💥 Tech post- Google Slide tools, some nice apps, YouTube tools, free music, and those annoying Windows pop ups... and more in this weeks tech email.

Accessibility Tools Chrome - A presentation by Heather Callihan - Technology Integrationisy, Northwest Public Schools at the Fall NETA Conference.

A couple of nice Google Slide add-ons: 

Slido is a polling service that offers a free Google Slides add-on and companion Chrome extension. Combining the two allows you to easily poll students and other audiences. 

The Unsplash Photos Google Slides add-on gives you instant access to Unsplash's collection of free, royalty-free photographs.

Check out this Google Slide game show template. From Ryan O'Donnell @creativeedtech 

With the new rollout of audio to Google Slides, he added music and sounds to his most popular TV Game Show style review game. Its called "Frazzle" (similar to Heads Up). You access it here for your own free copy.

 

Note - Norris staff, I have added this to our Google Slide templates folder in our tech docs folder. 

World Wildlife Fund's Together app - WWF Together - Revisiting a Favorite App

The World Wildlife Fund's Together app is a great free app.  Here is a little bit more about the app.   We do have several sets of iPad carts that are available for use in the classroom. 

The WWF Explore! app and WWF Free Rivers  are available in the Google Play store so they could be loaded on our Chromebooks.  (These are different apps and feature sets. They gets great reviews.) 

Easy Ways to Add Polls & Quizzes to Existing Slideshows  More info here. 

If you have not used FlipGrid - You need to give Jason a call and have him show you this cool tool.  It rocks!  (And if you have not had the pleasure of working with Jason, you are missing out! He rocks as well!)  This cool tool has a lot of uses in the classroom.

Free Music for Video Projects - Another great resource from  Richard Byrne

@rmbyrne 

It's HERE.... they finally rolled out the ability for users to embed MP3 and WAV audio files from Drive into Slides.  As long as you have added our Norris Public Folders to your google drive (Everyone should have done that already.) you will have a lot of Wav files all ready for you to insert.  In your presentation go to insert audio. (Just search for a tiger, phone, bells, etc...) 

9 Top YouTube Channels to Boost Classroom Lessons -  Article/resources here. 

How to Make a QR Code for Just About Anything - Check it out. 

Websites and Apps for Making Videos and Animation - Some are free, some are web tools, some are apps... check out the list here to see if there are some tools for you. 

YouTube can find, track, and blur faces of people who appear in your video.- A great tip from Tony Vincent @tonyvincent

Teach Civics or government - this one is for you. Annenberg Classroom - Civics website makes teaching the Constitution manageable, meaningful. EDU review can be found here. 

Gsuite Update - Insert collapsible text boxes into new Google Sites
Coming soon - Quick launch summary
Site editors can now insert collapsible text boxes into a new Google Site, which site viewers can click to expand. Collapsible text boxes can help condense large blocks of text, like content on FAQ or Help Center pages, allowing site viewers to quickly navigate to the most relevant information. More info here... it's coming soon! 

How to Make a YouTube Playlist for Your Favorite Videos - How to article here.  Organize your playlists by subject, assignments, etc...  You can share a link to a playlist that contains the list of videos for that subject, project, etc...   If you are not doing this now... check it out.  It's a great time saver and keeps you organized. 

In Google Classroom - New feature in Rubrics Beta, Reuse Rubrics!

In both Classroom and Assignments, you now have the ability to create a rubric from scratch or reuse an existing rubric you’ve already created. When you select the option to reuse a rubric, you can select to use a rubric available in the current class or switch to another class to reuse a rubric from that one.  

Once you find the rubric you’d like to use, you can preview it or select it to use immediately. While in preview mode, you can also flip between rubrics to easily find the one you need. We will be rolling out this functionality to all instructors in the beta over the next few days. Learn more about rubrics in Classroom and Assignments.

