Rain, Maps, and Slideshows - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the clouds have returned after yesterday's reprieve from what feels like a month of rain. It's a great morning for making pour-over coffee and sipping it at a leisurely pace. But since I have young kids, I won't be sipping it at a leisurely pace. Instead, I'll drink it while we get ready for a visit to the Maine Wildlife Park. It's one of our favorite places to go regardless of the weather. 

I hope that you have a fun weekend! If your definition of fun includes catching up on some articles about educational technology, take a look at the list below. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Five Good Collections of Historic Maps for Classroom Use
2. Four Easy Ways to Make End-of-Year Slideshow Videos
3. A Round-up of 15 AI Resources Created Without Using AI
4. GE Teach - Make Side-by-Side Map Comparisons in One Browser Tab
5. This AI Tool Generates Reading Comprehension Questions for Any Article
6. Ten Google Earth and Maps Activities for Math Lessons
7. More "Color Our Collections" Collections

Workshops and Keynotes

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.  

Self-paced Courses You Can Start Today

On Practical Ed Tech I have four self-paced courses that you can start today and finish at your own pace. 

• Animated Explanations
• How to Create & Sell Your Own Digital Products
• Five Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom
• Search Strategies Students Need to Know

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 45,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
• I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fifteen years. 
• I update my LinkedIn profile a time or two every week.
• 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.

47 Google Forms Tutorials

In a video that I published earlier this year I mentioned that the vast majority of my videos don't get more than a few hundred views. But there are some outliers. The biggest outlier is my simple video about the basics of creating a quiz in Google Forms which has received nearly half a million views. That's just one of forty-seven Google Forms tutorials available on my YouTube channel. 

On my YouTube channel and in my playlist of Google Forms tutorials you'll find tutorials for everything from the basics of making a quiz in Google Forms to adding voice comments to Google Forms and a whole bunch other things in between those extremes. Some highlights from the playlist are linked below. 

The Basics of Creating a Quiz in Google Forms

How to Import and Copy Questions One Google Form to Another



Add Voice Recordings to Google Forms Questions, Answer Choices, and Feedback



How to Collect Pictures Through Google Forms



How to Use Custom Fonts in Google Forms



How to Add Alt Text to Images in Google Forms