What You Looked for Last Month

At the end of every month I take a look at two statistics for this blog. First, I look to see which posts were visited the most. I published that list yesterday. Second, I take a look at the terms people enter into the search box on this blog. During the last month the most frequently searched terms were "sushi," "word cloud," and "random name picker." Here's a bit of information related to those terms.

Sushi

Sushi Monster is a free iPad game from Scholastic that helps kids practice their addition and multiplication skills. This is the premise of Sushi Monster; students feed their Sushi Monsters by correctly choosing two numbers that when added or multiplied result in the number that the monster wants to eat. When the monster has been fully fed students move on to feeding a new monster. 

Vocab Sushi is designed to help students prepare for standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, and more. When you register for an account, Vocab Sushi will ask you which test you are preparing to take. Based upon the test for which you're preparing, Vocab Sushi will give you a short quiz to evaluate your current skills. Then based on your score, Vocab Sushi will generate a list of words for you to learn. To help you learn the words in your study list(s) Vocab Sushi uses a combination of audio, visual, and text resources. Vocab Sushi provides games for practicing your vocabulary skills.

Word Cloud
ABCya’s Word Clouds iPad app makes it easy to quickly create word clouds on your iPad. To create a word cloud with Word Clouds by ABCya just type or paste text into the text field. After entering your text Word Clouds by ABCya will generate a visual representation of the most common words in your passage of text. You can customize the generated word cloud by choosing different fonts, different color schemes, and by excluding words from the word cloud. Your word clouds can be saved directly to your iPad’s camera roll.

In my video embedded below I demonstrate the features of WordClouds.com


Watch my video embedded below to learn how to make word clouds in Google Documents.



Random Name Picker
On Russel Tarr's Classtools.net you can find lots of great tools for your classroom. The Random Name Picker and the Fruit Machine are two of those tools that can be used in almost every classroom setting. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use both of those tools.

193 Short Timelapse Videos of Our Changing World

On Tuesday Google announced the publication of new Google Earth timelapse imagery. The new imagery shows the how the physical geography of the Earth has changed over the last 32 years. You can see this imagery on the Google Earth Engine website or you can view it as a series of 193 short videos on YouTube.

The new Google Earth timelapse imagery features cityscapes and landscapes. You can find imagery of cities like Miami and San Franscisco as well as imagery of things like the Columbia Glacier in Alaska.


Applications for Education
The fairly obvious use of this imagery is to prompt students to investigate the causes of changes to the land shown in the imagery. Or you could simply use it to show students the effects of erosion on a coast.

The Month in Review - Ten Most Popular Posts

Good afternoon from Maine where it feels like the month of November came and went in the blink of an eye. The month started out warm and now is ending in a snowy, icy glaze.

In November I had the pleasure of working with teachers in Georgia and Connecticut. Next week I'll be in Tennessee for a conference. Getting to work with teachers all over the world is the best thing that has come from writing this blog. Thank you all for making that possible.


Here are the most frequently visited posts of the last month:
1. Three Ways That Students Can Create Talking Pictures
2. All of my #GaETC16 Slides
3. 5 Fun Geography Games for Geography Awareness Week
4. Literature Map Helps You Find Authors You'll Like
5. Create MadLibs Through Google Sheets
6. How to Create Kahoot Games
7. How to Use a Whiteboard in Google+ Hangouts
8. How to Create a Word Cloud in Google Documents
9. 5 Handy Chrome Extensions for Teachers
10. Six Tools for Creating Classroom Quiz Games - A Comparison Chart

Need a keynote for your conference? 

Click here to learn about my keynotes and workshops.

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.

Pixton provides a great way to create comics. 

QuickKey saves teachers tons of time when scoring formative assessments.

WriteReader is a fantastic multimedia writing tool for elementary school students.

Math Playground offers hundreds of math games and tutorial videos. 

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.

Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.

EdTechTeacher is hosts workshops in six cities in the U.S. in the summer.

My Simpleshow provides a great way to create explainer videos.

Receive Email Notifications from Google Forms

In the past I have shared instructions on how to use the Form Notifications Add-on for Google Forms. Lately, that Add-on hasn't worked as well as I would like. So I recently started using a similar Add-on called Email Notifications for Forms. This Add-on lets me receive not only a notification in my email when someone completes one of my Forms, it also lets me see their complete responses in my email. In the video below I demonstrate how it works.

How to Share Google Docs With People Who Don't Have Google Accounts

A couple of nights ago in my G Suite for Education class I shared the following quick tip about sending Google Docs to parents who don't have Google Accounts. Rather than downloading your document as a Word file or as a PDF then sending it as an attachment from your email client, you can simply select "file," "send as attachment" to email directly from Google Docs. Doing that makes it quick and easy to send things like permission slips to parents from your Google Docs account. Watch the following short video to see how this works.