Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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Some great tools and tips for the start of the school year.

Thursday, August 11, 2016


Web sites and tools:

My Three Favorite Classroom Timer Tools - via Richard Byrne @rmbyrne

A Literacy Resource You Must See to Believe -  The aim [of The Literacy Shed] is to provide high-quality resources that can be used in stand-alone literacy lessons, can form the basis for a whole literacy unit, or can support literacy units that you already have in place.

Spiral Education promotes strong classroom collaboration for free!  IOS - Android and Chrome app

Help 1-8 students learn more than 1,000 crucial math skills for free - Nice game based learning motivates students to work outside the classroom too! (Over 4 million users and growing.) 

The Write Stuff - Some great tech tools for creativity and writing in the classroom. 





4 Free Digital Storytelling Tools for the Classroom via SimpleK12 
--Blabberize (Talking Avatar)
--Befunky photo apps 
--Animoto 
My Animoto notes: 
Animoto  Is a great site for creating videos from pictures! Sign up for free edu account. First sign up for a free account, then visit this site to apply for the teacher account:
http://animoto.com/education/classroom  (You can easily embed the Animoto, or link to it on your website too!)  First, create a free account, then request the education version to get the pro features for free.)


Soundtrap - allows students to capture audio, edit, collaborate and publish their final podcast, radio show, etc...  Designed for creating and sharing music too!  (Works great on Chromebooks... since it's all through the web.) 


WOW! - I like this tool! Google's new Tour Builder is great for telling a story with maps! https://goo.gl/AzDnMj   Example Tour here. 

Need to manage events and registrations ... This Google Sheet add-on will manage it for you! 

This is my favorite new Chome Extention for Gmail!  --> The New and Improved Gmelius Extension. It adds some great features that I really like! 

Google Docs & Apps:

How to Make Columns in Google Docs -- Great tip via BetterCloud Monitor | If you’ve ever tried to create columns in Google Docs (for example, if you’re making a newsletter), you might have noticed that there’s no built-in feature for it. Don’t worry, though—the workaround is easy. Here’s a simple method for making columns.

Google Templates for Students - Great list from TCEA 

Advanced Tricks for Making Your Google Slides Better with Multimedia

If you ever have a Google Doc that’s tens or hundreds of pages long, it can be difficult to find a specific section of text that someone has asked you to reference. To save time, it can be valuable to provide a direct link to a specific paragraph in your document. (Hint... it's using the bookmark function.)

5 Google Sheets add-ons that supercharge your data! 


Google Apps Education Newsletter for June 2016. 

Chrome Extensions:

WOW- This is a great list.  I personally use every one of these!  The 8 Best Chrome Extensions As Chosen By Teachers

Google Calendar:


Google Drawing:

Google Slides:
Are you looking for tips to make your presentations more engaging and captivating? Check out this episode and learn more about some cool Google Slides advanced features, that will help you improve your presentation design and flow!

Google Sites - It's new and improved! 

Google sites have been updated, and they are great!  (There are some new features.... and a few things I hope they add... ) We are a rapid release domain, so this new feature is available for our users.  You access the new sites here. 

This cheat sheet should help get you started.  (I have also added it to our tech docs in drive.) 

Google Classroom:




CoolCat Teacher's 100+ Google classroom resources. 

Classroom now lets you plan ahead by scheduling announcements, assignments, and questions to post at a later date or a specific time

Just announced from Google -Coming this fall: keep parents and guardians in the loop
Later this year, we’ll launch email notifications from Classroom for guardians so they can stay involved and help to motivate their students. Guardians will be able to sign-up to receive daily or weekly email digests of their student’s progress, upcoming work and class announcements. Administrators will be able to invite guardians directly and set domain-wide policies for guardian linking and notifications.


IOS Apps:

Thanks to free mobile apps, creating flashcards with students has never been easier. IOS & Android - FREE Flashcards by Dictionary.com looks like a winner. 

Play review games or learning games in your classroom?  Turn your iPad into a game style buzzer with this free app - Game Buzzer Free -Which I had this one when I was still in the classroom. ☺

Want to create some excitement with projects?  These apps are great for the K-12 classroom! Animate with avatars, pics and more.  This presentation from the ISTE conference will get you started.  It has Chatterpix Kids (Which is awesome for the young kids... and you hear a lot from teachers that love it!) but it also includes a ton of other ones that look great.  Check it out. 

