Annotations, Document Cameras, and Exercise - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it's going to be nice day with clear skies and temperatures peaking around 30F. In other words, it's going to be a good day for playing in the snow with my daughters. I foresee some sledding, skiing, and lots of fun in future. I'm also hoping to get some time this weekend to read A Concise History of Fly Fishing. I hope that wherever you are this weekend, you have something fun planned as well. 

This week was my first week back at school after winter break and I still managed to create some new blog posts and videos this week. Some highlights of this week in blogging include annotating your screen in Google Meet, a neat writing contest for kids, and turning your iPhone into a document camera. 

These were the most popular posts of the week:
1. Video - How to Annotate Your Screen in Google Meet
2. How to Create Your Own Online Board Game
3. Overviewer - Turn Your iPhone or iPad Into a Document Camera in Zoom
4. Seven Apps and Sites to Encourage Healthy Diet and Exercise Habits
5. Boomwriter's Writing Bee - A Unique Creative Writing Contest for Kids
6. How to Add an Announcement Banner to Google Sites
7. My Favorite Feature of OneNote's Chrome Extension

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
• New courses coming soon!
• Custom, online PD for your school. Contact me to learn more. 

Thank you for your support! 

• More than 300 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech course in 2020. 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!

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 32,000 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.

Daily Artifacts of U.S. History

Earlier this week I was catching up on some RSS feeds in Feedly when I came across this drawing from the patent application for the board game that became Monopoly. That drawing was the featured artifact of the day on the Today's Document website published by the U.S. National Archives. It's a resource that I frequently used when I taught U.S. History. Every day Today's Document features a new image or document from the archives. The documents are usually accompanied by some additional research links and lesson plan resources. 

The Library of Congress offers a daily artifact feed similar to the one offered by the National Archives. Today in History from The Library of Congress offers a new image or document along with the story of the notable event or person connected to it. The LOC generally includes more information about the featured artifact than what the National Archives includes about their daily documents. 

Applications for Education
When I was teaching U.S. History I used both of the resources on a regular basis. Sometimes I'd use, with modification, the lesson plans associated with the artifacts. Most of the time I just used the featured artifacts to spark little discussions about moments in history.