Two Ways to Create Videos in Your Gmail Inbox

Last week Google introduced a new video recording tool called Threadit. A Chrome extension is one aspect of what Threadit offers. With the Threadit Chrome extension installed you can record a video without leaving your Gmail inbox. Threadit is now the second tool that I can recommend for recording screencast videos directly from your inbox. Loom's Chrome extension is the first tool that I recommended for making screencast videos directly from your inbox. Both tools are demonstrated in this new video. 

Learn more about all of Threadit's features in this post on Practical Ed Tech. 

Applications for Education

Both of these tools provide an easy way to reply to requests for tech help. Creating a quick screencast video to answer a student's or a colleague's question about how to do something on his or her computer can be a lot more efficient than trying to write step-by-step directions. 

Record Annotated Video Presentations With PresentationTube's Chrome Extension

PresentationTube is a non-profit that has provided a free service to teachers for many years. That service is the ability to record video presentations based on PowerPoint files and PDFs. Recently, PresentationTube released a Chrome extension that lets you create video lessons in your web browser. 

PresentationTube's Chrome extension will let you record while talking over your PowerPoint slides or a PDF. You can record with your webcam turned on or you can choose to just record your voice talking over your slides or PDF. While you're recording you can draw on the screen, add text notes to the screen, and highlight text on the screen. 

When you have finished recording a presentation with PresentationTube's Chrome extension you can upload it directly to the PresentationTube website where you can then publish it publicly or keep it unlisted. Much like Google Docs, if you make your PresentationTube unlisted then only people who have the direct link to it can view it. 

Applications for Education

PresentationTube's Chrome extension could be a good one for anyone who is looking for a new, easier way to create video lessons based on their existing slides. Unfortunately, it only works with PowerPoint or PDFs at this time. Hopefully, in the future there will be support for Google Slides. In the meantime you can always download your Google Slides as PPT or PDF to use with PresentationTube.

MathQuiz.io - A Simple Game to Practice Math Skills

MathQuiz.io is a new math game developed by a student. It's a relatively simple site that presents you with a series of math problems to solve in your head then enter an answer. The problems are presented in sets of ten consecutive questions. You can play in an "easy" mode which is mostly simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication or you can plan in the "medium" mode which incorporates problems with fractions, division, and negative numbers. 

Applications for Education

MathQuiz.io doesn't require players to sign-up or log-in. There isn't any advertising on the site. It's just a simple site that students can use to practice their math skills. It's the kind of site that is handy to link to a class website or LMS under the heading of "things to do with extra time."

ICYMI - Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff - Episode 33

Every other Thursday afternoon Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I host a half-hour webinar plainly titled Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff. Last week was our Larry Bird episode (number 33). The recording of the webinar is now available to view here or as embedded below. 

In this episode we shared a cool tool for improving your writing and a cool video titled "A Concerto is a Conversation." Some of the questions we answered covered copyright, formative assessment, capturing audio in screencasts, and a Google Docs quirk. 

Register here to join us for our next episode on April 1st at 4pm ET/ 1pm PT. 

Geography, AI, and Presentations - The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where it was a great first day of spring! I went for a bike ride outside then played outdoor bingo with my daughters. We also got started on some yard work that we can do in the few west-facing patches of lawn where the snow has completely melted to the ground. Outdoor bingo was a lot more fun than yardwork. I hope that you also had time for something fun today. 

This week I hosted a webinar titled Copyright & Creative Commons for K-12 Educators. The recording of the webinar is available here. Next week I'm hosting a Practical Ed Tech webinar titled 5 Ways to Blend Technology Into Outdoor Lessons. You can register for that webinar here. 

These were the week's most popular posts:

1. How Does Artificial Intelligence Learn? - A TED-Ed Lesson I'm Using Today
2. City Guesser 2.0 - Guess City Locations from Video Clips
3. Kahoot Now Displays Questions and Answers on the Same Screen - Finally!
4. Jamboard Now Offers Version History
5. Live Transcription in Zoom - Free for All Who Need It
6. A New Look for Presenting With Google Slides
7. Enable Audio and Video Captions on Any Page in Chrome

Thank you for your support! 

• Registrations for my Practical Ed Tech webinars is one of the primary ways that I am able to keep this blog and my email newsletters going. 
• BoomWriter is hosting a unique creative writing contest for kids. Check it out!
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• 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.
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