Elk, Geography, and Art - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where I'm home after spending most of the week in western Nebraska. It was there that I took the picture featured in this post. It's a little hard to make it out, but there's a bull elk in the picture. It was one of three that walked right past me early on Monday morning. Those of you who follow me on Instagram might have also seen a video of those same elk earlier this week. 

Now that I'm home this weekend is going to be full of some late autumn chores like putting away my kids' outdoor toy box for the winter and cleaning up the last of leaf piles. There will also be time for fun. I hope that you have a fun weekend!

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Where I'd Like to Go - A Geography Lesson With Google Drawings
2. An Overview of Five Fun Geography Games for Students
3. Felt - A New Way to Create Multimedia Maps
4. Is This the End of the Google Keep Chrome Extension?
5. A Google Earth Lesson With the "I'm Feeling Lucky" Button
6. Free, Customizable Clip Art
7. 30+ Activity Templates to Use in Google Classroom

50 Tech Tuesday Tips!

50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook that I created with busy tech coaches, tech integrators, and media specialists in mind. In it you'll find 50 ideas and tutorials that you can use as the basis of your own short PD sessions. Get a copy today!

Workshops and eBooks

If you'd like to have me speak at your school or conference, please send me an email at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com or fill out the form on this page. Book me for this school year and I'll include copies of my eBook for all of the teachers in your school. 

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 43,000 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 Strava.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.

Five Digital Mapping Tools That Aren't Made by Google

Google Earth and Google's My Maps are great tools for students to use to create multimedia maps. But Google isn't the only game in town when it comes to digital map creation tools. In fact, there are some good ones that are freely available to you and your students outside of what Google offers. Here's a summary of five good ones that are worth trying. 

Scribble Maps is a tool that I've used and recommended for years. As the name implies, you can use it to draw on maps. You can also use it to create multimedia map markers. The best part is that you can use it without creating an account or enter any personal information. In this short video I provide an overview of how to create a multimedia map on Scribble Maps.

ArcGIS Story Maps is a free tool that you can use to create a variety of map-based stories. The basic ArcGIS Story Map lets you combine pictures and locations to playback as a series of slides. The learning curve is a bit steeper than the other tools in this list, but the finished product is quite slick. Here's a good example of an ArcGIS Story Map.

Padlet is one of the most versatile tools you can put in your digital toolbox. Creating multimedia maps is just one of the many things that you can do with Padlet. In the video that is embedded below I demonstrate creating a multimedia map by using Padlet's built-in maps. The video also covers how to share your Padlet maps, how to add collaborators to the map, and settings you need to know before inviting students to be collaborators on your Padlet maps. 

Felt is a new mapping tool that I recently started using. So far I think it's great! Felt offers a lot of easy-to-use tools for creating custom maps. Some of those tools include drawing and highlighting on maps, annotating maps with notes, adding custom placemarks, and overlaying datasets on your maps. Watch this video for an introduction to using the basic tools offered by Felt. 

StoryMap JS is a tool that I've been using and recommending for many years. StoryMap JS enables students to tell stories through a series of slides that appear on a map. Each slide is matched to locations that you choose on your map. Each slide in your story can include images, text, and hyperlinks. In this short video I demonstrate how to create a story map with StoryMap JS.