Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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πŸ’₯ T𝗲𝗰𝗡 π—Άπ˜π—²π—Ίπ˜€ - Canva, templates, holiday activities, free oline tools and even a rabbit out of the hat... in this weeks tech tips and tools.

Thursday, October 6, 2022

 Some exciting news coming up with Canva and Norris!




Watch your email for the full details soon! 

This is an amazing tool for graphics, videos, online & print materials and more.  (I know many of you have already been using this tool.) 

Sneak peek: It used to be you had to sign up you and your students for the paid version for free.  Now at Norris, you just log in with Google and you are ready to roll! (Log in from our Google Waffle Menu or from the link in Clever.) Many more features will be mentioned in the upcoming weeks! 


The Free Online Photo Editor In Your Browser WITH - No popups to close. No ads to ignore. No cookies to accept. No account to create. 100% Free ✨  Simple and quick.   Check it out.   We have added this to our doc of online photo and drawing tools here




Misc. Tech tips and tools:


QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK (Create Meeting Notes from Google Calendar) - Did you know you can auto-magically create meeting notes in Google Docs for a Google Calendar event in one click? This is a huge time-saver, and a great way to make sure everyone invited has a copy of the agenda for the event.  πŸ“Ί Watch this quick video to learn how!

QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK (Get Your Daily Schedule Sent to Your Inbox) - Did you know you can have Google Calendar send your daily schedule to your inbox every morning? This is a great way to review your schedule for the day! πŸ“Ί Watch this quick video to learn how!

Congrats to Adam Kranz on his GoGuardian certification!

10 Jamboard templates (for distance learning). Hey, they will work great for all classroom engagement, not just DL!)  Get the templates here

5 Google Apps Templates for Kindergarten - Check them out here.  

Free Illustrative Math in GeoGebra -  This free curriculum is available in GeoGebra for grades 6 – 8 and High School Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II. Check it out here. 

3000 Free medical images - Wow these are nice! Great illustrative images for medical/science classes. 

Building a Lego-powered Submarine 4.0 - automatic depth control. Could our kids do this?  Pretty cool

QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK (New! Emoji Keyboard in Google Docs) -  New Google Docs feature! Did you know you can now access a full emoji keyboard in Google Docs?   πŸ“Ί Watch this quick video to learn how!

Looking for some nice Google Sheets tips?  - Sign up for Ben's weekly tips sheet here.   You will get some other great links, including this Google Sheets Tip e-book (PDF Format). Check it out here. 

Tips for Google Jamboard - Have you tried Google Jamboard, the whiteboarding tool? If you have, here are 3 tips for getting more out of Jamboard. And - Remember, Jamboard has version history too! 

Bringing Gamification into Your Classroom - Some new ideas and tools in this list! Check them out here

Eight Great Resources for Teaching Digital Citizenship - Check them out here

Add a Checkbox to Your Google Form Data - How to here.  







Now this is what I call a Halloween display - Checkout this house light show. 

Speaking of Halloween -  Check Out these free Halloween slide templates.  Have your littles carve a pumpkin with this template activity or another more detailed one here. 

πŸŽƒ Halloween Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings (an oldie but a goodie) Checkout this magnetic poetry template, it's still a super fun activity!
Want to learn how to create your own magnetic poetry? Join the FREE online course!

Plan ahead for Thanksgiving with these Thanksgiving templates:







Customize Google Classroom Notifications in the Mobile App - If you use Google Classroom, you should also install the mobile app on your phone (iOS and Android). You can now customize all your notifications in the app! πŸ“Ί Watch this quick video to learn how!


Want more Google Classroom tips?  Check them out here!





You can fill out rubrics quickly using a Google Form and entering student names. - Check it out here! 







Sweet! Add Hashtags to Google Classroom



But WHY???  Check it out! 


Great for teaching cursive writing!


Play these on your projector while students are working on their letters! (Or great, for additional work/resource for parents.) 