Pro tip: If you'd like to share rubrics you've set up in Classroom with other teachers, simply add co-teachers to a shared class with multiple rubrics. All teachers and co-teachers will see those rubrics for assignments in other classes in the new reuse workflow.

Are you getting annoying reminders in Windows 10 that look like spam? If so, you are allowing notifications from certain websites and they are popping up in Windows 10.  These can be bad... if you allow them from sites that are not that great.  In other words... the website can continue to spam you with notifications. 

Go into your Chrome settings here: (Paste this in your URL) --->   chrome://settings/content/notifications

Under your Allow - Remove most sites.  (You may still want a few from Google Drive, etc... but most should be removed.)  If you can not remove them via a 3-drop menu, then they are an app or extension you have installed. 

When you go to a website and it asks you this.... say no! 

Some great ideas from ditch that textbook:  http://ditchthattextbook.com/

14 ways to turn your classroom into a game show - You've likely heard of -- or used -- Kahoot! or Quizizz. They turn review activities into a fun game show-like experience.

Want to ramp up that experience beyond "just a Kahoot! game"?

Check out these 14 suggestions for bringing game show elements into the classroom. (Hint: There are some new websites and apps you might not know yet on this list!)

If they like TikTok, they'll LOVE this.

• Do you have students who are enamored with TikTok? If so, you're not alone!
• Hundreds of millions of users age 16-24 use the app regularly worldwide.
• Want to grab your students' attention and inject some fun in a lesson?
• Give them the template in today's post and make a TikTok-inspired activity!

It's all ready to... grab the template and assign it in Google Classroom!  Let the creativity begin! 

💥 Tech tools - Free apps, Free short video clips, CLASSROOMQ, YoTeach, and more in this weeks tips!

Norris staff attending the York MLK in-service day. - Tip

Make sure you take some time to create a free Sched account and select the sessions you plan to attend. https://sched.com 

After you have selected your sessions, you can view/print just your schedule by clicking on your account in the upper right-hand corner and then going to My Sched. 

Better yet - view your schedule on your phone:

https://yorkmlkconference2019.sched.com (Bookmark this on the phone!) 

Mobile setup can be found here: https://yorkmlkconference2019.sched.com/mobile-site 

Misc. Tech tools/sites:

Three simple noise meters you can use in your classroom. 

A Google Docs Add-on That Tells You if Students Read Your Feedback 

Free IOS app:  PicCollage EDU for iOS is free this month (usually $1.99). It's a safe photo editor for schools.  

Another great tip from @tonyvincent   - Follow him on Twitter for more great stuff.

The GoogleClassroom iOS and Android apps have the ability to markup assignments. A teacher can use a finger or a stylus to add colorful annotations, handwriting, and highlighting.

Pexels Videos offers hundreds of short videos that you can download for free and re-use in your own video productions.  Try Pexels Videos to Find Green Screen Backgrounds! 

Take Animated Virtual Reality Tours of Ancient Rome at Its Architectural Peak (Circa 320 AD).

New free mini-book has a chart that compares next-generation storytelling technologies: 3D, AR, 360°, VR, & Hologram. 

Richard Byrne's Video Tutorials on a variety of Google tools and subject.  250+ great tutorials in this Youtube Playlist. 

Engage Your Class with These Fun Online Math Games - 2 Minute Read ᛫ Epson ᛫ November 29, 2018

• Notice how the Math Playground one (K-6) integrates with Google Classroom. (Not everything on Math Playground is free. You will notice the example Middle School one they give is for premium (Paid) members only.) 

10 Writing Prompt Tools for Creative Inspiration 

Wow! 100+ teaching and learning strategies! Flip a card to read about the strategy. You can download PDFs and PowerPoints.  (Unfortunately, this site only works on Chrome on the desktop)  From Tony V - I'm really digging the Why-Lighting strategy! "Students highlight text then write why they highlighted what they did in the margins of the document." Or, they can highlight in a digital document and add a comment with their reason for highlighting.  

