Chrome, Canva, and Code - The Month in Review

Good evening from Maine where it is not only the end of the month, it's the end of the year! Here's to a better year in 2022! 

In December I released a new ebook titled 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. I created it with busy tech coaches and media specialists in mind. You can get a copy of it right here. In December I also hosted my annual Best of the Web webinar. The recording of that webinar can be seen here. I have ideas for more webinars and ebooks in 2022 so stay tuned for announcements about those. 

These were the month's most popular posts:
1. Google's Favorite Chrome Extensions of the Year
2. How to Modify & Share Canva Templates
3. Classroomscreen - Timers, Names, and Noise Meters
4. The Easiest Way to Add Narration to Google Slides
5. A New Way to Add Students to Flipgrid
6. Six Reasons to Try Tract for Remote & Hybrid Learning
7. Blackbird Code Offers Two New Self-paced Coding Lessons
8. How to Use Google Keep as a Comment Bank
9. A Platypus in My House! Fun and Learning Through Augmented Reality
10. 21 Activities and Lessons That Have a Winter Theme

Thank you for your support!
Your registrations in Practical Ed Tech courses (listed below) and purchases of my ebook help me keep Free Technology for Teachers going.

On-demand Professional Development

• Search Strategies Students Need to Know
• A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video
• A Crash Course in Google Earth & Maps for Social Studies

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 39,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
• I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fourteen years. 
• The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week. 
• If you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Instagram or Strava.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin and WayBetterSite. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.

The Science of Fireworks

Today is New Year's Eve and while there aren't any fireworks displays planned for my little town, the nearby ski resort will have a little display. Fortunately, the display is planned early in the evening so my kids and I can see it without staying up past our bedtime. 

This is the first year that my kids will see fireworks in the winter.
If your kids are old enough to watch a fireworks display, they might have questions about how fireworks work. I know that my oldest daughter will definitely be curious about how they work. To refresh my memory I'm rewatching the following videos from NPR's SkunkBear, National Geographic, and Reactions to learn about the science of fireworks.

Best of 2021 - See What's Behind Bitly and TinyURL Without Clicking

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from April.

Bitly is a handy URL shortener that I've used for many years. As a registered user I can create custom, shortened URLs that people can actually spell. I use these whenever I need to share a link to a Canva or Google Slides presentation because the default URLs provided by those services are always long and incoherent. 

Unfortunately, not all Bitly users are using them for good reasons. Some people use them to hide nefarious links. Fortunately, there is an easy way to quickly determine what's behind a Bitly URL without actually clicking on the link. The trick is to simply add a "+" to the end of any Bitly URL. When you add the "+" the URL will redirect to Bitly instead of to whatever the original URL was. That will then show you the Bitly page on which the shortened URL is hosted and will show you what the original link was. 

You can try this trick with a URL that I recently shortened. Bit.ly/THWTAPRIL will lead you directly to a copy of the slides that I used in my recent Intro to Teaching History With Technology webinar. Bit.ly/THWTAPRIL+ will lead you to the Bitly page where you can see my original presentation URL and see when I created the shortened URL. 

Watch this short video to see how you can use the "+" trick to find out what's hidden behind a Bitly link. 

If you want to try this with a TinyURL, tinyurl.com/emkns9a8 will lead you to the page for the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp, but adding a “+” at the end of that TinyURL will take you to the page where you can see the original link without clicking on it.

Here's a video overview of how to see what's behind a TinyURL without actually clicking on the link.



Applications for Education
Building good digital citizenship and cyber safety skills is something that all of us should be helping our students do. Showing them little tips like this one to avoid clicking on suspicious links is one of the ways that we can help our students build their digital citizenship and cyber safety skills.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission.

Best of 2021 - Ziplet Exit Tickets

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from September. 

Ziplet is a service for gathering feedback from your students in a variety of ways. The simplest way is to create an exit ticket by using one of the dozens of pre-written questions provided by Ziplet. Back in July I published a video about how to use Ziplet. Since then it has been updated to no longer require students to have accounts to respond to exit ticket questions. Now your students can simply enter an exit ticket code that you give to them before they answer the question. 

What Ziplet offers that is somewhat unique is the option to respond directly to individual students even when they are responding to a group survey. The purpose of that feature is to make it easy to ask follow-up questions or to give encouragement to students based on their responses to a question posed to the whole group.

