Hear Me on the International Teacher Podcast

A few weeks ago Greg Lemoine invited me to be a guest on the International Teacher Podcast. I had a great time chatting with Greg and his co-host Kent about a wide range of topics including who I look to for information and inspiration, some of my favorite tools and tips, and how I got started down the road to creating Free Technology for Teachers and Practical Ed Tech. 

Somehow they also got me to tell some stories from my days for traveling before I had kids. Those include the time I ran into Sophie Ellis Bextor, a mountain biking trip in Iceland that started by meeting a reader of this blog, and a late-night grilling by an enthusiastic Canada Border Services agent.

Finally, I got to share a bit about the highlight of my life, my kids. 

So if you'd like to hear me in a completely unscripted interview, head over to the International Teacher Podcast today. 

How to Add Q&A to Your Google Slides Presentations

There are plenty of ways to gather questions and feedback from students in a digital format. But one of the ways that is often overlooked is to just add a Q&A component to a slide presentation. That can be done quite easily in Google Slides right from the presentation menu. Watch my video embedded below to learn how to add Q&A to your Google Slides presentations.

Applications for Education
The option for students to vote a question up or down is useful in determining which questions seem the most important to your students.

Pi, Puppy, and AI - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and it is going to be a beautiful late winter day. It's going to be perfect for playing outside with the newest member of our family, Rangeley Noodle! Last weekend we got a black lab puppy and my daughters named him Rangeley Noodle. Rangeley is for one of our favorite places in Maine and Noodle because my five-year-old thought it was fun to say and the rest of us went with it. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope that you have something fun to do outside too. 

This week I started a new course called Five Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom. Even if you missed the first week, you can still sign-up and get all of the lessons. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. A Round-up of Pi Day Resources
2. AI Tools are Coming to Google Workspace Tools
3. An Overview of Using and Detecting Artificial Intelligence
4. 15 Microsoft Forms Tutorials for Teachers
5. A New Answer to the Questions I'm Asked the Most
6. Annotate Videos With Text and Pictures
7. Whimsical - An AI Concept Map Generator

Make More Money This Year!

If you're looking for a way to put a little more money in your pocket this year, my self-paced course How to Create and Sell Digital Products in 2023 is for you! It's one of three on-demand courses that I currently offer.

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. 

Animated Explanations

Making and Teaching With Animated Explanations is a five-part, self-paced course that teaches you how to make a variety of animations. More importantly, it teaches you why making animations is a valuable and fun classroom activity for students of all ages. 

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.

The Birds Are Returning - A Short Lesson on Migration

When I took my dogs out this morning I heard some birds chirping that I hadn't heard in a few months. That's a sure sign that spring can't be too far away. The sounds of the birds this morning reminded me of a TED-Ed lesson about bird migration. Bird Migration, A Perilous Journey teaches viewers some statistics about songbird migration, the role of bird migration in the ecosystem, and the man-made challenges facing songbirds on their annual migrations.



Applications for Education
After watching the video and completing the lesson questions, a next step is to have students head to Project FeederWatch where they can see maps of bird migration patterns.

Project Feeder Watch is a public project. You and your students can contribute to the project by counting birds at a site near your school or even in your school yard.

Fun Games for Learning About Space

NASA Kids' Club is a collection games, interactive activities, and images for students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. At the center of the NASA Kids' Club is a set of games and interactive activities arranged on five skill levels. The activities range from simple things like guessing numbers in "Airplane High Low" to more difficult tasks like identifying planets based on some clues provided in prompts in "Go to the Head of the Solar System."

Applications for Education
NASA Kids' Club offers a teachers' section in which each of the Kids' Club activities is outlined with alignment to NCTM and Common Core standards.

Short Lessons on Rome and Life as a Roman Teenager

National Geographic has a great series of YouTube videos called National Geographic 101 which include videos like Ancient Rome 101. The video provides an excellent introduction to the origin, rise, and fall of the Roman Empire. The length and substance of the video makes it an ideal candidate for inclusion in an EDpuzzle lesson.


TED-Ed has a good lesson that you can use as a follow-up to Ancient Rome 101. A Glimpse of Teenage Life in Ancient Rome is a TED-Ed lesson developed by Ray Laurence from the University of Kent. The video and its associated questions feature the story of seventeen year old Lucius Popidius Secundus.

