Slides, Moving, and Fun - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is going to be a gorgeous spring weekend! Last weekend we spent a lot of time outdoors and this weekend we'll spend even more time outside. I hope that wherever you are this weekend that you also get some time for outdoor fun. 

This week I didn't publish as many blog posts as I usually do. That was partly because of my commitments to host webinars and partly due to the end-of-the-year crunch that every teacher feels right now. Speaking of end-of-the-year activities, the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp will happen after the school year ends. But if you register in May you can get the early registration discount. 

These were my most popular posts of the week:
1. Ten Tips for Using Audio and Video in Google Slides
2. How to Find Public Google Docs, Slides, Forms, Sheets, and Drawings
3. Fun Doesn’t Depend on Equipment or Clothing
4. Ten Good Tools for Telling Stories With Pictures
5. How to Embed Word Documents Into Blog Posts and Web Pages
6. How to Create Your Own Online Board Game
7. Moving Files Between Google Workspaces Accounts

On-demand Professional Development

• Ten 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 35,000 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. 
• And 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, TodayHeadline, and 711Web. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.

All About Plants - Three SciShow Kids Lessons

Spring has finally, fully arrived here in Maine. Our flowers are in full bloom and this weekend we're putting together garden boxes for growing vegetables. Planting flowers and vegetables is a great way to spark kids' curiosity and to develop some hands-on learning experiences. If you can't plant flowers or vegetables with kids, but want to share the science behind what makes plants grow, take a look at the following video lessons from SciShow Kids. 

How Plant Seed Travel the World explains how plants grow in the wild and spread naturally. 

Flowers and Their Pollinators is a good video that covers a topic that has come up a lot in my house recently, thanks in part to a Nat Geo Kids book about bees. That topic is the role of insects and birds in helping plants grow.



Why Daffodils Grow in the Same Place Every Year covers another topic that comes up in our house. That topic being, "why do we have so many daffodils?"



Applications for Education
I like these kind of videos for two reasons. First, they're short enough to be turned into video lessons with a tool like EDpuzzle. Second, they provide kids with a little bit of information that they can then take with them as they explore the natural world around them. For example, I love taking my kids on walks in the woods and parks around us where they can make connections between what they've learned or been told and what they actually see outside.   

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, TodayHeadline, and 711Web. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.