Applications for Education
Ziplet fits in a gap between tools like Kahoot and Google Classroom. For that reason it could be a good tool for engaging students in discussions about assignments, course topics, or the general feeling of the class. Ziplet does offer a Google Classroom integration as well as an Office 365 integration.

Best of 2021 - The Science of Cake!

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from October. 

If you ask my five-year-old what she wants to be when she grows up she'll say, "a cake maker!" She's been helping decorate cookies and cakes since before her third birthday. She loves it when we let her watch clips of The Great British Baking Show. That's why I was excited to come across an older SciShow Kids episode about baking cakes. 

Baking a Cake With Science is a short video that explains to elementary school students how the ingredients in a cake batter work together to when baked in the oven to rise and become a spongey cake. 

Watching Baking a Cake With Science reminded me of some other food science lessons that I've featured in the past. A quick look through my archives uncovered the following good food science videos.

Reactions has a playlist of seventy-six videos that teach short lessons about the chemistry of food and beverages. Some highlights from that playlist include 3 Egg-cellently Weird Science Experiments, Why is Pizza so Good? and Why Does Stinky Cheese Stink?  And who hasn't looked in the refrigerator and wondered Can I Still Eat This? All four of those videos are embedded below.










TED-Ed Lessons About the Science of Food

Caffeine and carbohydrates are just a couple of the topics covered in TED-Ed lessons about the science of food. Here are seven TED-Ed lessons that address elements of the science of food.

How Does Caffeine Keep Us Awake? explains what caffeine is and where it is found. The lesson also explains how the body adapts to regular doses of caffeine and what happens when you stop consuming caffeine.


How Sugar Affects the Brain is a TED-Ed lesson through which students learn why sugary foods and beverages can become addictive and how the human body processes sugar. The video is embedded below.


How Do Carbohydrates Impact Your Health? teaches students the basics of what carbohydrates are, the types of foods that are rich in carbohydrates, and how the human body processes carbohydrates.


What's the Big Deal With Gluten? is a lesson that teaches students what gluten is and where it is found. The lesson also addresses why some people are allergic to gluten and why some people just think they're allergic to gluten.


How the Food You Eat Affects Your Gut is a TED-Ed lesson through which students can learn about the gut microbiome that helps your body maintain its immune system and the best foods to maintain a healthy gut microbiome.


How the Food You Eat Affects Your Brain takes a look at the composition of the human brain and the foods that have an impact on how the brain functions. Like the lesson about gut health, this lesson includes a list of the foods that can have a positive impact on your brain's function.


This last one is a bit of physics lesson. Why is Ketchup so Hard to Pour? uses ketchup to explain why non-Newtonian fluids can transform from solid to liquid so quickly.

Best of 2021 - 27 Videos That Can Help Students Improve Their Writing

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from March.

The Writer's Workshop is a playlist of twenty-seven TED-Ed video lessons about writing. The The Writer's Workshop contains lessons on basic topics like how to use punctuation and point of view. It also offers videos about more difficult topics like how to make your writing humorous.

A few of the videos from The Writer's Workshop playlist are embedded below.

First, Second, and Third Person


When to Use Apostrophes


How to Make Your Writing Funnier

Applications for Education
TED-Ed's The Writer's Workshop is a good place for students to find some quick lessons on punctuation and grammar. Students who are ready to take their writing to a new level could benefit from the TED-Ed videos on irony, introductions, and building fictional worlds.

Best of 2021 - 700+ Free Typing Games for Kids

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from September. 

TypeTastic is a site that offers more than 700 free typing games for students of all ages. I first reviewed TypeTastic a few years ago shortly after it was launched and only offered thirteen games. Since then it has obviously added hundreds of more games and many more features. Just like when it launched a few years ago, TypeTastic's games are all optimized to work well on a laptop, desktop, or tablet. Although one might argue that learning to type on a tablet makes it more difficult to develop touch typing skills.

TypeTastic is designed for students to work through units of games. Before each game there is an introduction to a new skill and or a review of a previous skill. Each game within each section contains multiple levels for students to work through. Each game could take students an hour or more to completely master.

