💥 Tech items - Free templates, new features, tutorials, originality reports beta, and more....

Norris students have now added over 20,049 posts to their Seesaw digital portfolios! K-6 teachers... now may be the time!

Are you a part of the success?  I know many of you are already using Seesaw, but if you have not had a chance to check it out yet, now may be the time!  Give Jason a call and he will be happy to visit with you about what Seesaw can do for you and your students.  Parents love it. Kids love it.  And yes... our teachers love it too. 

Three Google Forms Tutorials for Beginners - Some nice tutorial videos to get you started with this powerful tool! 

Autocorrect and Smart Compose now available for Google Docs on web -  Last year, Google announced improved as-you-type spelling and grammar corrections in Gmail. Now, they are bringing that functionality to Google Docs on the web. This will start rolling out in the next few weeks.  More info here on Autocorrect.  More info here on smart Compose. 

Some great Google Slide Templates and ideas in this one!  Grab them now: 

Are you getting some web pages blocked? If so, let us know!

If you see a warning similar to above, please let Bryan know.  If you can take a screenshot that is helpful. (Use the Print Screen button on your keyboard to use the Greenshot tool.)   We recently replaced our old firewall with a couple of new ones.  In the process, some updated firewall rules and signatures may block a few things.  Let Bryan know and we can slowly get those corrected.

Side note on the firewall - Our old firewall served us for almost 8 years.  That's unheard of in terms of "firewall years".  One more way the district tries to make the pennies stretch.  Also - Kudos to Williams.  I am not sure if there is another school network admin that can swap out a firewall with two new redundant firewalls and see almost no interruptions within the network.  This guy truly rocks!  

How to Add Audio to Google Slides – And an Updated Tool for Easy Recording checkout the tutorial here.  And if you need some audio or music for your presentations checkout Nine Good Sources of Public Domain & Creative Commons Audio. 

12 Alternatives to Google Images Check them out here. 

20 digital bell ringer activities to kickstart class - Check them out!

[HEADS-UP] Famous 'Shark' Got Hooked and Lost 400K in an Embarrassing Email Phishing Scam - phishing emails and scams are something we all need to constantly be aware of.  In this story, they even asked the right questions but that was not enough!  Read the short story here. 

Turn a video clip into a looping animation by uploading it to http://EZgif.com. You can choose start and end times, crop, add effects, change speed, write text, overlay images, and optimize the file size before saving as a .gif file.  Great tip from @tonyvincent 

Resources from Shake Up Learning! 
You will find hundreds of free resources for using Google and G Suite for Education, Google Classroom, how to get Google Certified, free lesson plans, templates, downloads, tips, tricks, cheat sheets, online professional learning courses for teachers, and much more!

Great tip from @alicekeeler 

I have one Google Sites I use to make lesson tutorials. I just make all the pages hidden from navigation so I can just link to that specific page.    

20 ways to use Pear Deck to engage students

Here's another great tip from Matt at DitchThatTextbook!  Actively engage your students through PearDeck.  It uses your Google Slides presentation.  The free version is enough for most of us!   

13 Tools to Record Audio on Chromebooks and Other Devices 

Check them out here! 

6 clever Gmail tricks to minimize regret, frustration and spam
Gmail can help keep your inbox -- and your reputation -- clean by giving you control over what comes in and what goes out of your Google account. This is a nice list of 6 tips that I am sure many of you will find useful.  

Google's Teacher Center offers free professional development resources to help educators grow their skills
The Teacher Center houses a variety of free PD resources to help teachers feel confident using Google tools in the classroom. Google’s Teacher Center is a free, interactive online platform with a curriculum developed by educators for educators. Whether your staff is savvy with classroom technology or just getting started, they’ll find courses that expand learning at any level, including video tutorials and multiple certifications to demonstrate mastery of Google tools. The Teacher Center is the go-to spot for educator resources and professional development.  Check out these great resources here. 

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📢 If you use Google Classroom - Check this out! --New Originality reports feature in Classroom  

I know I sent something out in August about this... but I figured I would remind everyone about this feature and now is the time to try it out.  (Unlimited reports are free.)  This could be a great tool if you have students to reports, research papers, term papers, etc..