An Overview of Using and Detecting Artificial Intelligence

This week's news that Google Workspace will have new artificial intelligence tools added to it throughout the year was not unexpected. It was another sign that if you haven't being paying attention to the development of AI tools this year, you should start paying attention to them. Even if your school tries to ban or block AI tools, students will figure out a way to use them outside of school if not in your school. With that out of the way, here's a round-up of some the AI tools that I've written and or made videos about in recent months. 

A Short Overview of ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence tool that will create documents for you based on some minimal input from you. For example, I simply typed into ChatGPT "Ten Canva Features for Students" and got this article. ChatGPT can also be used to create poems like this one about the sunglasses worn by Geraint Thomas. 

With a little tweaking of what you put into ChatGPT you can create longer articles than the one that I mentioned above. A simple, "tell me more" or "what about X" can generate more material from ChatGPT. 

Video - A Short Overview of ChatGPT

Magic Write

Magic Write is the artificial intelligence tool built into Canva Docs. Magic Write works in a manner that is quite similar to ChatGPT. To use Magic Write you simply select it from the insert menu in Canva Docs. Once Magic Write is opened you then enter a short prompt like "green screen video tips" and Magic Write generates a short list or paragraph for you (formatting depends on the prompt). You can then insert that writing into your document as it was written or you can edit it before including it in your document. Watch this short video to see how Magic Write in Canva works. 

Video - How to Use Artificial Intelligence in Canva Documents

Turn Writing Into Videos

ChatGPT might be the first thing you think of when you read AI today, but there have been plenty of other AI tools before it. One such tool is Lumen5. Lumen5 is a tool that will produce a video for you based upon your written work.

To create a video with Lumen5 you can enter the URL of your published work or submit the text of an article you've written. Lumen5 will then select highlights from your writing to feature in a video. The video will always begin with the title of your article. From there it will use any subheadings or section headings that you have in your article to create sections of your video. If you don't have subheadings or section headings in your article, Lumen5 will attempt to pull the keywords or phrases from each paragraph. Watch my demo below to see how easy it is to use Lumen5. 

Video - How to Quickly Turn Written Articles Into Videos

Concept Maps Created by AI

Whimsical is a mind mapping and concept mapping tool that I first tried a couple of years ago. In addition to mind mapping and concept mapping it can also be used for creating Venn diagrams and other common charts in a collaborative environment. Now Whimsical has an artificial intelligence component. Whimsical's AI tool generates concept maps based on any keyword or phrase that you center on the screen. To use Whimsical's AI concept mapping tool you simply have to start a new concept map, enter a keyword or phrase, and then click the AI icon. The tool will then generate a simple concept map of linked terms and phrases. 

Detecting Writing Created by AI

Almost as quickly as new AI writing tools emerge, new tools to detect writing created by AI are emerging. I've tried three of them so far. All three are demonstrated in this short video. Watch the video as embedded below or skip down to read about the tools featured in the video. 

Video - Three Tools for Detecting Articles Written by AI

GPTZero is a free tool that analyzes text to determine whether or not it was written by an artificial intelligence program. There are some features of GPTZero that make it a bit different from some of the other AI detection tools that I've tried. First, in addition to accepting text that you copy and paste into it, GPTZero lets you upload PDFs, Word docs, and TXT files to analyze them. Second, GPTZero will highlight for you the parts of an article that it determines to have a high likelihood of being written by an AI tool. Third, GPTZero provides a perplexity score and a burstiness score to illustrate how it was determined that a document was or was not written by an AI tool. 

AI Text Classifier is a free tool from Open AI, the makers of ChatGPT, that will detect whether or not a passage of text has been written with ChatGPT and similar AI writing tools. To use AI Text Classifier you do need to have registered for a free account on Open AI. Once you have an account you can use AI Text Classifier. To use AI Text Classifier you simply have to paste a block of writing (at least 1,000 characters, roughly 175 words) into the text field and click the submit button. AI Text Classifier will then rank the writing as very unlikely, unlikely, unclear if it is, possibly, or likely written by AI. For the record, AI Text Classifier classified my article about detecting writing created by AI as very unlikely to have been written by AI. 