TypeTastic is divided into sections for K-2, upper elementary, and middle school/ high school. For K-2 the games start with basic skills like identifying the letters on a keyboard and build up to touch typing skills. The upper elementary games begin with learning and practicing the homerow before progressing through learning to touch type numbers and symbols. The middle school/ high school section has the same progress as the upper elementary section but has a greater emphasis on speed. The games are also a little more complex than the elementary school games.

Applications for Education
TypeTastic offers two free versions. There is an ad-supported version that anyone can access and a basic schools version. The schools version is free for teachers who register with a verified school email address. The schools version removes advertising and gives you an access code that you can share with your students to access the ad-free version of the games. There are also paid plans that give teachers access to reporting on the progress of their students. 

Best of 2021 - Save Google Forms Progress

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from August. 

This week Google finally added a feature to Google Forms that teachers and students have requested for years. You can now save your work in progress when answering questions in Google Forms!

Google Forms will now save students' work in progress when they are completing a quiz or any other Google Form that you give to them through Google Classroom. The only thing that students have to do to have their work saved in progress is make sure that they are signed into their Google accounts. That shouldn't be too hard to remember if the students have accessed the form through Google Classroom. Students' work will be saved in progress for thirty days from the time that they first open the form. 

Teachers do not need to take any action to enable the new save-in-progress feature (officially called Autosave) of Google Forms. It will be on by default starting today for some Google Workspace domains and will be on by default for all Google Workspace domains by September 15th. Teachers can disable autosave by opening the settings menu in Google Forms then choosing "presentation" followed by "restrictions."   

Autosave in Google Forms is available now in some Google Workspace domains and will be available in all Google Workspace domains by September 15th. 

Applications for Education
Saving Google Forms responses in progress has been a feature that teachers have requested for as long as I can remember (and I've been teaching with Google Forms longer than most middle school students have been alive). Students will no longer have to start over if they get disconnected from the Internet or the bell rings to end class before they've finished answering all of the questions on a Google Form.

Here's a tutorial on how to use the save in progress feature.



There are some situations in which you may not want students to be able to come back to a Google Form to finish it after they've started. For example, a student intentionally taking a long time to answer quiz questions so that he/she can return to it later after looking up answers. In that case you can disable the autosave option on that particular form.

Google Forms Tutorials

How to create your first quiz with Google Forms. 

How to create QR codes for Google Forms.

How to require complete sentences in Google Forms. 

50 Tech Tuesday Tips - My eBook for Busy Tech Coaches

I interupt this week's "best of series" to bring you something from the shameless commerce division of my life...

Are you a tech coach, a tech integrator, a media specialist, or a teacher who gets asked to put on workshops after school or on staff development days? Do you need ideas for what to do during those workshops? If so, my new ebook is for you!

Curated from more than 400 editions of The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips provides you with ideas for lots of helpful things that you can teach to your colleagues and to students. Throughout the ebook you'll find tutorials and handouts that you can pass along in your school. 

Some of the many things you'll find in 50 Tech Tuesday Tips include:

• What to do when a web app isn't working as you expect.
• Building your own search engine.
• How to create green screen videos.
• Improving instructional videos. 
• Streamlining email management.
• Creating educational games. 
• DIY app creation.
• Podcasting tips for teachers and students. 

Get your copy of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips right here!

No, this ebook isn't free but the tools that feature within it is free to use. Creating something like this takes many, many hours but reading it can save you many, many hours. Purchases of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips make it possible for me to create other free resources like The Practical Ed Tech Handbook that I update and give away to thousands of teachers every year.

Best of 2021 - Email Addresses for Cats and Dogs

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from March.

People often get a kick out of learning that my dogs have their own email addresses. You can send them email at Mason or Fionn (at) freetech4teachers.com and they'll get back to you as soon as they learn to type.

My dogs have email addresses because I conduct a lot of workshops throughout the year and I don't always want to use my personal email account to either register for a service or to demonstrate a function on a big screen. By using the fake email accounts that I've created for my dogs I don't have to clutter my personal email with lots of account registrations that I may or may not use again. Likewise, I don't have to open my personal accounts on a big screen in front of a group.

The other reason that I use my dogs' email accounts to register for services is so that I can demonstrate how to use a site or app from square one. For example, when I conduct Google Workspaces workshops I will use Mason's email account to demonstrate all facets of setting-up an account, adjusting settings, and adding new content to the account. By doing it this way new users see all steps on my screen the same as they will on their own screens.

