Just Do It

"That's so cool!  I'd like to try that."
"Yeah, that seemed neat.  I should check it out."
"I really need to learn to do that."
"I'll try it after report cards...after parent conferences...after this project is graded...maybe during summer...maybe once my year gets started..."

Sound familiar?  We've all said it.  I know I have.  To address this issue, I'm going to borrow some advice from our friends at Nike.  JUST DO IT!

When it comes to those things we view as extras in our teaching, they often get pushed aside for "later", but later never seems to come around.  The problem is that many of those extras that have to do with technology can no longer afford to be seen as extras.  They are necessary.  Innovation in the classroom is necessary.

My advice to you today is to just do it.  Pick something that you've been wanting to try or look into that is related to technology and take an hour, or more if you have it, and check it out.  Plan for how you can use it with your students next year.  Go for it.  Take the time.  Do it now.  You won't regret it.

Having just finished the CUE Rock Star conference, I have a few ideas for you on things you can check out in case you have misplaced your "I need to check into this later" list.

Student Response Tools
Want to increase engagement and get every student involved?  Hear every voice?  Check out these online student response systems.  They are easy and oh so much fun!

• Kahoot
• Socrative
• Go Formative
• Google Forms fits in this category too, but Google Forms is so much more.  Google Forms is a teacher's best friend.  My students used it almost daily.  If you are only going to look at one tool this summer - this is the one you should look at.  Here is a link to my Google Forms 101 blog post.  There are some links at the bottom of the post to give ideas on how to use Google Forms in the classroom.  I've got more Google Forms posts planned for you as the school year gets closer.  

iPad Apps for Teachers and Students

• Paper 53 - Amazing drawing app for making art as well as sketch notes.  This app is free.  Available only for iOS.
• Explain Everything - This is a whiteboard app which allows you to draw like you would on a whiteboard and make a video recording.  It allows you to import images, video, text, etc. and include them all in a video with your voice over.  Very handy to make instructional videos or for students to create movies and show evidence of learning.  This app is worth every penny of the $2.99!  Available for iOS and Android.
• Tellagami - This allows you or your students to take a photo, a stock picture, or a background you create, and make a little animated character to go in it.  You can record your voice and make your character "talk" and turn it into a video.  It's pretty neat!  This app is free, but does offer in app purchases. Available for iOS and Android. 

Other Cool Stuff

• Doctopus - This is an awesome free tool with a strange name.  To quote the Chrome Web Store - "Doctopus gives teachers the ability to mass-copy (from a starter template), share, monitor student progress, and manage grading and feedback for student projects in Google Drive."  If you don't use Google Classroom or Hapara to manage student work in Google Drive, then Doctopus is a pretty handy tool!  It is an add on that you put in Google Sheets.  It used to be a script you had to install for each individual sheet and it was pretty messy.   It is much nicer now that it is an add on and you only have to do it once.  Here is a little video about how it works.  The New Doctopus  I'm not generally a huge fan of video tutorials, but this is a good one and is only about 12 and a half minutes long.
• Videonot.es - This allows you to make notes to go with a video and synchronize the notes with the time in the video where they are applicable.  You can click on the notes and it takes you to that part of the video as well.  This seems really cool and it can connect with your Google Drive so you can store your videos there.  
• ThingLink - This is a fun one.  This website allows you to take a picture, and make it interactive.  You can place little "buttons" on your photo and make text pop up, a video can play, or it can even be a link to a website.  This has many possibilities.  You can create one on a certain topic for your students to explore, or you can have the students make one as part of a project of some sort.  
• Padlet - Padlet is a great collaboration space.  It gives you a sharable poster board so to speak.  You can share the link and others can then post things on it that are like little digital sticky notes.  They can share ideas as a brain storm, post links, photos, or videos to "turn in" an assignment of some sort.  There are many possibilities for this tool.

Ok.  That should be enough to at least get you started with something.  No excuses now.  Take the time to check out those things you've always thought of using, but have never taken the time to learn.  Just do it.

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog today.  I hope you found something helpful.  See you again soon for more helpful tech tips! 

