Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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💥 Tech items - Virtual fieldtrips, Amazing SeeSaw tips, Google Classroom Gems, PDF tool, and more in this weeks tech tips.

Monday, November 9, 2020

 Have you tried a virtual field trip yet?  (Our KG visits the Zoo about 4 times a year via their virtual field trips!) 


Checkout this list of over 100 virtual field trips.  Many of them are free!  Everything from "A Day in the Life of a Homesteader" to "Building of the Transcontinental Railroad" from a variety of great organizations! 





How to Create a Landing Page in your SeesawJournal🔗  Squeeze the most out of the new Pinning feature with this idea!!  Watch this short 8 minute tutorial to show you how. 



Want more Great SeeSaw tips and tutorials? This is a great YouTube Channel for SeeSaw tips and tutorials - Check it out.   Here is just one gem for this resource: How to Create a Listen and Write Activity



WOW! - Some great Seesaw classroom activities to inspire and engage your students!  Check them out. 




3 Tips for the Microphone in Seesaw Checkout this short video!


If you only use one tool/tip today - This is the one! This is so great, I am repeating a post! - This is a game-changer for Classroom whiteboard tools!  Whiteboard.fi – This is a winner for in-class or remote learning tools! This online whiteboard tool that is different from all the others! Each student has their own board and the teacher will see each board as a tile as the students work. A ton of features - waiting room, kick student, lock room, save boards, students see your board, etc... and all FREE.   Here is a great tutorial to get you started.


We have added this one to our list of top whiteboarding tools for teachers.   


PDFescape - This online PDF editor lets you easily edit a PDF without any extra software! This includes annotating PDF files and filling out fields in a PDF form. It works in all major browsers and the online version is free!  Need to sign a PDF - This Adobe online tool is pretty handy.    


 

Misc. tips and resources:

  • JamboardTip:   Hold down Shift while drawing with the Pen tool in Jamboard to draw a straight line.
  • FREE Google Lesson Plans for Teachers and Students – Remember  Google’s Applied Digital Skills resource FREE Google Lesson Plans for Teachers and Students. These are super handy for teachers!
  • Quick Tip of the Week (Clip a Video in Slides) - From Shake Up Learning. Google Slides gives us several options for formatting videos, like setting a start and end time (clipping a video), muting audio, and more. Short how-to video here. 
  • TIP: Remember - Never delete a Google Classroom.  Just archive it!  (You can not reuse work from archived classes, so if you have assignments that you want to use again you can always make a copy of the class before you archive the class.) 
Here is one for the Math teachers! -  The Math is Fun website has a lot of great K-12 resources!  Check it out. 


Some great Google Classroom tips: 



CleanPNG -   This website provides free high-definition images without a background. It offers millions of PNG images for your brochures, banners, websites, and more. The website provides unlimited free downloads with no registration or other hoops to jump through.






 Have you noticed a better cell signal at Norris the last few months? 

Verizon recently fired up their cell booster that they placed on our campus through a project that has been in the works for the last couple of years. So the good news is that many of us now have better Cell signals around campus.  (The bad news is that kids do too as well as data access via their phones too.) If you find yourself in an area with bad coverage, you can still enable WiFi cell access.







There are a lot of great slide templates and class activity templates in our "Google Slide templates and ideas" doc.






Flipgrid just added the comment feature for students.  If you have not used this amazing tool with your students... now is the time!  Reachout to us if you need assistance getting started!
Our "Using FlipGrip in the classroom document" will help get you started. 





Thanks to our own Megan Good for sharing this great tool.  I have added this one to our Assessment and Quizzing tools doc. Thanks to her and all of the staff for sharing such great resources and helping everyone out!  We have the best staff! 



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