The Friday Tech Tip

The other  school morning my 6 year old daughter who is in Kindergarten got up with me around 5:30 AM . I am in the kitchen getting the coffee going and I typically read for a few minutes to get going in the AM .  Ruby walks in the living room without saying a word and goes and gets her Kindle Fire tablet and her headphones and sits on the couch. Not a "Good morning Daddy", nothing, just wakes up,gets her device and sits on the couch and stares at the screen. I immediately think, "well great!,  parent fail, we're having too much screen time and she's addicted to the screen and she is 6. Am I modeling this behavior  for her? ".  Just to put myself a little  more over the edge I say Good morning and then I inquire about what she is watching.  Her device has  parent controls enabled so she can play kid games, and watch kid videos etc. . . so, anyhow, to put me over the edge a little more she is watching a Youtube Kids video of girls her age playing with Barbi

Happy Friday! As we continue to make the switch to the Google Suite Platform I wanted to make you aware of a few ways that our Google Suite can help with student projects. New Google Sites -  Sites.google.com/new   Is a great way for students to show what they know.  All of our teachers and students now have access to Google Sites. Google sites are a great way for students to build their own website. It is very easy to insert pages, insert Youtube videos, Google Docs, Google Presentations, maps etc. . . into Google Sites.  Sites can be collaborative meaning that more than one person can enter data. This would be a great resource for students to show what they know beyond a written project. Here are some directions to help get you started . Google MyMaps -  Google Mymaps is actually a great way for students to "pin" what they know. They can create a map and drop pins in specific places and include weblinks, Google Docs, Google drawing etc. . into the map. This map can a

Happy Friday! The other day I was asked about places to find good Primary sources for our students.  Below I am going to list some of my  favorites Google Arts and Culture -  Here students can view High quality art work, photography, and music.  Students can zoom in on famous pieces of art from around the world. Also, a new feature is that they have 360 Degree videos. This was a little mind blowing for me.  Students can sign in with their Google Account and save pictures, art, and videos.  Check out the video below. You can use the arrows in the left hand corner to rotate the video! The National Archives   -  National Archives has diaries, pictures, music, etc. . . A feature that is new to me is DocsTeach .  This is a tool for educators to discover and create lesson plans and search for specific documents. Finally, the Digital Public Library of America   is a collaboration with  Public Libraries  and cultural institutions all across America.  Here you can find  p

Happy Friday!  Last week I had several people say that they enjoyed hearing about some updates to some technology products that you already use so I want to continue that with some updates that are Google  Specific Quick Access in Drive -   Quick Access is a tool in Google Drive that is  actually Artificial Intelligence that learns how you use Google Drive and predicts what files that you may need. You can turn this on or off in the settings tab of Google Drive. Google Docs has a template Gallery -  This is constantly being updated.  if you or your students go to docs.google.com they can choose from a variety of templates to create a work. There are templates for letters.reports, science labs, etc. . Remember the benefit of doing this in Google is that you and your students can collaborate - leave comments, suggest edits etc. ..  Comments -  Now when you make a copy of a document you can choose to also copy the comments. When you go to file make a copy you can choose to