The Month in Review - What a March It Was!

Good morning from Maine where I'm sitting in my home office waiting for students to join into a Google Hangouts Meet for virtual office hours. It's hard to believe that at the beginning of the month COVID-19 was something that was affecting people "somewhere else" and now has nearly all of us working and teaching remotely. Only twice in the last three weeks have I been beyond the property of lines of my home.

I hope that all of you and your students are adjusting well to teaching and learning remotely. If I can help in anyway, please feel free to reach out to me. And on related note, Rushton Hurley at Next Vista for Learning has some great resources including recorded webinars that have been helpful to many people this month.

These were the most popular posts of the month:
1. The Cincinnati Zoo Launches Daily Virtual Zoo Visits
2. Cisco Makes Webex Free and Publishes Guides for Teachers and Students
3. Three Ways to Share Docs in Google Classroom - When to Use Each
4. 5 Google Classroom Tips for Teachers - Things You Might Have Overlooked or Forgotten
5. Tips and Tools for Teaching Remotely
6. Learn How to Use These 5 Time-saving Gmail Features in 2020
7. How to Schedule and Host Google Hangouts Meet Events - Video
8. How to Create Video Lessons Without Making Your Own Recordings
9. An Option for Making Sure Students Know They Have Google Classroom Assignments
10. Ten Fun and Challenging Geography Games for Students of All Ages

Online PD With Me!
I've been hosting professional development webinars for a decade. My most popular webinars are available on-demand right here. If you prefer live webinars, I am planning to host some in April so stay tuned for more information about those soon. And I'm always available to schedule custom, online PD for your school.

Thank You for Your Support!

• More than 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. 
• 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 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 18,000 people subscribe to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 350 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. 
• 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.

A Map Coloring Challenge

Last week Maps Mania shared a collection of online and printable map activities for kids and adults. At the bottom of that collection was a link to Mathigon's map coloring challenge. The challenge is to use as few colors as possible to color in all 50 U.S. states without the same color touching two states at the same time. For example, if I color New Hampshire purple, I can't use purple on Vermont, Maine, New York, or Massachusetts but I could use purple on Pennsylvania.

Mathigon's map coloring challenge can be completed online where they offer the same challenge for coloring maps of South America, England, and Germany. But if you send your students to that page they'll be able to quickly click to see the solution to the challenge. So what I'd do instead is print a blank map from a site like Printable World Map then have students try the challenge. Another option would be to upload an outline map to a service like Google's Jamboard to color the map online. Watch my video below to learn how that process works.

C-SPAN Classroom Offers New Lessons on the Economic Impact of COVID-19

C-SPAN Classroom is a free resource that anyone who teaches U.S. History or civics should have bookmarked. I've written about many of their great resources and programs over the years including their annual student video contest and annual summer workshops for teachers.

C-SPAN Classroom recently published a new lesson plan that includes a set of resources for helping students explore and learn about the current and possible future economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The resources include eight video clips, an analysis template, and a brainstorming activity for students to complete individually or in online groups.

Application in Online Classrooms
The lesson features eighteen vocabulary words that high school students have probably heard but will need to review in the context of the lesson and the current COVID-19 pandemic. I might use Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams to create a discussion forum in which students go beyond basic definitions and discuss the terms in current context. After that discussion takes place then I'd have students join me in an online meeting (Hangouts, Zoom, Teams would all be fine) to talk about the videos and or the brainstorming they did in the discussion forum.

Create Video-based Lessons a Little Faster With This Chrome Extension

A couple of weeks ago when I got the notice that my school would be closing I made a video about how to use EDpuzzle to create video-based lessons without having to create your own recordings. I first shared it with my colleagues and then included it in my Practical Ed Tech newsletter. One thing that I didn't mention in the video because I forgot about it, was the existence of an EDpuzzle Chrome extension.

EDpuzzle's Chrome extension lets you quickly jump from watching a video on YouTube to creating and editing a lesson in your EDpuzzle account. It even works if you use a different Google account for Chrome than you do for Google Classroom or EDpuzzle. With the EDpuzzle Chrome extension installed you will see a little "edit with edpuzzle" button appear next to the title of any video that you watch on YouTube. As soon as you click that button you'll be taken into the lesson editor in your EDpuzzle account. It's not a game-changing feature, but it is a convenient one. Watch my short video below for a demonstration of how the EDpuzzle Chrome extension works.


And here's my complete overview of how to use EDpuzzle.

Webinar Recording - Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions

Last Friday Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I held the first episode of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions (if you have a better idea for a title, please tell us). Lots of people came and lots more asked me about a recording. Rushton recorded it and put up a page of resources. The recording is embedded below and the slides from the session can be seen here.


If you're wondering why I'm looking away a lot, I had two computers going so that I could monitor chat and pull up questions.

Next Friday Rushton and I will host episode 2 of Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions - And Share Cool Stuff. Join us live at 1pm ET / 10am PT.