Open in New Tab

I want to tell you about a handy little option you have when you are browsing the internet.  This is true for most browsers - Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.  You have the option to open something in a new tab, or a new window, so that you don't have to leave the page you are on in order to click on the new link.  All you have to do is right click on the link you wish to open and choose "Open Link in New Tab" or "Open Link in New Window".

This picture comes from Chrome, but the specific wording may vary depending on your browser.  Sometimes it just says, "Open in New Tab" instead of including the word "Link".

This comes in handy no matter where you are browsing, but I find this option especially helpful when I run a Google search.  I can scroll through my results and click "Open Link in New Tab" for any of the links I think I might want to see.  Then once I've looked through the list, all the links I am interested in are open in separate tabs across the top of my screen.  I don't have to click the back button and return to my search to look through more results.

Happy browsing!

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Searching in Gmail

One of the biggest complaints I heard from people when our school switched from Outlook to Gmail, was that they couldn't make folders anymore.  I told everyone not to worry, because Gmail provides users with a labeling system.  I think it's even better than folders because you can give one email multiple labels, whereas you could only put an email in one folder in Outlook.  You can create up to 5,000 labels and even make sub-labels.  I'll be making a post about labels in the near future, but today I wanted to share with you about Gmail's amazing search feature.  It is so amazing in fact, that I don't even use labels.

At the top of your screen in Gmail you will see a search window.  You've probably even used it before.  You can type in a person's name, the subject of an email, or even a keyword to find the email you are looking for.  One you thing you may not have noticed though, is the little down arrow on the right edge of the search bar.  

This little arrow adds a lot of power to your search.  It allows you to search more specifically.  When you click on it, you get a bunch of options for your search.  

You can choose what section of your mailbox you want to search in (All Mail, Inbox, Trash, Spam, Read Mail, Sent, Drafts, etc.)  You can enter a name or email address of a specific sender or of the person you sent the email to, you can search for a specific subject, or for particular words. You can even search for an email that doesn't have a particular word or words.  One especially useful thing is the little check box for "Has attachment".  You can specify a size and even a date range, too.  It is pretty handy if you ask me.  

You can also use some advanced search operators to narrow down your search without clicking the arrow and using the drop down. 

When you are typing into the search bar, you can use these advanced search operators to help you:

Operator	Purpose	Example
to:	use this to specify the recipient of the email	to:mark   to:mark@mark.com
from:	use this to specify the sender of the email	from:mark from:mark@mark.com
subject:	use this to search for words in the subject line of the email	subject:meeting subject:Friday
label:	use this to search for emails you know you have labeled	label:PLN label:parents
has:attachment	use this to search for an email you know has an attachment	has:attachment
filename:	use this to search for an attachment with a specific name or file type	filename:Thursdayhomework.doc If you know the file type, but not the exact name, you can simply search for the file type filename:pdf
in:	use this to search a specific area of your mailbox	in:inbox in:all mail in:sent
after: before:	use these to specify a date range you can use them together, or individually (use the date format yyyy/mm/dd)	after:2014/12/15 before:2015/01/03

If you want to get a bit more technical, you can click here to see some other advanced search operators on Gmail's support page.

For example, if I wanted to search for an email from Heather about homework that has a pdf attachment and was sent before December 1, 2014, it would look like this:

I'm assuming here that I wasn't positive the word homework was in the subject line.  If I was sure of that, then I would have used subject:homework instead of just typing the word homework.

One thing you'll want to keep in mind is that Gmail search doesn't recognize special characters like &, *, ( ), [ ], and $.  

I know I use these search operators often when I'm hunting for emails.  I hope they come in handy for you as well!

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Handy Extensions: Tab Scissors and Tab Glue

Back when I used Outlook for my email and Microsoft Word for my word processing, I would often resize my windows so that I could look at something in my internet browser while I was creating a document or email.  I might also want to look at an email while I was working on a document.  Now that most of what I do involves Google Apps - all my work is in web browser windows.  What if I want to look at more than one thing at a time?  I could click on a tab in my Chrome browser, drag it away from the rest of the tabs which will make it into a separate window.  Then I can resize both windows so that I can see them side by side.  It's a bit of a hassle, but it works.  I used to do it.  Then I discovered the Chrome extensions Tab Scissors and Tab Glue.  These are must-have extensions!  You can have your two windows with just one click of your mouse!

Tab Scissors will split your Chrome browser tabs into two windows, perfectly positioned side by side, at the tab you have selected when you click the extension.  Tab Glue will, you guessed it, put them all back together again in one full sized browser window.