It's Not the Tech, it's the Teacher

I'm writing this today from the CUE Rock Star conference in La Jolla, CA.  If you have the chance to attend a CUE Rock Star event, I'd highly recommend it.  Limited attendance allows for great ratio between speaker and attendees.  This provides an amazing opportunity for learning and networking.  You can check the website here to see if there are any events coming up in your area.

My biggest thought today is a thought I've had during all the ed tech conferences I've attended lately.

It's not the tech you use, it's how you use it.

So if you feel like you can't possibly keep up with all the new apps and tools out there - that's ok.  You won't be a terrible teacher because you don't know all the cool new tricks.  Should you have a good foundation with the basics of what is out there?  Absolutely.  If your students have Google Apps, commit to learn all about Google Apps.  You can do amazing things just by utilizing the basics in meaningful ways.  Then you can work on learning more a little at a time.  Technology won't automatically make you a good teacher.  Don't lose sight of the instincts that make you good at what you do.  Just because we have all this amazing technology at our fingertips, it doesn't mean that we give up everything we know about good teaching, throw out all the textbooks, hand each kid a device, and sit back to watch the test scores rise.

It's true that there are many new devices, websites, and apps out there that allow teachers and students to do incredibly creative things.  How we structure our lessons and assignments should be changing in dramatic ways because of it.  If we allow the available technology to transform the way we think about what students can and should be doing for their assignments, learning can be impacted in amazing ways.  The hard thing is, this can easily lead to you feeling overwhelmed by all that is out there.  It can make you feel like you are doing everything all wrong when you see some of the advanced things others are doing.  Should some of those things be goals for you?  Yes.  Should you expect to do them tomorrow with confidence and ease?  Not necessarily.

I say start with the basics.  Whatever platform your students are using - Google, Microsoft, etc. - learn it, and learn it well.  Unless you have a good feel for what you can do with it, it won't begin to change the design of your lessons and assignments in truly meaningful ways.  Start with the basics, use those great teacher instincts about what will help your students connect with the content, and never be afraid to ask for help.

Technology alone is fun and interesting.  Technology in the hands of a great teacher becomes incredibly powerful.

Google Classroom

A few of my colleagues have asked me to do a post about Google Classroom.  I've played with it a little bit, but I do have to admit I haven't really used it yet.  We use Hapara Teacher Dashboard at our school and I thought I didn't need Google Classroom because of that.  I'm finding now that while I don't NEED it, they can be very powerful when used together and I'll be exploring that next year.  Regardless of whether or not you use Hapara...cough cough...if you have Google Apps you really should...cough cough...Google Classroom can be a really effective tool.

Instead of making a post about Google Classroom, I'm going to send you directly to the master.  Alice Keeler is one of my Ed Tech Heroes.  She is a Google Certified Teacher and a Google Classroom rockstar.  If Google Classroom can do it, she knows how.  If you are on Twitter, follow her - @AliceKeeler.  Even if you aren't on Twitter, you can check out her blog, Teacher Tech.  She even has a book that she co-authored, 50 Things You Can Do With Google Classroom.

She has an entire section of her blog focused just on Google Classroom, which you can access by clicking here.  Check it out, look around, and be inspired!

Thank you, Alice, for sharing your knowledge!

Handy Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Chrome

Sometimes using the mouse just takes up extra time.  I've got some handy keyboard shortcuts for you today that will save you some time and effort when working in Google Chrome.

Control-T (Command-T for Mac) - This will open a new tab.

Control-W (Command-W) - This will close the active tab.  The active tab is whatever tab you are currently working in.  This can come in especially handy if you are working through a whole class of Google Docs.

Control-Shift-T (Command-Shift-T) - This will reopen the last tab you closed.  This is really useful if you accidentally closed a tab, or realize you needed one more thing from the document or web page you just closed.  Google Chrome remembers the last 10 tabs you closed.

Control-Tab (Works for Mac also!) - This will switch you to the next open tab (moves you one tab to the right).  If you are on your last tab, it will take you back to the first one.

Control-Shift-Tab (Also works for Mac) - This will switch you to the previous tab (moves you one tab to the left).  If you are on your first tab, it will take you to the last tab.