Google’s new Arts & Culture app brings the world’s art, virtual tours and more to your smartphone Experiencing the world’s art just got a little easier, thanks to Google’s newly launched Arts & Culture application which puts works of art from over a thousand museums across 70 countries into the palm of your hand.  

7 Favorite Apps to Use with Book Creator  - Did you know we have licenses for Book creator for use on our iPads?  It's an amazing tool!
This si a great list!  The Explain Everything app is one that we provide free to teachers!  Need a code... drop me an email. 


Android Apps:

Google makes working on mobile easier with new Android Add-ons for Docs & Sheets! 
Posted by Noel Erskine at 12:16 PM 0 comments
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The NEW Smithsonian Learning Lab - a great new resource for educators.

Friday, June 10, 2016



Today’s museums are making millions of images and recordings freely available, going far beyond yesterday’s traditional field trip. The Smithsonian Learning Lab (http://learninglab.si.edu) is brand new and will officially released later this month!


The Smithsonian Learning Lab is about discovery, creation, and sharing.

The Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access created the Smithsonian Learning Lab to inspire the discovery and creative use of its rich digital materials—more than a million images, recordings, and texts. It is easy to find something of interest because search results display pictures rather than lists. Whether you've found what you were looking for or just discovered something new, it's easy to personalize it. Add your own notes and tags, incorporate discussion questions, and save and share. The Learning Lab makes it simple.

**above description taken from the Learning Lab - About Section. 

Check out the Learning lab here:  http://learninglab.si.edu  <---Be the first to check it out! 

The online portal for educational resources at the Institution can be found here: http://SmithsonianEducation.org,

There is even a live show about this new resource tomorrow on the classroom 2.0 site: http://live.classroom20.com 
Posted by Noel Erskine at 9:23 AM 0 comments
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BAM!!! Free music, awesome Tech tools... and more in this weeks tech list!

Web Tools and Resources:

Smithsonian Kids allows you to explore some of the world’s best museum exhibits This site offers tons of educational resources! Games, ebooks, lessons, animal cams and more! 

YOU have to check out TEDEd - Build a lesson around any TED-Ed Original, TED Talk or YouTube video. Make sure you view all the TED-Ed lessons! 

New 'Coding With Chrome' App Helps Students Learn to Code

Five Fresh, Fun, and FREE Presentation Tools <--- WOW! Great tools! - Some great new one’s in this list! The new free Adobe Spark tool is AMAZING!


Top 10 Places to Find Awesome Things to 3D Print

20 of the best 3D printing software tools-  And most of them are free!

Have your own classroom book library? 
Use this site to manage your classroom library! 
It's free, simple, apps and/or web interfaces, scan barcodes....... and gets great reviews. 

Free Music:

Jana Kramer: Live at Black River Studio (MP3 Digital Album) - Free

Led Zeppelin II: Remastered (MP3 Digital Album Download) - Free

These are not free - but for $1 are a good deal if you like them:

Thanks to slick deals for these!

Free eBooks - Via Zing!


You can create a class - have kids join via a code... and start assigning free books. 


Use Wizer to make creating engaging online worksheets fast and easy! You can even assign them directly to your Google Classroom classes! 

Ready to start?Read: How to make a Wizer worksheet
Watch: Getting started

ClassKick is a great tool for providing teacher feedback and works on any device free! This one looks really cool.  

The above two tools look really great! An educated guess would tell me that they will be free for several years, but may eventually start charging.  If it works as shown, it's probably worth using for the time it will be free. πŸ˜€  And who knows... they may always be free.  (I often miss on my guesses.) 

Google Doc' and apps - Tips and tricks:
How to Create a Word Cloud in Google Docs! -Nice add-on to docs. 

Google Sheets: Have Fun with Fonts 

Google sheets & slides
Posted by Noel Erskine at 7:38 AM 0 comments
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Tech tools, websites, video tools and more in this weeks list... as school winds down!

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Web sites and tools:

Poll your audience/class with Hotseat - Studio by Purdue University.  Free!  Text -Chat -Vote features.  Via the web or apps. 

