Avoid This Common Google Forms Mistake

New users of Google Forms often think that if students are in the same domain as the teacher, student information is automatically collected. That is not the case. Here's how to make sure that you do collect student names and email addresses when giving a quiz through Google Forms.


Learn more about Google Forms and Spreadsheets in my on-demand webinar Google Forms and Sheets for Beginners.

Built to Last - Blogging With Edublogs and Blogger

This November will mark the tenth anniversary of Free Technology for Teachers. Over those ten years I have reviewed thousands of free resources for teachers and students. Some of those free resources have come and gone in a blaze of glory (remember when Second Life and Nings were the cat's meow?) while others have stood the test of time. Over the next couple of months I am going to revisit some of the free resources that have endured over the majority of the last ten years. With a nod to the Grateful Dead song of the same name, I'm calling this series Built to Last. The previous installments can be found here, here, and here.

Edublogs and Blogger have been available for free for as long as I have been blogging. Over the last decade I have used both platforms with students and helped countless teachers get started using both platforms. Edublogs has lasted because it offers fantastic support for teachers. That support comes in the forms of staff members active on Twitter, super responsive email support, and on-going blog posts designed to help teachers engage their students through blogging activities. Blogger's longevity is due in large part to being owned by Google. Blogger is also very easy to start using. In a manner of minutes you can get your blog up and running.

Even as social media exploded in the forms of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and services that came and went quickly (remember Plurk, FriendFeed, and Pownce?) Edublogs and Blogger endured. In all of my workshops and webinars about blogging I say that a blog is your online hub for activity. A blog gives your students a place to fully express their thoughts through words, images, and videos in a manner that can't be done through social media. A blog also provides you with an easy-to-search archive of the work that you and your students publish. Have you ever tried to find a three month old Tweet or Facebook post? It's not easy to do. But it is easy to do that on a blog.

One of the challenges that many teachers and students face in blogging is developing ideas for things to write about. Here are five things that your students can write about and five things that you can write about:
Student-written posts:

• Three favorite moments from the last school year. 
• Favorite part of summer vacation. 
• All-time best moment in school. 
• Three questions they want to find the answers to this year. 
• Favorite book or movie and why. 

Teacher-written posts:

• How to talk to kids about web use.
• 5 fun, free educational activities to do at home (think Maker activities)
• 5 local field trips to do on rainy days
• Things parents should know about Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram/ Snapchat/
• 5 tasty and healthy snacks to send to school.

How Deep Is the Ocean? - This Video Puts It Into Perspective

Understanding the scale of something like depth of the ocean or distance to the moon is best done with visuals that are familiar to students. That's why I am excited to share this video from Tech Insider about the depth of the ocean. It does a great job of helping viewers understand the depths of the ocean floor. The video also does a good job of explaining what happens at each stage of ocean depth.


Try one of these seven tools to make a flipped lesson with this video. 

How to Create a Simple Timeline-based Game

ClassTools.net has many great online game templates for history teachers to use. Play Your Dates Right is one of the templates that I like to use to create a game that is focused on helping students recall the sequence of historical events. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to create a simple timeline-based game with the Play Your Dates Right template from ClassTools.net.

Copyright, AR, and Geography - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where it is a perfect first Saturday of the fall. Friends are visiting from out of state and we're going to take advantage of the nice weather by spending the day outside on mountain bikes and then perhaps some time on the river.

This week I hosted a Practical Ed Tech webinar about blogging strategies for teachers. If you missed it, the webinar will be available on-demand here later this month. Hosting webinars, running workshops, and speaking at conferences is how I manage to keep Free Technology for Teachers going. Click here to learn how to book me to speak at your school or conference.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. Kahoot Launches a New Mobile App - Play Games in Classroom or at Home
2. Copyright Lessons for Students and Teachers
3. A Fun Geography Game for All
4. Ten Great Tools for Telling Stories With Pictures - A PDF Handout
5. Beyond Words - A Library of Congress Lab Experiment
6. Using Augmented Reality to Learn Nouns and Verbs
7. Borrow, Read, and Listen - The Open Library

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.

SeeSaw is my favorite digital portfolio tool.
Metaverse enables anyone to create amazing things.
Kids Discover provides fantastic tools for helping kids discover new information. 

University of Maryland Baltimore County offers a great program on instructional design.

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.