Pictures, Wolves, and Code - The Week in Review

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising on what promises to be a fantastic Mother's Day weekend. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms that read my blog, especially my mom! We're doing some gardening this weekend. I hope that you have something fun planned for your weekend as well. 

This was another busy week as I tried to keep some balance between my full-time teaching job, keeping this blog going, hosting a webinar, and training for the Unbound Gravel 200 in early June. When summer finally gets here it will feel like a vacation to just have to worry about hosting the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. I hope you'll join me then. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Ten Good Tools for Telling Stories With Pictures
2. My Ten Favorite "Hidden" Office 365 Features
3. Ten Google Workspaces Features for Teachers You Might Be Overlooking
4. Five Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp FAQs
5. Blackbird Code - Overview and First Impressions from My Students
6. Wolves in My Yard and Penguins in My House! - Fun With Augmented Reality in Search
7. 7 Interesting Features You Can Add to Google Sites

On-demand Professional Development

• Ten Search Strategies Students Need to Know
• A Crash Course in Making & Teaching With Video
• A Crash Course in Google Earth & Maps for Social Studies

Other Places to Follow Me:

• 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 35,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
• I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fourteen 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.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.

ICYMI - Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff - Episode 36

Every other week my pal Rushton Hurley from Next Vista for Learning and I get together to host the plainly-titled Two Ed Tech Guys Take Questions & Share Cool Stuff webinar. Earlier this week we hosted the 36th episode in the series. If you missed it, the recording is now available to view here or as embedded below. The slides and links to all of the resources that we shared during the webinar are available right here on the Next Vista webinars page. 

The next episode in the series will be held on May 20th. You can register for it for free right here. If you have a question that you want us to answer, please send me and email or submit it through the Next Vista for Learning contact page. We'll do our best to give thoughtful, practical, and concise answers.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin, Today Headline, and 711Web.

Google Arts & Culture + Apple Classroom

Google is ending support for Google Expeditions on June 30th. A few weeks ago I shared a short list of alternatives to Google Expeditions. In that blog post I mentioned that one of features of Expeditions that I'll miss most is the ability to remotely guide or pace students through a virtual reality experience. 

I still haven't found something that works in the exact same way as the guide mode in Google Expeditions. That said, teachers who have iPads in their classrooms can guide students through scenes in the Google Arts & Culture app through the use of Apple's Classroom app. 

Applications for Education
The downside to using Google Arts & Culture on an iPad instead of on a phone is that the VR experience isn't immersive like it is if you're using a VR viewer. The upside is that as a teacher you can provide more assistance to young students as they use the app.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin, Today Headline, and 711Web.

Knowt Now Offers Public Galleries of Notes, Flashcards, and Quizzes

Knowt is a neat service that I've featured a few times over the last couple of years. It's a service that will automatically generate flashcards and quizzes from any document that you import into it. The latest update to Knowt provides registered teachers and students with a public gallery of notes, quizzes, and flashcards. 

Now when you sign into a free Knowt account you have the option to browse for notes, flashcards, and quizzes according to subject area. There is also a gallery of notes, quizzes, and flashcards based on popular textbooks. All of the notes, quizzes, and flashcards found through the public galleries in Knowt can be copied directly into your account where you can modify them as you like. 

Here's Knowt's promo video for their new galleries of notes, quizzes, and flashcards. And here's my overview of how to use Knowt to create your own notes, quizzes, and flashcards by importing a document into your account. 

Applications for Education
The new Knowt galleries of notes, flashcards, and practice quizzes are appearing at a good time for students who are preparing for final exams. Teachers who have Knowt accounts can go through the galleries and pick collections of notes and flashcards to share with their students.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that regularly steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web. 

The Question I'm Asked the Most

I get lots of questions sent to me every week. There is one that I get asked more frequently than any other. That is, "what are you using to make your videos." Usually, people ask that because they want to know how I'm highlighting my mouse pointer in my videos or how I'm creating the moving oval cut-out of my webcam.  

Screencast-o-matic is the tool that I use to create nearly all of the videos that appear on my YouTube channel. Screencast-o-matic is available in a browser-based version and in a desktop "deluxe" version. I use the desktop version unless I'm using my Chromebook. 

The deluxe version of Screencast-o-matic is the paid version that costs $1.65/month. With that version comes the option to crop and resize the webcam view that you can overlay on your screencast. One of those cropping options is to use an oval. That's what I do. Screencast-o-matic also provides the option to have a highlighted circle follow your mouse pointer on your screen. When I'm making longer videos I'll also utilize the clip merging tools, transition tools, and text overlay tools that are available in Screencast-o-matic.

Overviews of Screencast-o-matic
Last year March I published a complete video overview of Screencast-o-matic. You can see that video here.



A Comparison of Other Screencasting Tools
Last fall I created a chart and wrote a detailed comparison of free screencasting tools. In my ranking of free options, Screencastify came out on top. That chart and ranking can be seen here.

This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that regularly steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin, TodayHeadline, and 711Web.