Last night I hosted a free webinar in which I shared what I'm doing to transition to quickly transition to teaching my high school classes online. I also shared some advice from my colleague Dr. Wendy Robichaud on how to prepare students for online learning and what to focus on in the first week or two. Other highlights of the webinar included tips for making videos and tips for keeping a consistent communication schedule. The webinar concludes with a short demonstration of how to use EDpuzzle to make video lessons.
Like most of you, I'm quickly having to transition to teaching my classes online. I've taught professional development courses online for a decade, but this is the first time I have to do it for high school students.
The recording of the webinar is now available to view on my YouTube channel and as embedded below.
The slides from the webinar can be accessed here and viewed as embedded below.
The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is closed to the public right now and thousands (millions?) of kids are home from school right now too. That's why the zoo has announced that they're hosting daily "Home Safaris" beginning today at 3pm ET. These Home Safaris will be broadcast live on Facebook. Each Home Safari will feature a different animal and a related at-home activity. Be sure to follow the zoo's Facebook page to be notified when the Home Safaris begin.
In the latest episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I mentioned that EDpuzzle recently updated their user interface and that I was going to make a video about it. Well I started to make a video just about the updated UI then realized that I could help more teachers right now by making a complete overview of how EDpuzzle works. So that's what I did. In the following I provide a complete overview of how to use EDpuzzle to create video lessons using videos that you find online.
Highlights of the video include:
How to create an EDpuzzle account.
How to create an EDpuzzle classroom via Google Classroom and without Google Classroom.
How to make lessons with videos you've found online.
How to make lessons with videos you've created.
How students can access and respond to your lessons.
Last week I published a series of screenshots illustrating how to schedule and host Google Hangouts Meet events. For those who would like to see the whole process in a video format, I recorded the following tutorial video. In How to Create Google Hangouts Meet Events you'll see two methods for creating events and inviting your students to join those events.
Good morning from Maine where the wind is howling outside. Spring seems to be coming a little early this year as almost all of the snow in my yard has melted and the stream behind my house is running high.
As COVID-19 continues to spread and more schools close, I hope that all of can stay healthy and safe. Kudos to the ed tech companies and organizations that have worked hard to make resources freely available to teachers and students who need help rapidly transitioning to online instruction. As I said on my podcast, you can call me naive, but I think the vast majority are doing it out of a genuine concern and not as a money-grab.
2020 Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp!
I'm still planning to host the 2020 Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp in July. Discounted early registration is on sale now.
Thank You for Your Support!
Nearly 100 of you have already participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
Quillionz provides a quick way to generate quiz and discussion questions from articles.
PayGrade.io offers a fantastic way for students to learn personal finance lessons.
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 it includes my tip of the week and a summary of the week's most popular posts from FreeTech4Teachers.com.
My YouTube Channel - More than 17,000 people subscribe to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 300 Google tools tutorials.
The Practical Ed Tech Podcast is where I answer questions from readers, share news and notes, and occasionally talk to interesting people in education.