Our District recently joined the Google Classroom originality reports beta. This is a unique opportunity for you to pilot a new unreleased feature in Classroom and help shape the development. For more information, see this blog post. <--- you will want to read this for more details.

What is Originality Reports in Google Classroom?

Originality reports is a new feature that brings the capabilities of Google search right to your student assignments and grading interface through Google Classroom. The learning tool helps both teachers and students thoroughly review and analyze coursework to make sure it is properly cited and avoid unintentional plagiarism. This feature was designed to help students improve their writing and spot potential issues while saving you time while grading.

Getting Started and FAQs:

• Share this post via Classroom announcements with your students to help them learn more about how to use the tool for their assignments 
• Check out instructions for Originality for instructors on the help center
• For additional support reach out to the Classroom Community Forum

Submitting Feedback

Did you know you can send feedback directly to the Google for Education team via the “Send feedback” button within Classroom? Feedback on products in their early stages have big impact on product design. When submitting bugs, feature requests, or user confusions, be sure to start with “Originality Report.” Always include screenshots with feedback.

This feature was designed to help students improve their writing and spot potential issues while saving you time while grading. NOTE - When an instructor enables originality reports for an assignment, all students will be able to create reports up to 3 times for Google Docs files before they turn them in to spot check and correct potential missed citations.

Once the feature is generally available, instructors will be able to access originality reports at no charge for up to 3 assignments in each course they teach. Schools that would like unlimited access can upgrade their instructors to G Suite Enterprise for Education. During the beta, all users can use originality reports as much as they need. NOTE - During the Beta, you will have unlimited use of this. After that time, you will be limited to using it on 3 assignments, so using it on major papers or reports would be the way to go.)

If you have questions or need help... let us know.

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And another reminder... Tech training opportunities this summer!  

As noted in my email to staff earlier this week, I am starting to get a few questions about the Google Summit, Doane Classes and more... so I figured I would share what we have. 

• Doane Classes - For credit (Norris teachers can sit in for free without credit.) 
• Google Certification classes and stipend.
• Google Summit - Registrations are due March 30th at 8 am.
• Tech boot camp.
• And more...

Here is a complete listing of dates, registrations and information. 

💥 Tech items - FlipGrid video tool, remote mouse, more fonts, great updates and more in this weeks tech tools! -Check them out.

Use your phone or tablet as a remote mouse on your computer!

This one has been around for a while but wanted to mention it again since we have a lot of new staff members.  This document will help get you started. If you need help, let us know. 

Are we helping our students get the most from their 1-1 Chromebook take-home devices?  The smart worker's guide to using a Chromebook offline has some great tips to share with our students. (And use with our staff Chromebooks.) 

Windows 10 has notifications in the taskbar - Don't miss out!

The new Chrome update includes a right-click option on webpages to send that page to your other devices. 

This is kind of a cool feature, that may come in handy once in a while.  Basically right click on a web page and select your device to send the web page to. 

• You need to be running the current Chrome version. (So update your browser if you do not see it.)
• You need to be logged in and syncing to those devices in order for them to show up.
• You may need to reboot your phone for it to work.
• The alert shows up in your notifications on the computer so you need to accept the request similar to a Google Casting request as shown in the above post. 

Expeditions Coming on Chromebooks!

Already have Chromebooks in your classroom? Now you can explore the over 1000 virtual reality tours in Google Expeditions on your Chrome OS devices. More info here. (The list of supported models is small right now, but growing.) This new feature is not a show-stopper right now, but it shows what's coming and it will be great.  (Remeber - we have several Expeditions carts that are available for use now.  Talk to Jason or your media centers for using these great resources.) 

Google Forms Updates & Improvements
Locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms will be available starting in August. In addition to Locked mode, Google Forms will now enable you to import questions from other Forms into new ones in order to save time. More info here.

G Suite Update: More controls and customizations for headers and footers in Google Docs

Previously, you could set a single header or single footer for your entire document, with an option to make it different on the first page only. Now you can also define a specific header or footer for each section of your document, or use different headers and footers on odd and even page numbers.  More info here.

