How to Find and Create Primary Source Lessons With DocsTeach

DocsTeach has been one of my go-to tools for social studies teachers for many years. Despite that recommendation I've never made a video on how it works, until now. DocsTeach is a free service offered by the National Archives through which you can find primary source lesson activities and create your own activities by using one of thirteen online templates. In the following video I demonstrate how you can use DocsTeach to find primary source lesson activities and or create your own primary source lesson activities. All activities can be completed online even if your students don't have email addresses.

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast Episode #9

On Friday afternoon I recorded the latest episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast. In the episode I shared some news about the future of Free Technology for Teachers, gave a shout-out to Dr. Scott McLeod for this thought-provoking blog post about mobile devices in schools, shared a neat tool for distributing and collecting permission slips, and answered a bunch of questions from readers like you. You can listen to the episode here or on your favorite podcasting platform. The complete show notes are available in this Google Doc.



You can listen to all episodes of the podcast here or find them one of the following podcast networks:

• Google Podcasts
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• RadioPublic
• Pocket Casts
• Breaker
• Overcast

The Week in Review - Social Studies, Search, and Computer Science

Good morning from Maine where summer is having one last hurrah! After temperatures in the 30's (Fahrenheit) earlier this week it's going to be sunny and 80 degrees today. I plan to get my kids outside to play and soak up the last rays of summer today. I hope that you also have time to get outside and play this weekend.

In the last episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I shared the news that I have taken a job teaching computer science at a local high school. While I get my feet under me with the new courses the posting here will probably be a little slower than normal. But don't worry, I'll be back to full speed here before too long.

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. My Top Twelve Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students
2. My Approach to Creating Search Practice Activities for Students
3. 5 Features of Google's Advanced Search Menu
4. Another Approach to Creating Search Challenges for Students
5. Ten Free Tools for Creating Mind Maps and Flowcharts - Updated for 2019-20
6. Practical Ed Tech Podcast #8 Featuring Dr. Beth Holland
7. SnackVids - Automatic Creation of Searchable Video Transcripts

Bring me to your school or conference. 
I'm already booking my 2020 workshop and conference schedule. This will be my tenth year of speaking at schools and conferences. Click here to learn how to bring me to your school or conference.

Thank You for Your Support!

• More than 400 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
• Book Creator is my favorite tool for making multimedia ebooks.  
• PrepFactory offers free, personalized SAT and ACT prep. 
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been supporting this blog for many years.

Other Places to Follow My Work

Besides FreeTech4Teachers.com and the daily email digest, there are other ways to keep up with what I'm publishing. 

• Practical Ed Tech Newsletter - This comes out once per week (Sunday night/ Monday morning) and includes my tip of the week and a summary of the week's most popular posts from FreeTech4Teachers.com.
• My YouTube Channel - More than 15,000 are subscribed to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 300 Google tools tutorials. 
• Facebook - The FreeTech4Teachers.com Facebook page has nearly 450,000 followers. 
• Twitter - I've been Tweeting away for the last twelve years at twitter.com/rmbyrne
• Instagram - this is mostly pictures of my kids, my dogs, my bikes, my skis, and fly fishing. 

SnackVids - Automatic Creation of Searchable Video Transcripts

Update January 2021: The tool mentioned in this article is no longer available. However, you can accomplish the same goal of making a transcript of YouTube videos by following the directions I've outlined in this video. 

SnackVids is a new service that will generate a searchable transcript for any YouTube video of your choosing. To use the service simply copy the URL of a video, paste it into SnackVids, and then let SnackVids generate a transcript. When the transcript is completed it is displayed directly below the video. You can search the transcript for any keyword of your choosing. The keyword will be highlighted on the transcript. Click on the keyword highlighted in the transcript to jump to the corresponding section of the video.

Applications for Education
SnackVids could be a good tool to use when you come across a long tutorial video and want to see if the video will cover a topic or keyword that you're interested in. It's also convenient for jumping directly to specific sections within a video.

As with any automatic transcription tools, the quality of the transcript is dependent on the quality of the audio and the clarity of the narrator.

Fraidy Cats' Book of Courage - An eBook of Writing Prompts

Make Beliefs Comix is a creative writing platform that I have recommended for years. The core of Make Beliefs Comix is a free set of tools that students can use to create their own comics in multiple languages. Here's a video overview of how it works. In addition to the comic strip creation tools, Make Beliefs Comix hosts free ebooks that you can use online or download for free. All of ebooks are designed as fillable PDFs that your students can write in.

The latest ebook published by Make Beliefs Comix is titled Fraidy Cats' Book of Courage. The first half of the book contains comics featuring the title character talking about situations that make him scared and ideas for dealing with those feelings. The second half of Fraidy Cats' Book of Courage contains pages for students to write on in response to prompts like "people who inspire me and courage me to be braver..."

Applications for Education
Comics can make reading and writing seem less intimidating to some students. Free ebooks like Fraidy Cats' Book of Courage can be useful in generating approachable writing prompts for elementary school students.