If you find yourself conducting a lot of training sessions for colleagues or students, take a minute or two to create a fake email account for demonstration purposes.

Best of 2021 - Five Helpful PowerPoint Features You Might Be Overlooking

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from November. 

PowerPoint isn't the flashiest ed tech tool on the block and it certainly isn't the newest. In fact, you might have read "PowerPoint" and thought "old." But as old as it is (34 years) there are new things added to it and hidden gems within it that keep it going strong. If it has been a while since you looked at PowerPoint, here are some features you might not be aware of that can be helpful to you and your students. 

Record a Video in PowerPoint
The Windows 10 desktop version of PowerPoint has some neat features including the option to record a video and instantly insert it into your presentation. Watch this tutorial to learn how that's done.



Remove Image Backgrounds
PowerPoint has a handy built-in tool for removing the background from your images. Here's a demonstration of how to use that feature.



Get Instant Feedback on Your Presentation
Presenter Coach is a great tool for getting instant feedback on your presentation pacing and more. It's available in the online version of PowerPoint. This tutorial shows you how it works.



Automatic Captioning of Your Presentation
PowerPoint includes features for automatic captioning of your presentations. Captions appear while you speak. The captioning tool will also translate your presentation while you speak. Watch this video to see how it works.



Accessibility Checker
If you're not sure whether or not your slides will be accessible to all students, you can run an accessibility check on your PowerPoint slides. This video shows you how to run an accessibility check on your PowerPoint presentation and how to add alt text to pictures and videos in your PowerPoint presentation.



Add more features...
Through the use of PowerPoint add-ins you can add even more functionality to your PowerPoint slides. For example, you can quickly add a countdown timer to your slides. Here's a demo of how to add a countdown timer to your slides. This video shows you how to find and install add-ins.

Best of 2021 - Fling the Teacher!

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one about a fun game created by Russel Tarr. 

Fling the Teacher is a game that I mentioned briefly in this week's Practical Ed Tech newsletter. If you're not subscribed, here's a recap of what Fling the Teacher is.

Fling the Teacher lets students fling or slingshot their teachers across the screen for up to sixty seconds after they correctly answer fifteen consecutive multiple choice questions. Try it for yourself with this demo game.

You can create your own Fling the Teacher game by simply going to Classtools.net and then choosing the Fling the Teacher template. You'll then have the option to click "create your own" (bottom, left corner of the screen) where you can write your own questions and answer choices. Classtools will automatically shuffle answer choices when the questions are presented to students.

Your complete Fling the Teacher game will be assigned a unique URL for you to give to your students. Classtools will also generate a QR code and an embed code for you to use. Fling the Teacher games can be played on computers, tablets, and phones.

Here's a video demonstration of how to create your own Fling the Teacher game. 

Applications for Education
Fling the Teacher could provide students with a fun reward for successfully completing a review quiz. Of course, you could also have your students make their own review games with the Fling the Teacher template.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. 

Best of 2021 - Combine Canva and TeacherMade to Create Online Activities

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from May. 

Canva offers nearly two thousand worksheet templates for teachers to copy and modify. All of the templates can be downloaded as PDFs. You could print them and give them to your students to complete. But who wants another thing to have to print and keep track of? So instead of printing worksheets made with Canva's templates, download the PDF and then upload it to TeacherMade where you can quickly turn that PDF into an online activity. 

With TeacherMade you can upload a PDF then add to it fillable text boxes, lines for matching activities, multiple choice questions, and interactive hotspots to highlight specific points in the PDF. You can also use TeacherMade to add audio to an uploaded PDF. Depending upon the type of questions that you select, TeacherMade will automatically score assignments for you. 

Watch my latest video to see how you can use Canva and TeacherMade together to create online worksheets for your students. The video also shows how a student can access the online activities that you create with TeacherMade. 

You can learn more about using TeacherMade in this video and in this video. I also have nearly two dozen Canva tutorials listed here. 

Applications for Education
I'm always apprehensive to write about worksheets because a lot of people hear or read "worksheet" and think that it's just a time-filler for rote practice. Canva offers worksheet templates that aren't just rote practice activities. For example, in the video above I used a worksheet template for evaluating writing. When you browse through Canva's worksheet templates gallery you'll find lots of templates that have a similar goal of providing guidance for an activity rather than rote practice of skills or facts.

