The Most Popular Posts of the Month on Free Technology for Teachers

The end of September is here and by now we're settled into the the new school year. I hope that the first month or so of the new school year has gone well for you. As I do at the end of every month, I have compiled a list of the most popular posts of the month. The list is determined by the number of clicks, pageviews, and shares for each post.

I've recently rediscovered the benefits of planning my editorial and work calendar for the weeks and months ahead. Looking toward October I'll be focused on publishing more tutorial videos on my YouTube channel, creating a couple of new PDF hand-outs like the Practical Ed Tech Handbook, and teaching three online courses that start next week.

Here are September's most popular posts:
1. Five Good Digital Exit Ticket Tools
2. Click to Spin - A Fun and Free Random Name Picker
3. How to Create a Check-in/ Check-out System In Google Forms
4. My Go-to Google Tools for Social Studies Classrooms
5. Flubaroo Compared to the New Google Forms Auto-grading Feature
6. Practical Ed Tech Handbook - Updated for 2016-17
7. 7 Good Tools for Creating Timelines
8. How to Create Comic Strips in Google Slides
9. How to Insert Columns Into Google Docs
10. Try My Simpleshow for Creating Explanatory Videos

Online PD Opportunities

Getting Going With GAFE, Teaching History With Technology, and Blogs & Social Media for Teachers will start in October. Graduate credits are available. 

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.

Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.

Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards.

Haiku Deck offers the best alternative to PowerPoint.  

Pixton provides a create way to create comics. 

SeeSaw is the best platform for creating digital portfolios with K-8 students. 

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.

My Simpleshow provides a great way to create explainer videos.

5 Neat Things Students Can Do With Google Drawings

Google Drawings is one of the tools in the Google Drive suite that often gets overlooked by students and teachers. It can be a handy tool if you know how to use it. In the short video embedded below I provide a demonstration of five things that students can do with Google Drawings.


The five things featured in the video above are:
1. Image cropping
2. Image filtering
3. Image labeling & commenting
4. Creating custom word art
5. Creating & customizing charts and graphs.

A Short Overview of PrepFactory for Middle School

Last week I shared the news about PrepFactory updating its offerings to include language arts and math practice exercises for middle school students. The new exercises include written and video tutorials that students can consult before, during, or after a round of practice exercises. In the short video embedded below I provide an overview of the new features of PrepFactory for middle school students.


Disclosure: PrepFactory is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com

QuickKey + Inexpensive Phone = Time Saved On Grading

QuickKey is a popular iOS and Android app that can help you save a ton of time when grading multiple choice or true/false quizzes. I first learned about it a few years ago when a colleague of mine was raving about it on Facebook.

Here’s the basics of how it works; create your quiz on the Quick Key website then print and distribute a bubble sheet. After your students have completed the bubble sheet you simply scan the sheets with your phone and the grading is done for you. As you can learn in the video embedded below, QuickKey will work on the cheapest of Android phones as well as on more expensive Android phones and on iPhones.

Android Tracfone Scanning from Quick Key on Vimeo.

GameOn World - A Great, Multiplayer Geography Game

GameOn World is a new, multiplayer geography game developed by a high school teacher and his student in Portland, Maine. The game is similar in structure to that of Kahoot. In GameOn World the teacher selects a game category (cities, places, and timeline are three of the nine categories) and starts the game. The students join the game by going to GameOn.World and entering a game pin. In the location and timeline games, students answer the questions by moving a placemark on a map or selecting a date on a timeline. In some of the other games students answer by choosing a number on a sliding scale.

GameOn World is in its first iteration. At this time you cannot create your own games, you have to select from one of the pre-made games.

GameOn World can be played on any device that has a modern web browser including phones, iPads, and Android tablets.

Applications for Education
Playing GameOn World could be a fun way for students to review and expand their geography knowledge. When students respond to location questions they move a placemark on a map. Once they've submitted their answers students instantly see how close they were to the correct location.