Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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Tech tools and tips - TONS of free music, Free eBook with Audio and more!

Thursday, October 15, 2015


Quick Tip: Are you checking your Gmail Spam filter daily? You should be!  This site will help you find it if you are having trouble.  I check mine 1-2 times a day! 


Google Feud - Pretty Cool! If you have not seen this, it's worth a look. Like the name says, it's like Family Feud guessing "HOW DOES GOOGLE AUTOCOMPLETE THIS QUERY?". 

Amazon has theTreasure Island Book (Kindle e-Book & Audiobook) for Free. http://goo.gl/sMQWWT (Remember you can use these via their web player, IOS app, etc...) 

Clipular: Screen capture, screenshot, share/save. Chrome Extention  
Capture a region, visible content of a tab, or a horizontally/vertically scrollable page as a searchable image & bookmark it.

Google Apps Script and Add-on Feature: Form Limiter 
Google Forms are used for many scenarios ranging from sign-up sheets and surveys to classroom quizzes. In many cases, it would be very beneficial to have the form shut off and stop accepting responses automatically according to a deadline or quota. Visit this quick overview for more info. 


FREE Music!

(Thanks to the slick deal's website for this list!)
Play.Google.com has many Playlist: The Very Best Of Various Artist (MP3 Digital Album Download) for Freelisted below. 

Note, must be logged into your Google Play account in order to take advantage of these offer(s). I do both my personal gmail account and my nsdtitans.org (School) account! 
Posted by Noel Erskine at 3:07 PM 0 comments
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Tech Tools, FREE music, Apps and more!

Monday, October 12, 2015

Web tools and sites:

Easily create MP3 recordings on any device with SpeakPipe (speakpipe.com/voice-recorder)

Are you doing a blog instead of a website for your students? (I know several of you do!)  Create a Physical Record of Your Blog With BlogBooker. This is a pretty cool way of keeping a record of your past year's postings to parents, etc...

Audience Interaction Made Easy - Live Q&A, Polls  and more.  Similar to Today's Meet, Sli.do gives you ways for students to ask questions and for you to take polls free. 

Free Music - Grab it while you can!  (FYI - I grab these with both my gmail and nsdtitans school email addresses.) Thanks to slickdeals for this one!



I recently had an elementary teacher ask about timers, so you know us tech guys... we find some technology that may work!  Thought I would share this within this posting as well:

Online Timers (Use with your computer and projector) 
With the online timers, you can always use the zoom feature in your browser to enlarge them... or the zoom-it tool that starts each time with your computer. 

This online timer is like your grandmother's old timer: http://timerrr.com/
Online Egg Timer - http://my.online-eggtimer.com/ 
Online Stopwatch is a free website that gives you the choice of a stopwatch function or a countdown function. http://www.online-stopwatch.com/full-screen-stopwatch/

The Zoom-it tool is on every computer within our District.  This allows you to zoom in on the screen... but also has a built-in timer.  This doc should help with that program. 

Timer Apps for your iPad (Use with iPad or mirror it to your Apple TV.) 
Red Light, Green Light - Free App
Best Sand Timer - Free App
With the iOS 7 update and above, the iPad clock has a timer with a great visual that shows how much time has passed.  You can even change the sounds to ringtones or other cool sounds. 
There are many other apps... you may have to do a Google search to find the right app for you needs. 

Google tips and tricks:
Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – Take Advantage of the Google Drive Template Gallery

10 Google Docs Tips that Take Seconds & Save You Time

12 Google Search Tricks You Probably Didn’t Know

Video Blog (Short 4 minute video): Google Apps for Drawing and Artwork in the Classroom - Via Synergyse -Some great apps in this one! 

Google Apps Script & Add-on Feature: g(Math) - Via Synergyse

Google Draw:
How to Use Google Drawings to Create Mind Maps

Gmail:
If you are looking for an advanced email signature... WiseStamp - Email Signatures for Gmail is a nice option that has gotten good reviews.

Google Classroom:

WOW - Google calendar integration comes to Google Classroom! 

NEW! Forms integration in Google Classroom! -  Nice 1 Minute video

Classroom overview with 2015 updates. Nice, quick overview if you are not using Google Classroom. 
Posted by Noel Erskine at 6:15 AM 0 comments
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Some great Tech Tools, free apps, and score a free t-shirt too! All in this week's post.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015



Websites and web tools:
Quill.org provides free writing, grammar, and vocabulary activities to middle and high school students. - Thanks to Jason Cullison for finding this gem!  A great website with some excellent activities and game-based learning exercises. 

InnerBody (http://www.innerbody.com) is a great website for learning about human anatomy.

How to make some really cool email signatures right from your Google Drive. http://goo.gl/vm9d2y 

Have you tried POWToons??? it's pretty cool.  Welcome To The Intersection of Technology and Creativity for Teachers & Students - PowToon is Giving Away $10 Million Dollars of Classroom Accounts for The New School Year

Need to create video ... YouTube is really the best and free answer. 
Google offers several free tools: 
YouTube capture for IOS is so simple. It makes is easy to shoot and upload video to your channel.(It even does simple video edits on your device.  
YouTube Creator Studio- By Google, Inc. IOS version or Android Version makes it easy to manage your channel on the go. 

