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The Global Forest Change Explorer is a new Google Maps product that provides visualizations of patterns in global deforestation. The Global Forest Change Explorer was developed in conjunction with Science in the Classroom and Dr. Matt Hansen of the University of Maryland . On the Global Forest Change Explorer you can view patterns in deforestation and explore causes of deforestation. The map has three basic sections that you can explore. Those sections are countries, ecosystems, and hotspots. The hotspots section includes questions for students to investigate to discover the cause of deforestation in that location. Applications for Education The Global Forest Change Explorer offers a set of basic research questions for students to investigate. That question sheet can be downloaded as a PDF. The Global Forest Change Explorer is a good example of the type of data that can be visualized in Google Maps. Students can use Google's My Maps in Google Drive to create their own visualiza

It's the end of the month and as I do every month I have compiled a list of the most frequently read posts of the last 31 days. May seemed to zip along quickly. This list offers an easy way to quickly see interesting and useful posts that you might have missed. Here are the most popular posts from May, 2016: 1. 10 Sites and Apps for Vocabulary and Spelling Practice 2. Create an Interactive Video Summary of the School Year 3. A Fun Tool for Making Word Clouds in Fun Shapes 4. 12 Tools for Creating End-of-Year Review Activities 5. Great Tools for Creating Screencasts - A PDF Handout 6. 7 Tools for Creating Flowcharts, Mind Maps, and Diagrams 7. More Than 100 Sets of Primary Source Documents for Students 8. How to Blend Images in Google Slides 9. 10 Ways to Use Adobe Spark in School 10. 4 Google Apps Updates You Might Have Missed Last Week Spring and Summer PD Opportunities With Me Take a look at the  online workshops  I'm hosting throughout the spring and summer. The Pra

Every month I take a look at the most popular posts of the month. At the same time I look at the search terms that visitors enter most often on Free Technology for Teachers . This month the three most frequently searched terms were "random name selector," "kahoot," and "photos for class." Below I have assembled some resources about each of those terms. Random name selector: On Russel Tarr's Classtools.net you can find lots of great tools for your classroom. The Random Name Picker and the Fruit Machine are two of those tools that can be used in almost every classroom setting. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use both of those tools. Flippity has a template for creating a random name picker in Google Sheets. You can learn how to use that template in the video that you see embedded below. Kahoot: In April Kahoot released a new team mode . The team mode is designed to be used with students who are sharing computers, tablets, or ph

Whenever I publish a new blog post, I include an image in the post. Including an image helps draw readers in and it helps grab attention when it is shared on places like Pinterest and Facebook. Folks who blog frequently may find it tiresome to look for new images all the time. Likewise, in a shared classroom blog setting your students may be pressed for time to find good quality public domain or Creative Commons images for every post. In a shared blog setting you may also find that you start to run out of storage space when every student uploads a bunch of high resolution images.  In the video embedded below I demonstrate an easy way to re-use images from your Blogger or WordPress blog.  In the video I mention that you should avoid hotlinking another blog's or website's images. This blog post explains what hotlinking is and why you should avoid it. Learn more tips and tricks like this while earning graduate credits in my online course Blogs & Social Media for Teachers and

Bookboon  is a service that offers free etextbooks to high school and college students. The textbook section of Bookboon offers more than 500 digital textbooks. On  Bookboon  there are etextbooks available in ten core subject areas with additional subtopics with each subject area. The bulk of the etextbooks are focused on economics, engineering, and IT. You can browse the title lists to find a book you want or you can search Bookboon by keyword. Bookboon hosts books written in five languages. All of the books are free to download. The only catch is that you have to provide an email address before you can download the books. Applications for Education Bookboon's  books are targeted to university students, but that doesn't mean that some of the books couldn't be used with high school students. And since the books are free it wouldn't hurt to download one that you think might work for your class and use excerpts of it to supplement other materials that you are already usin

The University of Wisconsin, Stout has organized a nice collection of rubrics for assessing digital projects . In the collection you will find rubrics for assessing student blogging, student wikis, podcasts, and video projects. Beyond the rubrics for digital projects there are rubrics for activities that aren't necessarily digital in nature. For example, you can find rubrics for writing, research, and oral presentations. Applications for Education These rubrics might not fit perfectly with the projects you're students are working on, but they could provide a good starting point for creating your own rubrics. Perhaps you could show the rubric you're considering to your students and ask them for their input as to what they think is important to be evaluated in their projects.