The thing that I've always appreciated about Canva is that it enables people like me who don't have a natural knack for graphic design to create good-looking graphics, presentations, and PDFs. Looking through Canva's worksheet templates I found plenty of templates that I would snap-up if I was teaching social studies or language arts today. Unfortunately, I didn't see any good templates for computer science so I guess I'll have to make my own.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Featured graphic created by Richard Byrne.

Best of 2021 - How to Make Chrome Run Faster

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from September.

There was a time when Google Chrome was the new kid on the block and promised faster browsing and faster page load time. That hasn't been the case for many years now. In fact, now when I hear colleagues, students, or others complain about their computers or Chromebooks running slowly the first thing I do is check their Chrome settings. 

There are two little Chrome settings that can make it run faster on your Windows 10 computer or on your Chrome book. Those settings are found under "system" in the "advanced" menu. Those settings are:

• Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed.
  
• Use hardware acceleration when available.

The speed with which Chrome runs should improve if you turn off the two options listed above. In the video below I demonstrate how to find those settings. 

Best of 2021 - How to Find Public Google Workspace Files

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. Here's one from May. 

Last week I published an animated GIF of how to search by domain to find publicly shared Google Workspaces files. Over the weekend I was asked if I had a video of the process. I didn't have one, so I made this short one to demonstrate how to use Google's advanced search function to find publicly shared Google Docs, Slides, Forms, Sheets, and Drawings. Take a look and feel free to share if you think it can be helpful your students or colleagues. 

Applications for Education
One search strategies that I regularly remind my students to use is to search by file type. Doing that can often lead students to helpful resources published as PDFs or Word documents that they wouldn't have found with a typical Google search. Likewise, searching by domain to locate Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, or Drawings can help students discover useful resources that might otherwise go overlooked. 

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Featured graphic created by Richard Byrne.

Best of 2021 - Three Good Options for Annotating PDFs

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. New blog posts will resume on January 1st. 

In last week's Practical Ed Tech newsletter I shared three good options for adding audio comments to Google Docs, Word docs, and PDFs. That prompted a couple of readers to ask me about options for annotating PDFs. I have a few recommendations for annotating PDFs. The one you pick may depend upon whether you prefer to use tools that work with your Google account or ones that work with a Microsoft account. 

Annotate PDFs in OneNote
OneNote has lots of neat features built into it. One of those neat features is a tool for annotating PDFs. In this short video I demonstrate how you can do that.

Annotate PDFs with Lumin PDF

Lumin PDF is a Chrome extension that enables students to draw on top of PDFs that you open in Chrome. After drawing on the PDF students can save the PDF as a new copy or replace the existing copy of the PDF that was sent to them in Google Classroom. Here's my video overview of how students can use Lumin PDF to write on PDFs that are assigned to them in Google Classroom.

Annotate PDFs with Kami

Kami is a service that enables users to annotate and comment on PDFs. You can do this directly on the Kami website or in Google Drive with Kami's Chrome extension. Kami also works with Word and Pages files.

Here's a couple of videos about how Kami works.

Best of 2021 - Interactive Checklists in Google Docs

As I do every year, I'm taking this week as a break from publishing new blog posts and will be republishing some of the most popular posts of the year. New blog posts will resume on January 1st. 

This week Google announced more than a dozen updates to Google Workspace products. Included in those updates is a new text box feature in Google Documents. The new text box option can be used to create interactive checklists. Those checklists, just like any other Google Document, can be shared with colleagues and students who can then cross off items as they're completed. 

In this short video I demonstrate how you can create interactive checklists in Google Documents. One of the neat things that you'll see in the video is that you can adjust the size and style of the checkboxes by using the font menus in Google Docs.  

Applications for Education
My first thought when seeing the new checklist option in Google Docs was that it could be great for students to use when planning group projects. The group can have their to-do list and all of the details of their plans on the same document instead of having to use a separate task management tool or having to write/re-write comments when a task is completed.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Feature image created by Richard Byrne using Canva. 

Winter, Animals, and Fun - The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where my daughters are eagerly anticipating Santa's arrival. Tomorrow morning I won't be in the mood to write blog posts or even think about my blog. That's why I'm breaking from my pattern and writing the week-in-review on a Friday evening. 