PowerSchool Gradebook tip - How to Copy Assignments from One Semester (or Year) to the Next.  

Thanks to Janelle Coady for doing this Screencastify video on how to do this.  

FlipGrid - The leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to Ph.D. educators, students, and families. This one makes my top 25 list! -https://info.flipgrid.com/ 

The gang @flipgrid just released Integration docs. http://bit.ly/2CO8p4b  a collection of subject and age-specific integration docs from the Flipgrid Educator Innovation Leads http://bit.ly/2COtpYs. Each doc is packed with resources and ideas for amplifying your students.

This is one of those tools that will always be free!  (Microsoft purchased them and it's a part of their strategy.) 

If you have not checked it out yet and have questions - Feel free to drop Jason or me an email and we will help.  Betsy Barent also did a session at our summer boot camp on this great tool so she would be a great resource as well!   

Make PDFs Interactive with Kami. 

We love GoogleDocs, but sometimes we still have a use for PDF's and Kami is one to keep in the tech tool belt.  This article will walk you through the process. Make PDFs Interactive with Kami. 

Create your own Virtual tour: (I noticed there is a session on this at the YorkMLK day!) 

Visit https://vr.google.com/tourcreator/   -  You may already familiar with Google Expeditions, a virtual reality platform that lets users experience hundreds of places in the world in 3D. But what you might not know is that you can now create your own tours using Tour Creator. This tool enables us to create your own tours, using imagery from Google Street View or our own 360 photos, then publish them right into Poly, Google’s library of free VR and AR objects.

7 Minute tutorial video on using Google's VR Tour Creator. 

Note - (Here at Norris we have VR-Viewers in the IS and MS buildings that can be utilized throughout the district. 

Great back-channel resource - YoTeach! 

TodaysMeet is gone.... but YoTeach has you covered! Just set up a free room, give your students the URL, and everyone can come on in and chat just like they did on TodaysMeet. What’s even better is that you can password protect your room, participants can add pictures and drawings in the chat, and rooms don’t appear to ever expire. 

No more having students raise their hands - CLASSROOMQ to the rescue! 

classroomq.com Rather than have them wait with their hands up or get off-task, have them add their name to a digital queue. (They can even add an optional note about what they need.) The teacher sees the names in the order they were submitted, and once the student has met with the teacher, their name can be checked off with a single click.  Great for our 1-1 Chromebook classrooms! 

Applied Digital Skills - Google's curriculum at your fingertips!

Website: https://applieddigitalskills.withgoogle.com/c/en/curriculum.html 

Remember - This curriculum is a part of WorkBench that we have deployed at Norris. (Your students and classes are already setup! ...and it does integrate with Google Classroom too.) 

Sample lesson: 

Annotate Text in Google Docs 

Time 45 - 90 minutes    

Make digital notes in an article to increase your understanding of what you read. 

Great for: Clarifying questions, helping students remember what they read, consolidating thoughts to participate in class discussions, studying for exams. 

SKILLS TAUGHT: Researching a topic & Document formatting

AUDIENCE:  Middle School & High School

New to Google's curriculum - get started in less than 3 minutes! 

Sign Up

1. Sign in or sign up 

Visit our website and click “Sign in” or “Sign up” in the top-right corner. You’ll use your Google account (or set one up) to log in.

 

2. Create a class.  (It works with Google Classroom too!) 

Click the “plus” sign at the bottom of your screen to create a new class and give it a name (e.g. third-period science). 

3. Add lessons and students

Click “Add lessons” to explore the curriculum and choose a lesson for the class you’ve just created.

WEBJETS - It's like Padlet on steroids.  

webjets.io  Similar to Padlet, users create boards where they gather items on cards, placing these on a desktop that feels like a bulletin board. Their free plans give you enough to make it a nice occasional tool for the classroom. 