AI Writing Check is a free tool created by the collaborative efforts of the non-profits Quill.org and CommonLit. AI Writing Check is a tool that was created to help teachers try to recognize writing created through the use of artificial intelligence. To use AI Writing Check you simply have to copy a passage of text of 100 or more words and paste it into AI Writing Check. The tool will then tell you the likelihood that the writing has or has not been created by artificial intelligence. That's all there is to it. AI Writing Check isn't foolproof and as is pointed out on the site, students can still develop ways to get around tools designed to detect AI-generated writing. It's also worth noting that it can't handle more than 400 words at a time. 

Crossplag AI Content Detector is a free tool that you can use to try to determine whether or not an AI tool was used to generate a passage of text. Like other AI detection tools, Crossplag AI Content Detector is easy to use. To use it you simply paste a block of text into the content detector and it will give a rating of likelihood that AI was used to create that text. Watch my short video below to see how it works. 

Video - Another Tool for Detecting Writing Created by AI

The Microphone I Recommend for Video and Audio Recordings

The podcasting platform that I recommend the most recently changed names. The screencasting tool that I use the most also recently changed names. One thing that hasn't changed is the microphone that I use with those tools. 

For years I have used and continue to recommend the Snowball iCE microphone.

The Snowball iCE microphone is the microphone that I have used for years to record on my Mac, Windows, and Chromebook computers. It's very easy to use the Snowball iCE just plug it in and it works. I have two of them, one of which I bring to workshops just to let people see how easy it is to plug in and use. The Snowball iCE has an MSRP of $49.99 and is currently on sale on Amazon for $39! 

Disclosure: the product links in this blog post are affiliate links which mean that I'll make a small commission if you purchase either product. Using the links doesn't affect the price you pay. And I only link to products that I have actually purchased myself. 

1759 Art Lesson Plans

The playroom in our house has lots of Crayola products in it because my daughters love to make pictures to hang on our refrigerator and cards to give to friends and family. And like most kids they don't always remember to put their boxes of crayons and markers away. While picking up one of their Crayola boxes last night I was reminded of Crayola's huge collection of lesson plans.

Crayola's lesson plan library contains 1759 free lesson plans. There are lesson plans for every grade from pre-K through 12th grade. As you might expect, the lesson plans incorporate one or more Crayola products, but you could probably substitute in similar products made by other companies. The lesson plans include step-by-step directions as well as a list of standards addressed by in the lesson.

All of the lesson plans on the Crayola site have an art component, but many cover topics in other areas. For example, this lesson plan on storytelling traditions is based upon a couple of brief history lessons. And this lesson plan for high school students focuses on using whiteboards and dry erase markers in group or individual problem solving. You can search and browse Crayola's lesson plan catalog according to grade level, subject area, and topic.

Annotate Videos With Text and Pictures

Timelinely is a neat tool for annotating videos that you find on YouTube to share with your students.

To get started simply paste a YouTube URL into the Timelinely homepage to get started. Once you have entered the URL for a video, a new screen appears that allows you to add tags or annotations to the timeline of the video. You can do this while the video plays or you can simply jump to a place on the video to add annotations. Your annotations can include text or images. As you can see in the screenshot below, I included an image of my friend Tom Richey in the annotation that I made on one of his YouTube videos.

Before you get too involved with Timelinely it's important to note that you'll have to create an account in order to save and share your work. You can create an account by using your Google account, by using your Facebook account, or by signing up with any email address. You can share your annotated version of a video via email and social media. 

Applications for Education
One of things that I like about Timelinely is the option to include pictures in your annotations. I can see that feature being used to include an alternate example for students to view when watching a math lesson.

I'm not sure that Timelinely is any better than a handful of similar services, but it is nice to have options

How to Record a Google Earth Tour

The Amazing Race is the only reality game show that I've watched with interest for as long as it has been on television. Years ago I created a classroom game based on the same premise of the show. Last spring I updated that game with some new graphics and new challenges and then published it as a PDF on PracticalEdTech.com. 

Recording a Google Earth tour is the capstone activity in Around the World With Google Earth. There are a couple of ways that students can do that. Students who are using the desktop version of Google Earth can use the built-in recorder. Students who are using the web version of Google Earth can use a screencasting tool like Screencastify to record a tour. 

