register here.

Thank You for Your Support!

• Hundreds of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been supporting this blog for many years.
• Pixton EDU offers a great way to create comics in your classroom. 
• Cloud Stop Motion provides a great way to make stop motion videos. 
• Find cool mugs and other swag in my YouTube store. 

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 it includes my tip of the week and a summary of the week's most popular posts from FreeTech4Teachers.com.
• My YouTube Channel - more than 27,000 people subscribe to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 400 Google tools tutorials.  
• Facebook - The FreeTech4Teachers.com Facebook page has more than 450,000 followers. 
• Twitter - I've been Tweeting away for the last thirteen years at twitter.com/rmbyrne
• Instagram - this is mostly pictures of my kids, my dogs, my bikes, my skis, and fly fishing.

How to Direct Students to Videos Based on Answer Choices in Google Forms

This morning I answered an email from a reader who wanted to know if there was an easy way to direct students to videos based on how they answered her quiz questions. My answer was to make the quiz in Google Forms and use the built-in answer feedback option to include videos. I made the following short video to show how that works.



On a related note, you can do a similar thing in Google Forms without making a quiz. The process is a bit longer, but it does provide more options. That process is detailed in this video that I published back in April.

Journey Into the Deep Sea - Neat Nat Geo VR Experience

Earlier this year I featured National Geographic's fantastic playlist of 360 degree immersive videos that can be experienced with or without a virtual reality viewer. Recently, National Geographic added another excellent video to that collection. That video is Journey Into the Deep Sea.

Journey Into the Deep Sea is a nine minute underwater tour of the coral reefs around Palau. In addition to the fantastic imagery of fish, sharks, and manta rays the video includes little "pop-up" facts windows throughout the video. You can view the video in a VR viewer like Google Cardboard or simply watch it in your web browser. If you watch in the web browser on your computer you can click on the video to pan and zoom through it. When you watch the video in a VR viewer your movements will reveal different aspects of the video.

Seven Zoom Tutorials to Watch Before School Starts

As the new school year approaches I've been getting a lot questions about Zoom. I have published some tutorials on my YouTube channel that address most of those questions. Until this morning I haven't put them all together in one place. Here are my Zoom tutorial videos.

The Basics of Hosting a Zoom Meeting


Zoom from a Student's Perspective (desktop version)



Zoom from a Student's Perspective (mobile version)


Zoom Virtual Background and Green Screen



How to Create a Whiteboard Video in Zoom


How to Flip the Camera in Zoom


5 Things You Should Never Do In a Zoom Meeting (Fun)