Good morning from Maine where we play outside even if it’s cold and snowy. Sometimes that means doing traditional snow activities like skiing and sledding while other times it just means knocking some snow off the swings and having fun in our snowsuits. Whether the weather is hot or cold where you are, I hope that you also have some time for fun in the fresh air this weekend.
The inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris was the story of the week. Larry Ferlazzo and Terri Eichholz each compiled excellent collections of resources about the inauguration and Amanda Gorman’s poem. You can find Larry’s collection here and Terri’s collection here. On a related note, Larry is always incredibly fast at compiling resources for events in the news. His blog is where I go for resources about events in the news.
These were the week’s most popular posts:
1. My Favorite Chrome Extensions Right Now – And What They Do
2. Mote – An Easier Way to Add Audio to Google Slides
3. How to Check and Edit the Accessibility of Word Documents
4. How to Quickly Record Audio in Google Slides, Docs, and Classroom
5. How to Quickly Check and Improve the Accessibility of Your PowerPoint Slides
6. Six Good Tools for Making Multimedia Timelines
7. ReadWorks Adds an Offline Mode for Students
Professional Development Opportunities
- More than 300 of you have participated in a Practical Ed Tech course in 2020. Those registrations help keep Free Technology for Teachers and Practical Ed Tech going. I couldn’t do it without you!
- BoomWriter is hosting a unique creative writing contest for kids. Check it out!
- Pixton EDU is a great tool for creating comics and storyboards.
Other Places to Follow Me:
- The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter comes out every Sunday evening/ Monday morning. It features my favorite tip of the week and the week’s most popular posts from Free Technology for Teachers.
- My YouTube channel has more than 32,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools.
- I’ve been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for thirteen years.
- The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week.
- And if you’re curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Instagram or Strava.