Although their popularity seems to have fallen a bit since their peak a few years ago, word cloud generators still provide students with a nice way to visualize the most frequently used words in a passage of text. Wordle is probably the best known tool for making word clouds, but there are plenty of others that accomplish the same thing. One such tool is WordClouds.com . On WordClouds.com you can create word clouds in a variety of shapes and sizes with a wide array of color schemes. As you can see in the image below, I made my word cloud into the shape of a cat. WordClouds.com works like other word cloud generators in that you simply paste a chunk of text into text editor then let the generator do the work of creating the word cloud. You can remove words like "the" and "it" from the word cloud. Finished word clouds can be downloaded from WordClouds.com in JPG, PNG, PDF, or SVG format. Google Docs users will be happy to know that they can create word clouds within

Dan Russell has provided the inspiration for many of the web research lessons that I have conducted with students over the years. Every week he posts an interesting search challenge for readers then provides the answers a few days later. The challenges vary in difficulty, but I always learn something from them regardless of how difficult they are. This week he posted a challenge called What's In Common? The What's In Common? challenge asks you to identify the shared characteristics of two or more pictures, events, and or scenarios. In Dan's post this week he asked readers to find the commonalities between three floods and he asked readers to find the commonalities between three plants. What do these two have in common besides being dogs? Applications for Education What I like about the What's In Common? challenge is that I can make it as easy or as difficult as I need it to be based on my students' current skill levels. For example, I might make one challenge bas

Earlier this week Storyboard That introduced customizable background scenes for all users. I've had a few emails this week about how to change the colors and other elements in Storyboard That scenes so this morning I created the following short demonstration video. Applications for Education Watch this recent webinar recording to learn more about the many ways that Storyboard That can be used in your classroom. Disclosure: Storyboard That is an advertiser on this blog. 

The Practical Ed Tech Summer Camps have sold out, but there are other ways to learn with me this summer. This summer I'm offering three online PD courses for teachers. Two of those courses include a graduate credit option. You can bookmark the menu of courses here or read on for more information. Getting Going With GAFE Getting Going With GAFE  is a webinar series designed for teachers and administrators who are new to using Google Apps for Education.  Getting Going With GAFE  is a five week course covering everything you need to know to integrate Google Drive, Google Classroom, Google Calendar, and Google Sites into your practice.  Click here  to learn more about the course including how to  earn 3 graduate credits . Summer section: July 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th, and August 2nd at 7pm Eastern Time.  Click here to register .  Blogs & Social Media for Teachers & School Leaders Blogs and Social Media for Teachers and School Leaders  is a five week webinar series during which t

Good morning from the Byrne Instructional Media, LLC headquarters in Woodstock, Maine. As I sit on my deck I can tell that it is going to be a beautiful weekend to play and relax in the outdoors. In fact, my dogs and I are going to do just that by going camping this weekend. Before we can do that I have to finish a couple of blog posts and Mason needs to finish his breakfast. As you can see in the picture to the left, he wasn't in a hurry to eat this morning. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope that you have time to relax just like Mason. Here are this week's most popular posts: 1. 4 Google Apps Updates You Might Have Missed Last Week 2. 12 Tools for Creating End-of-Year Review Activities 3. 10 Sites and Apps for Vocabulary and Spelling Practice 4. How to Create Images, Videos, and Web Pages With Adobe Spark 5. 10 Ways to Use Adobe Spark in School 6. Interactive Maps of Travel Through the Roman Empire 7. Thousands of Free eBooks for Summer Reading Spring and Summer PD Oppo

Service tax is a tax levied by the government on service providers on certain service transactions, but is actually borne by the customers. It is categorized under Indirect Tax and came into existence under the Finance Act, 1994. Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, in his budget announcements proposed to impose a cess, called the Krishi Kalyan Cess, @ 0.5% on all taxable services. The present rate of service tax will be hiked to 15 per cent from June 1, 2016, from 14.5 per cent. Take a look at what gets expensive: Phone Bills:  Your phone bills are going to go up. So, pay a good 15 per cent now on service tax on phone bills. Restaurant Bills :If you are dining in a restaurant that already has service tax applicable, you are going to pay more on your eating out. Though 0.5 per cent on a single bill may not mean much, frequent diners may end-up paying a lot during the year. Travelling: You will have to pay more for air travel, as there is a service tax on tour operators and travel ag