New fonts intended to help improve reading speed now available in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

The Google Fonts team has teamed up with Thomas Jockin to create a series of fonts that are aimed at improving reading speed. To learn more about the research behind this initiative, see here for more details.   Here is a quick video by one of my favorite tech resources. 

Some great resources from the Norris Tech Bootcamp! 

Thanks to Jason Gault and to all of you that presented and attended our tech boot camp on August 6 & 7. If you have not been to one you may want to consider attending and/or presenting next year. I know Jason sent this out already but wanted to share again:  Here's a Google Doc containing the SESSION RESOURCES that were presented.  It's not the same as being there, but there some great takeaways from these resources.

If one of your students asks about an email from the tech department about issues with their YouTube account - Read this for more info: 

Everyone at Norris has a YouTube account. (They come with each G Suite account.)   Some users created a few things or used a few tools that caused that account to be a "branded" account.  No one really knew they had this and it was not a big deal until some change happened with Google and school created accounts with YouTube.  So - you can read this doc for more info if you get questions from any of your students.  We have sent an email to each staff member and student that was affected. (400+ students and 20+ staff accounts.) 

 Congrats to these staff members for becoming Google Certified over the summer:

sarah.harms@nsdtitans.org  Completed Level 1 -  7-18-19

shelly.patrick@nsdtitans.org  Completed Level 1 8-7-19 

adam.kranz@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 7-2-19 

jamie.kernes@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1 -  7-5-19

kelly.baehr@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1  7-30-19

colin.kubik@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1 -  6-10-19 Level 2 - 7-1-19 

james.myers@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1 -  6-27-19 Level 2 - 8-7-19

eric.lechtenberg@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1 -  8-7-19  

See our complete list of Google Certified Staff members here.  Watch out this spring for another opportunity to become Google Certified and earn an extra $600 doing it!

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. Some links to nice yearbooks and newsletters for the classroom.  Check them out! 

This article - 20 activities to Ditch that Textbook has some great templates for the K-2 teachers. We have these templates in our K-2 templates folder here.   

FlipGrid - New feature added to record video.

20 activities to "Bloom" with the new Flipgrid camera  -Nice resource for ideas! 

💥 Tech tools - Great student sites, end of year tech tools, Google sheet tools and more in this weeks tech tips.

A list of Web tools and sites that require no registration for students. 

Here is a nice list of sites/tools that do not require students to create accounts: https://bit.ly/noreg19   This list has some great resources!

Create and Insert Image Carousels in New Sites

Via G Suite Updates -- Google is making it easier for site editors to share a selection of images in new Sites by creating a new image carousel.

SeeSaw End of Year Best Practices

Archive classes do not delete your classes or remove students! Do not turn off family access!  Here is a short 3 min. video.  (This is also included in our Norris Important end of year reminders for staff concerning technology document.) 

Clever - New features coming! Have you created a Classroom page?

Did you know you can build your own classroom page (Better than Symbaloo now!)  You can also click a button to launch an app/page for your entire class. If you need help, talk to Jason to get started today with your own class page!  Great short video tutorial here. 

Fun review games. Almost no prep time. 

If you're looking for new ways to review at the end of the year, this post from Matt's DitchThatTextbook is for you.

Twelve Tools for Creating End-of-Year Review Activities

Check out these resources compiled by Richard Byrne @rmbyrne

10 tools for effective peer feedback in the classroom

Click here: 10 tools for effective peer feedback in the classroom

Teaching students some Chromebook skills? -This one is for you! 

Chromebook grade level skills K-12. 

G Suite for Education: 90 Million and Beyond!

Last month, Google announced that 90 million students and educators are now using G Suite for Education and shared 15+ G Suite product updates, including accessibility features like closed captions in Hangouts Meet, editing Office files from G Suite, inserting audio files into Slides, and more. Check out the news!

Google Classroom Updates

To help teachers and students find assignments quickly, Google added topic filters to the Classwork page and changed how new items and topics post to the top instead of the bottom so that students can see the newest information first (newly created courses only). To make Classroom accessible to all students, they also changed the way attachments appear in assignments by bringing back thumbnails- so all attachments now have an image preview, especially useful for students who aren’t yet reading. More on Classroom updates here. 

Sign up to get Google for Education updates in your inbox.  <--- I recommend signing up! (You only get 1 email a month packed with some great resources and updates for education. 

