Free Guides to Teaching and Learning With Primary Sources

Last month Common Craft released a great video explanation of the differences between primary and secondary sources. After sharing that vid...

Storytelling Tips from the Producers of BBC Explainers

BBC Explainers are short explanatory videos produced for the BBC. Through Lee LeFever's recent post I learned about the process used to...

Common Craft Explains Primary and Secondary Sources

Understanding the differences between primary and secondary sources can be a challenge to some middle school and high school students. Under...

How Wikipedia Works

On Saturday evening while I was out having dinner I overheard a conversation that sounded like a father telling his daughter (I can't co...

Using Pizza to Explain Politics

Lee LeFever recently shared a great example of how to stay neutral while explaining concepts in political science. Lee shared why he used t...

Visual Metaphors and Ideas for Creating Visualizations of Complex Ideas

Lee Lefever at Common Craft is a master of creating visualizations and explanations of complex ideas. So when he posted a TED-Ed video abo...

Reminder - If It Doesn't Look Legit, Quit

This evening Peter Vogel shared a screenshot of a phishing attempt that he had received in the form of an email attempting to look like a G...

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 ...

Blogs vs. Wikis - Video Explanations

A question that I am frequently asked by teachers at this time of year as they start to think about going back to school is, "should I ...

Best of 2013 So Far... Three Books & Videos About Creating Better Presentations

We're half-way through 2013. Like I've done in years past, this week I'll be featuring some of the best new tech tools of 2013 a...

Making Videos In the Common Craft Style - Rubric Included

A couple of years ago I had students in one of my classes create Common Craft -style videos to tell the story of Lewis and Clark. I was remi...

A Simple Video Explanation of Compound Interest

Compound interest can be a wonderful thing if you're saving money. Or it can be a curse if you're trying to pay-off a debt. Either w...

3 Good Books and Videos About Crafting Stories and Presentations

Last month's most popular post was 6 Alternatives to PowerPoint and Keynote . A lot of times when we think about putting together presen...

Wideo - Create Animated Videos With Voiceovers

Last month I introduced you to a neat video creation tool called Wideo . Wideo allows you to create short, animated videos and Common Craft ...

Create Animated Videos With Wideo

Wideo is a service that allows anyone to create animated videos and Common Craft-style videos online. You can create an animated video on ...

A Short Explanation of Augmented Reality

I just published a post about a NASA iPad app that uses augmented reality technology. Just after I hit publish on that post it occurred to ...

The Art of Explanation - A Review and a Conversation With Lee LeFever

A couple of weeks ago I received a copy of Lee LeFever's new book The Art of Explanation . Many educators are familiar with Lee's wo...

Creative Commons in Plain English

I just published a post about creating attributions for Creative Commons licensed images. Writing that post reminded me that Creative Comm...

The Electoral College in Plain English

Election Day is less than one month away in the United States. If you're planning to discuss the Electoral College with your students in...

What Are Cookies? And What Do They Do?

Image Credit:   No, this is not about those delicious-looking cookies to the left. This is about the kind of cookies that are captured when ...