Last night I watched the conclusion of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. A recap of the finals is available on the  Associated Press YouTube channel . Like many others who watched the finals, I have to admit that there were some new-to-me words in the final rounds. That reminded me that I have a bunch of sites and apps in my archives that can help students learn new vocabulary words and practice spelling new words. Stumpy’s Alphabet Dinner  is a fun app in which students feed letters and shapes to cartoon characters. The letters and shapes that students feed to the characters have to match the letter or shape displayed on the character’s stomach. If the child makes an incorrect match the character spits out the letter. Building Language for Literacy  offers three nice little language activities from Scholastic. The activities are designed for pre-K and Kindergarten students. The spelling activity is called   Leo Loves to Spell . Leo Loves to Spell asks students to help a lobster named

Flippity is a great service that offers a handful of templates for creating flashcards, random name selectors, Jeopardy games, and progress trackers in Google Sheets. This morning I was thinking about ways to create writing prompt generators when I realized that Flippity's flashcard template could be used to create sets of image-based and text-based writing prompts too. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use Flippity and Flickr together to create sets of image-based writing prompts. Applications for Education One of the biggest challenges that some students face when tasked with writing a fiction story is coming up with an idea to start a story. Flipping through a set of images and text can be a good way to find some inspiration for a story. By creating the set of prompts with images you've selected, you can control the type of images and phrases that your students will see in the writing prompts. If using Flippity and Flickr seems too difficult, take a look at

Memorial Day  is on Monday. Here are a couple of quick resources that you may want to include in a lesson about Memorial Day. The Meaning of Memorial Day is a two minute video covering the origins of the holiday in the United States. The video is embedded below. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs offers the following video overview of the history of Memorial Day. For more resources for teaching about Memorial Day, visit Larry Ferlazzo's list of resources .

Mentimeter  is a nice service that allows you to pose a question to your audience and get instant feedback on that question through cell phones, tablets, and any other Internet-connected device. I reviewed the service a few years ago. Since then Mentimeter has added some more options for teachers. The latest option added to Mentimeter is a quiz component. Like other quiz game systems, teachers create questions that students have to answer quickly and accurately. Mentimeter gives you the option to show immediate feedback on each question. There is a time limit that you can set for the questions. Students play along by either entering a quiz code on their phones, tablets, or computers or by scanning a QR code that you display to them. Another neat response option in Mentimeter is the word cloud response. This lets you create an open-ended question for your students to respond to. Their responses are displayed as a word cloud on your screen. Mentimeter includes a profanity filter to prese

Storyboard That has become a popular digital storytelling tool over the last few years. That popularity is due in large part to their response to feature requests from teachers. One of the newest features added to Storyboard That is the option to customize the background scenes in each frame of a storyboard. Now when you drag a background scene into a frame on Storyboard That you can edit the scene by adjusting the color scheme, by changing the lighting (time of day), and by adding or removing elements from the scene. Applications for Education Watch this recent webinar recording to learn more about the many ways that Storyboard That can be used in your classroom. Disclosure: Storyboard That is an advertiser on this blog. 

The head tilt says, "I'm listening." Last week I stumbled upon an older Life Hacker article about how to improve your listening skills. It's a good article that students should read. After reading the article I did a YouTube search for videos on the topic. I found plenty, but none that I thought were worth sharing here. So I headed over to Next Vista to see if there were any student-produced videos about listening skills. Sure enough there was one. The following student-produced video explains the LEAP technique for effective listening.

A few weeks ago ReadWorks teased the launch of a new platform called ReadWorks Digital . Yesterday, ReadWorks Digital finally launched to general public. ReadWorks Digital is built upon the popular ReadWorks service for finding articles aligned to grade level, lexile, and Common Core standards. ReadWorks articles are accompanied by reading comprehension questions, vocabulary lists, and discussion questions. The ReadWorks Digital platform makes it easy for you to distribute articles and assignments to students in an online classroom environment. Within ReadWorks Digital teachers can track students' progress on assignments, see responses to questions, and grade students' responses to questions. In the video embedded below I demonstrate the teacher side and student side of ReadWorks Digital .

