Latest education updates from around the world
How to Redirect Students When They’ve Completed a Google Form
Yesterday I published a video about collecting pictures through Google Forms. That post was inspired by a request for help from a former colleague of mine. This post was also inspired by the second part of that colleague’s help request. The question he had was about how to direct people to purchase tickets for an event after completing a Google Form. The solution is to put a link in the “successful submission” field that people see when they complete your Google Form.
In the settings for your Google Form you can edit what appears when people successfully […]
Best Live New Year’s Countdown Tools and Apps
2023 is just around the corner: a new year, a new beginning, as the saying goes. If you are like me super excited and can’t wait for the start of a new year, you will probably be counting the remaining days and hours until the day the fireworks ring in 2023. But you don’t have to do it the traditional way!
8 Best Countdown Apps
The purpose of this post is to share with you this handpicked collection featuring some of the best countdown timers apps out there. Countdown apps can help you keep tabs on important events, deadlines, promises, goals, meetings, among others.
The apps below will enable you to create unlimited countdown events, add notes and reminders to your events, and share your countdowns with others. You can use the app to both countdown to an event or count up from an event.
VR Industry Luminary John Carmack Quits Meta, Calling it “the end of my decade in VR”
John Carmack, legendary programmer and key player in the Oculus gensis story, announced he’s left Meta, writing in a memo to employees that he “wearied of the fight” of trying to push for change at the highest levels of the company.
Carmack has never been one to mince words. Outside of bringing industry expertise to Oculus in 2013—notably a year before Meta (ex-Facebook) acquired the VR headset startup for $2 billion—Carmack has been a rare window into the world of consumer VR and one of the most important companies behind it. And even now, it appears we’re getting a […]
Road to VR’s 2022 Game of the Year Awards
Virtual reality opens a portal to every conceivable dimension, whether it be far-flung space stations, medieval dungeons, or fantastical realms translated directly from the minds of this generation’s most talented artists. We were transported from our living rooms, home offices, dorm rooms—anywhere you could unplug a piece of physical reality to make way for the virtual.
And now that a year has gone by, we’re again given the chance to look back and highlight the adventures we had along the way, the lessons we learned, and the new places we all went together.
It’s our sixth annual Game of the […]
Another Favorite is Shutting Down
Last week I shared the disappointing news that Tract is closing down at the end of the year. Sadly, this morning I learned that another service that I really liked is also closing down. That service is Stash 101 Classroom (formerly known as PayGrade).
Stash 101 Classroom/ PayGrade was a service that I used in my 9th grade Intro to Computer Science class back in February of 2020, but it could be adapted for just about any classroom setting. It was a tool for creating a classroom economy in which students earned currency for […]
Edtech Has Changed Forever — And Not Just By COVID
Edtech was evolving at a strong rate even before the pandemic
Are Educators Leaving Twitter?
Leaving Twitter or staying has become a complex decision for many educators, as has picking potential replacements
How to Collect Pictures Through Google Forms
Last week a former colleague of mine reached out to me for help setting up a system to collect profile information to put into a printed event program. He was looking for a convenient way for people to submit a profile picture and brief biographies to include in a printed program. My suggestion was to create a Google Form through which respondents could upload pictures and submit short blurbs about themselves. In this short video I demonstrate how to do that. The video also includes an important note about restricting the file type […]
Quickly Turn Documents Into Slideshows in Canva
The new Canva Documents has a bunch of neat tools including the AI writing tool that I highlighted last week. Continuing on that theme of artificial intelligence, Canva now has a feature that lets you quickly turn a document into a slideshow presentation.
When you viewing a document in Canva take a look at the upper-right corner of the screen and you’ll notice a “convert” button. When you click that button Canva will generate a set of slideshows based on your document. You can preview all of the slideshows they generate […]
40+ New Year Wishes to Ring in 2023
The new year, 2023, is only a few days away. Now is the perfect time to get your new year wishes ready to send to friends and loved ones. This time, though, you don’t have to do the work alone. I trawled the web and came up with the list below featuring a wide variety of new year wishes. Use these expressions and phrases to craft your own wishes and enrich your greetings vocabulary.
I categorized these wishes into General New Year Wishes that you can send to anyone you want, New Year Wishes for Friends, New Year […]
9 Tech-Friendly Hobby Ideas for High School Students That’ll Help Their Career Prospects
Hobbies and interests are great additions to your resume. They provide potential employers with a fair idea about your personality and help them understand whether you’re the right fit for the position you are applying for.
Hobbies increase your chances of employability by demonstrating your passion and dedication. They help you become more adaptable and reduce stress thereby influencing your performance at school.
Finding a new hobby can be challenging as there are so many hobbies to choose from. A hobby is something that keeps you engaged and happy in your free time. Hence, you must choose a hobby that […]
17 Tools for Collaboratively Creating Mind Maps and Flowcharts
Last week there was a spike in traffic to my blog post about using whiteboard and brainstorming templates in Canva. Seeing that spike reminded me that it was probably time to update my list of good tools for creating mind maps and flowcharts. Here’s my updated list of mind mapping and flowchart creation tools.
44,000+ People Get Ed Tech Tips This Way
This morning when I logged into my YouTube account I noticed that my little channel now has more than 44,000 subscribers for the first time. I’ve never had a video go viral nor have I tried to make one for that purpose. Instead, all of my videos are just simple how-to videos about a wide range of educational technology topics like the basics of making Google Forms, how to see what’s hidden behind a TinyURL, and how to create a video with Adobe Express.
If you’re interested in […]
Quilgo- Easily Create Timed Quizzes in Google Forms
What is Quilgo?
5 Effective Teaching Practices
Best YouTube Math Channels
70+ Engaging Debate Topics for Students
Debate is one of the ancient rhetorical skills that marked human interaction. Part of our job as teachers and educators is to nurture a culture of debate in our classes, teach our students how to become better debaters, and how to voice their opinions in respectful and responsible ways.
Gimkit- Live Game Show for the Classroom
Unscreen- A Great Video Background Removal Tool
Best Science YouTube Channels for Kids
New Features of the LOC’s By the People
By the People is a Library of Congress project that I’ve written about and featured in my Teaching History With Technology courses since 2018. On By the People teachers and students can contribute to crowd-sourcing transcriptions of thousands of primary source documents. Some of the collections that I’ve featured over the years have been campaigns to transcribe collections of documents written by soldiers in the American Civil War, the journals of Walt Whitman, and letters written by James Garfield.
This week the […]
Slides, Experiments, and Skis – The Week in Review
Good morning from Maine where everything is covered in snow this morning! The first proper snowstorm of the year rolled in yesterday and it’s still snowing as I write this morning. After I take care of shoveling it will be time for fun in the snow. My oldest daughter has been eagerly anticipating getting out on her skis so we’re going to do that this weekend. We also have tickets to see a Disney on Ice performance this weekend. It’s going to be a fun-filled weekend for us. I hope that you’re weekend is equally fun!
Before […]
Best Concept Mapping Tools for Teachers and Students
These are The Hardest Languages to Learn
The answer to the question what is the hardest languages to learn depends on one’s own native language. Languages are not equal: some are more structurally, phonetically, and syntactically complex than others. For instance, for me a Moroccan Canadian whose native language is Arabic, learning the different Arabic dialects spoken in the Middle East is pretty easy. Most of these dialects descend from classical Arabic, which is the proto-language or the parental language.
