💥 Tech items - Student badges, More tips on Flipgrid... Google Classroom... tech tools... and more in this week's tech tips.

FlipGrid is one of our Must-have tech skills/tools for next year - Look what they have added!

Read the FlipgridLIVE recap or watch the recording to see what's launching August 1st and beyond, including major improvements to the...

 Flipgrid Camera

 Learner Experience

 Educator Dashboard

 Discovery Library

Flipgrid tips: How to Create Whiteboard Videos in Flipgrid and Wakelet  

Checkout our "Using Flipgrid in the Classroom" doc to get started. 

Student Badges coming next year

Just an FYI - We are getting rid of the fingerprint readers in our lunch lines.  Students will be issued badges.  These badges will be printed in-house and placed in badge holders.  They will be used for lunch and library systems, activity passes and  other services. (Clever & SeeSaw QR codes will be on the backs of elementary cards.)  Each building may have some other logistics including possible lanyards, etc... 

How are you coming with your tech skills prep this fall?

Our "Remote Learning Teacher Tools and Skills - For the 2020-21 School year" document outlines the guidelines for the fall. Check it out! 

Some great sessions are coming to the Norris Tech Boot Camp on August 5th and 6th! 

Jason will be sending out the schedule in the future.... WOW it's looking great!  Thanks to everyone for making this a great event.  Hope to see you there. 

Some new resources added to our Google Classroom tips & Tricks document: 

Google Classroom header graphics (Templates) - Thanks to our very own Hanna Borgmann for sharing this one!  Did you know you can add custom graphics as the banner for your Google Classroom?  Here are a few templates in our public tech docs folder to give you an idea on getting started. Here is a quick how-to article. 

Animated Bitmoji Banner for Google Classroom - A cool trick for a fun animated banner in Google Classroom. 

Quick Tip: Emphasize Text in Google Classroom -Short 2 minute how-to video.  (Note possible limitations on this one in the video.)   

 

Leslie Fisher’s Google Classroom Training 

Kasy Bell’s Google Classroom Cheat Sheet for teachers.

Kasy Bell’s Google Classroom Cheat Sheet for students.

9 Ways Online Teaching Should be Different from Face-to-Face - Some great tips and ideas to prepare for the fall.   If you listen to the podcast they bring out some great points beyond the article.  

• We need to be consistent with our communications to parents.  (This is why we want all K-2 staff using SeeSaw and 3-12 using Google Classroom.) 
• Parents  need a learning hub to go to.  (SeeSaw and Classroom can help in this arena but there may be more in each building to guide instruction.) Parents need to be able to easily navigate and communications need to be consistent. 
• We need to encourage our students (especially in the 6-12 grades) to be checking their email each day. (Consistent form of communications.) (This was pointed out in our tech survey and is correct!) 

More Google Slide Templates! How to Use Slidesgo Templates for Daily Organization   We have added this resource to our "Google Slide templates and ideas" doc which is chocked full of templates! 

Ten Ways to Use Google Earth in Your Classroom – It’s Not Just for Social Studies -Some great ideas to check out!   

How to Convert Physical Notes into Google Documents. -It's simple. They are searchable in drive, and they OCR.  This short 3 minute video walks you through the process. 

Google Cast for Education and Share to Classroom extensions are going away!  (Bummer!) 

I think Google really missed this one up!  Especially getting rid of Cast for Education.  (It ranks up there with pulling the video editing tools from YouTube. The share to classroom extension was nice, but it's not as big of a deal and not as many teachers used that extension.   So my Google Kool Aid is not tasting as good today! 

They have a couple suggestions/workarounds, but both are pretty lame.

• Share links with students by posting to the Stream page of Classroom. Students can also use this feature to share materials with you.
• Teach students how to create bookmarks in Google Chrome or your web browser.

How can I replicate the functions of Cast for Education?

The Cast for Education Chrome extension allowed teachers and students to remotely “cast,” or share a live display of, their screen wirelessly to the instructor’s computer from anywhere in the classroom. After Cast for Education is discontinued, Google Meet will be the best tool for screen sharing between instructors and students.
Tools for educators

• Start class online meetings (inclusive of screen casting) in Classroom, Google Calendar, and Meet on your computer or mobile device.
• Create a unique Google Meet link for each class to easily start virtual meetings and screen shares with students.
• Present your screen and use live captions in Google Slides or Meet to show text of the conversation as a learning aid.

