Monday, November 9, 2020
Short Lessons on the History of Veterans Day
How to Create and Conduct Polls in PowerPoint and Google Slides
Poll Everywhere offers a free PowerPoint add-in that you can use to create and conduct polls directly in your presentation. You can create polls that are multiple choice and open response. Results of the poll can be displayed in a variety of formats. Students can respond to your polls from their computers of phones anonymously or as logged-in users.
In the following video I demonstrate how to create and conduct a poll in PowerPoint. The video also shows you how students respond to a poll created using the Poll Everywhere PowerPoint add-in. The features shown in the video work with both free and paid Poll Everywhere accounts.
Saturday, November 7, 2020
The Week in Review - Heading Into Hibernation
Rising counts COVID-19 cases, election news, and the new and constantly changing challenges of teaching during a pandemic have contributed to a stressful week. Writing my weekly summary of popular posts is a bit of a soothing process for me. I hope that you also benefit from it. Have a great weekend!
These were the week's most popular posts:1. Three Ways to Conduct Polls in Google Slides
2. The 2020 Great Thanksgiving Listen
3. Use a Zoom Virtual Background for Lesson Outlines
4. Five Uses for Wakelet in Your Classroom
5. A Template for Getting Permission for Publishing Student Blogs, Podcasts, and Videos
6. How to Record a Video in PowerPoint (Windows Desktop Version)
7. Two Short Lessons on Checks & Balances
Through Practical Ed Tech I'm currently offering an on-demand course called A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video.
Thank you for your support!
- More than 300 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech course or webinar this year. Those registrations help keep Free Technology for Teachers and Practical Ed Tech going. I couldn't do it without you!
- Pixton EDU is a great tool for creating comics and storyboards.
- Wakelet is a great tool for making collections of resources, recording video, and more!
- GAT Labs offers a great, free guide to using Google Workspaces in online classrooms.
- The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter comes out every Sunday evening/ Monday morning. It features my favorite tip of the week and the week's most popular posts from Free Technology for Teachers.
- My YouTube channel has more than 30,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of edtech tools.
- I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for thirteen years.
- The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week.
- And if you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Instagram or Strava.
Friday, November 6, 2020
Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff - Episode 25!
Bulk Acceptance of "Knocks" in Google Meet
While this isn't a major change to Google Meet, it will be helpful to those who have large classes meeting in Google Meet. This is available in all versions of Google Workspaces (formerly known as G Suite).
If you don't see this new feature today, keep checking as it is being rolled-out over the next ten days to all users.