The Most Popular Posts of the Month on Free Technology for Teachers

Good evening from sunny Maine. As I write this I'm enjoying a perfect summer evening sitting on my back deck and watching my dogs enjoy ...

Lessons in Computational Thinking

Google offers dozens of lessons for exploring computational thinking through the use of Python programming. Now if you're wondering, ...

A Short Explanation of the European Union

If you teach global studies, current events, geography, or anything along those lines, you've probably found yourself explaining the Eur...

North Korea Explained in Four Minutes

This afternoon I spent some time jumping from one interesting and educational YouTube video to the next. Many of those videos will be appear...

Wibki - Quickly Create Personalized Start Pages

Wibki is a free service for creating personalized start pages. It's service that I think people that like iGoogle will like. (Remember,...

Is Your Message Clear? Have Someone Else Animate or Illustrate It

This is a problem we all face at times; we think that we've created a great presentation or developed a great story yet it just doesn...

Narrable Launches New Education Plans - Create Unlimited Audio Slideshows

I have just received an exciting email from the folks at Narrable. They have launched a new plan for educators . The new plan includes free ...

Exploring Flipboard Magazines On the Web

Since June Flipboard has made it possible for people to collaboratively create digital magazines on their iPads, Android tablets, and in t...

DictaNote - Speak to Create Documents

A couple of years ago I tried out a Chrome extension called Speech Recognizer . Speech Recognizer allowed users to speak to create text. Spe...

Three Responses to "But I Don't Have Time to Blog"

Earlier this month at the Authentic Learning Workshop I was asked, "what do you say to teachers who say I don't have time for a bl...

Lucid Chart Now Works Offline - Create Mind Maps Offline

Lucidchart is a nice tool for creating flowcharts, mindmaps, and graphic organizers. Lucidchart offers a simple drag and drop interface fo...

Create a Custom Start Page With OneFeed for Chrome

Google is closing iGoogle on November 1st . Some readers have already migrated to Symbaloo or MyLinkCloud as their new browser start pages...

The Old Reader Announces Shut Down for All Except a Select Few

The Old Reader was one of the many Google Reader alternatives that I tested earlier this year. I liked it enough to name it one of my five f...

engVid - 500+ Free English Video Lessons

engVid is a free service that has produced more than 500 video lessons to help viewers learn to speak and write English. Eight instructors ...

The Difficulty With "Best" and "Must Use" in Professional Development

We've all been in a professional development workshop in which we had to learn to use a specific method instructional method or a specif...

The Week In Review - Camp Week!

Good morning from Maine where it's almost starting to feel like fall. This week I held the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp at Sunday Rive...

Geology Hikes - A Model for Blogging and Mapping

John Haley is one of my former colleagues that I keep in touch with through Facebook. John is a fantastic, enthusiastic Earth Science teache...

Wildfires and Climate Change - Video

Earlier this week while exploring Climate Central I found a good video about wildfires in the western United States. The video ( available ...

When Teaching Web Safety Don't Forget to Teach Common Sense

Earlier this week I shared the RADCAB framework for teaching students how to evaluate websites. In the past I've shared other resources...

7 Ways to Create and Deliver Online Quizzes

Creating and delivering quizzes and tests online offers a number of advantages over paper-based quizzes and tests. Many online quiz services...

Collaboratively Create Music In a Google+ Hangout

One of Kevin Hodgson's posts last week prompted me to revisit Soundation. Soundation is an online music creation tool that I tried a fe...

5 Handy Google Drive Shortcuts

This evening when I attempted to access my Google Drive dashboard the way that I have been doing it for years by typing "docs.google.c...

How to Disable Tabs in the New Gmail Layout

One of the constants of using free services like Gmail is that changes to the service can occur whether you like them or not. One of the rec...

How to Quickly Create Simple Online Quizzes

QuizPoo is a free online quiz creation tool. Quizzes created on QuizPoo have a simple format based on an "either or framework." W...

How to Create Your Own Custom Search Engine

I've posted directions for creating your own Google Custom Search Engine in the past. Since the last time I published those directions G...

Cooking With Solar Energy - A Hands-on Project for Students

Climate.gov is a good place for teachers to find videos, interactive activities, and lesson plans for teaching about climates and climate c...

Adam Savage Shares Lessons from Failure

FORA.tv , like TED , features videos of talks and presentations from intelligent and notable people from a variety of fields. One of the tal...

Two Video Guides to Website Evaluation

Writing the previous post about RADCAB reminded me of a Common Craft video about website evaluation . That video is embedded below. Common ...

RADCAB - A Website Evaluation Framework for Students

Thanks to Patty Eyer today I learned about a great mnemonic acronym to help students remember a process for website evaluation. RADCAB, whi...

How to Use B-Roll Footage In Videos

Earlier today at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp I talked about the idea of creating a gallery of b-roll media that your students can use...

Two Minute Geology Lessons

Two Minute Geology is a newish series of videos from HugeFloods.com . The Two Minute Geology videos provide short lessons on things like I...

Three Ways to Make Useful QR Codes for Your Students

This morning I did a very simple QR code activity at the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp . QR codes were distributed on the tables in the room...

You Shouldn't Be an Instructional Technology Coordinator If You Don't Understand This...

I realize that this post comes from the pages of, I'm tired of writing about this and you are probably tired of it too, but I have to t...

Geodia - A Timeline and Map of Mediterranean Archeology and Culture

Geodia is a free history resource hosted by the University of Texas. Geodia uses a combination of a timeline and Google Map to outline the ...

5 Services for Creating & Sharing Audio Recordings Online

Adding an audio message to your classroom blog or website can be a good way to help deliver important messages to your students and their ...

Picture Manhattan Inside the Grand Canyon

Gus Petro is a Swiss photographer that recently published a neat visualization of the size of the Grand Canyon. He took his pictures of buil...