This month's issue of National Geographic Magazine is all about Yellowstone National Park. The magazine's website has some excellent articles, videos, and interactive graphics about the animals and geology of the park. Unfortunately, about half of the resources on National Geographic Magazine's website are restricted to people who have paid for a subscription to the magazine. Here are some other free resources for learning about Yellowstone National Park. PBS offers some excellent videos about Yellowstone. Return of the Wolves examines how and why wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone and the effects of their reintroduction. The Volcano Under Yellowstone takes a look at the geology of the park including the famous geysers. The USGS in partnership with the University of Utah produces the  Yellowstone Volcano Observatory . The  Yellowstone Volcano Observatory  records and publishes data about volcanic activity in Yellowstone National Park. Much of the material on the si

On Tuesday morning I published a video about how to use Adobe's new creative suite called Adobe Spark . That video was focused on how to use the three parts of Adobe Spark; post, page, and video. If you haven't seen the video, it is embedded below. Now that we know how the tools work, let's take a look at some ways that teachers and students can use Adobe Spark. Post: Post is the part of the Adobe Spark that lets you create graphics like posters, announcements, and Internet memes. Students and teachers can create simple posters to print and post in their schools to announce club meetings, campaigns for class elections, or to post encouraging messages to students. To help students understand and show that they understand what propaganda messages look like, I have had them create simple early 20th Century-style propaganda posters of their own. Adobe Spark has built-in Creative Commons search that can help students find pictures to use for those posters. Students can also up

A couple of weeks ago I featured the summer reading packs offered by ReadWorks . Those reading packs are a great option for those teachers and students looking for relatively short articles. For those teachers and students in need of longer ebooks, I recommend taking a look at what Zing has to offer. Zing is a service that offers thousands of free fiction and non-fiction ebooks to teachers and students. On Zing you can browse for books by topic, language, or reading level. You can read the books in your web browser on a laptop or tablet. Zing is more than just a repository of free ebooks. In the Zing reader students will find a built-in dictionary and tools for taking notes while they read. Applications for Education If you create an accounts on Zing you will be able to create Zing classrooms. In those classrooms you can create and manage accounts for students. Through your Zing classroom portal you can check your students' reading logs.

Stackup is a free service that aims to help you give students credit for time spent reading quality articles online. On Stackup you can create reading challenges for your students. A challenge could be something like "read current events for 60 minutes this week." After creating the challenge you invite students to join it. Students can join by entering a challenge code on Stackup or you can invite them by email. Learn how Stackup works by watching the video embedded below.

Adobe Spark is a new suite of free tools for creating images, videos, and simple web pages. The blog-o-sphere was all abuzz about Adobe Spark late last week so I gave it a try too. Adobe Spark can be used in your web browser or you can download the Adobe Spark video, image, and web page iPad apps. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to create images, web pages, and videos with Adobe Spark in your web browser. Key features of Adobe Spark's web app include an integrated Creative Commons image search tool, the option to download images as JPEGs, and the option to download your videos as MP4 files. Applications for Education You and your students could use Adobe Spark to create short informational videos. The recording feature in Adobe Spark's video editor makes it very easy to precisely control the audio on each part of your videos. The Adobe Spark web page tool provides students with a great way to tell stories through pictures. And the image tool provides you with a

This is the time of year that we think about activities that we can do to help students review the school year. At this time of the year I frequently receive requests for suggestions for tools to create review activities. The tools presented in the slides below can be used to create online games, iPad games, video quizzes, and interactive classroom exercises that engage students in reviewing the year's lessons.

The Psychology Behind Irrational Decisions is the title of a relatively new TED-Ed lesson that I watched over the weekend. The lesson focuses on the role of heuristics in our decision making processes. Of course, to understand the role of heuristics in making decisions students first need to understand heuristics. The lesson does a good job of defining heuristics for students. The video from the lesson is embedded below. Applications for Education A possible extension for this lesson is to have students think about and find examples of how heuristics can influence the statements people make in political discussions.

