The Week in Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where it is already hot and the sun has only been up for an hour. My daughters have been enjoying their water table and wading pool all week. I see a lot more of that happening today. I hope that you also get outside for some fun this weekend.

This week I hosted the first session of the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. A huge thank you to all of the great teachers who joined me for five days of online learning. Many great questions were asked and ideas were shared. I'll be hosting the same event again in July. You can register for the July sessions here.

These were the most popular posts of the week:
1. How to Convert a PDF Into a Google Document
2. Five Screencastify Settings You Should Know How to Use
3. Webinar Recording & Slides - A Framework for Using Educational Technology
4. How to Create Your First Google Sites & 5 Ways to Customize It
5. Seven Ideas for Flipgrid Activities
6. A Great Set of Microsoft Teams Tutorials
7. How to Create Complete Sentence Requirements in Google Forms

Online Summer PD Opportunities
The Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp will be held two more times this summer. Register here for the July session of your choice.

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 250 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech webinar this year. Thank you!
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County has been supporting this blog for many years.
• Pixton EDU offers a great way to create comics in your classroom. 
• Find cool mugs and other swag in my YouTube store. 

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 - 25,000 people subscribe to my YouTube channel for my regular series of tutorial videos including more than 350 Google tools tutorials.  
• Facebook - The FreeTech4Teachers.com Facebook page has more than 450,000 followers. 
• Twitter - I've been Tweeting away for the last thirteen years at twitter.com/rmbyrne
• Instagram - this is mostly pictures of my kids, my dogs, my bikes, my skis, and fly fishing.

Explore the Royal Academy of Arts in Google's Arts & Culture Apps

Google's Arts & Culture site and corresponding apps make it possible for students of all ages to virtually explore thousands of fascinating landmarks and works of art. This morning Google announced a new collection with the Arts & Culture site. That collection features the Royal Academy of Arts.

The highlight of the Royal Academy of Arts collection within Google Arts & Culture is a collection of 31 online exhibits. The exhibits tell the stories of the artists and art showcased in the Royal Academy of Arts collections. You can also take a virtual tour through the Academy and some of the galleries. Visitors can navigate through the tour much like navigating in Google Street View imagery.


Applications for Education
Google Arts & Culture is, obviously, a great resource for art teachers who want to give their students opportunities to explore great works of art from around the world. It's also a good resource for social studies teachers who are looking to have their students make connections between events they learn about in their classes and how those events have been depicted through various forms of art over the years.

Short Lessons About the Longest Day of the Year

It is going to be over 90F here in Maine today. That temperature will make it feel like summer a few days before the summer solstice. Many refer to the summer solstice as the "longest day of the year" when they really mean "longest period of daylight in a day." But that's beside the point of this post which is to share a few resources that can help kids understand what the summer solstice is.

SciShow Kids offers a nice video that can help K-3 students understand why the length of daylight changes throughout the year.


Reasons for the Seasons is a TED-Ed lesson appropriate for upper elementary and middle school students. The lesson explains the relationship between the shape of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the Earth's tilt on its axis, and how those affect the amount of sunlight on different areas of the Earth.


And for a little perspective on winter vs. summer solstice here's a great side-by-side time-lapse of the winter and summer solstices in Manchester, England.

A Great Set of Microsoft Teams Tutorials

I published a bunch of videos about using Google Meet and Zoom this spring. That's because those are the tools that I use the most and I was asked about the most. This afternoon I answered an email from a reader who was looking for help with Microsoft Teams. My recommendation was to check out the videos on Mike Tholfsen's YouTube channel.

Mike is a product manager at Microsoft EDU so he probably knows the products better than just about anyone else who is producing tutorials about Microsoft EDU products including Teams, OneNote, and Immersive Reader.

Here's Mike's tutorial on using Kahoot in Microsoft Teams.



Here's his tutorial on keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Teams.

5 Things Students Can Do in Google Earth Without Google Accounts

Google Earth has many handy little features that your students can use even if they don't have Google accounts. Without a Google account your students can customize the appearance of Google Earth, measure distances and areas, change the units of measurement, and share locations and Street Views with you. Of course, they can also use the more obvious features of Voyager and "I'm feeling lucky" in the web version of Google Earth without having Google accounts.

In the following video I demonstrate five features of Google Earth that your students can use even if they don't have Google accounts.

1. Navigate in Street View
2. Share locations and views.
3. Measure distance and area.
4. Change units of measurement.
5. Change/ customize base map.




Learn more about using Google Earth in this Practical Ed Tech on-demand webinar or in the July session of Teaching History With Technology.