4 Fun Facts About Reindeer

Thanks in part to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer some children don't believe that reindeer (caribou) are real animals. SciShow Kids seeks to remedy that in their latest video 4 Facts to Know About Reindeer. Through the video kids can learn why reindeer are called caribou in North America. The lesson also teaches students how reindeer have adapted to find food and stay warm in cold weather. The video concludes with an explanation of why reindeer migrate.


To create a flipped lesson based on this video try using Vizia or EDPuzzle.

The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good evening from Woodstock, Maine where we were treated to a beautiful sunset over the mountains. While it was a cold day, it was still a nice day to go look for a Christmas tree on my land. The search for a Christmas tree was abandoned when my dogs decided to run off in pursuit of a secret dog agenda. They came back. We'll look for a tree again tomorrow. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope that you had time for something fun too.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. Two Ways to Grade Short Answer Questions in Google Forms
2. Google Returns the Reference Citation Option to Google Docs
3. Two Good Sets of Animated Maps for U.S. History Students
4. How to Cite the Source of Images Found in Google Docs & Slides
5. Expii Solve - Fun and Challenging Mathematics Exercises
6. Three Alternatives to Glogster
7. Two YouTube Search Methods You Might Be Overlooking

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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.

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

My Simpleshow provides a great way to create explainer videos.

Three Free Online Whiteboards Students Can Use Together in Realtime

Online whiteboards that let students communicate in realtime either by voice or text can be powerful tools to create a mathematics tutorial, create a diagram, or to brainstorm ideas for a project. The following three whiteboard tools can all be used by students for free.

NoteBookCast is a free whiteboard tool that will work in the web browser on a laptop, iPad, Android tablet, and Windows tablet. NoteBookCast is a collaborative whiteboard tool. You can invite others to join your whiteboard by entering the code assigned to your whiteboard. You can chat while drawing on NoteBookCast whiteboards. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use NoteBookCast.



Web Whiteboard makes it easy to include a whiteboard in your Google+ Hangout. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how easy it is to use Web Whiteboard in a Google+ Hangout.


Stoodle is a free collaborative whiteboard tool hosted by the CK12 Foundation. You can use text chat while sharing your whiteboard. Registration is not required in order to use Stoodle. In the video embedded below I demonstrate the features of Stoodle.

How to Use Storyboard That to Create Greeting Cards

Earlier this week I published a tutorial on using Canva to create simple holiday greeting cards. Storyboard That also offers some good templates for creating holiday greeting cards. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to do that.



Applications for Education
As I wrote earlier this week, if you're thinking about giving an assignment in which your students write letters to family members for the holidays, consider using one of Storyboard That's handy templates.

Disclosure: Storyboard That is an advertiser on this blog.

How to Cite the Source of Images Found in Google Docs & Slides

The Explore function in Google Docs and Google Slides makes it easy for students to find images to insert into their documents and presentations. The old research tool in Google Docs used to automatically add a link to image sources in the footer of your documents. The same is not true for the Explore function in Google Docs and Slides. In the video below I demonstrate how to find and cite the source of images that appear in the Explore menu in Google Docs and Slides.


Thanks to Rita for her email that inspired this post.