A card can contain an image, an embedded video, a live Google Doc, an attached file, or a table containing a variety of elements organized into columns. Probably the best feature is that cards can be collected into folders, where the items are listed along the left, and the selected item appears in a larger window on the right. You can keep multiple folders on one board, and all cards can be collapsed or expanded, making it easy to neatly collect large amounts of resources all in one place. Webjets would be a great, flexible tool for group projects or task curation, whether it’s done by you or your students.

160+ Chrome Apps and Extensions for Teachers and Students - from Kasey Bell's shake-up learning site. 

Check out her growing database of apps and extensions. 

Remember, here at Norris students are only allowed to install apps and extensions that are approved.  Here is our current list of approved apps/extensions for students.  If you need any added, let us know! 

What's coming in Gsuite -

Embed Google Drawings in Google Docs -  Posted: 07 Jan 2019 10:51 AM PST

What’s changing 

Now you can embed Google Drawings files saved in Drive into Google Docs and update the content of linked drawings embedded in Docs. When the source file is updated, you’ll see an “Update” button in the upper right-hand corner of the embedded drawing.

Assign unique colors to chart elements in Google Sheets

Posted: 07 Jan 2019 10:07 AM PST

What’s changing

Now, when you’re working on a chart in Sheets, you can give a design element (such as a bar on a bar graph or a point or line on a line graph) a unique color, instead of all similar elements being the same color. This works for bar charts, column charts, line charts, scatter charts and for certain series in combination charts.

🎁 Our tech present to you! Tech tools and updates - Workbench, Killer iPhone tip, PowerSchool login without passwords, animated GIFs, and more!

Norris School District now has Workbench!

Build, find, customize, and share standards-aligned lessons for your classroom- all for free (forever!). Check out the help doc to get you started. <--- WOW this is a great new tool!

Easy Student (and teacher) Login to PowerSchool - Using Clever - No passwords required -only Google! 

If your students do not know this... It's the easiest way to get to PowerSchool and many other applications! -Check out the simple directions here. 

Misc Tech tools and tips:

Learn how to use your bitmoji to create feedback notes in Canva that can then be added to 

Google Keep. -Nice short 2 minute video. 

Surf to http://brush.ninja . Draw a series of frames and export as an animated GIF. This is pretty cool! Check out what others are doing in their gallery/examples: https://brush.ninja/animations 

Make your own Emoji online with this simple tool: http://phlntn.com/emojibuilder/ 

20 Google Slides activities to add awesome to classes 

Wow, there are some great ideas and templates in this article!   I love the Icon boards to get kids started right away. The Google Slides sticky notes template/idea is pretty cool.  Check them out!  Great stuff from Ditch tat Textook! 

Google Calendar SMS (Text message) notifications to be removed January 7, 2019 (This one hurts- I loved this feature!) 

Posted: 19 Nov 2018 08:25 AM PST - Starting on January 7, 2019, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be available. Since Calendar offers in-app notifications, you can still get notified, regardless of your device or connection.  If you had previously been receiving Calendar notifications via SMS, they’ll be replaced with in-app and email notifications.  More info here.

This Little-Known iPhone Space Bar Hack Has Everyone Losing Their Minds.  

(I think it takes IOS12 to work.)  Here is a quick 45-second video demo of the feature.  

Google Photos adds depth control, color pop to iOS app

It works on all Portrait Mode photos and doesn't require an iPhone XS or XR.

I like the portrait mode, but you need a new iPhone to do it.  This addition to Google Photos makes it simple to do on all of your photos.  More info here. 

Free Meme Maker for Classrooms from Filmora 

Why would you want to use memes in the classroom? - Find out why and how here. 

Why Your Student eBooks Need a Spark Video 

Spark Video + Book Creator = Favorite App Smash - Find out more here! 

Some great resources from National Geographic! 

Thanks to Natasha Gault for sharing these! She just completed her National Geographic Educator Certification. (By the way... congrats!)  Throughout the experience, she had the opportunity to use some really amazing resources that she shared with our MS staff. If you would like to talk about how to use any of these resources, she would love to help/share.  There are some really great projects!

https://mapmaker.nationalgeographic.org/

National Geographic's interactive mapmaker overlay maker.  