Take your students on a FREE, fun, fact-filled science field trip—without leaving school! - Sponsored by Purdue University. zipTrips™ at Purdue University  Some great trips!  WOW. 

A nice tip from our very own @WilhelmBecky
Watchkin. This is a nice site for searching and watching YouTube videos. It strips all the ads and comments, and is supposed to be more "family-friendly." Students were searching for videos of world music to include in presentations so I had them search through this site which worked well. There is no guarantee something inappropriate won't still pop up when they search, but my chances are a lot better than sending them directly to YouTube. I like to use it when showing videos of performances in class too. Even when I preview everything, you just never know what ads might come up.

BandLab allows you to create music in your browser or via the free Android and iOS apps: https://www.bandlab.com/ 

Annotating PDF Files on Chromebooks with Kami - Works on the desktop in Chrome too!  (Pst... we have this added to our nsdtitans.org domain, so look for it!) 

New Feature! - Embed charts from Google Sheets in Google Docs and Slides and update them with a single click. (Remember form data goes to a Google sheet... so that's a plus if you are pulling live data from a form spreadsheet!)


Android Apps coming to Chromebooks! - It's official. 

Android apps, coming to a Chromebook near you - With over 1.5 million Android apps... there are a lot more potential apps and uses for the Chromebooks! (If you are looking to buy a personal Chromebook... maybe a touch screen would make sense??) 

A Google Docs Add-on for Grading Writing
  • Improves efficiency when commenting on student writing
  • Integrates with Google Classroom
  • Includes a rubric builder

HippoCampus.org - A top resource for MS & HS teachers!

HippoCampus.org is a free, core academic website that delivers rich multimedia content--videos, animations, and simulations--on general education subjects to middle school and high school teachers and college professors, and their students, free of charge.Teachers project HippoCampus content during classroom learning and assign it for computer labs and homework. Students use the site in the evenings for study and exam prep. Users do not need to register or log in to use the site.

As an open resource for personalized learning, HippoCampus.org was designed as part of a worldwide effort to improve access to quality education for everyone. HippoCampus is powered by The NROC Project, a non-profit, member-driven project focused on new models of digital content development, distribution, and use. NROC makes editorial and digital engineering investments in the content to prepare it for distribution by HippoCampus.

A little YouTube tech fun:

In youtube - Search for Use the force luke ... and see what happens. 

Or try the YouTube leanback - https://www.youtube.com/leanback to put you in TV mode.


Make any website interactive with questions, videos and more -  with DOCENTEDU (Not free, but does offer a free trial.) 

Teachers can add questions, discussions, and insight directly into any website.

When students go to that website, they can respond to those questions and discussions, see that insight, and take their own notes.


iBooks & eBooks:

PBS Announces iBooks for K-8 Teachers  (Free)

Videos:

Really cool!  Take a 360° Journey Through Antarctic Ice and see the penguins!  More videos from National Geo can be found here.  

The teacher's guide to using YouTube in the classroom. 

Google help for you and your students -- right at your fingertips! 

Remember last week we added Synergyse to our Google Apps Domain - Check it out! 
Posted by Noel Erskine at 7:07 PM 0 comments
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Home filtering, Teacher Tech tools, Awesome new Google features, and more....

Thursday, May 5, 2016


We need to encourage parents to filter and monitor student's internet access at home!

We do the best we can here at school... but parent's need to be encouraged to monitor at home. 

Feel free to share my recommendations doc to parents, patrons, and others that may need help. 


Misc. web tools and tech resources for teachers:


How to Add a public DropBox folder to your Google Drive - My doc will walk you through how to set this up.  I just set mine up, because I had someone that needed to send me a file, but Google blocked it.  (EXE file.)  This solution works great.  Nice way to collect files from parents, students, etc...  No sign in, etc... just drop me the file. 

Super list of free online resources to spark student creativity: https://goo.gl/uRB5iJ

Create personalized bingo cards for students with this website: https://bingobaker.com



Google Classroom:

NEW - Now you can schedule lessons in Google Classroom. Google Classroom now allows the busy teacher to schedule announcements, assignments, and questions for a later date.