Convert Google Slides to Video -   How to Video here (It uses the Creator Studio add-on for Google Slides.) . 

Breakout EDU - A Wakelet Collection of Breakouts

Rewordify.com is powerful, free, online software that improves reading, learning, and teaching. This site can:

• Intelligently simplify difficult English, for faster comprehension
• Effectively teach words, for building a better vocabulary
• Help teachers save time and produce engaging lessons
• Help improve learning outcomes

Assess without Tests - Here is Lynne's Assess without Tests presentation at our Norris Virtual Summit.   (We have added this to our assessment tools doc) 

See new changes or restore an old version using version history. Hopefully this is not new to you, but some of you may not be using named versions which can be nice! 

Sometimes it’s helpful to look back at an older version of a Doc, Sheet or Slide to see how the contents have evolved or to restore an earlier version. In the file, click the gray text at the top saying “Last edit was on [date].” You’ll see a list of versions organized by date to the right of your file; click on a version to view associated changes. You can also revert to a particular version by clicking “Restore this version” (a blue button on the top left above your file). You can even name your versions to help keep track and quickly find the one you’re looking for.  If you’re working in Sheets, use edit history to track edits for a specific cell.  

5 Things You Might Not Know About Adobe Spark - Check it out.  Yes, we already have the Enterprise version (Free to schools) for all staff and students.  Our directions for logging into the Adobe Spark tools for Norris can be found here. 

💥 Tech items - Even more tech tips and tools from our Covid lockdown days.

Video Conferencing -  We still support both Meet and Zoom.  (We keep adding tips to our Staff doc, including our video conferencing section. )

This is a nice add-on for Zoom (Zoom for G suite) that adds the ability to easily schedule a Zoom Meeting on your Calendar just like you have been able to do with Meet.  It also adds a Zoom icon to the sidebar in Gmail for easily doing an ad-hoc Zoom meeting.

Common Sense - Does it again!  Great free collection of resources for educators and families during these times. 

Today we're launching a brand-new, free online resource to support families and educators who are transitioning to remote learning as a result of the coronavirus: Wide Open School.  <---Check it out!
Curated and coordinated by the experts at Common Sense, Wide Open School is the result of a collaboration among leading publishers, nonprofits, and education and technology companies. Wide Open School features a free collection of the best learning experiences and activities for kids, organized by grade band and subject. You will also find daily schedules with creative breaks and recommendations to keep kids engaged and exploring, one day (or one hour) at a time.

Flipgrid just keeps getting better!  If you have not used this one, it's a must!

Just announced 4-1-20 - New feature! Screen Recording in @Flipgrid.  Yes, you can now capture your screen in FlipGrid.  (you have always been able to record videos with a click of the button, now you can record your computer screen!  Great for tutorials. 

Here is a testimonial that Dick Marolf, our Middle School Band Director sent out to our MS staff a couple days ago: 

Those of you who are using Flipgrid:  I just tried something new today and it worked really fairly well I think.
I need to have readily available recordings of the music I'm asking my kids to play.  So when I go to post a new topic on Flipgrid for them, I also add a video recording of me (probably should hide my face I know!!) playing the music so the kids have an example of how it should sound.  There is an Add Recording button that takes you right to this application.  Let me know if you need help.  Next week I hope to actually use student exemplar recordings. Thanks Dick for the encouragement to staff and great job on using a new tool! What a great vetran teacher that is always willing to use new tools to reach his kids!  (As I have said before our staff rocks!)  There are so many of you doing amazing things.  Keep up the good work!

SeeSaw Shines for our K-2 teachers!   If you are a K-2 teacher, you are probably already seeing the benefits of using SeeSaw from how with your kiddos.  If not, you are missing out.  Reach out to Jason to get started with this great tool today! 

Gmail adds a setting to store multiple signature options - Will start rolling out April 8th! More info here.   (I have used templates in Gmail to accomplish the same thing up to this point, but will probably switch to multiple signatures when this comes out.) 

Misc. Resources: 

Some great Learn From Home Resources curated by another K-12 School District.

Are you using Video conferencing?  If not, you will be!  I see it as a must for all K-12 teachers! 

I know most of you are already off to a great start.  But, for those of you that have not used Google's Hangouts Meet or Zoom... you had better start getting used to them now!  I see more staff meetings and more parent/student contacts and expectations coming your way.  We are here to help!  Reach out to us and we are willing to help you!  (The best way is to practice.)  

