It's free membership week for TCEA! May 3-7. After 5:30 on Friday it goes back to $49
TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) is similar to NETA but they have a much larger section of online resources including free tools and resources available to members. At this cost... who can go wrong!
Join here for free. (After joining you will get an email with detailed member benefits as well.)
They have some great lunch and learn sessions that are always recorded for review later. They have ebooks, app lists for Chrome, IOS & Android and a bunch more. They have a great active EDU community as well.
Some nice 15 second tutorials (No - really 15 seconds.)
Some new GoGuardian Features! Coming April 20, 2021:
Did you know you have free access to one of the best online graphic's programs for you and your students? Canva gives away accounts to you acn your students. (Normally it's $120/year!) It's simply one of the best!
New Marketplace addon that can help visualise storage, and also has other nice features, like Copy Folder, Transfer Folder, and more. Folgo, Drive toolbox
Google Slides comic strips: Another great tip from DitchThatTextbook! Use your webcam to take pictures and add them to Google Slides (or Drawings). Add speech bubbles to make them into comic strips. A fun and easy activity! Watch the video to see how!
April 17th through 25th is National Parks Week in the United States. This is a good time to share that the U.S. National Park Service hosts thousands of videos and pictures about the various parks and forests under its care. More info here from one of my favorites - Richard Byrne @rmbyrne
Checkout these Google Slide Templates for Earth Day!
Some new GoGuardian Features! Coming April 20, 2021:
Annotations
This new feature will enable teachers to make an annotation that appears on students’ screens, showing them where to click or helping them move through assignments. This feature will help teachers better guide students remotely; take a look at the video for details. Short video here.
Detecting Student Inactivity
This new feature will help teachers detect when a student may be inactive, or may not be using their device. It will show a “Student may be idle” indicator on the student’s tile when the student has not interacted with the webpage or browser for more than 10 minutes during an active GoGuardian Teacher Session. This will help teachers understand which students are engaged and which may be inactive during the lesson.
Just released in March:
GoGuardian Teacher Instructional Integration with Google Classroom
If you are using scenes in GoGuardian : Updates for GoGuardian Teacher Scenes
Misc. tech:
How to Create Comic Strips in Google Slides - 4 minute tutorial.
Wheel of Names - A Random Name Picker Check Out this short tutorial here.
Want to Improve your students keyboarding skills? Try this game... it's fun too! Z-Type turns you into a starfighter pilot. You zap letters and words as they fall towards you. Looking for some free typing lessons? TypingAcademy has those as well.
QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK (Add Bullets and Formatting in Google Classroom) - Yay! Rich text formatting has arrived in Google Classroom. This means we can finally add bullets, bold text, and more! 
Watch this quick video to learn how!
Spark Interest in Local History With These Digital Newspaper Archives - More info here.
Google Now Lets You Tour UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Virtually - (Here is a use for our expedition kits) -More info here.
Remember screen recording is now built into Chromebooks. (Must be running Chrome 89 or above, so update your Chromebook!) This was in one of my prior tech emails a while back as well. Hit Ctrl + Shift + F5 key on your Chromebook to start!
You don't have to be high tech to create and use animation in the classroom - Some great resources from TCEA. (Not that most of us would come up with this type of a massive animation in Google Slide, but a pretty cool demo of one.)
Explore ready-to-use, remixable Adobe Spark lessons. - Want to get students started with Adobe Spark in your classrooms? Find more than 400 Adobe Spark lessons and activities on the Adobe Education Exchange.
Did you know you have free access to one of the best online graphic's programs for you and your students? Canva gives away accounts to you acn your students. (Normally it's $120/year!) It's simply one of the best!
Checkout these Comic Strip Templates they recently sent out: Template 1 , Template 2, Template 3, Template 4, Template 5, Template 6, Template 7, Template 8, Template 9.
New Marketplace addon that can help visualise storage, and also has other nice features, like Copy Folder, Transfer Folder, and more. Folgo, Drive toolbox
Google Slides comic strips: Another great tip from DitchThatTextbook! Use your webcam to take pictures and add them to Google Slides (or Drawings). Add speech bubbles to make them into comic strips. A fun and easy activity! Watch the video to see how!
April 17th through 25th is National Parks Week in the United States. This is a good time to share that the U.S. National Park Service hosts thousands of videos and pictures about the various parks and forests under its care. More info here from one of my favorites - Richard Byrne @rmbyrne
Checkout these Google Slide Templates for Earth Day!
Virtual Sticker Pack
Earth Day reminds us to honor our planet by preserving and protecting the environment. We’re celebrating Earth day by sharing 30 virtual stickers for you to use in your Pear Deck lessons!
Earth Day Deck
These quick Slides were designed to drop into your other lessons for a bit of fun to celebrate Earth Day! You can use them as a bell-ringer, to check attendance, as a brain break, or as part of your class activities.
Earth Day reminds us to honor our planet by preserving and protecting the environment. We’re celebrating Earth day by sharing 30 virtual stickers for you to use in your Pear Deck lessons!
Earth Day Deck
These quick Slides were designed to drop into your other lessons for a bit of fun to celebrate Earth Day! You can use them as a bell-ringer, to check attendance, as a brain break, or as part of your class activities.
Five Fantastic Browser-Based Digital Tools
Here are a few browser-based digital tools you didn’t know you needed, but that can save you time and effort. And they work on any device!
Here are a few browser-based digital tools you didn’t know you needed, but that can save you time and effort. And they work on any device!
On a personal note - Facebook Now Lets Users Export Posts and Notes to Google Docs, Blogger and WordPress.com
Facebook today announced a new feature that will allow users to export their Facebook posts and notes to a number of third-party services. Although the company has long since offered tools that let you download the information you’ve posted to Facebook, the tool launching today offers a more practical way of saving that data — by allowing you to export your notes and posts to popular services like Google Docs, Blogger, or WordPress.com. More info here.
Watch the world change: Google Earth has added a time lapse feature. Watch the world change, in motion from 1985 to 2020. It's a great visual aid to talk about urban expansion, climate change, and more. Check it out - PRETTY COOL!
20 ideas for exit tickets in the classroom - Including a Google Slides template PACKED with lots of exit ticket ideas. Check it out! (From DitchThatTextBook) It's a great template!
10+ FREE EduProtocol templates + ideas for using them - Check them out here.
