Free Webinar - Behind the Scenes at Common Craft

When it comes to producing clear explanations of tricky topics, no one is better than Lee and Sachi LeFever at Common Craft. Their videos, featuring paper cutouts and flat white backgrounds, have helped millions of people understand topics like RSS, copyright, cyberbullying, and much more. In fact, their style has come to be known as "the Common Craft style" and has been used by teachers and students to create videos of their own.

On April 11th Lee and Sachi are hosting a free webinar titled How We Produce Common Craft Videos. In the webinar you'll see how they make videos from start to finish. There will be opportunity for Q&A with Lee too. They hosted a similar webinar last summer and it was excellent. I'll be joining this webinar and you should too. Click here to register for How We Produce Common Craft Videos.

If you're not sure what a Common Craft video looks like, watch this one embedded below.

The Basics of Creating a Quiz in Google Forms

Years ago I published a slideshow that demonstrated how to create a quiz in Google Forms. Even though that slideshow is now outdated, I still get requests for copies of it. To replace that slideshow I made the following video that demonstrates how to create a quiz in the current version of Google Forms.


Take my online course to learn everything you need to know to feel comfortable using Google Forms and all parts of G Suite for Education in your classroom.

Pixabay Videos - How Have I Been Overlooking This?

Thanks to Anthony St. Jean last night I learned that Pixabay hosts public domain videos that you can download for free. It's an option that is right on the front page of Pixabay and I've just overlooked it. To find public domain videos on Pixabay just select the "video" option from the menu on the homepage. The videos that you find through Pixabay can be downloaded as MP4 files in standard or high resolution.

On a related note, visit Dig CC Mixter if you need music for a video project. And take a look at these options for free images to use in your multimedia projects.

Everything That Apple Announced Yesterday - In Under Three Minutes

In case you missed it yesterday, Apple had a big marketing education event in Chicago. MacRumors made this video to summarize all of the things that Apple announced during the event.


As with any shiny new hardware or new software, I always ask:

• How can it be used?
• Does it enable students to do things they couldn't do before?
• Is this the best option for my students?

I'm thinking about those questions today and I'll publish my thoughts a bit later. 

Three Search Tools Students Often Overlook

Google is the default search engine for many students. In fact, if your students have Chromebooks and the school has set Google as the default search engine, they may not even realize that there are search engines other than Google. Here are three search tools that students often overlook.

Bing
Sure this seems obvious and possibly redundant to Google, it's not. Search the same terms on both Bing and Google and you'll find some overlap, particularly on the first page of results, but as you dive deeper you'll find different results. You can compare Bing and Google results on the same page right here.

Google Scholar
Google Scholar serves results that are quite different than what you'll find on Google.com or Bing.com. Google Scholar is focused on academic articles rather than commercial results. Many of the results will lead to databases that require a subscription for access. The good news is that your school library or community library may have a subscription that will grant you access to those databases.

Subscription Databases
As mentioned above, your school library or community library probably has a subscription to one or more databases that you couldn't otherwise access. Talk your librarian about which databases are available to you and your students.

Learn more about search strategies students need to know in tomorrow's Practical Ed Tech webinar Ten Search Strategies Students Need To Know.