Have you had a pod or team virtual meeting yet? Maybe a Pictionary game using Zoom or Meet and sharing a free remote shared whiteboard like WhiteboardFox  might be a fun team building activity! Try it out! 

Working from home: This invaluable Google Docs feature keeps you from losing your work
Good Doc offline sync will almost certainly prevent you from pulling your hair out.  If you have ever read any of our Norris tech tips and recommendations... you and your students should already have this on.  If not... this article will help you turn it on.  Encourage your kids to turn it on too! 

Google Forms can be your friend during these times of social distancing!

Google forms can save you a lot of time gathering information, quizzing students, assisting with parent or student sign-up, etc...

Here are a few tips and add-ons that could help:

• Remember to keep in mind the data you want and what you might sort that data on.  Do you want a separate question for first name and last name? (This will help when you have this data dumped into a sheet.)
• Plan out your form!  You can jump to sections based on a question.  This can really help you as well as make your form simple for the end user. 
• Make sure you create that spreadsheet to dump your form data into. (It's just a click of the button.)  Having it in a Google Sheet allows you to easily work with the data.
• The add-on form mule can easily automate your form by sending out emails based on question answers, etc... (This is an add-on for sheets. One more reason to automatically dump your form data to sheets.)
• The add-on Choice Eliminator is great if you are wanting to have parents or students select a meeting time slot.  After that option has been selected it's eliminated from the form so others can not choose that question/time slot,  (Ignore the low ratings, we have never had any issues.  Most of these people do not take the time to figure out how these work.) 
• You can use the quiz mode with forms to have it auto-graded. 
• You can also add pictures to a question. This works well for quizzes too! 
• If you collect their user login then users are required to log in with their Google Account.  It then collects their gmail address. 
• When you share the form for people to take... make sure you share the preview and not the actual form. (You do not want them editing your form... only filling it out.) 
• Preview the form in an incognito window in Chrome. (Ctrl-N)  This will make sure your form is ready for the public to use. 
• There are several add-ons for getting emails when a form is completed.  I like subscribing to notifications in Sheets.  That way each time a submission is made and it updates the sheet I can get an email or a daily digest of changes. (Whichever I prefer.)
• The FormRecycler add-on allows you to merge multiple forms into the current form with 1 click. You can also recycle form questions from a form in your Google Drive to the current form.
• There are many other add-ons for forms that may fit your specific needs. 

Google has created a new teaching from home resource site.  (New 3-26-20)

NMS Enrichment Activities - Great resource site put together by Jessie Andre. (Thanks Jessie for this great collection of resources.) 

A fem Misc. Resources:

• Mixkit - Hundreds of Free Music and Video Clips for Multimedia Presentations
• How to Create a Backchannel on Padlet
• An Overview of How Students View and Return Assignments in Google Classroom
• How to Collect and Organize Images in Google Classroom
• How to Design & Send Certificates With Google Slides and Forms 
• A Comparison of Multimedia Timeline Creation Tools - Updated
• Think Like a Coder - My Freshmen Love These Videos!  (These are pretty cool and really well done!) 
• Free At-Home Education Resources From Ancestry® and Access to Nearly 500M National Archives Records. 
• Free Kindle and Nook ebooks. (A few are no longer free, but still a nice list.)
• FREE Sesame Street ebooks @ Google Play and Amazon (Kindle)  and even more in this list!  This list even has a Pete the Cat book. (One of my grand kids favorites.) 

Free Online Activities and Events for Kids During Coronavirus Shutdowns

Although schools, gyms, art classes, music lessons—and, seemingly, life as we know it—are canceled, families can keep entertained and keep learning with live events and activities online.

CommonSense Media has put together a great free list of resources.  Check them out! 

More elearning resources

Here are some great resources from Ditch That Textbook. 

25 Reasons to Share TED-Ed Videos with Students

includes a free ebook download  Checkout this great article.

Google Earth launches virtual tours of 31 of the world's most incredible national parks
From Yosemite to Yellowstone, this is stay at home travel at its best. 

Here are a few new ones we have added to our "Platforms for Digital Communication with Students and Parents" doc. 

Breakout Rooms in Zoom - Short how-to video here. 

We love Google Meet's simplicity for teachers, but Zoom does have this feature that Meet does not! I have added this tip to our Remote Learning Doc.   Thanks to Katy D for this one!

On Chromebooks, Hangouts Meet does not require any installation to work.  Zoom will require students to use the zoom app. (Located here.) We have force installed the zoom app for all of our students as of 3-23-20, so it may already be installed.  

