The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where I'm still groggy from all of the turkey I ate on Thursday. It's either that or my coffee hasn't kicked in this morning. Like many parents of young children I try get up an hour before my kids do in order to get a quiet moment for coffee and writing a blog post or two. I hope that all of you also get a quiet moment for coffee or other beverage this weekend. 

Every Saturday I take a look at the analytics for Free Technology for Teachers and put together a list of the most read posts of the last week. Take a look and see if there's anything interesting that you missed during the week. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Ten Google Meet Features for Teachers - Fall 2020 Update
2. The Differences Between American and Canadian Thanksgiving
3. A Crash Course in Computer Science
4. An Easy Way to Make Videos on Windows 10 Computers 

5. A Good Game for Learning About Nutrition Around the World 

6. Parade 101 - Hands-on STEAM Activities for Learning About Macy's Thanksgiving Parade
7. How to Move Google Tour Builder Files Into Google Earth

Professional Development Opportunities 
Through Practical Ed Tech I'm currently offering two on-demand learning opportunities: 

• A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video. 
• Ten Search Strategies Students Need to Know

Thank you for your support! 

• More than 300 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech course or webinar this year. Those registrations help keep Free Technology for Teachers and Practical Ed Tech going. I couldn't do it without you!
• Pixton EDU is a great tool for creating comics and storyboards. 
• Wakelet is a great tool for making collections of resources, recording video, and more!
• GAT Labs offers a great, free guide to using Google Workspaces in online classrooms.  

Other Places to Follow Me:

• The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter comes out every Sunday evening/ Monday morning. It features my favorite tip of the week and the week's most popular posts from Free Technology for Teachers.
• My YouTube channel has more than 31,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of edtech tools. 
• I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for thirteen years. 
• The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week. 
• And if you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Instagram or Strava.

Inexpensive Equipment to Improve Online Meetings

I usually don't write about hardware because it doesn't fall under the banner of "free." However, I've been asked about this topic a lot this year so I thought I'd cover it. 

The last nine months have put most of us in front of a webcam more than ever before. Which is why I've had more questions about webcams and microphones in this year than in the previous twelve years combined. One of the things that I've been telling people when they ask about webcams is to first make sure you have good lighting around you. Good lighting can make you look good on even an average webcam. Likewise, a good microphone can make a world a difference in the quality of your online meeting hosting experience and your students' viewing experience. 

The lighting set-up that I use in my home office consists of three inexpensive gardening lights positioned over head and one small ring light positioned in front of me just above my webcam. The ring that I've been using is fine, but lately I've noticed that it's not quite as bright as it was when I got it a few years ago. Therefore, I jumped on a "Black Friday" deal and ordered this 10" ring light with a tripod from Amazon. 

The microphones that I've used and recommended for years are Blue Snowball microphones. I own two of them and have lugged them all around the globe to use in workshops. Unfortunately, they've become so popular that they are hardly ever in stock these days. My school tried to buy some at the start of the year and couldn't. Instead, we ended up getting these Fifine microphones and they've been fine but I still like my Blue Snowball better. Either one is a great improvement over using the built-in microphone on a laptop. Speaking of built-in microphones, when you show videos in Zoom be sure to change the sound input settings to pick up the computer sounds instead of just the microphone sounds.