Wednesday, March 9, 2022

A Short Overview of Library of Congress Digital Collections

I reference the Library of Congress nearly every time that I talk or write about searching for historical maps and images. If you know where to look on LOC.gov and how to filter a search, you can find some amazing resources to use in all kinds of history lessons including overlaying historical maps onto current views in Google Earth. The challenge is wading through all of the information on the Library of Congress's website to find what you want. While the site has gotten remarkably easier to use in recent years, students can still benefit from being shown where to look for historical images and maps on LOC.gov. 

In this new video I provide a short overview of the two places on the Library of Congress's website that I recommend students search and browse to find images and maps that they can use and reuse. 



On a related note, the National Jukebox is a great place to find historical music recordings to use in your history lessons. An overview of that resource is provided in this short video.

How to Add Narration to Google Slides Without Add-ons

Earlier this week someone replied to my Practical Ed Tech Newsletter with a question about narrating Google Slides. Specifically, she wanted to know about options for adding narration to Google Slides that didn't require installing Google Slides add-ons or Chrome extensions. My immediate suggestion was to try using Vocaroo to record the audio then upload it to Google Drive to use in Google Slides.

I've been using Vocaroo for fifteen years to create and share audio recordings. I've written a dozen or more blog posts about it over the years. But until now I haven't made a video specifically about using it in conjunction with Google Slides. In this new video I demonstrate how to create an audio recording with Vocaroo and then use it in Google Slides



Applications for Education
The method that I demonstrated in the video above will also work with MP3 recordings created with other tools like Online-Voice-Recorder, Audacity, and GarageBand. If your school doesn't allow you to install add-ons or extensions, the method I outlined in the video above work for adding narration and other audio to your Google Slides presentations.

On a related note, watch out for these common Google Slides audio errors.

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