Tasks, Spaces, and Cakes - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where we have enjoyed a great week of beautiful fall weather. The nights have been cool, the days have been warm and sunny, and the leaves are turning into vibrant shades of red, yellow, and orange. My daughters can't wait for me to make big piles of leaves to jump in. That's what we'll be doing today. I hope that you have something fun planned for your weekend as well. 

This week I co-hosted another edition of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions. We'll be holding the next episode on October 28th. I hope you'll join us!

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Taskade - A Complete Project Planning Solution for Teachers and Students
2. Two New Google Docs Features to Note
3. How to Turn a Spreadsheet Into Multimedia Flashcards
4. The Science of Cake! - And 83 Other Food Science Lessons
5. How to Add Watermarks to Google Documents
6. Five Google Earth Features for Teachers
7. Spaces - Capturing & Celebrating Student Growth

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

A big thank you also goes to the companies whose advertising helps keep the lights on.

• Screencastify
• Breakout EDU
• Tract.app
• Make Beliefs Comix
• Taskade
• Spaces

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 38,000 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.

Lighthouses and Minibooks

The Library of Congress has a great collection of activities suggestions and resources for parents who are looking for educational activities they can do at home with their kids. The collection is called Resources for Family Engagement. Within this collection you will find activity kits that offer directions and ideas for making mini books at home, designing and coloring lighthouses, and creating comics.

Resources for Family Engagement also offers a handful of printables called Color Our Collections. These are free coloring pages based on historic pictures and drawings. You can print these pages as black and white outlines then color them to your heart's content.

Applications for Education
The materials within Resources for Family Engagement are intended for elementary school age students. The LOC's Resources for Family Engagement is the type of resource that I like to add to classroom websites for parents who are looking for ideas for fun learning activities they can do at home with their kids.