More Physics Lessons About Bikes

A few weeks ago I shared some educational resources related to the Tour de France. Tomorrow, the Tour de France concludes in Paris. To mark the tour's conclusion I have two more educational resources about bicycles to share.

Minute Physics offers two videos about the physics of bicycles. In How Do Bikes Stay Up? we learn how bikes stay upright, how design and weight influences balance, and why bicycles are difficult to balance in reverse.


The Counterintuitive Physics of Turning a Bike explains how we turn bicycles.


Applications for Education
Both videos provide physics lessons based around an activity with which most students are familiar. Before letting students watch the videos ask them to try to explain how bikes stay up and turn. The first of the two videos could also provide inspiration for an outdoor physics lesson.

The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good evening from the FreeTech4Teachers.com world headquarters in Woodstock, Maine where the blueberries are ripe. Picking blueberries in my yard is one of my favorite things about living in Maine.

This week I was busy presenting six webinars including three for Simple K12. Thank you to everyone who participated in one or more of the webinars. The recordings of the Simple K12 webinar recordings will be available next week.

Next week  I'm hitting the road to speak in Mooresville, North Carolina. Professionally, there's nothing I enjoy more than visiting schools to work directly teachers.  If you would like to have me visit your school, send an email to richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. Frequently Overlooked Useful YouTube Features - A PDF Handout
2. 50+ Google Tools Tutorial Videos
3. 7 Good Options for Building Digital Portfolios - A PDF Handout
4. ClassDojo Introduces Groups...More to Come
5. How to Create an Online Whiteboard Space
6. 5 Tools for Hosting Collaborative Brainstorming Sessions Online
7. Beyond Assessment: 3 Other Uses for Socrative

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.

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.

Explore Mongolia in Google Street View

The history and culture of Mongolia has fascinated me since I first read about in high school. It's one of the places on my not-a-bucket-list list (h/t Gillian Duffy for that phrase) that I want to visit. I'm not going be able to visit anytime soon, but I can virtually explore it Google Maps Street View imagery.

Google recently added Street View and off-Street Views to Google Maps of Mongolia. Through the Street View imagery of Mongolia you can virtually tour mountains, frozen lakes, desserts, and the streets of Ulaanbaatar.

Applications for Education
I love Google Maps Street View because it allows students to see and virtually explore places in ways that geography textbooks simply cannot support.

If you find a specific image or view in Google Maps Street View, you can embed it into a blog post or webpage. Click here for a tutorial on how to do that.

7 Good Options for Building Digital Portfolios - A PDF Handout

Next month I am leading a short workshop on building digital portfolios. In preparation for that workshop, like every workshop I lead, I created a short PDF summarizing the tools that we will explore. For the benefit of those who cannot attend my workshop I'm making the handout available here on FreeTech4Teachers.com. You can view it as embedded below and or grab a copy by clicking here. Within the PDF you will find links to tutorials on how to use some of the featured tools.

Frequently Overlooked Useful YouTube Features - A PDF Handout

One of the webinars that I did yesterday for Simple K12 was about useful YouTube features for teachers and students. If you couldn't attend the webinar you can still get the handout that I shared during the webinar. 8 Overlooked Useful YouTube Tools is embedded below as a PDF. You can also click here to grab it from Box.com.