As I look toward the end of the year I'd like to say a big thank you to all of you who have supported my work throughout this year and year's past (some of you have been with me for more than decade). Whether you've purchased one of my courses or ebooks or you've simply shared my blog posts with your friends and colleagues, your support is appreciated. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. A New Way to Add Students to Flipgrid
2. How to Modify & Share Canva Templates
3. Six Reasons to Try Tract for Remote & Hybrid Learning
4. A Platypus in My House! Fun and Learning Through Augmented Reality
5. How to Use Google Keep as a Comment Bank
6. Nine Interactive Maps Depicting the History of the United States
7. 21 Activities and Lessons That Have a Winter Theme

Thank you for your support!
Your registrations in Practical Ed Tech courses (listed below) and purchases of my ebook help me keep Free Technology for Teachers going.

On-demand Professional Development

• Search Strategies Students Need to Know
• A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video
• A Crash Course in Google Earth & Maps for Social Studies

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 39,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
• I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fourteen years. 
• The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week. 
• If you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Instagram or Strava.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin and WayBetterSite. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.

Building the Hoover Dam - A New TED-Ed Lesson

Blood, Concrete, and Dynamite is a new TED-Ed lesson that tells the story of the building of the Hoover Dam. The lesson explains why the dam was built, the short-term economic impact of its construction (21,000 people employed by the project), the engineering of the dam, the environmental impact, and the human toll of its construction. While it touches on all of those topics, the emphasis of the lesson is on how many people benefitted from its construction and the people who died during its construction. You can watch the lesson here and find the accompanying lesson questions here. 

Despite already knowing the history of the construction of the dam, I still found the video entertaining and informative. Overall, it's a good summary of the dam's construction. You would need to look elsewhere to really dive into the engineering of the dam or the environmental impact of the dam. 

Of course, I can't think of the Hoover Dam without also thinking of the famous dam tour scene in National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation and The Highwaymen performing The Highwayman. 

4,000+ Maps of Military Battles and Campaigns

The Library of Congress housed hundreds of thousands of maps covering a huge array of topics from maps used by fire insurance companies to population density to maps of military battles and campaigns. 

The LOC's collection of maps of military battles and campaigns contains more than 4,000 maps that are free to view, download, and reuse. The vast majority of the maps are from the 18th and 19th centuries although there are about 600 maps covering World War I and II. 

You can browse through the collection according to date, location, subject, and language (most of the maps are in English or French). Once you've found a map that seems interesting, click on it to view more information about the cartographer and a little backstory on the map. Most of the maps can be downloaded as images and some can be downloaded as PDFs. 

Applications for Education
My first thought when looking through the collection was to download the maps to use as overlays in Google Earth. Doing so can provide students with some geographic context and comparisons for military battles and campaigns that they're learning about in U.S. History classes. Directions for overlaying historic maps onto Google Earth can be found in this video.

If you're interested in learning more about using Google Earth and Google Maps in your classroom, enroll in my self-paced Crash Course in Google Eath & Maps for Social Studies.

Reindeer Facts and a Ride With Them

My daughters are very excited for Santa and his reindeer to visit our house tomorrow night. We'll be leaving out snacks for him and his reindeer. For weeks they've been asking if reindeer are real. Reindeer are real, they're just not capable of flying like Rudolph and his pals (I leave that part out when talking to my daughters).

If they still have questions about reindeer when they're older I might show them this SciShow Kids video about reindeer. 4 Facts to Know About Reindeer explains why reindeer are called caribou in North America. The lesson also teaches students how reindeer have adapted to find food and stay warm in cold weather. The video concludes with an explanation of why reindeer migrate.

Older kids and adults who want to learn a bit more about reindeer should watch this clip from BBC Earth. The video explains how reindeer stay warm in the coldest of conditions.



Another part of the same BBC series about reindeer is this Magical Finland Sleigh Ride.

This blog post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, there's a 99.9% chance that it has been used without permission by one of the many splogs that steal my work every day. 

How to Create Videos of Augmented Reality Animals

During my Best of the Web webinar on Tuesday afternoon someone asked me how I made the videos of the augmented reality animals in my house and in my yard. The answer is that I simply used the augmented reality tools that are built into Google's mobile search on Android (also available on iOS). 

