Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere) and after a break from school you might start thinking about next year and what you need to do to be ready for it. Many people have been asking me questions like, "what can I do to be ready in case we have to switch back to online teaching next year?" One of the things that you can do is spend some time learning more about the features of your school's learning management system (Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Schoology, Canvas). Another thing that I've been recommending is creating a website to organize handouts, resource links, videos, and more.
There are many free tools for building websites. Google Sites is one of the best options for teachers who have Google accounts (either school-issued or personal accounts). Here are some tutorials to get you started on the process of creating a great website with Google Sites.
Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and the air has that perfect early summer feel to it. It's going to be a great day for riding bikes and doing all kinds of fun things outside. And it's also a good day for mowing the lawn (something I don't consider to be fun). Before doing all of that I have this week's list of the most popular posts of the week to share with you.
Have a great weekend! Get outside and play...after you read this.
Online Summer PD Opportunities
This summer I'm hosting two online professional development courses. I'm hosting the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp three times. The June session is sold out! The July sessions have more seats available.
In July I'll be hosting Teaching History With Technology. This is a five part course designed to help you develop new ways to create engaging history lessons and projects. Register now and use the discount code THWT2020.
This summer I'm working with a handful of schools and organizations to develop online professional development for teachers. If you'd like to work with me, please send me a note at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com to learn more about how we can work together.
Thank You for Your Support!
More than 200 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
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 - 25,000 people subscribe to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 350 Google tools tutorials.
Have you ever signed up for a webinar like this one and then wondered why you never got any information about how to join the webinar? Or have you had someone say, "yeah, I emailed that to you yesterday" but you didn't see it in your inbox? If so, you should create an approved senders list in your inbox.
Creating an approved senders list will ensure that email you want to receive from a particular sender or group of senders always ends up in your inbox instead of in your spam folder.
In the following video I demonstrate how to create an approved senders list in Gmail. (Creating an approved sender list is also known as creating a whitelist in your email account).
Create an Approved Senders List in Office 365
If you're an Office 365 or Outlook user, you can also create an approved senders list in your email account. Here are a couple of tutorials on how to do that.
Yesterday afternoon I hosted a free webinar titled A Framework for Using Educational Technology. The recording of yesterday's live webinar is now available to view on my YouTube channel and is embedded below.
As I mentioned at the end of the webinar, there are still some seats available in the July sessions of the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. If you're interested in learning more or signing up, you can do so here.
Canva for desktop includes all of the same features that are found in the web browser version. Those features include seemingly endless graphic design templates, image editing tools, animation tools, and simple website publishing tools. You'll also find libraries of high quality pictures, drawings, icons, music, and b-roll video clips.
The aspect of Canva for desktop that I like the most so far is being able to have multiple designs open and quickly switch between them. I'm also excited about being able to run it in the background separate from my web browser. That feature should make it easier to present a slideshow made with Canva and not have to keep flipping between web browser windows when I want to give a demonstration of something outside of the slideshow.
Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and the air has that perfect early summer feel to it. It's going to be a great day for riding bikes and doing all kinds of fun things outside. And it's also a good day for mowing the lawn (something I don't consider to be fun). Before doing all of that I have this week's list of the most popular posts of the week to share with you.
Canva is a tool that I use almost daily for everything from creating YouTube thumbnails to designing full presentations like the one that I'm giving this afternoon. And as I wrote earlier this year, there are at least ten good ways to use Canva in your classroom. That's why I was excited this morning when I read the news that Canva now offers a Windows and Mac desktop app. I've already installed it and it's great! You can get the Windows version here and the Mac version here.