In this short video I demonstrate how to record a Google Earth tour in your web browser by using Screencastify. 

Whimsical - An AI Concept Map Generator

For the last handful of months whenever I scroll through Product Hunt and just about every other new product is an AI-powered product. Or at least they claim to be using AI. One that recently jump out to me is Whimsical. 

Whimsical is a mind mapping and concept mapping tool that I first tried a couple of years ago. In addition to mind mapping and concept mapping it can also be used for creating Venn diagrams and other common charts in a collaborative environment. Now Whimsical has an artificial intelligence component. 

Whimsical's AI tool generates concept maps based on any keyword or phrase that you center on the screen. To use Whimsical's AI concept mapping tool you simply have to start a new concept map, enter a keyword or phrase, and then click the AI icon. The tool will then generate a simple concept map of linked terms and phrases. 

Applications for Education
Whimsical calls their AI tool an "AI mind mapping" tool. However, it's actually a concept mapping tool because the AI is doing the work for you that your mind would have otherwise done. That doesn't make it a bad tool, it just means that it shouldn't be viewed as a mind mapping tool. As a concept mapping tool it could prove to be quite handy for generating a diagram of connected terms and phrases. Showing those connections could be helpful to some students who are in need of assistance in seeing how concepts are connected.

For more AI resources, take a look at the links below:

• Artificial Intelligence in Canva Docs
• Three Tools for Detecting Writing Created by AI
• A Short Overview of ChatGPT
• Lumen5 - Turn Your Writing Into Videos
• Free Course on ChatGPT

15 Microsoft Forms Tutorials for Teachers

Despite the fact that I've been using Google Forms for as long as it has existed and that it is my default tool for creating online forms and quizzes, there are some things about Microsoft Forms that I prefer over Google Forms. One of those things is the ability to convert a Word document into a Microsoft Form. Another is the ability to create a timed quiz without having to use any external, third-party tools. Those are two of the fifteen things that are featured in my new playlist of Microsoft Forms tutorials for teachers. The aforementioned features and three more are featured in the videos from the playlist embedded below. 

How to Create a Self-grading Quiz in Microsoft Forms

How to Include Video in Microsoft Forms Feedback



How to Create a Timed Quiz in Microsoft Forms



How to Quickly Convert Word Docs Into Microsoft Forms



How to Use Branching Logic in Microsoft Forms

A New Answer to the Questions I'm Asked the Most

For many years now the question that I am asked more than any other is about the videos that appear on my YouTube channel. Specifically, people want to know how I'm highlighting my mouse pointer in my videos or how I'm creating the moving oval cut-out of my webcam. Sometimes they want to know the answer to both of those questions. Since at least 2014 the answer to has been Screencast-o-matic. Today, the question has a new answer. 

Screencast-o-matic has been rebranded as ScreenPal. I used it today to make a screencast video. It worked exactly the same way as Screencast-o-matic did. In fact, if I hadn't gotten an email about the name change, I wouldn't have even noticed that anything had changed. 

Screenpal offers all of the same features as it did when it was Screencast-o-matic. And as far as I can tell, there haven't been any changes to the free plan nor have there been any changes to the paid plans. Much like the rebranding of Anchor last week, the rebranding of Screencast-o-Matic to Screenpal appears to be purely cosmetic for now. And look for a new Screenpal tutorial on my YouTube channel in the near future. 

On a related note, Five Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom begins tomorrow. There is still time to register here. 

A Round-up of Pi Day Resources

Pi Day is on Tuesday. Last week I shared a few resources for teaching and learning about pi. This post is a summary of those resources and a few more. 

The Nationwide Legal DMCA Scam Returns - There's a Lesson Here

On a few occasions last year I wrote about a scam in which someone who pretends to be an attorney from a law firm called Nationwide Legal or Arthur Davidson Legal sends an email stating that a website owner has committed a copyright violation. The recourse that they seek is a link to another website for credit for the image. All of the details of the scam can be read here, here, and here. All that to say, the scam is back!

