Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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Awesome video tool, free apps for the day/week, cool tools, tips and more in this weeks tech posting..

Wednesday, March 22, 2017


A couple nice apps - Free for a limited time:

First giveaway ever. Free for just one day! No ads. No in-apps. Best sound level meter in your pocket! 

Teach Your Monster Read for iOS – Free Through the Weekend 


Web tools and sites:

One for the K-2 Math folks -- Plus.HappyNumbers.com: a fantastic FREE web-based tool that provides mind-growing monthly math challenges to unlock your students’ higher-order thinking. Plus can be used as an independent math center to provide math enrichment that supplements your curriculum. (Looks like this one works on about any all 

Free Technology for Teachers: 7 Great Tools for Creating Flipped Lessons from Existing Videos from Richard Byrne’s (Contains a few of my favorites - EDPuzzle PlayPosit and more....) 

I have mentioned this one in past... but worth noting again!  Learn how to make your own Jeopardy-style review game with Flippity and Google Sheets and gamify your classroom for greater learning. 

Top 10 Music Tools - Web and Mobile

CommonLit -- Free Fiction & Nonfiction Literacy Resources, Curriculum, & Assessment Materials for Middle & High School English Language Arts

Looking for science videos for younger students? Check out SciShow Kids

Simple Video Recording:
I LOVE THIS TOOL!
Loom just released integration with Gmail and Drive which is really cool. Not sure if you have seen this one, but it's pretty cool for creating a quick talking head or other videos. (You can even download them.) 



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I have updated my doc "Creating Video and Video Slide Shows" to include these new features. Check it out for some more great, simple and free tools.

Google Docs:

This is a pretty slick idea - Never thought of doing this! An Easy Way to Color Code and Organize Ideas in a Google Doc (Nice way for students to organize their thoughts within a doc.) 

Google Keep:
I mentioned this in my last tech posting/email and very seldom do I mention something twice in a row... this is great!  Google Docs just added Google Keep integration! Chek out my help doc... and make sure you watch the short video on how easy it is for inserting comments from Keep into a Google Doc. 

We do not recommend using the Google Drive Sync Program. 
We have very few staff members using the Google Drive Syn program that get's installed on your computer.  (Similar to an installable program that Dropbox has that keeps your local computer files synced to Dropbox.)  You big reason for not using it is that a virus or ransomware program on your computer would infect those files and they would then get synced to your Google drive and infect those files on Drive. (The other reason is that it can fill up your local computer PC/Mac drive if you do not know what you are doing setting up the sync.) 

Google Classroom:

Google is opening up Google Classroom to users without G Suite for Education accounts. Now, teachers and students in many different environments can teach or attend classes, manage assignments and instantly collaborate—all with their personal Google accounts.


Are we preparing for our 1-1 and more devices here at Norris???

Ran across this great advice via a tweet



All of my tech emails are archived!

Remember, all of tech emails are posted and archived on my blog so you can easily reference them at any time!

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