Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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💥 Tech tools - NETA Congrats!, TIPS , New Google tools, Video tools, More Google Fonts and more!

Monday, March 19, 2018


Congrats to these Norris staff members for being presenters at this years NETA conference!

Katie Mueller, Jamie Kernes, Shelly Coe, Julia Odgers, and Jason Gault will be presenting at this year's conference - Congrats!  Here is a list of their sessions.   Natasha Gault was also awarded a Classroom grant for $$$ for her classroom!

If you have not registered to be a member - DO SO NOW!  It's free, and gets you a great email newsletter as well as an opportunity to apply for classroom grants, contests, and more!  


Misc. Web tools and sites:


Free tools to make your students better writers! - Quill provides free writing and grammar activities for elementary, middle, and high school students. (Overview Video here.) 

ABC Mouse provides content for pre-K and Kindergartners.   Though it charges families, teachers can sign-up for their own virtual classrooms. (Full Online Curriculum for children AGES 2– 8) 

How about a #gafe4littles activity!
Leprechaun edition of the create and graph activities...works on computer devices. In Google Sheets Littles create a scene with the drawing, graph their items, and complete word/number sentences.  Make a copy of the Google Doc here to get started. 

Book Creator - An awesome tool for creativity 

Students Can Work Together with Book Creator’s Collaboration Feature - Great on Chromebooks!   Side note for Norris staff - We also have this available for the iPads. 

To help kickstart your bookmaking, we've curated 50 top tips, ideas and lesson plans from teachers that have already successfully integrated Book Creator into their classroom (and yes, we made this book using Book Creator).  Check it out! 

Add more fonts to your Google Docs!

 


Check out this article that walks you through the process! -How to add more fonts to Google Docs


Video tools for Chromebooks:

Several favorites from this list include Screencastify, Loom, Spark tools and more... 

Some nice tools from our very own Tristan Mitchell Mrs__TMitchell:
Here are some review/practice tools that I use in Technology that the students seem to enjoy! 
  • Think On Your Feet (which I know some of you already use) is a GoNoodle game show that incorporates movement. You can upload your own questions and have teams compete against each other for points. Warning: this can get prettyyyyy intense! 
  • Flippity.net has templates for a jeopardy type game, flashcards, BINGO cards, crossword puzzle, memory game, and lots more! You can save each template as a link and share!

Find the perfect IOS App:

Finding an App Based on Student Need - The Insignio database can assist.
Finding an App Based on Content or Topic -  Try fnd. This website allows you to search for apps by content or topic.
Finding an App Based on Recommendations - Some resources from TCEA:

The New Google Hangouts Chat  

Google has added a new tool as a part of Gsuite and it's called Hangouts Chat.  I know we have had hangouts and chatting for a while, but this is a little different. (Side note - It's Google's answer to Slack, which is really big in the business world now.)

Nothing changes with hangouts, so we can continue doing video and chat the way we have been. The difference here is you can now use https://chat.google.com and create rooms and discussions threads within those rooms.  You then have a nice location (Room) for all of your threads as well as notifications when things are added, etc... "A team approach". 
For now, we have enabled this feature for all staff here at Norris.  (WIth classroom, not sure it's a needed feature for students.)  I have updated our Google Hangouts doc  (Chat Section here) to include the new chat feature. 

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

How to manage file versions in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
Rather than creating a new file, you may just need to create a named version of that file that you can refer to--or print--later. Here's how to manage the file version from your desktop browser.

Airbus CIO: We dumped Microsoft Office, not over cost but because Google G suite looks sweet.
Here is the article. I thought I would share... Google owns the education market now... but many companies use Google as well. 

Some nice tools from our very own Jennifer Hutzler:  
I had the opportunity to learn from Tony Vincent at a conference recently.  If you want to follow him on social media he always has quick tech tips or ideas to use in the classroom.  Here are a few links and ideas he shared.  I think we only got to about half of the formative assessment session, but are several things and great graphics on his page. 

photofunia.com - play with photos and text 

chatterpix - add voice to screenshots or drawings.  (App) 

mysimpleshow.com - make explainer videos

coggle.it  & popplet.com- easy way to make mindmaps

Authentic Questions
learninginhand.com/investigating - more ideas on his website, like how to teach students to effectively search using google

Formative Assessment

mentimeter.com & polleverywhere.com - create interactive polls and lists

Posted by Noel Erskine at 1:20 PM
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