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/mapping/nat-geo-mapmaker-kits/

Download, print, and assemble national geographic maps for your classroom.

https://tourbuilder.withgoogle.com/

Take a premade tour that connects to student learning or you can create your own.  

Host Hangouts Meet meetings with up to 50 participants with our Norris Education Edition. 

New info from Google released - November 29, 2018

Located here: https://meet.google.com

Meeting with teammates, clients, or customers around the globe is critical to getting your job done. For those times when you need to meet with a larger group, Hangouts Meet now allows G Suite Enterprise users to organize meetings with up to 100 participants and G Suite Business and education users to host up to 50 participants. This participant count includes people from both inside and outside of your organization. 

 

This new extended participant limit supports people joining from any mixture of video and dial-in entry points so you can flexibly bring together even more people from all over the world. It is now fully rolled out across all domains.

Erskine's Notes:  Note, Google is transitioning their "Hangouts" for video to the product called "Hangouts Meet".  When you visit the old Hangouts site - https://hangouts.google.com/ and click on video it takes you to the https://meet.google.com site. 

💥 Tech tools - Last one of the school year - But some great ones! Clipart, New features in Google and more!

Misc websites and tech tools:

Favorite Sites for Free Clipart and Photos

IOS App -  Stickyboard 2 for iPad is free right now. It's usually $4.99.

16 practical YouTube pointers for teachers.  (Some great tips!) 

Twelve Tools for Building End-of-year Review Activities (That Aren't Kahoot Games)

Make a QR code that opens to a gallery of Images. -  Ever want students to do a quick activity and don’t want them to spend all their time searching for images? Or, maybe you are not comfortable sending students out on the web to search for photos? Perhaps you want students to use a specific set of images? Then consider creating a QR code that links to a shared Google Drive folder with images!

Kids (Or teachers)  interested in programming? - Three Ways to Develop Programming Skills This Summer

Google Classroom:

Some great tips by Tony Vincent. (Guessing even a veteran will pick up a few tips from this one!)  

Automate Repetitive Tasks in Google Sheets With Macros

This new feature in sheets can same you a lot of time with repetitive tasks. Check out this short 1-minute video to see it in action. 

Elementary & Intermediate teachers - are you using Google Classroom?

...If it wasn’t for Disney on Pandora, you could have heard a pin drop! Love seeing them so focused with Google Classroom to review reading! Check it out from our own Katie Mueller @MrsMueller2nd 

There are a ton of great uses in the younger grades! The #GAFE4Littles will get you started. 

Google added Offline Gmail baked into the new Gmail -No extension installs, etc...

Here are the quick settings:

• Log in to your Gmail account.
• Click on the gear icon to open the Gmail menu, then click Settings.
• Under Settings find Offline. Click on it.
• In the Offline menu, click Enable Offline Email.
• Choose how many days to sync, and whether to keep or remove cached email when signing out of a Gmail account.
• Click Save Changes and you're done.
• Give Gmail some time to download messages, and be sure you have Gmail open in Chrome before going offline.

Just Like Twitter, Gmail Lets You ‘@’ Mention People

Via TNW | Gmail got a much-needed visual refresh and some clever new features recently. But did you know that the revamped interface also supports user mentions, à la Twitter? When you’re composing a new message or a reply, you can insert anyone’s email address in the body by entering the @ symbol, followed by their name. It'll bring up a list of people in your contact list with that name, and choosing any of them will add a mailto link labeled with their name. When your recipient clicks that link, it’ll bring up a new compose window so they can write to that contact.

Have a computer at home - you may want to run this once in while! - Chrome Has a Built-In Malware Scanner, Here’s How to Use It

Google Slides tip:

4 Key Google Slides Tips and Tricks to Know

Tip - In case you didn't notice, Google Slides has a Grid view. Click the View menu and select Grid view or click the Grid view icon in the bottom left corner. 

