Blurred Backgrounds and More Microsoft Teams Updates

I'm not a daily user of Microsoft Teams so I rely on Mike Tholfsen's excellent YouTube channel to stay abreast of the latest features added to Microsoft Teams. It was through his recent video Top 5 New Features in Microsoft Teams that I learned about blurring backgrounds in Teams. I had assumed that the web version of Microsoft Teams already had that feature and I was bit surprised to find that it's just now been added to the web version of Teams. 

The other new features highlighted in the video include hiding your own video when speaking, hitting the spacebar to temporarily mute or unmute, changing the hand raise order, and using OneNote chiclets in Teams. Watch the video to learn how all of these features work and why they might be helpful to yo when teaching online. 

New Lesson Plans from DocsTeach

DocsTeach is one of my favorite resources for U.S. History teachers and students. The platform makes it easy to find curated collections of primary source documents and offers great templates for creating online lessons based on those documents. And if you don't have time to make a new activity, DocsTeach offers hundreds of premade primary source lesson activities for elementary school, middle school, and high school classrooms. Recently, DocsTeach added some new ready-to-use teaching activities based on primary source documents. 

New DocsTeach Activities

There are six new DocsTeach activities that were recently featured in the DocsTeach newsletter sent out to registered users. I've listed and linked to them below. And at the end of this post I've included my tutorial video about how to use DocsTeach to create your own online activities based on the primary sources hosted on DocsTeach.  

• Comparing Perspectives in the Dawes Act and a Hopi Petition. This activity uses the compare/contrast model and is intended for high school classes.
  
  
• Fannie Lou Hamer and Voting Rights. This is an activity intended for middle school students to complete by answering some questions about specific portions of the document.
  
  
• Analyzing a Document about Teaching at Indian Boarding Schools. This is another activity designed for middle school classrooms. Students compare the salaries and responsibilities of educators at Indian Boarding Schools with those of educators at public schools.
  
  
• Writing to the President is an activity that introduces elementary school students to the process of analyzing a primary source. In this activity students read a letter written by third graders to President Gerald Ford asking for a "Kids Day."
  
  
• Japanese American Incarceration During World War II is an in-depth primary source analysis activity for high school students. The activity requires students to analyze more than two dozen primary sources. I recommend reading NARA's statement on potentially harmful content before using this activity in your classroom.
  
  
• Ten Crucial Days: From Washington Crossing the Delaware to the Battles of Trenton and Princeton is an activity for middle school students in which they'll match descriptions of events to their corresponding locations on maps.

Here's my video overview of how to create and distribute your own primary source activities via DocsTeach.



On a related note, next Tuesday (February 15th) I'm hosting a webinar all about search strategies for history students and teachers. Join Me!

40,000 People Get Their Ed Tech Tips This Way

Yesterday morning I logged into my YouTube studio dashboard and saw that my little channel of screencast videos now has 40,000 subscribers! My videos aren't anything fancy. I just write some bullet points on a notepad then record using Screencast-o-matic. I do some light editing (blurring, trimming, and occasionally adding text overlays) and then hit publish. I've never had a video go "viral" nor do I try to make them go viral. The point is just to make clear and concise videos that help teachers. 

My Most Popular Videos

If you haven't seen my YouTube channel, some of my most popular ones are embedded below. 

The Basics of Creating a Quiz in Google Forms



How to Host an Online Meeting With Zoom



How to Create a Video With Canva



How to Share Videos Through Google Drive



How to Annotate PDFs in OneNote



How to Create Your Own Online Board Game



How to Create an Android App With the MIT App Inventor



How to View the Moon and Mars in Google Earth



Are you a tech coach or media specialist looking for some new ideas to share with your colleagues? If so, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook you need. You can get it right here.

How to Create VR Tours of Local Landmarks

I live near a little ski mountain called Mount Abram that is totally geared toward being family-friendly, affordable (seriously, my kids ski the whole season for $20!), and community-oriented. During the weekends when my kids are in lessons I like to skin up the mountain. By skinning I burn a lot calories and I get to take in some views that a lot of people miss when they only ride the lifts. 

I like to take a lot of pictures of this little winter playground at Mount Abram. Last weekend when I stopped to take some pictures I used the photosphere mode on my Pixel 5 to capture a 360 view of the intersection of a few trails. Doing that reminded me of a cool tool called Story Spheres that offers an easy way to make little virtual tours of places that you photograph. 

How to Create a VR Tour

There are many ways that you could create a virtual reality tour. This is a simple method that utilizes the native camera app on a Pixel 5, Google Photos, Story Spheres, and Vocaroo. 

Step 1: Use the photosphere mode in the camera app on a Pixel 5. (If you don't have a Pixel 5 or 6, there are other camera apps you can install to capture 360 imagery). Save the picture to Google Photos. 

Step 2: Go to your Google Photos account and download to your computer the 360 image that you want to use in your VR tour. 

Step 3: Create a free account on Story Spheres.

Step 4: Create a new story on Story Spheres. The editor will walk you through uploading your 360 image. 

Step 5: Use Vocaroo.com to record short audio narration for your Story Sphere. Save the recording as an MP3 file. 

Step 6: Upload your MP3 to your Story Sphere story (again, the editor guides you through that process). 

Step 7: Publish your Story Sphere!

I provide a complete overview of this short process in this short video. 

Applications for Education
Creating a VR tour with Story Spheres can be a great way to get students to research, create, and share little reports about landmarks in their communities. Their Story Spheres could be included as part of a larger multimedia project that they publish on Google Sites or a similar platform.

Are you a tech coach or media specialist looking for some new ideas to share with your colleagues? If so, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook you need. You can get it right here.

How to Create Collaborative To-do Lists in OneNote

In this week's Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I featured some tools and ideas for students to use to manage group projects. OneNote was one of the tools that I mentioned using for that purpose. It's a good option for students who are already using OneNote because they don't have to learn a whole new tool just to keep track of a group project.

OneNote for Project Management

An easy for students to use OneNote for group project management is to simply create a new shared notebook and on the first page include a task list. Then when group members complete tasks they can check them off. The nice thing about this is that students can see the task that have been done and who did them. They can also uncheck tasks or add notes if a task needs to be done again.

Watch this short video to learn how to create collaborative task lists in OneNote.



Are you a tech coach or media specialist looking for some new ideas to share with your colleagues? If so, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook you need. You can get it right here.