You must be using Google's Chrome Browser in order to install and use these nifty little extensions. To learn more about Google Chrome - click here.

To install these handy extensions, browse to the Chrome Web Store.  Type "Tab Scissors" into the search bar and you will see both extensions come up.

To install one of these extensions, click on the blue "Free" button to the right of the extension you wish to install.

It will prompt you for permission to add the extension.  Click "Add".

After installation is complete, it will give you a little message in the upper right hand corner of your screen.  You will see the little icon, in this case a pair of scissors, next to your address bar (also called the Omnibox).

Once you have done this for both extensions, you should see both the scissors and the little glue bottle next to your Omnibox, along with any other extensions you have installed.  

The other extension you see in this picture is Google Docs Quick Create.  It's another one of my favorites.  You can read my post about it here.  

Now, when you are browsing, if you need to see two windows side by side, make sure the two tabs you want to see are next to one another.  You can click on a tab and drag it to reorder the tabs.  Once the two tabs are next to each other, click on the righthand tab and then click on the Tab Scissors icon.  The Tab Scissors extension will take the tab you have selected and the one before it, and split your browsing window right between them.  Any tabs before will be in one window, and all the tabs after will be in another.  

So if I want to see both my blog and my new Google Doc, you can see I chose to select the tab with my blog in it, because it was on the right side.  I know the split occurs just to the left of the tab I select.  Now I click on the Tab Scissors icon and ta da!

Two windows!  Handy, right?  When you are all finished and you'd like to return to one window, simply click on the Tab Glue icon and it will put it all back together again in a nice full sized window.

I hope this tip is helpful to you, I know I use it almost daily!  

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Easy Way to Filter in Gmail

Everyone wants your email address these days.  You sign up for this, for that, and for the other thing and the next thing you know, each morning greets you with 15 unread emails you don't care to read.  Every once in a while you actually want one, so you don't want to tell Gmail to delete them all when they arrive, but you don't really want to deal with them on a daily or weekly basis either.  Gmail has a good filtering system, and you can create filters and have Gmail do whatever you like with them.  This works great, but some companies have different variations of the email address they are sending from, and some messages may make it through without getting caught by the filter.  I have a solution that will help the filters in Gmail become more effective for you.

You can add a + and then whatever word you want to your email address, and it will still come to you.  You can do this with any Google Apps account.  For instance, my email is cynthia@teachingtechnix.com.  If I am signing up at a retail store, or online at someplace like Pinterest for example, when I sign up on their form, I will list my email address as cynthia+Pinterest@teachingtechnix.com.  The emails will still come to me, but I can tell Gmail to take any message sent to cynthia+Pinterest@teachingtechnix.com, which should be ALL the emails they ever send me, and mark them all as read, or archive them, whatever I wish to do with them.  No matter what words are in the messages, no matter which email address they come from, all the messages from Pinterest will get caught by the filter.  Neat, huh?  

To set up your filters, you will need to select an email.  It doesn't have to be one from the person or organization you wish to filter, but it's ok if it is.  Whether you simply select the email by clicking the check box to the left of the sender in your inbox, or you actually open the email, your instructions will be the same.  Once you do one of those two things, click on the "More" button at the top of the screen and click on "Filter messages like these".  (If you click on the "More" button before you either select the email or open it, you will not have the option you need.)  

Once you click "Filter Messages like these", you will get a box with options for your filter.  The "From" box will be autofilled with whoever the sender of the email is that you selected.  It will also say "from:" and list the sender at the very top of the option box.  It doesn't matter who it is, because you need to delete everything in the from box anyway.  We are going to set up the filter to look at who the email is sent to, not who it is from.  

Let's say I signed up at Pinterest with the email address cynthia+Pinterest@teachingtechnix.com.  (Oh how I wish I'd known about this feature long ago!  You can bet I'll be updating some email addresses!)  I want everything sent to that email address to be marked as read and archived.  That way, I can search for emails from Pinterest and look at them when I so choose and they won't clutter up my inbox.  To do this, I want to delete anything that is in the "From" box and type whatever email I signed up with into the "To" box.  Then click "Create filter with this search" at the bottom right corner of the box.  

You'll notice that the very top of the option box will update and now show that you are making a filter using "to" the email address you listed, instead of "from" the address in the email you selected to start the process.  Here is where you can choose what you want Gmail to do with the emails that come in.  I like to "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)" and "Mark as read", but you can do whatever you like.  If you look at the green arrow below, you can also add a label to the message.  I'll cover labels in a future blog post.  If you already use labels, this is where you would add a label to the incoming message if you wanted to.  Once you have selected the options you want, click on the blue "Create filter" button at the bottom left.  If you already have emails from this specific organization that were sent to the email address you are trying to filter, you'll want to make sure you check the box next to "Create" that says "Also apply filter to matching conversations".  That way the filter will catch these emails as well.