As noted in the "Platforms for Digital Communication with Students and Parents

For Norris Staff" doc, there are pros and cons to both. 

💥 Tech items - More tech tips and tools from our Covid lockdown days.

More Zoom changes - meeting passwords are required. 

As noted in my last tech email, Zoom is battling a lot of security and privacy holes.  They are now requiring passwords on all meetings.  (Many of you have already navigated these waters before you receive this email.) I think the HS has all come to a consensus of using the same password on all of their meetings to make it easier for their HS students. 

If you have already scheduled meetings on your calendar you can set the password for them: 

Go to the settings for each meeting; then go to edit the meeting at the bottom; then change the password to what you want,

If you do a quick ad-hoc meeting, Zoom assignes hyour meeting password.  If you add a meeting on the calendar

This article by zoom is helpful.  - Best Practices for Securing Your Virtual Classroom  (I would not require registered users, since we do not require students to have Zoom accounts.) 

Automagical Forms Add On - Take a PDF document or worksheet and automatically turn it into a Google Form or quiz.  - Short 2-minute how-to video here.   More info here.  (You can create 30 questions per week for free. 

Misc. tech tips and resources:

Thanks to Kellen Korinek for sharing this one: 11 Little Tips for Better Video Chat (For Teachers...and Everybody Else), 4 min. video with some nice tips. 

A Random Name and Image Picker - This one is a little different it allows you to upload pictures too. Check it out. 

How to Create Simple Videos on a Chromebook - No Apps or Extensions Needed - Simple video on using your built-in webcam to make these videos. 

Now You Can Use Flipgrid to Make Screencast Videos - I know I mentioned this last week, but wanted to highlight it again.  Here is a nice article on getting started. 

5 Google Classroom Tips for Teachers - Things You Might Have Overlooked or Forgotten -  Some great tips from one of my favorite "tipsters". 

Quizlet Live now has an Individual Mode so that a class can play together when physically apart!  - https://quizlet.com/blog/1297

Now there are 3 FREE Courses! Each less than one hour! Check them out if you have not tried these great resources. 

• Raising handsBook Creator
• Green heartFlipgrid
• Collision symbolAdobe Spark

One for the K-6 kids and families. TIME FOR KIDS DIGITAL LIBRARY FREE FOR THE REST OF THE SCHOOL YEAR

Schedule Individual Online Office Hours Meetings via Google Classroom - Checkout this simple way to make this happen. 

How to have 1-1 conversations with students in an E-Learning environment -GoGuardian to the rescue.  Thanks to Janelle for this tip. (I Know it was sent out to the HS and MS already.)  

This is something I miss from a regular classroom because you could just go over to a student during work time and have a quiet "private" conversation. However, in this new environment, I had a hard time doing that without calling them out in front of peers. The chat feature in zoom allows you to have a "private" conversation, but many students don't have that up or may not see it. Today, though, it dawned on me that I could use the chat feature in GoGuardian, and it would automatically show up on their screen. I knew this was there and have used it, but I don't use it much in the classroom because (a) I am not sitting on my computer, and (b) it is impersonal. However, given this new environment, it is the closest thing I can find to having a "private" conversation with a student. I still prefer in-person visits, but this is still better than nothing. 

Some great tips from Tony Vincent. -  (Thanks Tony for allowing me to use your graphics! )  (Follow him for more great tips!) 

You can use the Line tool in Google Slides to create mind maps and flowcharts.

The background color of your Google Doc doesn't have to be white. There are some good reasons teachers and students might change the background color.

Teleprompt.me is a free online teleprompter. Your text is presented in a large font on your screen. It uses your computer’s microphone to listen to you speak and scrolls as it recognizes the words you’re saying. 

💥 Tech items - HOT off the press- Google Meet is now in classroom! Get Loom today, pro- free forever!, a feature button added to Zoom, more great tech tools, Phishing bad guys and more in this tech email.

NOW is the time to take a look at Workbench.  It's STEM based lessons can easily be assigned right from Google Classroom.  Build, find, customize, and share standards-aligned lessons for your classroom- all for free (forever!).  THisone lends itself really well to remote learning!  Checkout our how-to document to get started. 

Why are we requiring parents to print things off at home for their kids assignments? A few thoughts and ideas... 