Google Slides:

This will be NEW Feature -Just released ... pretty cool. Allows audience interaction (Backchannel) - Talk with your audience—not at them—with Slides Q&A





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YouTube:


Google Docs:


12 Free Add-Ons That Take Docs and Sheets to the Next Level 
Posted by Noel Erskine at 9:58 AM 0 comments
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Free apps for the K-6, math tools, web tools, TED, Snap chat for schools... and more, in this weeks tech tools.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016



Misc. Web and tech tools: 

Assessment, quick polling, exit tickets and more.... DEAD SIMPLE! 
Several staff members have been using this... and it works great.  Plickers lets you poll your class for free, without the need for student devices. Just give each student a card (a "paper clicker"), and use your iPhone to scan them to do instant checks-for-understanding, exit tickets, and impromptu polls. Best of all, your data is automatically saved, student-by-student, at plickers.com. Get the app here. 


You Can Use a Picture If: Guidelines for Image Copyrights

UPDATED - We just updated our Network Information sheet for student teachers!  If you are going to be working with a student teacher here at Norris... this is a must have doc for them! 



Mathstudio's website works right from a web browser and will connect with Google Drive too! 



Use the free Adobe Draw app to create your own color-coded maps: - A nice video tutorial. 

Google Image Search Save Image Feature - You can now save any images from your searches... and even tag them!  Pretty cool new feature from Google search!  All the stuff you save goes here: https://www.google.com/save

Create self-paced review quizzes with the free tool Quizzy. 

Snapchat:
Well, these are my first links to ever get posted to my "Education Blog and email list" but I guess we have to meet students where they are... and right now, it's Snapchat. 

Snapchat explained by students to teachers - Ever wonder how it works... this is a nice video to show you how!  Makes you feel right at home.... you can hear the school bells ring and everything. ☺
Snapchat 101 for teachers — What you need to know 

And in case you want more Snapchat info - The 15 Newest Snapchat Features You Need To Know About.

15 ways to use Snapchat in classes and schools. 


Android apps:

Five Android apps for adding special effects to photos.

Google Classroom:


NEW - Now You Can Ask Multiple Choice Questions - 
Google Classroom has updated the Ask Question feature to allow for multiple choice responses along with short answer responses. Find out more here. 

NEW - The IOS Classroom app has been updated! Save Drafts and Reuse Posts.
The iOS Classroom app has been updated with the ability to save draft assignments, announcements, and questions. This update also allows teachers to reuse posts previously used from any of their classes. Both of these features are very important to teachers who use Classroom on the web, and now they can better manage their classes on the go with an iPad or iPhone. Find out more here. 



Google Chrome:

Have you checked out the Google Play for education store with all of the chrome apps?  If not... check it out.  They have it divided into useful categories. 

Chromebooks:


Google Docs/Apps:
Update to Google Docs Adds Outlines Automatically for Easy Navigation - Displayed in a pane to the left of the page, this outline features headers for each section of your document, making it simple to quickly jump from section to section. If you haven’t manually applied headers, no worries—Google will do it for you, intelligently detecting the logical divisions within your work.

TIP: Force people to 'Make a Copy' of your doc
Sometimes when you ask people to make a copy of the doc, they forget or don't know how. Force them to make a copy with these simple steps:
--Share your doc with view rights via the link
--Change the end of the url from 'edit' to 'copy'


3 Google Apps Tools You Didn’t Know You Could Use Offline  - and nice directions on how to set up offline access as well. 

Create a drop box for files without needing a Google account, etc....  How to Allow Anyone to Upload Files Directly to Your Drive
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!

Google Slides:
Want to grab some great templates for Google Slides? Check these out: 

Google Forms:

Form Publisher will make your life easier! It generates Google Docs from a template, using Form responses. If you use forms to collect data... this could automate a lot of things for you! 

YouTube:
TIP: Want to start a Video from a Certain Spot? 
Play the YouTube video of choice --  Once you determine the time at which you want to start the video, click on ‘Share’-- Select the checkbox next to ‘Start at’.
When you share this link with your users, it will start at that time. 


Some great apps for the Elementary Classrooms to get your kids creating in an exciting & easy way. (Free too!)  

Pic Collage for kids - the best and safest visual and photo editor for home and schools!

Tellagami is a mobile app that lets you create and share a quick animated video called a Gami.