Once you click "Create filter", you are all done!  Your filter is created and now any new emails that are sent to that specific email address will do whatever you selected in your filter.  

If you need to go back and edit your filter in the future, click on the gear box in the upper right hand corner of your inbox and click "Settings".  

Across the top, select "Filters".  

You will then see any filters you have created and you can edit or delete them as you please.  

That's it!  Simple, but very cool!  I saw my husband do this at Ikea the other day and could not believe I didn't know about it sooner.  I think it's pretty handy!

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  I hope you found this little tip helpful!  Stop by again soon for some more handy tech tips!

Review and Discussion Activities Using Google Forms

This is the third post in a series about using Google Forms in the classroom.  If you aren't familiar with Google Forms, you may also want to read my Google Forms 101.

Today, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite ways to use Google Forms in the classroom - review and discussion activities.  One of the reasons why I love Google Forms so much is its versatility.  It can be used for nearly everything!  Show me a curriculum unit, and I'll give you at least three ways to use Google Forms to make it better.  I've got two specific examples for you today.

Science or Social Studies Chapter Review

Review time is when our discussion can be very rich, but the kids are often burnt out on the subject or think they already know it so they check out.  As a student, I always hated those end of chapter reviews they had in the textbook.  I knew it was helpful to go over before the test, but it was long and tedious and I never really got feedback on my answers.  Enter - Google Forms!
I let my students choose partners, or I assign them, and have them complete a Form together to review the important content of the chapter.  You could use the questions from the chapter review in your text, or create your own questions like I did.  I give the page numbers from the text that will help them and send them off to work together.  When all the students have completed the Form, I hide the column on the response document that contains their usernames and put the response document up on the screen.  Here are a few screenshots of a response document from one of my chapter review activities.

This isn't the whole activity, but you get the idea.  As you can see, some kids nailed it, and others need a bit more review.  So we go down the line discussing the traits the students put for each type of animal.  Was it correct?  If not, why not?  What could they have put instead?  Are there any traits we can think of that weren't listed?  It makes for great discussion.  The kids love it because their answers are on the screen.  They also love that their names aren't up there so that it isn't embarrassing if something was incorrect.  I find the kids are significantly more engaged than they would be during the review of a paper assignment or a discussion lead solely by me.

Post Chapter Novel Discussion

My students have just finished reading the short novel, The Chalk Box Kid, by Clyde Robert Bulla.  After each week's chapter reading, the students had a Google Form to fill out.  The form asked about character traits and things that happened in the story.  The questions often required the students to make inferences.  There were a few questions where the answers were there in the text for them to find, but most of the questions I asked were digging deeper into the story.  This allowed for richer discussion once we showed the responses.  I also used these as a teaching tool to get the kids to support their answers with evidence from the story.  Here are a few screenshots from these activities. 

The responses actually created some great conversation about the story.  There were also some other topics that came into the conversation, like what qualifies as a character trait.  My students LOVE this activity and they ask me all day about when we get to do the "responses thing".  I also noticed some really great and thoughtful answers I know I never would have gotten if we had just discussed these things verbally in class without Google Forms.  Another great thing is that I have these answers stored away.  I can bring them out for the students to use when I ask them to do a writing assignment comparing the main character in a new story to the one they read about previously.  This week, my students are actually using their old responses to compare and contrast the main problem in The Chalk Box Kid with the main problem of this week's book, Molly's Pilgrim.  (Special thanks to @JenRoberts1 for giving me the idea to scaffold their writing using Google Forms!  See her blog post here.)

There are so many fun ways to use Google Forms to get your kids excited about sharing - no more discussions with the same four kids raising their hands the whole time.  These types of activities give every child a voice in a safe environment.  They can build confidence and even lay the groundwork for future writing assignments. 

Consider using Google Forms for your next chapter review or novel discussion.  Go ahead, give it a try!  I promise you won't be disappointed.

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  I hope I've inspired you today.  Stop in again soon for more helpful tech tips.   

Organize Parent Conference Notes With Google Forms

This is the second post in a series about using Google Forms in the classroom.  The first post can be found here.  If you aren't familiar with Google Forms, you may also want to read my Google Forms 101.

Communication between parents and teachers is integral to a student's success, especially in elementary school.  I'm halfway through a two-day parent conference marathon and I tried something new to help me organize my conference notes that I'd like to share with you.

