A Game and a Crash Course on Weathering and Erosion

The Crash Course for Kids YouTube channel offers overviews of various topics including weather. Weathering and Erosion is the topic of one of the more recent releases on Crash Course for Kids. In the video students will see a comparison of Cape Cod's coastline in 1984 and 2014. That image combined with the commentary does a great job of showing students the effects of erosion.

Applications for Education
After watching Weathering and Erosion: Crash Course Kids ask your students to find and take pictures of examples of erosion and erosion prevention measures in their neighborhoods.

You could also continue the lesson by having your students play Walter's Travels - Weathering and Erosion on National Geographic's website. Here's a short video overview of the game. 

Five Things Students Should Know About Google Books

Last week I wrote an explanation of why Google Books can be a helpful research tool for history students. In short, it helps students locate and search inside books without having to track down a physical copy of each book that they are interested in reading. If students do want a physical copy of a book, Google Books can help them find a local library that has a copy of the book they desire. Those features of Google Books and more are demonstrated in my new video Five Things Students Should Know About Google Books. 

Superhero Science Lessons

Superhero Science is a playlist of science lessons published by TED-Ed. The lessons in the playlist feature explanations of what would happen in various scenarios if you had superhero powers like flight, strength, and speed. Each lessons explains the mathematics and science of scenarios frequently found in superhero stories. For example, in the lesson on strength we learn what would happen if a superhero did catch someone falling from the top of a skyscraper.

The first video in the Superhero Science playlist is embedded below.

What is a Default Gateway? - A Concise Explanation

PowerCert Animated Videos is a great YouTube channel that publishes clear and concise explanations of big concepts in computer hardware and networking. Over the last couple of years I regularly used the videos in EDpuzzle to create short introductory assignments for my students.

Default Gateway Explained is the latest video published by PowerCert Animated Videos. The video does a great job of explaining to students why a default gateway is a necessary network component if they want to connect computers to the Internet.



On a related note, here's the PowerCert video about DHCP and here's my demonstration of how to create Edpuzzle activities.

July's Most Popular Posts on Free Technology for Teachers

July has come and gone. It feels like just yesterday the school year was ending and now it seems we're seeing "back to school" promotions on every website and in every store. With the exception of a few days at the beginning of the month I've been working all summer long on maintaining this blog, hosting the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp, and working on some new materials for the fall. I hope that you've been able to enjoy a little break between school years. 

As I do at the end of every month, I've gone through the analytics for Free Technology for Teachers and compiled a list of the most popular posts of the month. Take a look and see if there's something interesting that you missed in July. 

These were the most popular posts in July:
1. 15 Updates Coming to Google Workspace for Education
2. 21 Google Docs Features You Should Know How to Use
3. How to Create Your Own Online Board Game
4. Getting Started With Google Forms - The Basics and More
5. How to Password-protect an Edublogs Blog
6. See the Elements Present in Common Products - The Periodic Table in Pictures and Words
7. How to Create Interactive Checklists in Google Docs
8. Collect Chat - Turn a Google Form Into a Chatbot
9. Free Music for Classroom Projects
10. Three Places to Find Fun and Interesting Math Problems

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

On the Road Again!

• I'm accepting a limited number of invitations to speak at events during the 2021-2022 school year. If you're interested, please send me an email at richard (at) byrne.media for more information. 

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 36,000 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 and WayBetterSite. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.