EdTech by Emily

This Chromebook training by Nadine Gilkison is AMAZING! I think it is intended to use with students but I think it would be awesome for adult training, too! Actually, all of Nadine's stuff is great. You should definitely check her out on Twitter or on her blog !

This is a nifty little tip I use all the time if I need to hop on someone else's machine and don’t want to completely log them out of what they are doing. It’s called INCOGNITO MODE. Incognito mode is a clean window that is not automatically logged into anything, and it doesn’t save your history or save cookies. It will also remove login information so that it doesn’t appear the next time a window is opened. To learn how to open an Incognito Mode window as well as learn 8 more reasons you might benefit from Incognito Mode CLICK HERE . Article credit: Kasey Bell from Shake Up Learning

I got this idea by listening to the Google Teacher Tribe Podcast with Kasey Bell (from Shake Up Learning) and Matt Miller (from Ditch That Textbook). The idea is this: create a Google Slide with a page for each student. On the first slide create a Table of Contents linked to each student’s slide. It will help facilitate the beginning of a collaborative lesson and also help you find each student’s work quickly. Personally, I would make one Google Slide this way and copy it for each assignment so that I wouldn’t have to create the Table of Contents each time. You can SEE AN EXAMPLE HERE .

Research proves that using graphic organizers improves student learning. (Read more about that in this Cult of Pedagogy article .) Did you know you could have students complete graphic organizers DIGITALLY?! Eric Curts gives us not only a tutorial but also 30 free templates to copy, modify or use as needed. Check out his tutorial and templates HERE . EXAMPLES:  

I came across this cool tool from Alice Keeler that would support our writing goals this year. It is a Google Slide with some Alice Keeler magic. Students can write the different parts of a piece on each slide. Then they click “Slides Essay” and “Create a Doc” to automatically create one writing piece from each part they typed on the Google Slide. You can read more about Alice's cool tool on her blog .

This tech tip comes from my friend, Kim Estes, who works at Burleson ISD. Her team has developed a collection of learning resources that are based in Google apps. You can find the collection of resources here. There is a filter you can use to search through the collection. For example, this document could be assigned as an exit ticket for students to show 5 things learned about a certain topic:

As illustrated in the image above, Grammarly checks your text, as you type, for hundreds of common and advanced writing issues. The checks include grammatical errors, contextual spelling mistakes, phonetic spelling mistakes, and others. Grammarly also provides synonym suggestions to make your writing more readable and precise. To use Grammarly, click this link and then click the green Add to Chrome button in the upper right-hand corner. (Note: you will want to be signed into Chrome to make full use of your extensions and bookmarks. 😊)

Image Credit: here Are you one of those people who likes to keep your digital files organized? Have you ever wanted to keep a file or document in MORE THAN ONE folder? You can do that! Check out Schooled in Tech ’s article titled Save a Google Doc to Multiple Folder Locations within Google Drive .

Tab Snooze If you have a problem with too many tabs like I do, then check out the Tab Snooze Chrome Extension . It allows you to put a tab to sleep and set when you want it to wake up . Whenever you set it for, that tab will wake right back up on whatever machine you are logged into. BTW, Google Docs all have a url so you can set these to wake up at a certain time too!

Image credit: here If you use any of the Google apps with your students, you will want to check out this resource ! It is a collection of ready-made templates for you to use in your lessons. It is even divided by grade level! I particularly like the newspaper templates on the front page. Check out this resource today!

Do you ever see things for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers and think to yourself, “I could make that myself and not have to pay anyone.” I’m not saying I did that, but here are some directions you could use with your students to do a little virtual jack-o-lantern decorating and writing. Happy October! (A little note…these directions assume your students have used Google Docs and are working on a Chromebook. Also, this activity would be a PERFECT one to share out via Google Classroom.) To view the directions CLICK HERE! Example of student work:

Quick, Draw! is a fun, new tool by Google that uses a “neural network” to guess what you’re drawing. The user is given a word to illustrate and as the image is drawn Google’s fancy artificial intelligence engines guess what is being drawn. You really just have to try it to see it’s magic! I think this tool would be a great ice-breaker or time filler, a fun way to introduce devices to students, a tool for practicing drawing skills as well as practice reading and vocabulary development. Quick, Draw! will work with both iPads and Chromebooks. To get started, head to quickdraw.withgoogle.com and see if your drawing skills are up to par!