Once your video is uploaded, the YouTube video editor makes it easy to edit your videos.


Google Apps, tips, tricks and more:

Google Sheet Add-on:  Need  to remove duplicates from a Google Sheet? This add-on is a great tool for doing just that! 

Google Sheets Now Automatically Analyzes Your Data For You! - Pretty cool new feature! 

Google Sheets has seen another update that makes getting work done a bit easier. Now, when you paste data into a cell, you will have the options to paste everything, just the value, or just the format. More info here. Thanks to Aaron Svoboda's Synergyse site. 

In case you missed it (Janelle C shared this one with our staff already!) .... here it is again Great Google Drive Add-ons for Teachers - This resource has some great tools! 

Schedule an email to be sent later - This article compares 3 tools you can use. 

Set Expiration Date on Shared Items
Sometimes you need to share folders or documents with others but only for a short amount of time. Perhaps you are working with a group of people and want to provide access to some of your documents for reference or instruction. Once that time together is over, you might not want them to have that information any longer. This Script will do the trick. 

And some tips, tricks, and more from the Google Guru:

Google recently solved this problem by adding a new option to the Google Docs interface specifically for viewing recent edits and the editors that made them. Simply click the “See New Changes” button next to where it says “Help” on the Doc navigation bar and view the whole edit history as well as who made the edits. It’s time you got the full picture when collaborating.
3 Google Apps Tools You Didn’t Know You Could Use Offline
Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – How to Use Handwriting in Google Docs and Forms. Great for math expressions too!  
Google's updated training center has some nice tutorials and resources for you and your students. 

Google Chrome:
Back to School with Google Chrome: The Complete Guide! - You can even download a copy of this right to your Google Drive.

Google Classroom:
Take a look at the assignment option in Google Classroom from both a teacher and a student perspective. This short 5 minute video is a nice overview. 
Check out what's new in Google Classroom including the ability to reuse posts and ask a question. This short 4 minute video is a nice overview.  Google's Aug. 24th post "Head back to school with new features in Google Classroom" will get you up to speed with the new features awaiting you in classroom. 

Sign up for this great online (and free) hangout:  A Deep Dive Into Google Classroom. September 30th 4-4:45 ET (Starts at 5 pm our time.) 
Google set out to change the entire way that you manage your classroom and your workflows with radical simplicity. Come find out about one of the newest and most exciting innovations for Google Apps for Education–Google Classroom. You will be amazed by how much of your workflow can be transformed to digital through the use of this new tool. 
They will be giving away Official Google Apps Bootcamp t-shirts to attendees of this session! (These are put on by the Google Guru - and are usually great... and you get a free shirt too!) 
If you are sharing docs and having student share files with you.... you really need to use Google Classroom! 

Free Apps and more:
FiftyThree's new Paper app is a productivity powerhouse. This free app, may be worth a look with it's new update! 


If you are a Norris Teacher....


Clean out your Z Drive!  This doc should help you find where your Z drive files are hiding: How to determine the size of your Z drive, and where the files are hiding.
Posted by Noel Erskine at 6:56 AM 0 comments
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Short and sweet -- Tech tools, Free Apps, and some great Google tips and tools!

Wednesday, September 9, 2015



Web sites and Tools:

The wonderful, free digital portfolio app Seesaw is now available on Chromebooks and Android, as well as iOS. Via TCEA (@TCEA

Free Apps today (9-9-15):

iLearn Geography for iOS is free 9/9; normally $2.99: http://ly.tcea.org/yqyfl  (iPhone version) 

Photo Captions Premium for iOS is free 9/9; normally $2.99: http://ly.tcea.org/wrpff 

Reading Comprehension Skills – Grades 1st and 2nd for iPad is free 9/8; normally $3.99: http://ly.tcea.org/guaws 

Create Videos on the Chromebook
How to create an explanatory video on a Chromebook http://goo.gl/lVTwZP  (A couple tools you may not be familiar with!)

Send All Your Students To The Same Website With Two Clicks - On Chromebooks! 
Google Apps Update - Send All Your Students To The Same Website With Two Clicks  If you are using Google classroom... this is a GREAT TOOL! 
The Share to Classroom Chrome Extension, which was released by Google last week, is an easy way to send all your students to the same website during a class. Save time emailing everyone out links or wondering if they typed the URL correctly, this new extension will put everyone in the right place. The short 3 minute video will walk you through the process. 

Prevent People From Downloading, Copying or Printing Your Drive Files  This short video will show you how. 
Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – Create Freehand Drawings in Google Slides 

Posted by Noel Erskine at 1:25 PM 0 comments
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Free Music - Tech Tips - Free apps and more! Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Friday, September 4, 2015


IOS apps:

You have to see this one... even if you do not teach math!  PhotoMath is an IOS app that uses your camera to do the math.  This video will demo the app.  Here is a link to the app. (Kudo's to Drew for finding this one!)

