💥 Tech items - Even more tech tips and tools from our Covid lockdown days.

Video Conferencing -  We still support both Meet and Zoom.  (We keep adding tips to our Staff doc, including our video conferencing section. )

This is a nice add-on for Zoom (Zoom for G suite) that adds the ability to easily schedule a Zoom Meeting on your Calendar just like you have been able to do with Meet.  It also adds a Zoom icon to the sidebar in Gmail for easily doing an ad-hoc Zoom meeting.

Common Sense - Does it again!  Great free collection of resources for educators and families during these times. 

Today we're launching a brand-new, free online resource to support families and educators who are transitioning to remote learning as a result of the coronavirus: Wide Open School.  <---Check it out!
Curated and coordinated by the experts at Common Sense, Wide Open School is the result of a collaboration among leading publishers, nonprofits, and education and technology companies. Wide Open School features a free collection of the best learning experiences and activities for kids, organized by grade band and subject. You will also find daily schedules with creative breaks and recommendations to keep kids engaged and exploring, one day (or one hour) at a time.

Flipgrid just keeps getting better!  If you have not used this one, it's a must!

Just announced 4-1-20 - New feature! Screen Recording in @Flipgrid.  Yes, you can now capture your screen in FlipGrid.  (you have always been able to record videos with a click of the button, now you can record your computer screen!  Great for tutorials. 

Here is a testimonial that Dick Marolf, our Middle School Band Director sent out to our MS staff a couple days ago: 

Those of you who are using Flipgrid:  I just tried something new today and it worked really fairly well I think.
I need to have readily available recordings of the music I'm asking my kids to play.  So when I go to post a new topic on Flipgrid for them, I also add a video recording of me (probably should hide my face I know!!) playing the music so the kids have an example of how it should sound.  There is an Add Recording button that takes you right to this application.  Let me know if you need help.  Next week I hope to actually use student exemplar recordings. Thanks Dick for the encouragement to staff and great job on using a new tool! What a great vetran teacher that is always willing to use new tools to reach his kids!  (As I have said before our staff rocks!)  There are so many of you doing amazing things.  Keep up the good work!

SeeSaw Shines for our K-2 teachers!   If you are a K-2 teacher, you are probably already seeing the benefits of using SeeSaw from how with your kiddos.  If not, you are missing out.  Reach out to Jason to get started with this great tool today! 

Gmail adds a setting to store multiple signature options - Will start rolling out April 8th! More info here.   (I have used templates in Gmail to accomplish the same thing up to this point, but will probably switch to multiple signatures when this comes out.) 

Misc. Resources: 

Some great Learn From Home Resources curated by another K-12 School District.

Are you using Video conferencing?  If not, you will be!  I see it as a must for all K-12 teachers! 

I know most of you are already off to a great start.  But, for those of you that have not used Google's Hangouts Meet or Zoom... you had better start getting used to them now!  I see more staff meetings and more parent/student contacts and expectations coming your way.  We are here to help!  Reach out to us and we are willing to help you!  (The best way is to practice.)  

Have you had a pod or team virtual meeting yet? Maybe a Pictionary game using Zoom or Meet and sharing a free remote shared whiteboard like WhiteboardFox  might be a fun team building activity! Try it out! 

Working from home: This invaluable Google Docs feature keeps you from losing your work
Good Doc offline sync will almost certainly prevent you from pulling your hair out.  If you have ever read any of our Norris tech tips and recommendations... you and your students should already have this on.  If not... this article will help you turn it on.  Encourage your kids to turn it on too! 

Google Forms can be your friend during these times of social distancing!

Google forms can save you a lot of time gathering information, quizzing students, assisting with parent or student sign-up, etc...

Here are a few tips and add-ons that could help:

• Remember to keep in mind the data you want and what you might sort that data on.  Do you want a separate question for first name and last name? (This will help when you have this data dumped into a sheet.)
• Plan out your form!  You can jump to sections based on a question.  This can really help you as well as make your form simple for the end user. 
• Make sure you create that spreadsheet to dump your form data into. (It's just a click of the button.)  Having it in a Google Sheet allows you to easily work with the data.
• The add-on form mule can easily automate your form by sending out emails based on question answers, etc... (This is an add-on for sheets. One more reason to automatically dump your form data to sheets.)
• The add-on Choice Eliminator is great if you are wanting to have parents or students select a meeting time slot.  After that option has been selected it's eliminated from the form so others can not choose that question/time slot,  (Ignore the low ratings, we have never had any issues.  Most of these people do not take the time to figure out how these work.) 
• You can use the quiz mode with forms to have it auto-graded. 
• You can also add pictures to a question. This works well for quizzes too! 
• If you collect their user login then users are required to log in with their Google Account.  It then collects their gmail address. 
• When you share the form for people to take... make sure you share the preview and not the actual form. (You do not want them editing your form... only filling it out.) 
• Preview the form in an incognito window in Chrome. (Ctrl-N)  This will make sure your form is ready for the public to use. 
• There are several add-ons for getting emails when a form is completed.  I like subscribing to notifications in Sheets.  That way each time a submission is made and it updates the sheet I can get an email or a daily digest of changes. (Whichever I prefer.)
• The FormRecycler add-on allows you to merge multiple forms into the current form with 1 click. You can also recycle form questions from a form in your Google Drive to the current form.
• There are many other add-ons for forms that may fit your specific needs. 

Google has created a new teaching from home resource site.  (New 3-26-20)

NMS Enrichment Activities - Great resource site put together by Jessie Andre. (Thanks Jessie for this great collection of resources.) 

A fem Misc. Resources:

• Mixkit - Hundreds of Free Music and Video Clips for Multimedia Presentations
• How to Create a Backchannel on Padlet
• An Overview of How Students View and Return Assignments in Google Classroom
• How to Collect and Organize Images in Google Classroom
• How to Design & Send Certificates With Google Slides and Forms 
• A Comparison of Multimedia Timeline Creation Tools - Updated
• Think Like a Coder - My Freshmen Love These Videos!  (These are pretty cool and really well done!) 
• Free At-Home Education Resources From Ancestry® and Access to Nearly 500M National Archives Records. 
• Free Kindle and Nook ebooks. (A few are no longer free, but still a nice list.)
• FREE Sesame Street ebooks @ Google Play and Amazon (Kindle)  and even more in this list!  This list even has a Pete the Cat book. (One of my grand kids favorites.) 

Free Online Activities and Events for Kids During Coronavirus Shutdowns

Although schools, gyms, art classes, music lessons—and, seemingly, life as we know it—are canceled, families can keep entertained and keep learning with live events and activities online.

CommonSense Media has put together a great free list of resources.  Check them out! 

More elearning resources

Here are some great resources from Ditch That Textbook. 

25 Reasons to Share TED-Ed Videos with Students

includes a free ebook download  Checkout this great article.

Google Earth launches virtual tours of 31 of the world's most incredible national parks
From Yosemite to Yellowstone, this is stay at home travel at its best. 

Here are a few new ones we have added to our "Platforms for Digital Communication with Students and Parents" doc. 

Breakout Rooms in Zoom - Short how-to video here. 

We love Google Meet's simplicity for teachers, but Zoom does have this feature that Meet does not! I have added this tip to our Remote Learning Doc.   Thanks to Katy D for this one!

On Chromebooks, Hangouts Meet does not require any installation to work.  Zoom will require students to use the zoom app. (Located here.) We have force installed the zoom app for all of our students as of 3-23-20, so it may already be installed.  

As noted in the "Platforms for Digital Communication with Students and Parents

For Norris Staff" doc, there are pros and cons to both.