A Great Set of Videos for Teaching Networking and Computer Hardware Concepts
As some of you know, I took over a computer science program at my local vocational/ technical high school this year. It has been fun and, at times, has made me feel like a brand new teacher again. When I took the job I told my director that I’d be fine with the programming side […]
Gmail, Screencasts, and Summer Plans – The Month in Review
The first month of 2020 is at its end. I hope the first month of the year has gone well for you. Did you make a New Year’s Resolution? How’s going? Mine was to cut-out junk food and except for three slip-ups I’ve kept to it. This month I had the honor of speaking at […]
Two Ways to Make Progress Trackers With Google Sheets
In my previous post I mentioned that Google Sheets can be used for all kinds of interesting things. It can also be used for practical things like keeping tally of your progress or that of your students toward a goal. There are two ways that I usually recommend doing this. The simplest way is to […]
How to Make Timelines With Google Sheets
There was a time when I didn’t like working with Google Sheets. That changed about ten years ago after a chat with Kern Kelley who showed me some of the things that he had created with Google Sheets. Since then I’ve used Google Sheets for all kinds of things from self-grading assessments to data visualizations. […]
Three Interesting Ways to Use Google Slides Besides Making Presentations
Google Slides was once a bare-bones alternative to PowerPoint and Keynote. I can still remember when the option to add a video was big news. Fast forward to today and there are lots of things that you can do with Google Slides besides make basic slideshow presentations. Here are three of my favorite ways to […]
It’s Not You, It’s Me – How to Check If a Website is Working Correctly
Yesterday morning Charles asked me via Twitter about a site I had previously mentioned for checking whether or not a website is up or down. The site Charles was looking for is Down for Everyone or Just Me. It’s a simple site that will tell you if a website it is up or if it […]
Quickly Create & Share Transcripts of YouTube Videos
VidReader was one of my favorite new tools in 2019. It’s a tool that makes it easy to create an interactive transcript of any YouTube video. This morning I used to to create a transcript of a video. When I used VidReader this morning I noticed two new features that I hadn’t previously seen. Those […]
Cotton and the Life Cycle of a Tee Shirt
Last week TED-Ed published a new lesson titled Why Is Cotton In Everything? The lesson begins with an explanation of why cotton was used by the Inca in suits of armor. From there the lesson delves into the properties of cotton that make strong, soft, and flexible. The bulk of the lesson is then spent on […]
19,000+ Teachers Get Their Ed Tech Tips This Way
At about this time six years ago I created the Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week newsletter as a way to provide a summary of my most popular daily posts along with a featured tip of the week. This week the 19,000th teacher signed up for the newsletter. You can do the same right […]
How to Remove Image Backgrounds in PowerPoint
A few weeks ago I published Three Ways to Remove Image Backgrounds With Just a Click or Two. I got a handful of Tweets and emails from folks who kindly reminded me that I didn’t include using PowerPoint in that list. That was because I hadn’t made a video about how to use PowerPoint to […]