Days or even weeks after a conference, I always find myself remembering that someone asked me about something specific, but I can't remember which parent it was.  Maybe a parent requested their child not sit next to a particular student, so when I change seats again, I know I made a note about it, but I can't find it.  So I go searching through all my student files, digging for the one paper that has the note I know I wrote about whatever it was.  Yesterday, I was thinking there had to be a way to keep all my notes about each child in a central document, but still maintain the privacy needed so parents aren't seeing what I've written about other students while I'm typing notes.  There is!  Google Forms!  

I've created a Google Form that asks for student name, date, people who attended the conference, and comments about behavior and grades.  I also left a place for additional comments and necessary follow up steps.  I open up the form for each conference, type in it as we meet, finish it up once the parent leaves, and then hit "Submit".

When I made the form, I chose the option to give a link to submit another response.  This way, when I hit "Submit", I get a link to click on that opens up a fresh form for my next conference.  Quick and easy!  

My information goes into a spreadsheet that I can access easily anytime, anywhere, from almost any device.  I can use the search function in my browser to search for any key terms when I want to find something specific.  (If you want to know more about the search function in the Google Chrome browser, check out my post about it.)

Another great function is that I will use the same form all year long.  At any point in the year, if I need to check back and look at all the conferences I've had with a particular family, I can sort my answer spreadsheet by the column containing student names.  This will put all the conferences for that child in a row for easy viewing.

This worked really well for me today and I'm excited to use it again tomorrow.  I was so excited about it last night, that I made one for all of my colleagues in grades K-5 and most of them used it today and loved it.  Such a quick and simple change can make a big difference in organization.

To get a copy of this form and make it your own, click here.

A few of my other Google Forms posts can be found by clicking the links below.

Parent Surveys with Google Forms
Anecdotal Student Notes with Google Forms
Review and Discussion Activities with Google Forms
Digital Assignment Tracking with Google Forms
File Upload: Collect Files with Google Forms

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  I hope you found this little tip helpful. 

Parent Surveys Using Google Forms

This is the first in a series of posts I'll be making about how you can use Google Forms in the classroom.  Forms is extremely versatile and can be used in many different ways.  (Not familiar with Google Forms?  Check out my Google Forms 101 post.)  Today I'm going to talk about using it for parent surveys.   I have three different surveys I give throughout the year.

1. The "Get To Know You" Survey

The very first time I meet parents, I hand out a flyer with instructions for them to take my "Get To Know You" survey.  I use a URL shortener like bit.ly to get a shortened URL so it is easy for parents to type in.  Sometimes I even use this website to create a QR Code that parents can scan.  I put the short URL and QR code with some easy instructions on a half page colorful flyer and hand it out to parents during the meet and greet, or as homework for the kids on the first day.  You can either send them straight to your survey, or like I did, you can use the short URL to send them to your class website and link to your survey from there.  I ask the parents to tell me about their child, the child's interests, goals, etc.  I also ask the parents for their names as well as the best phone numbers and email addresses for each parent.  This is where doing this on a Google Form is so much better than paper.  I can copy and paste the column of email addresses into a blank spreadsheet and then import them right into Google Contacts and use labels create an easy class email list. I've got my email list for the year.  No more deciphering parent handwriting on a written form or hunting through my school's student information system trying to find emails for each parent.  Any other forms I send out during the year go on my class website or I put a link in an email to all parents.

2.  The "How Is It Going?" Survey

After the first third of the year, I ask the parents to fill out a "How Is It Going?" Survey.  I ask them to tell me how the year has been for them so far.  How is homework going?  What do they like about my system?  What do they think would improve my system?  There are always some interesting responses that come through, but overall I find it helpful to get a feel for how the parents think things are going.

3.  The "How Did It Go?" Survey

At the end of the year, I send out a "How Did It Go?" Survey.  I ask what their favorite things about the year were, and about the things they thought could have gone better with some adjustment.  I ask about my system and communication and see what they liked and where they think it could be improved for the following year.  Again, always some interesting answers, but overall I've found it helpful.  If you'd like to see a sample survey, click here.  If you want to make a copy of it to use with your parents, click here.

Three quick and easy ways to engage parents, let them know you value their feedback, give them an appropriate avenue through which to share their feedback, and my favorite part - easily gather those email addresses at the beginning of the year!

The next two Google Forms posts can be found by clicking the links below.


Organize Parent Conference Notes with Google Forms
Review and Discussion Activities with Google Forms

I hope you found this helpful!  If you have any questions about my parent surveys, leave a comment.  I'd love to help you out.  Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  Stop in again soon for more ways to use Google Forms in the classroom.