To create the videos of augmented reality animals in my house I simply did a Google search for them on my Pixel 5 then chose the "view in your space" option to have the animals rendered in AR. Once the animals were rendered in AR I then just held down the record button that appears on the screen when viewing an AR object via Google mobile search. The video automatically saves to the phone and from there you can share it anywhere including YouTube and Instagram (that's where I shared a video of a hippopotamus in front of my Christmas tree). 

The whole process of making a video with augmented reality videos might sound complicated, but it's not. I demonstrated the whole process in this short video. 

Applications for Education

I think it could be fun to have students record short videos about animals in augmented reality. Then stitch together a series of the short videos to tell a story about the animals. For example, I can envision creating an entire story about the misadventures of a hippopotamus that gets loose in my neighborhood.  

This blog post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, there's a 99.9% chance that it has been used without permission by one of the many splogs that steal my work every day. 

How to Create Google Docs and PDFs With Hyperlinked Chapters

A kind reader who purchased my new ebook asked me how I was able to create the hyperlinked sections within the ebook. There are a couple of ways that it can be done, but the way that I did it is built into Google Documents. 

Like nearly every document that I create, I created 50 Tech Tuesday Tips in Google Documents. Within Google Documents there is an option to insert headers and section breaks. When you insert a header into a Google Document that header is automatically added to the index that Google Docs automatically creates for you. Those headers are automatically hyperlinked between the index and the corresponding section in your document. Then when you export the Google Document as a PDF the hyperlinked is preserved. Additionally, if you use the automatic table of contents feature in Google Docs, the table of contents is hyperlinked and preserved when you export your Google Document as a PDF. 

The whole process that I described above is demonstrated in this short video. It's one of those things that's a little easier to understand when you see it as opposed to just reading about it. 

Applications for Education
Hyperlinking sections makes it a lot easier for people to jump to sections in a long document. If you or your students are creating long reports in Google Documents, consider adding section headers to make it easier navigate.

How to Embed Blog Posts Into Canva Designs

A few weeks ago I discovered that you can embed Google Forms and Microsoft Forms into Canva designs including website design templates. Then yesterday, as I was putting together my Best of the Web presentation slides, I accidentally discovered that you can embed blog posts into Canva designs. 

The process for embedding blog posts into Canva designs is the same as it is for embedding Google Forms or Microsoft Forms into Canva designs. Simply choose the "embed" option in the Canva design editor then paste a link to the blog post into the embed field. The blog post will then appear in the design where you can resize it to fit into the design as you like. 

Watch this short video to learn how to embed blog posts into Canva designs. 

On a related note, here's how you can use Canva to create webpages.

Have you heard? I published a new ebook titled 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. It's a great resource for busy tech coaches, media specialists, and curriculum directors. 

Best of the Web 2021 - Webinar Recording and Slides

Yesterday afternoon I hosted my annual Best of the Web webinar. More than 100 people attended the live session and even more asked to view the recording and slides. As promised, you anyone can now watch the recording right here on my YouTube channel. The slides can be seen here or as embedded below as a Canva presentation. 

Best of the Web 2021 by Richard Byrne

My new ebook, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips, mentioned in the webinar can be found right here.

The tools mentioned in the webinar:

SpinnerWheel

Mote

WordTune

Volley

Flipgrid virtual backgrounds

Classroomscreen

Canva's video editor

Google's AR animals

Ziplet

Lumio

Carrd.co

Narakeet

Mouse X-Ray Goggles

PhET

Tract

Screencastify Editor

Blackbird Code

TeacherMade

Wick Editor

Glide Apps

Bitly+ TinyURL+

Demonstrations of all of the tools and services mentioned above are included in the Canva slides that I posted. 

21 Activities and Lessons That Have a Winter Theme

Today is the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere. To mark the start of winter I've put together a list of twenty-one activities and lessons that have a winter theme. 

Snowy Outdoor Activities
I enjoy winter and my kids do too. We like to sled, ski, snowshoe, and just play outside in the snow. If you live where we do, it's a long winter if you don't learn to the love the snow.

NOVA, as a part of their program on Denali, has directions for building a snow cave and directions for building an Igloo.

