Sunday, October 2, 2022

The Science of Pizza, Diets, and the Esophagus

Last week two of my favorite YouTube channels, TED-Ed and SciShow Kids, published new videos on the topics of food and weight loss. And those videos reminded me of the Reactions playlist of 76 videos about food science including Better Pizza Through Chemistry. Between the three videos there are lessons for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. 

In How Does Food Get to Our Stomach and More Answers to Your Questions SciShow Kids explains to primary grade students the role of the esophagus in getting food into our stomachs. The video also explains the difference between the esophagus and the trachea and what it means when we say "something went down the wrong tube." Jump to the 3:03 mark in the video for the lesson. 



Is It Possible to Lose Weight Fast? is a new TED-Ed lesson that explains the basic concept of weight loss and what happens in your body when you have a calorie deficit. The video gives a scientific explanation of why just having a calorie deficit or using a "detoxification" diet in which you entirely avoid certain types of foods don't work in the long run. Unlike some TED-Ed lessons, this one has some good questions to support your use of the video in your classroom.



Like a lot of families, every few Friday nights is pizza night in our house. As you can see in the picture in this post, even our cat gets in on the fun. And try as we might, we just can't make pizza that turns out as well as pizza from a local pizza restaurant. But that could change if we utilize some of the tips in the Reactions video titled Better Pizza Through Chemistry. The video does a nice job of explaining the science of making a good pizza dough including why we need to give it more time to rise and need to bake it at a much higher temperature.

Join Me and Rushton Hurley This Tuesday Evening for a Free Webinar

On Tuesday, October 4th at 8pm ET/ 4pm PT Rushton Hurley and I will be hosting the second episode of our third season of Two EdTech Guys Take Questions and Share Cool Stuff. Just like the title says we take questions, answer questions, and share some cool stuff that we've found around the web. We'd love to have you join us for this fun and free half-hour webinar. You can register here to join us live

If you have a question for us, send it to me at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com or just join us live and drop your question into the chat. And to see what our little webinars are all about, watch the recording of the first episode of season three

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Videos, Writing, and Pictures - The Week in Review

Good evening from Maine where it was a beautiful autumn day. My kids had soccer practice, we rode our bikes, and I mowed the lawn for what was hopefully the last time this year. And before bedtime tonight we have to get ready for my youngest daughter's birthday party that we're hosting tomorrow. It should be a fun day. I hope that you have had a good weekend so far. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. My Updated Big List of Tools for a Variety of Classroom Video Projects
2. The Writer's Workshop - 29 Videos That Can Help Students Improve Their Writing
3. A Great Alternative to Quizlet
4. How to Find TED-Ed Lessons by Grade Level
5. My Top Ten Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students
6. A Great Place to Find Free Images for School Projects
7. Five Time-saving Ways for Teachers to Use Technology

I'll Come You!
If you'd like me to come to your school or conference, please send me an email at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com or fill out the form on this page

50 Tech Tuesday Tips!
50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook that I created with busy tech coaches, tech integrators, and media specialists in mind. In it you'll find 50 ideas and tutorials that you can use as the basis of your own short PD sessions. Get a copy today!

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 43,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
  • I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fifteen years. 
  • The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week. 
  • If you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Strava.
This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.

An October Video Project - Halloween Safety

Halloween is thirty days away. My kids have been planning their costumes since last November or so it seems because they're very excited about it. Last fall I shared a list of Halloween-themed activities and resources. In that list I included playing a Halloween safety review game from Kahoot. Keeping with the idea of Halloween safety, consider having students create a short video about trick o' treat safety. 

There are a lot of tools and ways that student could create a short video about trick o' treating safety. They could make a quick one-take video in Microsoft Flip in which they share a Halloween safety tip. Another option is to use Adobe Express to make a little audio slideshow about Halloween safety. And my favorite option would be to use Canva's video editor to make a little animated video about Halloween safety. 

A quick search for "Halloween" in Canva will provide you with templates for making Halloween-themed videos and lots of Halloween-themed animated GIFs and drawings. Here's a demonstration of how to create an animated video by using Canva's video editor. 



Applications for Education
Making Halloween safety videos could be a good way for elementary school students to show what they know about being safe on this fun day. Creating Halloween safety videos could also be a good exercise for middle school and high school students to do to practice video editing skills while creating PSA-style videos for younger kids. 

Friday, September 30, 2022

September's Most Popular Posts on Free Technology for Teachers

Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on the week and on the month of September, 2022. I don't know about you, but for me the month seemed to come and go in the blink of an eye. My oldest daughter started Kindergarten, I hosted a bunch of webinars, and tried to enjoy some cool autumn evenings. I hope that the first full month of the 2022-23 school year went well for you. 

As I mentioned above, I hosted a bunch of professional development webinars in September. I'd be happy to host one for your school or library. I'm also have some limited availability for in-person events this year. Please send me an email at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com to learn more about those opportunities. 

At the end of every month I take a look at my Google Analytics account to find the most popular posts of the month. Take a look and see if there's something interesting that you missed in September. 

These were the month's most popular posts:
1. A Great Alternative to Quizlet
2. My Top Ten Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students
3. Quizalize Games - Turn Any Quiz Into an Epic Game
4. A Great Place to Find Free Images for School Projects
5. Two Tips to Make Chrome Run a Little Faster
6. A Free STEM Toolkit for Librarians
7. A Short Overview of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine - And How I Use It
8. 5 Little Things You Can Do To Improve Your Videos
9. How to Create PDFs in Google Classroom
10. The Physics of Soccer Kicks

I'll Come You!
If you'd like me to come to your school or conference, please send me an email at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com or fill out the form on this page

50 Tech Tuesday Tips!
50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook that I created with busy tech coaches, tech integrators, and media specialists in mind. In it you'll find 50 ideas and tutorials that you can use as the basis of your own short PD sessions. Get a copy today!

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 43,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
  • I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fifteen years. 
  • The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week. 
  • If you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Strava.
This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.

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