The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from the Free Technology for Teachers World Headquarters in Woodstock, Maine. It's a beautiful late fall morning here. It's the kind of morning that makes wearing a sweater fun. It's also the kind of morning that reminds us that winter isn't far away and we should take care of any last-minute yard work before the snow flies. That's exactly what I'm going to do right after I write this post.

This week I was home all week preparing for a busy November and December. Next week I'll be at the IETC conference in Illinois. If you're there, please say hello. Later this month I'll be launching a new section of my popular online course Getting Going With GAFE. That course will again offer a graduate credit option and a registration discount will be available to people who are subscribed to the Practical Ed Tech Newsletter.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. 9 Google Apps Productivity Tools & Tips for Teachers
2. An Illustrated Mathematics Dictionary
3. Write Music in Google Documents
4. 7 Halloween-themed Educational Activities
5. OpenEd Offers Thousands of Quizzes and Review Materials to Share in Google Classroom
6. 10 Resources for Teaching With Primary Sources
7. An Introduction to Google Forms for Teachers

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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.

HelloTalk is a mobile community for learning a new language.
MasteryConnect offers a series of apps for identifying standards. 

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.

Lesley University offers online education programs for teachers.

PortfolioGen is a professional portfolio tool for teachers.  

Southeastern University offers online M.Ed programs.

75 Google Apps Video Tutorials

One of the most popular posts of the past week was my two video introduction to Google Forms for teachers. Those videos are part of my larger, constantly growing, playlist of Google Apps tutorial videos. I now have more than 75 videos in that playlist. All of the videos were created by me using Screencast-o-matic. The entire playlist is embedded below. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here to be notified whenever a new video is added to my channel. Lately, I've been creating two new videos per week.

Hands on Banking - Personal Finance Lessons for Kids

Hands on Banking is a program produced by Wells Fargo. The purpose of the program is to introduce students to the basics of personal finance including saving, budgeting, and credit management. Hands on Banking has a self-directed component for students as well as a teacher-directed component.

The self-directed component of Hands on Banking features an animated tour in which students learn what gives money its value, how to save it in a bank, and the benefits of saving in a bank. The tour then goes on to illustrate budgeting and borrowing concepts. Finally, students can earn a certificate of completion if they pass an assessment at the end of the tour. A glossary of terms and a calculator is provided for students to use throughout the Hands on Banking interactive, animated tour.

Applications for Education
The teacher-directed component of Hands on Banking features a PDF that corresponds to the animated tour. Included in the PDF are a list of key points to emphasize with students, worksheets to correspond with the animations, and activities for classroom practice.

Nursery Rhyme History

Earlier this week I was chatting with a friend and we somehow got on the topic of nursery rhymes. That prompted us to Google search for an explanation of the Baa Baa Black Sheep nursery rhyme. That search landed me on a YouTube channel called Nursery Rhyme History. The channel offers sixteen short videos explaining the origins of common nursery rhymes including one of my childhood favorites, Humpty Dumpty.


Applications for Education
Nursery Rhyme History could be a good channel for history teachers to bookmark. I would use these videos if I wanted to help students make a connection to one of the topics we're studying in class.

How to Create a Twitter Poll

Over the last week Twitter has been rolling out a new polling feature to its users. The new polling option allows you to post a Tweet that contains a short poll question. Using a poll is different than just asking people to reply to a question that you Tweet. When you post a poll people don't have to reply to you with an "@" reply. Instead of sending a written reply people just choose from one of your response choices. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how the new polling feature works.


Applications for Education
Twitter polls could be useful in large professional development settings in which you want to quickly get a sense of the participants' level of interest in a particular topic. Twitter polls could also be useful for sparking discussion in a social studies/ current events course. Post a poll about an issue and then discuss the results with your students.