Google Arts & Culture Presents "From a Picture to 1000 Stories"

Google Books turned 15 this week. To mark the occasion Google released an interactive book titled From a Picture to 1000 Stories. The interactive book is a part of the Google Arts & Culture Institute.

In From a Picture to 1000 Stories readers learn some fun facts about famous authors and their works. On the pages that have the facts about authors and their works you will find a set of images. Each of those images leads to a page of book recommendations based. The book recommendations pages lead directly to Google Books where you will find options for downloading and or purchasing the book. Overall, it's an interesting way to discover new books.

Google Books has been one of my favorite research tools for years. The new version of Google Books appears to be rolling out to more users all the time. In the following video I provide an overview of how to use the latest version of Google Books. Below that video you'll find an overview of the classic version of Google Books.

Make Long Google Docs Easier to Navigate With a Hyperlinked Outline

One of the "hidden" or frequently overlooked features of Google Documents is the built-in outline tool. The outline tool lets you create an outline that is hyperlinked to sections of your document. Any section that begins with header text or bolded font can be automatically added to the hyperlinked outline in your document. Watch the following video to see how this process is done.


Applications for Education
Creating an outline in this manner can be useful in long reference documents that you create or that your students create. The outline makes it easy to jump into any section at any time. This could be particularly useful when students are working on a collaborative document and want to jump right back to the section(s) they're responsible for. 

The Practical Ed Tech Podcast - Episode #14

This afternoon I recorded the fourteenth episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast. The episode follows the same format as all of the other non-interview episodes. I shared some news and notes from the world of ed tech including a new Google Slides add-on and a fun game for physical education. The middle of the episode includes my thoughts and reflections from my classroom (spoiler, my students reminded me that I'm as old or older than their parents). The last part of the episode features my answers to questions from readers and listeners like you.

You can listen to episode 14 of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast right here or on your favorite podcast network.




The complete show notes can be found here.

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

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

Slido - Create and Run Polls Within Your Google Slides

Slido is a polling tool that has recently launched a Google Slides add-on and a corresponding Chrome extension. With Slido installed you can create polls directly in the Google Slides editor. The poll will appear as a slide in your presentation. The poll slide includes your question and the directions for your audience to respond to your poll.

When your audience responds to your poll their responses will appear on the slide. By using Slido's Google Slides add-on you don't have to toggle between your presentation and a polling website in order to view poll responses.

Watch the following short video to see how Slido works.

What Causes a Recession?

The U.S. stock market has been on a historic bull run over the last decade. That has a lot of people asking and a lot of talking heads on CNBC speculating about when the next recession will hit. Fittingly, TED-Ed has a new lesson titled What Causes an Economic Recession?

By watching What Causes an Economic Recession? students can learn about the roles of interest rates, inflation, and employment rates in causing and easing economic recessions. The lesson also indirectly hits on the topic of monetary supply. You can view the video and lesson questions here or watch the video as embedded below.