Some great Google apps tips, tricks, apps and more: 

How to Save Time When Replying to Email.  This short video will show you the Auto Text Expander for Google Chrome add-on. 

Create and Access Custom Maps in Google Drive - This new feature is great. I even used it for my vacation maps. :)  Students could do maps of anything for classroom projects... History, Geography, and more!

Create graphs and complex math equations directly from the Google Docs sidebar with g(Math) - This article will walk you through the process! 

Well, it turns out there is a script that automatically provides you with a URL that allows any user to upload a file to a designated folder in your Google Drive. The beauty of this script is that anyone can send the file to your Google Drive without signing in to a Google account!
Voice Typing now available! 

Now Voice Typing is a standard feature in Google Docs, both on the Web and mobile but only in Chrome. (One more reason to always use chrome!) (There have been some extensions that made this happen in the past... but now it's built right into Google Docs.) 

Click Tools
Select “Voice Typing”
Click the microphone icon that appears to the left and begin speaking.
When done, click the microphone again to stop.
Note - At Norris, every webcam (Logitech Doc cam) has a really good built-in mic... so you are ready to go! 

Did you know that Chrome has a remote desktop app?  Find out more with my how-to doc.
From the Google Blog: Posted: 02 Sep 2015 12:40 PM PDT
Today, we’re launching a new Chrome extension for Classroom called Share to Classroom. This extension makes it easy for teachers to send all of their students to the same website during class. Once the extension is installed, a teacher can simply open a website and “push” it to his or her students, triggering that website to open on the students’ devices as well. (It also works the other way—students can “push” websites to their teachers.)

A TON OF FREE MUSIC!

Google Play has many Playlist: The Very Best of (Various MP3 Digital Album Downloads) for Free. 
Must be logged into your Google account to purchase (free).  You can grab it under a gmail account, your nsdtitans.org account... or both... like I did. :) 
Posted by Noel Erskine at 2:34 PM 0 comments
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Free whiteboard app, great clip art site, Google tools, and more in this weeks tech tips!

Tuesday, June 30, 2015


Web sites and tools:
Free Clip art, media and more... 
If your students are looking for media for a project they're working on, AllTheFreeStock is a great place to begin that search. Link: http://allthefreestock.com/

Dozens of Story Starters in One Free eBook via Free Technology for Teachers - Make Beliefs Comix ... tinyurl.com/oeabb9f

Need to make a motivational poster - This one is a Winner!  Quozio is a handy website for making quotes look stylish: http://quozio.com 

Fun & free animated video lessons for English Language Learners. (You will need to click on this link on a computer with iTunes or on your iPad.) 

IOS apps and tips:

Stage Pro: Interactive Whiteboard and Document Camera (For the iPad.) <-- Free until 7-4-15 Reg. $4.99


Tons of iPad Resources - iPads for Teaching by Kathy Schrock

Talkboard – Sketch and Talk With Others in Realtime ipadapps4school.com/2015/05/26/tal…

Google Apps - Tips and Tricks:

15 FREE Google Drawings graphic organizers — and how to make your own

Tech Edge, iPads In The Classroom - Episode 165, Nutrition Apps

Google Apps - Tips and tricks:


Google for Education newly designed Training Center - https://edutrainingcenter.withgoogle.com/training 

Some tips from the Guru:

Collections is the newest feature to be added to the Google+ platform. By giving you the ability to create blocks of themed content, Collections is the ultimate way to organize the items you have posted to Google+ and get them seen by the right people.
The paintbrush tool in Google Sheets provides a pain free way to copy the formatting from one cell to another. When you are copy and pasting information into a spreadsheet this tool will help you keep the fonts, colors, and conditionals consistent throughout.
Email Schedulers: Which One Is Right For You?
Scheduling an email is a great way to get ahead on work and take care of that Father’s Day email before you forget. Boomerang, Right Inbox, and SndLatr, all allow you to schedule an email to be sent at a later date. We took all three for a test drive and put together this comparison to so you can pick the right one for your needs.
Mute annoying group threads (Gmail)
We’ve all been there. A group email thread quickly deteriorates into lunch discussions and inside jokes, popping up in your inbox each time another irrelevant reply is sent. Did you know Gmail offers the option to mute these threads so they don’t distract you from your real work?
How To Access Your Desktop From Your Phone
Viewing and interacting with your desktop is necessary when you need to view items that are not located in your Gmail or Drive. This extension brings your computer desktop to the small screen and replaces your mouse or trackpad with your fingers. Your computer should not chain you to your desk, Remote Desktop will break you free.

Share Individual Tabs In Google Sheets 
Sometimes you want to share one tab of a spreadsheet while keeping the other tabs private. Protecting the cells prevents collaborators from editing particular tabs but they can still view the contents, so it is not a valid solution. The ImportRange function in Google Sheets allows you to create a dynamic copy of particular tabs in a spreadsheet that you can share without worrying about collaborators viewing information in the other tabs. 
Posted by Noel Erskine at 1:57 PM 0 comments
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