DIY Apps, Patriots' Day, and Taxes - The Week in Review

Good evening from rainy Paris, Maine. If April showers bring May flowers, I'm going to have a nursery on my hands in a couple of weeks! Ten days ago my yard was covered in snow and today it is resembles a small river.

This week I had the privilege of speaking at TLA's annual conference. Thank you to everyone who came to one or more of presentations. Next week I'm speaking in Bonner Springs, Kansas. If you'd like to have me speak at your school or conference, please get in touch with me here. I'm currently booking for back-to-school season and the fall.

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Two New Options in Google Classroom's Classwork Page
2. Glide - Make Your Own App by Just Making a Spreadsheet
3. How to Make Your Own Mobile App
4. A New Way to Customize Google Slides
5. A Flipgrid Feature That is Often Overlooked
6. Pictures of the American Revolution - And Other Resources for Patriots' Day
7. A Few Resources for Learning About Income Taxes

Only Six Seats Left!
The Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp is happening on July 15th and 16th. I've secured a beautiful location for it that offers lots of activities for the whole family within walking distance. Only six seats are left! Register here!



Register here!

Ten things to learn and do at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp

A Flipgrid Feature That is Often Overlooked

Earlier this week I was leading a workshop about making videos with students. The first part of the workshop included using Flipgrid. One of the features of Flipgrid that I always show is the sticky notes feature for students. Even though this feature is in plain view many people say to me, "I never tried that."

I always show teachers and students the sticky note feature in Flipgrid because it is a good one for students to use to write out a few bullet points before they record their Flipgrid videos. The sticky notes are present to students while they record so they could use it to include an entire script. The notes don't appear in the video. Watch my video to learn how to use Flipgrid's sticky note feature.


You can find twelve more Flipgrid tutorial videos in my complete guide to using Flipgrid.

Two New Options in Google Classroom's Classwork Page

This week Google added a couple of frequently-requested features to Google Classroom. Those features are automatically placing the latest work at the top of the Classwork page and filtering the Classwork page by topic. Both of these features should be available to you as soon as you open your Classwork page. You can read more about both of them here.

Filtering the Classwork page according to topic comes at just the right time for end-of-year review. filtering by topic should help you and your students quickly find materials and assignments according to topic. And automatically putting new work at the top of the page should be helpful to students in not missing important and new items.

How to Use Google's Dataset Search Tool

Yesterday, I wrote an overview of Google's relatively new Dataset Search tool. It is a tool that is designed to help users locate publicly available datasets. As I explain in the following video, datasets aren't limited to CSV or Excel files. Through the Dataset Search tool you will find datasets in the forms of Google Earth files, zip files of images, and collections of documents. Learn more about how to use Google's Dataset Search tool in my new video that is embedded below.


I'll be talking more about search and search strategies in next week's Practical Ed Tech webinar, Search Strategies Students Need to Know. 

How to Measure Distances & Share Google Earth Views

Thanks to YouTube's "on this day" feature last night I was reminded that two years ago I published a video overview of what was then the new browser-based version of Google Earth. As I shared on my YouTube channel last night, Google has added a couple of features to Google Earth since I published my original video. Two of those features are the ability to measure distances in multiple units and the ability to share a specific view to Google Classroom. Both of those features are demonstrated in the new video that I published this morning. Watch it on my YouTube channel or as embedded below.