Over the last week I have had at least five people ask me for suggestions for a tool to create an audio slideshow video for an end-of-year assembly or similar exercise. The following are the audio slideshow video creation tools that I suggest more than most. YouTube's audio slideshow creation tool is my first suggestion for people who have Google Accounts to which they have been saving a lot of images. YouTube's audio slideshow creation tool allows users to quickly import batches of images from their Google Drive accounts and or from their Android devices. The tool offers a large collection of Creative Commons licensed music that you can use in your videos. Watch my tutorial embedded below to learn more about how to create an audio slideshow in YouTube. Stupeflix doesn't require users to register in order to produce a video. Stupeflix could be a good option to use with students who don't have email addresses that they can use in school. Like YouTube's audio slides

Read Write Think is a great place to find story starters and interactive writing templates. A good example of that is found on  Read Write Think's Compare & Contrast Map . The Compare & Contrast Map is a template for creating a comparative essay. Using the template students are guided through writing three styles of comparison essays. To get started students identify two things that they wish to compare and or contrast. Then they choose if they want to write a "whole to whole" essay, a "similarities to differences" essay, or a "point to point" essay. Whichever essay type they choose, students are guided through the types of information they should put in each part of their essays. When their essays are complete students can share them via email or print them. Applications for Education For younger students who need help formatting an essay, the Read Write Think templates can be very helpful. If you haven't spent much time exploring the re

If you teach any lessons about the Roman Empire, take a look at ORBIS from Stanford University. ORBIS is Stanford University's Geospatial Network Model of the Roman Empire. On ORBIS students can calculate the distance and travel times between 751 settlements in the Roman Empire. The calculations happen according to the modes of travel that would have been used during the time of the Roman Empire's greatest height. For example, I calculated the time and cost to travel by foot, wagon, and boat between Roma and Chalcis in March. The calculations include the cost of feeding donkeys along the way. Click for full size image.  Applications for Education While you could certainly have students use Google Earth to map distances between settlements in the Roman Empire, ORBIS is a step above that because students can calculate travel times and distances according the modes of transportation that were available during the Roman Empire.

Last week Google released a new product and updated some existing products that are of interest to teachers and students. Last Monday at the Google I/O conference Google introduced a new product called Spaces. Spaces is a service that lets you create small communities to share links, notes, and pictures. Take a look at my video about Spaces to see how it works. On Wednesday of last week Google added a new charts feature to Google Slides. You can now import charts made in Google Sheets and display them in your slides. You can also use and modify one of the new charts templates in Google Slides. My video here demonstrates how to use the new charts feature in Google Slides. Also on Wednesday of last week Google announced some updates to the Google Classroom API. The updated API could lead to more apps integrating with Google Classroom, not the least of which being improved gradebook options through Google Classroom. Learn more about these updates in the explanation that I shared on Th

ETFs vs. Mutual Funds It’s important for investors to understand the key differences between traditional mutual funds (open-end) and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) . Each has its advantages and disadvantages. This knowledge can translate into making informed investment decisions. ETF's can be bought or sold just like stocks through stock exchanges anywhere across the country. While, mutual funds do not see price variation during trading hours as the Net Asset Value (NAV) is set at the end of each trading day. This gives an added advantage to ETF over traditional funds. Rate of Return:  Most of the ETFs track a particular index and are considered to have lower expenses than actively managed mutual funds. However, when investing in an ETF, an investor needs to pay commission to the broker. Investment in ETFs works out to be cheaper when compared with traditional mutual funds or index funds in terms of fees and other expenses. Sales Load: ETFs do not attract any sales load or there ar

Good morning from the temporary Byrne Instructional Media, LLC office in Connecticut. I'm working in Connecticut this morning because I'm down here to see the hooding ceremony for my friend of 20+ years who has just completed her Doctorate of Nursing Practice. Meanwhile back in Maine the lilacs in my meager garden have started to bloom. Hopefully, we don't get any more snow to cover them as we did briefly on Monday morning. Here are this week's most popular posts: 1. Create an Interactive Video Summary of the School Year 2. Great Tools for Creating Screencasts - A PDF Handout 3. More Than 100 Sets of Primary Source Documents for Students 4. How to Create a Biking or Walking Route Map in Google Maps 5. How to Create a Google Spaces Community 6. Geopedia - A Map & Wikipedia Mashup 7. How to Create an Interactive Series of Videos Spring and Summer PD Opportunities With Me Only two tickets remain for the Practical Ed Tech BYOD Camp in July.  Take a look at the  o