Remember - New things coming to Google Forms!

Six New Features Coming to Google Forms

💥 Tech tools - Whiteboarding apps, cool tools, new Gmail tips, Google Sheet awesomeness, and more in this weeks tech tips.

Misc. web tools and sites:

10 ways Google tools can make the end of the year ROCK - Via DITCH THAT TEXTBOOK

This is cool!  - First-Ever 3D VR Filmed in Space | One Strange Rock  (This also works with Google cardboard or other viewers.  If you have not looked at other 360 YouTubes -you can move the video around, give it a try! You can even pause the video and move it around.)  They have a ton of other 360 videos on YouTube. 

Adobe Spark Activities for Elementary Students.  Remember it's free and easy! 

A Hyperdoc Unit That Will Blow Your Mind!   (An extensive lesson with some ideas you can use within your Hyperdocs as well!) 

Here's an awesome tool and tip that our very own Megan Good shared with our High School staff. Our Norris teachers ROCK!  Thanks for sharing this Megan!  Just found a website called gimkit.com.  You can use your quizlet sets with it to create a review game for students.  I know this time of year my students are getting a little tired of quizlet, kahoot and even nearpod so this could be something new to share!  For the free version you can create 5 kits, but with how easy it is to set up with quizlet, I may just delete and create new kits if I would need more.

The new Gmail!

5 Powerful New Gmail Features You Need to Start Using Right Now - this is a nice list with screenshots. Also, it shows a few new features coming soon. 

13 Essential Gmail Terms and Features You Should Know About - This is a nice list of settings, apps, and features that may improve your Gmail experience.  

New Coding App/Tool available for teaching: 

This week, Google released a free app called Grasshopper that teaches adults how to code JavaScript on their phones. https://goo.gl/KHUkAc Grasshopper's courses are quick lessons and games on your phone that teach adults to write real JavaScript, which is used by more than 70% of developers. Grasshopper takes a similar form to apps like Duolingo that teach foreign languages. (We have approved this Android app on our Chromebooks that run Android.) 

Great Whiteboard site!

Easy Chalk - WOW - a bunch of features!  Without logging in (Free) you have a lot of features to use but cannot save what you have drawn. (You could use 3rd-party screenshot tool.) You get some added features when you create an account, but you are only given 30 days free)  

Note- I have added this to my Whiteboard and drawing tools doc along with some other great ones! 

Google Slides:

New features - New in Google Slides: linking in Docs, guides and rulers, and improved commenting. 

Google Forms:

How to Create a Custom Google Forms Theme

Google Sheets:

WOW New - Think macro: record actions in Google Sheets to skip repetitive work -  Starting today, you can record macros in Sheets and save yourself time!  (This short 1-minute video will give you an idea of how a macro works.  

They have also added some nice formatting features and more!  Check it out - Additional details on the new macro recorder and formatting options in Google Sheets. 

Make checkboxes in Google Sheets! - Check it out!

Get more control over chart data labels in Google Sheets - New Feature April 2018. 

5 Google Sheets Features You Should Know 

Get more templates in Google Sheets -  Template Gallery and Template Vault are a couple add-ons that will add a few more.  Here are a few sites with some nice templates:

Smartsheets

Template.net 

IOS APPS/TIPS:

This iOS Trick Makes it 100% Less Annoying to Move Apps Around -WOW I never knew this one! 

A few good reminders:

Remember - avoid the reply all if it's not needed!  It's fine in many instances - but often you can just send the person a direct email instead of letting everyone know you were kind enough to thank them.  There are times we do want to do a reply all!  Sometimes it's adding a new tip or comment that helps the thread.  But, as much as we love you... maybe it's better to directly email the person if you liked the new dip or cookies that were in the lounge. 

Never fall for a fake pop-up on your screen and "call for support". They want your credit card! They are finding more ways to get your personal info and money. Always be cautious.