New! Freehand Drawings in Canva
Last week Canva hosted a big event to announce a bunch of new features. One of those features is something that I’ve thought they should have added years ago, a freehand drawing tool. Canva’s freehand drawing tool lets you choose a drawing tool (pencil, pen, highlighter) and customize it to make the lines it creates […]
Pacing Group Activities With Focusable
A few weeks ago I ran a workshop in which I changed up the way that I paced the session. What I’ve almost always done is give a little instruction then time to try and complete a little practice activity. Then I’ll hold a little debrief before moving onto the next activity. It’s a pretty […]
Math, Science, and Search Baseball Lessons
Today is the home opener for my beloved Boston Red Sox. Hope springs eternal for a great season. So until at least the first pitch is thrown I’ll set aside the pessimistic New Englander in me and get excited because this is the year! On that note, here are some baseball-themed lesson ideas and resources. […]
An Interactive Simulation of Greenhouse Effect
PhET was one of the resource that I featured in this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter. Shortly after hitting send on that newsletter I learned about a new simulation that PhET now offers. The latest PhET simulation is about the greenhouse effect. The simulation can be used to help students understand the effect of greenhouse […]
Have a Chat With Hundreds of Historical Figures
Hello History is a new AI app that I wrote about last week. Almost immediately after I published my blog post about Hello History I started to get questions about it. To address a bunch of those questions, I created the short video overview that is embedded below. Video – How to Use Hello History […]
How to Use Microsoft Designer
Microsoft Designer is a new AI-powered tool that enables users to quickly generate many variations of a graphic design with just a few clicks. The purpose of Microsoft Designer is to give you a gallery of designs based on your input. You can then choose the design that you like best to download and use […]
How to Add Audio to Google Slides
Last week I was looking through my YouTube Studio analytics when I noticed that one of the most-searched phrases was “add audio to Google Slides.” I took that as a sign that it was time to create a new video about how to add audio to Google Slides. So that’s exactly what I did. In […]
Seven Tips for Good Infographic Design
Last week Canva made waves on social media with all of their announcements about their new AI-powered design tools. While those tools look great and I plan to use them, I think it’s still important for students to learn some basic design principles instead of just relying on whatever an algorithm spits out. To that […]
All About Explorers – It’s Still a Great Site
All About Explorers is a site that Russel Tarr told me about many years ago. I was recently going through my archives to remove links to sites that no longer exist when I came across All About Explorers again. I was pleased to see that it’s still going. All About Explorers developed by Gerald Aungst and […]
Science, Slides, and History – The Week in Review
Good morning from Connecticut where we’re visiting family this weekend. Yesterday, we had a great time exploring the Connecticut Science Center. We saw big snakes, sloths, and tropical butterflies before heading over the engineering wing where we made and played with all kinds of contraptions. If you ever find yourself near Hartford, Connecticut, go check […]
