Chrome, Cookies, and Canva - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where a steady rain is washing away the last of snow that is in my yard. We're heading into the time of year in Maine that is affectionately referred to as mud season. It's going to be a good day for catching up on some indoor projects and perhaps making some more cookies with my daughters. We had a great time decorating and eating some on St. Patrick's Day and I believe we still have a bit of dough in freezer. Whatever the weather where you live, I hope you do something fun this weekend!

This week I announced a new Practical Ed Tech webinar that will be held next Tuesday. It's all about how to create and sell your own digital products. If you've been thinking about doing this yourself, you don't want to miss this webinar in which I'll share the lessons I've learned from doing it for the last decade. Learn more and register here!

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Five Chrome Settings You Need to Know
2. Readlee - Know How Your Students Read Online Assignments
3. ICYMI - Two EdTech Guys Take Questions - Webinar Recording
4. My Five Favorite Canva Features
5. An Interactive Map of Surnames in Ireland
6. Watch Me Unravel an Email Scam
7. Why You're Seeing More of My Face

Thank you for your support!
Your registrations in Practical Ed Tech courses and purchases of 50 Tech Tuesday Tips help me keep Free Technology for Teachers going. Purchase ten or more copies of my ebook and I'll host a free one-hour webinar for your school or organization. 

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 40,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
• I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fifteen 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 Icons Daily and Daily Dose. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.

A Lesson About Gas

Whenever I fill up my car's gas tank I'm thankful that I don't have a car that requires high octane gasoline. What is high octane gasoline anyway? Is is really significantly better than regular unleaded gasoline? And why is gasoline "unleaded?" Those questions and more are answered in this relatively new Reactions video. 

Applications for Education
Over the years I've had lots of students who were aspiring mechanics. One that I had last year was always moaning about how his car could only run on high octane gasoline and that it was so expensive. A video like this one could help those students understand how gasoline is actually produced and how the octane rating is measured.

On a related note, here are some good tools for annotating videos.