ChatterPix Kids or https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chatterpix-by-duck-duck-moose/id734038526?mt=8ChatterPix (For the older kids.) Grab your camera! Let’s ChatterPix! Chatterpix Kids can make anything talk -- pets, friends, doodles, and more. 

Popplet Lite - Popplet is the simplest tool to capture and organize your ideas. With Popplet you can quick jot down your ideas and sort them visually. 

Seesaw empowers students of any age to independently document what they are learning at school. (App links at bottom of their website.)

TeleStory - Write, direct, and star in your own TV show with TeleStory!

TED & Prezi:

If you have not experienced TED talks - you need to... they are awesome, and many are applicable to the HS level students. They have TED-Ed designed for education. 

A new superweapon in the fight against cancer - Filmed Nov. 2015. Lenght: 10:42

This presentation uses the cool (Free for educators!) tool Prezi to present some facts.  You can see the actual Prezi they used here. 

Posted by Noel Erskine at 6:33 AM 0 comments
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Some Great Tech Tools - apps and more in this weeks list!

Wednesday, April 6, 2016


Web sites and tools: 
WOW - What a list!  The most comprehensive list of free online tools for teachers and students This PDF is worth the look! Put out by a California State College. 

Have your students use this free too to create animated maps: Animaps is a great tool!   Sample of what can be done here. 

Want to know how Google Apps can assist special-needs learners? Google for Education Certified Trainer, Stephanie Parretta, provides us with some great ideas in this blog post! 

Nice presentation on using GeoGebra and Desmos in the secondary science and math classroom. (Note it has you join a Desmo's class as a student as the demo.  You would not have to do this.) 

Student Centered Chromebook Classroom Curriculum Ideas - Great Google Doc with apps, sites and more. 

AWESOME site - pixabay.com for free images for use in your classroom!  

Are you using your Doc cam to it's fullest? 20 Fun Ways to Start the School Day Using Your Document Camera.

Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – 5 Good Tools for Creating Audio Recordings Online

Google Apps Tips and Tricks: 

What's new in Google Apps - Jan. 2016 Newsletter by Google. 

WOW - I like this visual and quick guide!  A Visual Guide to Sprucing Up Your Google Doc.  Who needs... or even wants Word anymore! 

Create and/or send customizable rubrics/scores to students by email for any assignment with this Google Sheets add-on.


NEW Google Contacts look and feel - We just enabled the new Google Contacts View, so feel free to give a try! 

Become a Google Slides artist with these seven tricks!

Google Classroom:


A Deep Dive Into Google Classroom - A 50 minute training video. 

Digital Differentiation with Google Classroom. Some nice idea's from "Shake up Learning.". 

Google add-on's: 
If you haven't checked out the add-ons available on Docs, Sheets, & Forms recently, you need to do it!  There are some amazing tools available to you.  This Google Slide presentation <-- This is a GREAT LIST! has a ton of great info and recommendations for using these add-ons. 

Need a Twitter Archiving Google Sheet? - This one is for you!  Here is an example of the sheet used for the FETC convention hashtags. 

Google Draw:

Google Forms - Some great new tools!

9 Awesome Add-ons for Google Forms.


Alice’s Quick Way to Make a Google Form - This is a pretty cool tool for quickly making forms. 

IOS apps:
Virtual Heart from the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago for iPad is a great free app for students. 

Lapse It • Time Lapse & Stop Motion Camera • Free By Interactive Universe. Add's some features not found in the camera defaults.  (Offers a Pro version for $1.99 too.) 

Did you ever wonder why the periodic table is shaped the way it is, what gives each element its own unique set of properties, or even how elements combine to make everyday objects such as a cup of coffee? With “NOVA Elements,” explore an interactive periodic table, play a game hosted by David Pogue, or watch the two-hour NOVA program.

NASA App by NASA
Come explore with NASA and discover the latest images, videos, mission information, news, feature stories, tweets, NASA TV and featured content with the NASA App for iOS.

Some great free apps for learning on a variety of platforms. 

Learn to create your own artwork by tracing photos →  A great tutorial by Tony V. using a free iPad app. The video features the free Adobe Illustrator Draw app for iOS and Android, and the techniques can certainly be used in other drawing apps.
Posted by Noel Erskine at 11:37 AM 0 comments
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