Use your phone or tablet as a remote mouse on your computer!
This one has been around for a while but wanted to mention it again since we have a lot of new staff members. This document will help get you started. If you need help, let us know.
Are we helping our students get the most from their 1-1 Chromebook take-home devices? The smart worker's guide to using a Chromebook offline has some great tips to share with our students. (And use with our staff Chromebooks.)
Windows 10 has notifications in the taskbar - Don't miss out!
The new Chrome update includes a right-click option on webpages to send that page to your other devices.
This is kind of a cool feature, that may come in handy once in a while. Basically right click on a web page and select your device to send the web page to.
- You need to be running the current Chrome version. (So update your browser if you do not see it.)
- You need to be logged in and syncing to those devices in order for them to show up.
- You may need to reboot your phone for it to work.
- The alert shows up in your notifications on the computer so you need to accept the request similar to a Google Casting request as shown in the above post.
Expeditions Coming on Chromebooks!
Already have Chromebooks in your classroom? Now you can explore the over 1000 virtual reality tours in Google Expeditions on your Chrome OS devices. More info here. (The list of supported models is small right now, but growing.) This new feature is not a show-stopper right now, but it shows what's coming and it will be great. (Remeber - we have several Expeditions carts that are available for use now. Talk to Jason or your media centers for using these great resources.)
Google Forms Updates & Improvements
Locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms will be available starting in August. In addition to Locked mode, Google Forms will now enable you to import questions from other Forms into new ones in order to save time. More info here.
Locked mode in Quizzes in Google Forms will be available starting in August. In addition to Locked mode, Google Forms will now enable you to import questions from other Forms into new ones in order to save time. More info here.
G Suite Update: More controls and customizations for headers and footers in Google Docs
Previously, you could set a single header or single footer for your entire document, with an option to make it different on the first page only. Now you can also define a specific header or footer for each section of your document, or use different headers and footers on odd and even page numbers. More info here.
New fonts intended to help improve reading speed now available in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
The Google Fonts team has teamed up with Thomas Jockin to create a series of fonts that are aimed at improving reading speed. To learn more about the research behind this initiative, see here for more details. Here is a quick video by one of my favorite tech resources. 
Some great resources from the Norris Tech Bootcamp!
Thanks to Jason Gault and to all of you that presented and attended our tech boot camp on August 6 & 7. If you have not been to one you may want to consider attending and/or presenting next year. I know Jason sent this out already but wanted to share again: Here's a Google Doc containing the SESSION RESOURCES that were presented. It's not the same as being there, but there some great takeaways from these resources.
If one of your students asks about an email from the tech department about issues with their YouTube account - Read this for more info:
Everyone at Norris has a YouTube account. (They come with each G Suite account.) Some users created a few things or used a few tools that caused that account to be a "branded" account. No one really knew they had this and it was not a big deal until some change happened with Google and school created accounts with YouTube. So - you can read this doc for more info if you get questions from any of your students. We have sent an email to each staff member and student that was affected. (400+ students and 20+ staff accounts.)
sarah.harms@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1 - 7-18-19
shelly.patrick@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1 8-7-19
kelly.baehr@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1 7-30-19
eric.lechtenberg@nsdtitans.org Completed Level 1 - 8-7-19
See our complete list of Google Certified Staff members here. Watch out this spring for another opportunity to become Google Certified and earn an extra $600 doing it!
20 Google Slides activities to add awesome to classes
Wow, there are some great ideas and templates in this article! I love the Icon boards to get kids started right away. The Google Slides sticky notes template/idea is pretty cool. Some links to nice yearbooks and newsletters for the classroom. Check them out!
This article - 20 activities to Ditch that Textbook has some great templates for the K-2 teachers. We have these templates in our K-2 templates folder here.
FlipGrid - New feature added to record video.
20 activities to "Bloom" with the new Flipgrid camera -Nice resource for ideas!