I was asked this question today (Monday). It was hard for me to answer.  Realize many people no longer have printers at home.  If they do have a printer, sometimes it's harder to print from a Chromebook.  I just want to give teachers a heads-up, because you may be getting that same pushback. You may want to look for online sites/activities that do not require printing.  Maybe interactive activities pushed out via Google Classroom and collected back via Google Classroom???  (You may get some ideas from our K-2 Templates section in Google Drive.)  Also, if you push out PDF worksheets in Classroom... students can mark them up and return them via classroom as long as they are using the IOS or Android Classroom app. 

Google changed the name of "Add to my Drive" to shortcuts.  More info here: Create pointers to any file or folder in Google Drive with shortcuts,  (Thanks to Nate for catching this one.) 

QUICK TIP - Remember you can use appointment slots from Google Calendar to meet with small groups.

The new version of Chrome (Ver. 81) is adding Tab Groups. One headline read... Google Just Gave Millions Of Users A Reason To Keep Chrome.  Not sure it's that big, but it is a great new feature.

• You must be running the current version of Chrome. (Ver. 81) (How to update Chrome.) 
• The more tabs you have open, the slower your device will run and more it taxes your Internet so this might be a great feature for you. 

How about starting a lesson with a mystery picture? Another great tip from Tony V.  

Hot off the Press - Google Meet is now in Classroom!

Thanks to Gault for catching this one rightway!  

Loom would be one of our top 10 tools for teachers to use for remote learning. And now it's FREE! 

Loom is one of the best for recording screens, doing talking head demos, and more.  They are giving away the pro features to teachers forever!  (Yes, no crack dealer here to get you hooked... No 90 day trial...they are giving it away to teachers for free  forever!) 

•  Click here for the verification process details.  This is a permanent change moving forward. <--All staff and students should do this! 
• Take advantage of the opportunity to get a powerful application!

They have a nice Chrome extension as well.

We do have this one in our Staff Covid Resources doc, but wanted to make sure all teachers have seen this and grab this deal.  (Ask Matt Rosenau about this deal - this tool rocks!) 

More Internet options for families.

The Holland Church reached out to us as an option for students/families.  It sounds like they have several students utilizing their Internet and facilities during this time. I have added their contact information into our Parent’s Guide and Tech Help for Covid-19 situation document.  (As always, feel free to share this with families/students.

Padlet is one of the top tools for remote learning and especially the K-5 teachers. 

Padlet has been around for years and is an awesome free tool.  It allows boards to be viewed and edited easily.  One comment from a Lynne at ESU 6 was that elementary students love using it and teachers have loved using it with remote learning. 

They will be clearing out your bank accounts, watching you on your webcam, listening to you on your computer, watching your security cameras... and more!  Kind of scary. 

I know this sounds like fearmongering, but if you keep clicking on Phishing emails these are things that could happen to you. Phishing attacks are worse now and the bad guys are using the Covid-19 to get you to click on things! 

More info in this recent article.

Our last month's Phishing campaign still had 4% of you clicking on links!  We can do better!  Be careful and do not click on phishing emails! 

Miscellaneous tech tips and tools: 

 "If you are looking for a meaningful assignment that you can give students while we are all stuck at home, consider doing a 'living through history' assignment."  Checkout more info/ideas here. 

 A few remote resource tips with Google Classroom, Meet and Chrome. 

 ROYALTY FREE MUSIC by BENSOUND - is a great resource is you are looking for music to add to projects and videos. 

  At OnlineLearningIdeas.com, we gather the best ideas being shared around the web by educators. We link to them all in one place so you don't have to search. It's run by Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook and Holly Clark from The Infused Classroom. 

E-Learning Digital Resources by Content Area  

These are NDE's vetted instructional materials for e-learning, so it is intended to serve as a compendium of quality instructional materials for classroom teachers to use for remote instruction.  (Thanks to Brenda Tracy for sharing this resource!) 

Checkout this Glide App - A ton of E-Learning resources put together by educators.  (You also get to see how you could create your own Glide App for resources.)  (Thanks to Lynne Herr at ESU6 for sharing this great resource.) 

FlipGrid is one of our favorite tools and it rocks for remote learning!  Checkout the Remote Learning with Flipgrid Guide to get started. 

And one more Zoom update - surprise, surprise.  But, it's a nice feature. 

Zoom has added a button to quickly lock the meeting, enable waiting rooms, block screen share, block chat, and block renaming users.  (you can easily turn these off and on as needed within the meeting. (Like screen sharing, etc...)