Three new features to format and work with data in Sheets

Posted: 08 May 2019 09:08 AM PDT

What’s changing 

We’re introducing three new features that will help you clean up and work with your data in Sheets. These features are: 

• Remove duplicates 
• Trim whitespace 
• Compatible spreadsheet shortcuts 

Complete info here. 

How to Automate Google Sheets With Macros

How-To Geek | Google Sheets lets you automate repetitive tasks with macros, and you can then bind them to keyboard shortcuts to execute them quickly. They work using Google Apps Script to capture your actions for later use. When you record a macro in Google Sheets, it automatically creates an Apps Script with all the code to replicate your actions for you. This means you can create complex macros without knowing how to write code. How-to article here. 

Dropdown List in Google Sheets - How to article here-Simple!  From http://jakemiller.net/ 

Misc. Gsuite tips:

Set a cut-off date on Drive shares via the Set expiration feature

The already very powerful search in Google Drive now allows you to limit a search for files to a single file hierarchy

How To Work With Images in Google Docs

Misc. Tech Resources:

8 Options for Making Digital Maps  

Lots of New Videos Added to One of My Favorite Alternatives to YouTube 

How to Use Spark for End-of-Year Celebration Videos 

60 Tools to Inspire Students with Chromebooks

💥 Tech tools - Form add-ons, make your own GIF's, Cool brush tool and more in this weeks tech tips!

If you in the Elementary and not using SeeSaw... you are missing out!

Jason has been working with a lot of teachers in the elementary getting Seesaw up and rolling. The feedback from staff and parents have been great!  If you have not tried it out yet... make an appointment with Jason to check it out!  SeeSaw's home page. -- 2-minute video overview. 

Misc. Tech Resources: 

Intelligent Search in Google Drive Available for All G Suite Editions - This new feature has just been added to Google Drive. (Our nsdtitans.org domain is on rapid release for feature sets.)

G Suite quick access side panel in Drive - Coming to the web.

You can now access the side panel while using Drive on the web. That means you can access Calendar, Keep, and Task while using Drive, Gmail, Calendar, or Editor products (Docs, Sheets, and Slides).

Organize Your Browsing with This Chrome Dashboard Extension 

Record a 3-second reaction video with your computer's webcam and share as an animated GIF with the free website http://andtheniwaslike.co  COOL!

How to Make and Use Your Own VR Tours in Google Expeditions  -Remember we have a couple of VR carts available for Google Expeditions! 

How to Make Common Craft-style Explanatory Videos. 

VoicePods Adds a Multiple Voice Option

How to Virtually Place Yourself in Front of Any Landmark With Free Image Editing Tools - Using  Remove.bg  

How to Create & Use Canned Responses in Gmail - This has been one of my favorites for a long time now! - Give it a try. I love this Gmail feature! 

How to Use and How to Disable Gmail's Smart Replies - Short 2 minute video, (If you are not using these... you are missing out. 

 Google Has Improved Access to G Suite Accessibility Settings 

✂️ Upload a photo to http://online.photoscissors.com. Mark what to keep with green and what to remove with red. See the results instantly, and download as a PNG with a transparent background.

Gdocs and Forms add-ons:

5 Favorite Google Forms Add-ons  and My 5 Favorite Google Docs Add-ons via Richard Byrne @rmbyrne  

Head over to http://brush.ninja . Draw a series of frames and export as an animated GIF. COOL!

Classroomtools.net has added another tool! 

Animated Cube Creator -  What is it?

Create an animated 3D cube with text, images, and media. 

Save your work for future editing and embed it in your own website. 

If you have not looked at any of their other resources... now may be a good time! https://www.classtools.net/  

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Some great resources from Ditch That Textbook:

Google Slides for interactive notebooks - Google Slides interactive notebooks + 20 activities to fill them.  Think out of the box using slides- it's the best-kept secret for teachers! 

30 Google Classroom tips every teacher must know!

Taking notes can be a drag. - Creating notes into something special -- something very visual that actually represents your personality and learning preferences -- is magical. 10 tips for creating awesome diginotes with Canva

Speech & Thought Bubbles in Google Drawings

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💥 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.