THIS IS COOL! - What a great idea and use of Google Jamboard! 
Have kids pull things out of a hat, like vocab words, questions, objects, etc...

















Check them out here!   Some great tips worth checking out! 

Use Google Forms?  This is a great tip!  It's always helpful to validate the data a user is putting in the form.  So, they actually give you a zip code and no letters, etc...  Checkout this page, it's worth a look and a quick bookmark for when you will need it! 


Miscellaneous tech tips: 

A New and Easy Way to Create Green Screen Videos - Canva to the rescue once again - check it out. 

Just a fun one - Into the Past! Astounding London 1930s in color [60fps, Remastered] A few more fun ones - I Jumped From Space (World Record Supersonic Freefall).  QE Aircraft Carrier Jet Suit Flights in NYC

5 Features of Google Keep You Are Not Using - Keep is a great tool!  Checkout these tips to make it even better. 

WOW - these are some great lists of tools - 
How to Create Online Books With Page Turning Effects - Check them out. (Free options and paid plans for more books/options.) 

Periodic Videos - A video for each of the periodic table elements and more great science videos. Check out their channel

Dice Debrief - Use dice debriefing activities as entry or exit tickets, for example, to engage students in Self-judgment and Reflection. Checkout the template here. (Make a copy if you like)  How-to video here

Have you tried out Baamboozle? - https://www.baamboozle.com (Pricing here.)  (Most teachers feel the free version is fine.) Checkout the games here: https://www.baamboozle.com/games This and more in our assessments/games doc.


Automate setting up your Google Classrooms from a spreadsheet using the free Classright extension
Overview - You install the Classright extension and can easily manage some Google Classroom tasks fight from a Google Sheet.  This one may be more for the advanced user, but it's simple enough for anyone. 
  • Classright is a free Google sheet add on used by over 2 million teachers to manage Google Classroom.
  • Bulk Create, List, Delete courses & bulk add, invite, list or delete students from Courses.
  • Use it right from your Google Sheets without a line of code to manage your Google Classrooms easily.

Yes, I am letting the cat out of the bag.


Canva just keeps adding tools and getting better. I see something new every time I see a demo. (The graphic above was automatically created by using their Text to Image tool under the more section.  You guessed it... I typed "Cat coming out of bag" and it created this graphic.) 
Canva is doing another training for the MS/HS teachers on Wednesday, so make sure you join us if interested. (See Jason's prior emails.)  For the ES/IS, here are links to the training materials they presented last week:
HERE are the slides.
HERE is the recording.

Be ready... but in the meantime, checkout our Canva resources doc and Canva's Teacher Resource Center for more great tools, tips, tutorials, ideas and more.  CANVA is a big deal! Jump on the train now before it totally leaves the station! 



Did you know we have an Ace in the Hole when it comes to Google Files for staff? 

We have a backup solution in place for staff that will allow us to recover any files within your Norris Google account.  So, just in case something happens, hopefully we have you covered.  You still want to be careful and never need a backup anyway.... but just in case we wanted to let you know it's here. 



Have you subscribed to our YouTube Channels?  If not, it's a great time to visit the page, and just subscribe to everyone!  It doesn't hurt anything, and it actually helps out the broadcasting team by having more subscribers.  Visit this page, and subscribe to each channel. 

Checkout the free Open Middle Math tools! 



As Alice Keeler explainst: "Open Middle provides higher critical thinking math problems for students. DOK 2 and DOK 3 level math problems require students to strategize and figure out how they would solve the problem rather than being expected to know what the first step is. Oftentimes Open Middle uses a style of question where students can only use certain digits that need to fit a pattern."

Checkout their website here, and here are links to each of their interactive problems in Google Slides. 

Combine it with Google Jamboard: Using Open Middle Math Problems






Add a Rubric to Google Classroom with Google Sheets - Check it out here





Here is a board of Grammaropolis videos ready for to go!  Make a copy of this activity to add to your drive.





Turkey Trouble? -  A book narration and activity sheets are already to go in this activity.  Make a copy of this activity to add to your drive