On Friday morning I got an email from someone claiming to be Victoria Boyd, Trademark Attorney at Nationwide Legal. It's the same scam as before. The difference is that now the website for the fake firm is hosted a different domain since the old site was shuttered by the hosting service. The pictures are the same, the typos are the same, the nonsensical logic is the same, and the scam is the same. 

Lessons for Everyone

1. Don't be a lame SEO backlink scammer.

 
2. If you do get an email from someone claiming to be an attorney (or similarly tries to appear authoritative) and it doesn't seem right, look at all of the context clues. In this case there were a lot of context clues that made it fairly obvious that there was a scam at play. The first of those clues being that the email was addressed to "owner of website" and not to any particular person.

 
3. Don't click on links in emails that you weren't expecting.

Resources on Copyright

• Copyright for Teachers - A Webinar With Dr. Beth Holland
• Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center
• Copyright and Creative Commons Explained by Common Craft
• How to File a DMCA Takedown Notice With Google
• How to File a Copyright Claim on Facebook

Pi, Myths, and Daylight - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and we're all ready to go out and play in the snow. It's going to be a great day for late-winter skiing. I hope that you also do something fun this weekend. 

This week I hosted a webinar for a school and had a Zoom meeting with some folks who recently completed my course on how to create and sell digital products. If you take the course, I'll be happy to Zoom with you too. Speaking of courses, Five Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom begins on Tuesday. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Physical Education Activities for Pi Day
2. A Lesson in Writing Myths
3. Changes are Coming to Your Favorite Google Workspace Tools
4. "But It's Still Sunny Outside!" - Short Lessons on Daylight Saving Time
5. Three Activities All Teachers Can Create in TeacherMade
6. Another Tool for Detecting Writing Created by AI
7. 167 Math In "Real Life" Lessons

Make More Money This Year!

If you're looking for a way to put a little more money in your pocket this year, my self-paced course How to Create and Sell Digital Products in 2023 is for you! It's one of three on-demand courses that I currently offer.

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. 

Animated Explanations

Making and Teaching With Animated Explanations is a five-part, self-paced course that teaches you how to make a variety of animations. More importantly, it teaches you why making animations is a valuable and fun classroom activity for students of all ages. 

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.

Anchor is Now Spotify for Podcasters

For the last five or so years I've been using and recommending Anchor for creating podcasts on your desktop and mobile devices. In fact, at the start of this year I released a new tutorial on how to use it to create a podcast on your Android phone. Today, Anchor was renamed Spotify for Podcasters. 

The new name is a reflection of the fact that Anchor has been owned by Spotify for the last few years. Other than the name, it doesn't appear that anything has changed in the mobile app or web app. I was able to log into Spotify for Podcasters using the same credentials that I've used for years to log into Anchor. 

Next week I'll publish some updated tutorials on how to use Spotify for Podcasters to create a podcast. 

Two Options Explained

A few weeks ago I published a short video that I produced as an introductory explanation of stock options. Dabbling in options trading is a hobby of mine as is producing various types of explanatory videos. Earlier this week I made a follow-up to my video introduction to stock options. This new video explains the two type of stock options that traders buy and sell. Those are call options and put options. 

In the short video that is embedded below I provide a short explanation of what call and put options are and why someone would buy one of them. In a future video I'll explain more about options contracts and the all-important strike price. 

Video - A Short Explanation of Call and Put Options

Video - A Short Explanation of Stock Options



Learn how to make videos like these and many others in your classroom in my new Practical Ed Tech course Five Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom.

How to Create Your Own Online Connecto Game

Connecto is one of the many online game creation templates that Flippity offers. Flippity calls it Connecto, but the style of game is exactly like the classic Connect 4 board game (I'm sure that for trademark reasons Flippity can't use that name for their Connecto game template). 

In a Connecto game students see a question and have to answer it correctly in order to get marker on the board. The object of the game is to connect four markers in a row before your opponent does. Of course, there is also a bit of strategy involved in where you place your markers to connect your own while blocking your opponent from connecting theirs. Watch my new video that is embedded below to see how Connecto is played and how you can create your own with Flippity's free Google Sheets template. 

Video - How to Create Your Own Online Connecto Game

Applications for Education

You could create a Connecto game to have your students play in teams as a fun review exercise before a test or quiz. You might also consider having your students make the games themselves and challenge each other.