The Week in Review - New Pageview Record

Good morning from the FreeTech4Teachers.com World Headquarters in Woodstock, Maine. For the third day in a row we are experiencing squalls, wind, and generally just a winter that won't quit. I probably jinxed it last week when I raved about how spring had finally arrived. Before I head outside to ride my bike in snow, I have this week's week-in-review to share.

This week saw FreeTech4Teachers.com receive a new record high for pageviews for a one month period, just over 1.1 million views. Put another way, that's 1.09 million more than I ever expected when I started this blog nearly eight years ago. A huge thank you to those who have been with me since the early days. And thank you to everyone that has helped the site grow by sharing posts through Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other networks. It's seeing Tweets like the one below that make it fun for me to keep blogging. Thank you.

@rmbyrne :) You just saved me a TON of time! TYVM How to Embed Tweets into a Blog http://t.co/SEuqjhAKn5 #tlchat #txlchat #edtech #nisdchat
— Naomi Bates (@yabooksandmore) April 24, 2015

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. A Handful of Tools That Help Students Analyze Their Own Writing
2. 124 Recordings of Famous Poets Reading Some of Their Poems
3. Google Classroom Now Supports Teacher Collaboration and Announcement Drafts
4. g(Math) for Google Forms Now Supports Handwritten Responses
5. How to Use Handwriting in Google Documents
6. 100 Practical Ed Tech Tips Videos
7. 10 Topics for School Blog Posts

PD Opportunities With Me

• A new section of my online course Getting Going With GAFE is starting on this coming Tuesday, April 28th. Graduate credit is available. Click here for more information. 
• On May 7th I will be in Gimli, Manitoba to speak at the Riding the Wave of Change conference. 
• Only six seats are left for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp on July 13th and 14th. 

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.
Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.
BoomWriter provides a fantastic tool for creating writing lessons. 
Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards and cartoon stories.
MidWest Teachers Institute offers online graduate courses for teachers.
HelloTalk is a mobile community for learning a new language.
Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.
PrepFactory offers a great place for students to prepare for SAT and ACT tests.
MasteryConnect provides a network for teachers to share and discover Common Core assessments.
The University of Maryland Baltimore County offers graduate programs for teachers.
Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.
EdTechTeacher is hosting host workshops in six cities in the U.S. in the summer.
SeeSaw is a great iPad app for creating digital portfolios.

How to Use Handwriting in Google Documents

Earlier this week John Stevens tipped me off to using g(Math) to add handwritten responses to Google Forms. This morning John sent me a direct message on Twitter to tell me that you can now use handwriting in Google Documents through the g(Math) Add-on. John wrote out step-by-step directions with screenshots here. I made a short screencast of the process. That screencast is embedded below.


Thanks again to John Stevens for the tip. And thanks to John McGowan for developing g(Math).

How to Cite a Tweet in MLA, APA, and Chicago Style

As social media has evolved it has crept into academic work. I've even given research assignments in which I've asked my students to seek out and cite quotes from people on Twitter. More and more I'm asked, "how do I cite a Tweet?" In fact, I was asked this in an email last night. If you're citing for a blog post, you can just embed the Tweet. If you're citing for a more formal work you will want to follow guidelines of MLA, APA, or Chicago Style.

Guidelines and examples for citing a Tweet in MLA style can be found here. Guidelines and examples for citing Tweets in APA are available here. If you need guidelines and examples of citing a Tweet in Chicago Style, click here.

Those who use tools like EasyBib or RefMe should note that the Tweet citations generated by those tools don't exactly match the guidelines set by APA, MLA, or Chicago Style. I tried both tools for citing Tweets and found that I had to slightly modify the formatting produced by those tools.

How to Embed a Tweet Into a Blog Post

Last night I received an email from someone who had a question about sharing Tweets. She had seen my post about QR codes in which I shared a Tweet that had a picture in it. She wanted to do the same to share on her classroom blog the Tweets that parents and students sent during and about a school event (I think that's a great idea).  The process is rather easy and I demonstrate it in the video embedded below.

Nearly 700 Art History Books to Read Online for Free

Last night on the Free Technology for Teacher Facebook page I posted a set of resources for art lesson plans. That post reminded me of a couple of sources of free art history books that together offer nearly 700 books.

 The Metropolitan Museum of Art hosts 437 art history books online. All of the books can be read online or downloaded as PDFs (warning, some of them are massive files). You can search through the catalog of books by thematic category, format, and publication type. And, of course, you can search through the books by title, author, and keyword.

The Getty Museum has put more than 250 art books online for anyone to read online and or download. You can find all of these books in the Getty Publications Virtual Library. You can search through the collection by author, keyword, or title. Alternatively, you can simply browse the collections. All of the free books are also available on Google Books.