The Friday Tech Tip

Happy Friday! This Friday I have three resources that you may find beneficial as we wind down the school year Explore.org is a site where you and your students can view live animal web cameras from all over the world.  Students can watch birds, whales, buffalos, etc. . .  in their natural habitat.  This could be a great Starter or writing prompt. One of my other favorite resources that I have explored lately is Booktrack Classroom. With Booktrack classroom students can create and insert ambient sound, music, and other sound effects into their writings.  This does require that students create an account (Sorry Elementary and some Middle school teachers you have to be at least 13 to create an account ). You can set the reading speed of your audience to have the sound effects align with your reading. Below is a video tutorial of how to use this. Let me know if you have any questions Take Care, Clint

Happy Friday, On Wednesday I was able to listen and learn about the US Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology   #GoOpen movement . In short, this is a movement to provide free open source materials for students and teachers.  A couple of the resources that I thought would be very useful are the OER Commons (OER stands for Open Educational Resources) website and   Smithsonian Education . OER commons has K-12 Digital resources that can be searched by, Grade, Subject Area, and Standard.  Also, there is an option to push out Digital  resources using the Google Classroom button. Teachers will have to sign up for a free account. Students do not have to sign up. Smithsonian Education has over 2,000 Digital Resources that can be shared with students. These could be primary sources, videos, articles, and more that are currated by the Smithsonian Institute.      Also, with both of these sites, there are using ratings. You can brow...

Happy Friday! Text Help (The People behind Read and Write for Google ) launched Equation IO extension this week. With Equation IO it will be much easier for students and teachers to create digital  math equations in Google Docs.  Students can  draw, use speech to text, and equation editors to craft math problems. I was able to try it out today and I think that this is going to be  a great benefit for students in the math class. Students will need to go the chrome store (or click on the link above) and add the extension. You can find more directions HERE . Another update that has recently rolled out is that we are now able to put videos into Google Slides straight from Google Drive! In the past we could only insert videos from YouTube. If your students are creating their own documentaries or videos they can upload the video to drive and then insert it into their presentation. If you have any questions about these new features...

Google Docs, Slides, and Spreadsheets  all now  include an "Explore" feature. You may have noticed this if you open up one of these documents and see this icon at the bottom of your sheet. When you click on this icon there are several things that both you and students will be able to do. Below are some examples.  Google Docs -  When there is text in a Google Document and then you press the Explore option there will be a search generated on the text of the Google Document. Students will be able to research and also have access to photographs based on that text.  Google Slides -  When you press the explore feature Google Suite will recommend different formatting and slide types for your presentation. This really helps to make high quality Slide decks. Google Sheets -  If you have a Google Sheet that is populated with data  then the explore feature will allow  you to ask questions about your data. For example, "What is th...

Happy Friday! If you are interested in student made digital creations then you may enjoy the following tools SpeakPipe is a  easy way for students to  easily create mp3 voice recordings. This site does not require a login. You simply go to Speakpipe Voice Recorder   and press record. Once you finish your voice recording you can upload it to the server. After you do this you will have a unique link that students can go back and listen to their recording. Students and teacher  could also share this link in a Google Doc, Google Classroom, etc. . . For students who are over 13 one of my favorite digital creation sites is Adobe Spark. Here is an example of an adobe spark project.   With Adobe Spark students can make very professional looking Videos, animations, and online text documentaries.  Adobe spark requires students to sign up and log in with a free account.  There are also adobe spark apps for android and iOS devices. Finally, ...

Happy Friday! If this were a bracket then I would make the Share to Classroom App a #1 seed!  With the share to classroom App teachers can easily pushout a website to ALL of the students in their Google Classroom. For example, I want all of my students to access this virtual tour of Machu Picchu .  By installing the Free Push to Classroom Extension teachers can choose the link choose push to classroom and then  the link will automatically open on the students computer.  You can also create and push out assignments using the extension.      My number 2 seed would be the Alice Keeler Gradebook split extension .   Click this extension and it will automatically split your screen so you can have student work on one side and your gradebook on the other.   Also, I would like to make one more push for our unconference happening Saturday April 1st. This is  a FREE event.  This will be a time for educators from all over the state to com...

Happy Friday and Happy almost Spring Break. I hope that you have a great week next week.  This week I wanted to focus on a few things within Google Docs that may make your life much easier. Google Docs -  Did you know that there are already made Google Docs templates for you or your students to use? These are templates for Google Docs, Google Spreadsheet, and Google slides.    The easiest way to access these is to just type in docs.google.com , slides.google.com   or sheets.google.com into the address bar. (You will have to be signed into your CCSD account) and there you and your students can choose Templates for Reports, newsletter, essays, etc. . .  Because these are Google Docs that means that they are also collaborative Documents Also Google has added an "Explore" icon in these products as well. Explore is a new way to interact with your documents. For instance, in Google Slides it will recommend templates for you to use based on the text and ...