Boys' Life offers a list of outdoor winter games as well as directions for building igloos and snow shelters.

Making your own snowshoes is an activity that can be done indoors with the final product enjoyed outdoors. There are dozens of DIY snowshoe videos on YouTube. This one is a little bit too quick, but it does have a detailed materials list in the description. 

When I was about seven or eight I was given a copy of The American Boy's Handy Book (available for free in Google Books). The book is filled with fun hands-on indoor and outdoor activities including an entire section devoted to snow forts and other snow-related activities. I took my tattered copy off the shelf last winter and explained to my daughters that the book was written when people thought that girls couldn't do the same things as boys, but now we know better. We then turned to the section about making ice-fishing traps. Now they can't wait to go ice-fishing, again! 

Playing outdoor bingo is a fun way to get kids outside and exploring the nature in their neighborhoods. Watch this video to learn how you can create your own outdoor Bingo boards using Flippity's Google Sheets template.



Video Lessons About Winter Weather
The following video explains how windchill is calculated. The video comes from Presh Talwalkar.

 

Television news reporters like to use the word "extreme" whenever we have a lot of rain or snow in a short amount of time. Is the weather really "extreme" or is that just our impression of it? The following Minute Earth video takes on the topic of how extreme weather affects our thinking about weather patterns in general. I found the video to be interesting from a psychology perspective. The video is embedded below.

 

The video from Reactions that is embedded below explains how snowflakes are created.

 

Thundersnow is a video from UNC-TV that explains how thunder sometimes, though rarely, coincides with snowstorms. PBS Learning Media has a set of corresponding lesson materials that you can use with this video.

Why the Full Moon is Better in Winter explains how the combination of the position of the moon relative to Earth and snow on the ground make the moon appear brighter in the winter than in the summer. Take a look at the video as embedded below. 

Where do Snowflakes Come From? is a SciShow Kids video about how snow is formed. What is a Blizzard? also comes from SciShow Kids and does a good job of explaining the difference between a blizzard a regular snowstorm. Both videos are embedded below.

Video Lessons About the Winter Solstice

What is a Solstice? is a National Geographic video. The two minute video explains why we experience solstices. The video also explains why the solstice and the first day of winter aren't always the same.


PBS Kids Nature Cat has a cute video that explains the basic concept of winter and summer solstice.



Last year TIME published a video featuring "four things you probably didn't know about the winter solstice." Spoiler alert! You probably knew them, but the video will remind you about those things.


Mechanism Of The Seasons is a six minute video about why the length of daylight we receive in a location changes throughout the year. This video could be helpful in a flipped classroom environment.

Autumn Stars and Planets is a short PBS video that explains why the stars and planets that we see from Earth change with the seasons. The video is embedded below.

Indoor and Online Winter-themed Activities

Lumio, a new service from SMART that I wrote about last month, has a collection of a dozen ready-made winter-themed online activities including winter poetry writing, math snowmen, and a winter "would you rather?" quiz. 

Flippity offers a template for making your own online snowman activity in which students have to guess the correct letters to spell words before the snowman melts. Here's a demo of how to use the template. 

Surviving Winter is a PBS Learning Media online activity for elementary school and middle school students. The activity consists of reading and watching videos about how animals adapt to survive through winter. Students have to complete writing and word sorting activities as they move through each section of the Surviving Winter activity. 

ReadWorks has a big collection of reading activities arranged around the theme of winter. A couple of those activities include a lesson on Beating the Winter Blues and a lesson about Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. 

Free Webinar Today at 3pm ET - Best of the Web 2021

Every year I review hundreds of new websites, apps, and other educational technology tools. And every year I give a "best of" presentation about my favorite new and updated tools of the year. This year I'm giving that presentation the form of a free, live webinar! 

Today at 3pm ET (check here to convert to your time zone) I'm hosting Best of the Web 2021. Registration is free but it is limited. 

During the webinar I'll share my favorite new and updated tools of the last year. I'll give live demonstrations of some of them and answer your questions about them. A copy of my slides will also be provided to those who attend. 

You can register for the webinar right here!

If you cannot attend the live webinar, a recording of it will be available on my YouTube channel the next day. 

I have a new ebook for busy tech coaches, teachers, and media specialists. It's titled 50 Tech Tuesday Tips. You can get it right here.