💥 Tech post- Google Slide tools, some nice apps, YouTube tools, free music, and those annoying Windows pop ups... and more in this weeks tech email.

Accessibility Tools Chrome - A presentation by Heather Callihan - Technology Integrationisy, Northwest Public Schools at the Fall NETA Conference.

A couple of nice Google Slide add-ons: 

Slido is a polling service that offers a free Google Slides add-on and companion Chrome extension. Combining the two allows you to easily poll students and other audiences. 

The Unsplash Photos Google Slides add-on gives you instant access to Unsplash's collection of free, royalty-free photographs.

Check out this Google Slide game show template. From Ryan O'Donnell @creativeedtech 

With the new rollout of audio to Google Slides, he added music and sounds to his most popular TV Game Show style review game. Its called "Frazzle" (similar to Heads Up). You access it here for your own free copy.

 

Note - Norris staff, I have added this to our Google Slide templates folder in our tech docs folder. 

World Wildlife Fund's Together app - WWF Together - Revisiting a Favorite App

The World Wildlife Fund's Together app is a great free app.  Here is a little bit more about the app.   We do have several sets of iPad carts that are available for use in the classroom. 

The WWF Explore! app and WWF Free Rivers  are available in the Google Play store so they could be loaded on our Chromebooks.  (These are different apps and feature sets. They gets great reviews.) 

Easy Ways to Add Polls & Quizzes to Existing Slideshows  More info here. 

If you have not used FlipGrid - You need to give Jason a call and have him show you this cool tool.  It rocks!  (And if you have not had the pleasure of working with Jason, you are missing out! He rocks as well!)  This cool tool has a lot of uses in the classroom.

Free Music for Video Projects - Another great resource from  Richard Byrne

@rmbyrne 

It's HERE.... they finally rolled out the ability for users to embed MP3 and WAV audio files from Drive into Slides.  As long as you have added our Norris Public Folders to your google drive (Everyone should have done that already.) you will have a lot of Wav files all ready for you to insert.  In your presentation go to insert audio. (Just search for a tiger, phone, bells, etc...) 

9 Top YouTube Channels to Boost Classroom Lessons -  Article/resources here. 

How to Make a QR Code for Just About Anything - Check it out. 

Websites and Apps for Making Videos and Animation - Some are free, some are web tools, some are apps... check out the list here to see if there are some tools for you. 

YouTube can find, track, and blur faces of people who appear in your video.- A great tip from Tony Vincent @tonyvincent

Teach Civics or government - this one is for you. Annenberg Classroom - Civics website makes teaching the Constitution manageable, meaningful. EDU review can be found here. 

Gsuite Update - Insert collapsible text boxes into new Google Sites
Coming soon - Quick launch summary
Site editors can now insert collapsible text boxes into a new Google Site, which site viewers can click to expand. Collapsible text boxes can help condense large blocks of text, like content on FAQ or Help Center pages, allowing site viewers to quickly navigate to the most relevant information. More info here... it's coming soon! 

How to Make a YouTube Playlist for Your Favorite Videos - How to article here.  Organize your playlists by subject, assignments, etc...  You can share a link to a playlist that contains the list of videos for that subject, project, etc...   If you are not doing this now... check it out.  It's a great time saver and keeps you organized. 

In Google Classroom - New feature in Rubrics Beta, Reuse Rubrics!

In both Classroom and Assignments, you now have the ability to create a rubric from scratch or reuse an existing rubric you’ve already created. When you select the option to reuse a rubric, you can select to use a rubric available in the current class or switch to another class to reuse a rubric from that one.  

Once you find the rubric you’d like to use, you can preview it or select it to use immediately. While in preview mode, you can also flip between rubrics to easily find the one you need. We will be rolling out this functionality to all instructors in the beta over the next few days. Learn more about rubrics in Classroom and Assignments.

Pro tip: If you'd like to share rubrics you've set up in Classroom with other teachers, simply add co-teachers to a shared class with multiple rubrics. All teachers and co-teachers will see those rubrics for assignments in other classes in the new reuse workflow.

Are you getting annoying reminders in Windows 10 that look like spam? If so, you are allowing notifications from certain websites and they are popping up in Windows 10.  These can be bad... if you allow them from sites that are not that great.  In other words... the website can continue to spam you with notifications. 

Go into your Chrome settings here: (Paste this in your URL) --->   chrome://settings/content/notifications

Under your Allow - Remove most sites.  (You may still want a few from Google Drive, etc... but most should be removed.)  If you can not remove them via a 3-drop menu, then they are an app or extension you have installed. 

When you go to a website and it asks you this.... say no! 

Some great ideas from ditch that textbook:  http://ditchthattextbook.com/

14 ways to turn your classroom into a game show - You've likely heard of -- or used -- Kahoot! or Quizizz. They turn review activities into a fun game show-like experience.

Want to ramp up that experience beyond "just a Kahoot! game"?

Check out these 14 suggestions for bringing game show elements into the classroom. (Hint: There are some new websites and apps you might not know yet on this list!)

If they like TikTok, they'll LOVE this.

• Do you have students who are enamored with TikTok? If so, you're not alone!
• Hundreds of millions of users age 16-24 use the app regularly worldwide.
• Want to grab your students' attention and inject some fun in a lesson?
• Give them the template in today's post and make a TikTok-inspired activity!

It's all ready to... grab the template and assign it in Google Classroom!  Let the creativity begin!