Control-1 through Control-8 (Command-1 through Command-8) - This will take you to tab in that position across the top of your screen.  For instance, if you want the third tab from the left, you push Control-3 (Command-3).  If you are like me and often have more than 8 tabs open, Control-9 (Command-9) will take you to the last tab, no matter how many tabs are open.

This one does use a mouse - but I use it quite a bit, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Press Control (Command) while you click a link - This will open the link in a new tab.  You can then click on that tab to see the new webpage.  This works especially well if you are doing a Google Search.  You can open several of the links that look promising as you look through the results and then click through the tabs to view.  It also means you don't have to hit the back button to return to your results because they stay open in the original tab.  If you want it to open the results in a new tab and have it take you to directly to that tab, you can press Control-Shift (Command-Shift) while you click the link.

Thank you for stopping by the TeachingTechNix blog.  Stop by again soon for more handy tech tips!

Keyboard Shortcut for Adding a Comment in Google Docs

Like I've said before, I love using Google Docs with my students and leaving them comments as feedback on their writing.  Leaving comments for students is great, but there is a bit of clicking involved.  These keyboard shortcuts have shortened up the process significantly, especially if I'm using a device with a touchpad instead of a mouse.

If you aren't already familiar with making comments on a Google Doc, click here to read my introductory post.

To make your comment - position your cursor or highlight the desired text and then press Control-Alt-M (Command-Option-M for Mac).  This will open up the comment window.  Type in your comment and then hit Control-Enter (Command-Enter for Mac) to submit the comment.  Simple I know, but it saves so much time when you are grading multiple documents in one sitting.

Try this out next time you leave comments on a doc.  Trust me, you'll never go back to using the mouse!

Stop in again soon for more handy tech tips!

Making Comments in a Google Doc

I love using Google Docs with my students.  It makes looking over their writing so much easier than lugging around all their papers or spiral bound writing notebooks.  Giving them feedback has gotten much easier also.  The ability to make comments right on the Google Doc has been amazing!  When we first moved to Google Docs, I would change the color of the font and then type notes to the students directly in the document.  I laugh at that now because using the comments function is so much better.

If you haven't made comments in a Google Doc before, it really is very easy.  I'm going to show the instructions for Google Docs, but the process is essentially the same in Sheets and Slides as well.

When you have a document open, place the cursor where you'd like the comment to appear in the text.  It normally highlights the nearest word.  You can also highlight a specific word or section of the text that you wish to comment on.  Then click the "Comments" button on the upper right hand corner of the window to open the comments thread.  You will see the options for Notifications and Comment.  Click on Comment.

Then it will pop up a little window for you to type your comment.  After you type what you'd like to say, click the blue "Comment" button to submit your comment.

Then the comment will appear to the right of the document.  All the comments will show up in that right side pane for the students.  If they click the highlighted portion of the text, the comment that goes with it will be emphasized.  If your students have email with their Google Apps account, they will get an email letting them know that you commented on their document. 

If they want to reply to your comment, it gives them a little reply box.  You can also type into the reply box to add to your comment.  This creates a little conversation.  You will get an email notification letting you know the student replied to your comment. 

My students love checking their comments and responding back.  Even if it is just to say "ok".  Once they are finished with the comment, they can click "Resolve".  The comment will close, and appear to go away, but you can access it again by clicking "Comments" on the upper right hand corner of the page.  

With my younger students, I try to do a face to face conference about their writing and I leave little comments to remind them of what we talked about.  If the comments are very simple and straight forward, I can leave the comment without the conference.  When I'm at home at night grading their writing, I try to make the comment as clear as possible, but I might ask them to come and see me in the text of the comment so I don't forget to meet with them the following day.  I love it, the students love it, and I love how their little personalities come out when they respond to the comments.

Stop by again soon for more handy tips!

Save Slides as Image Files

This is one of those tips that you may not use all the time, but it can come in really handy when the need arises.  A colleague shared this tip with me and I've already thought of a few ways I might use it!

There are a variety of reasons you might want to save some, or all, of the slides from a PowerPoint or Google Slides Presentation as image files.  You can create a video with a song or with narration using iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, or Adobe Premiere Pro using your slide images.  You can easily email out single slides that students have created for parents to see.  Maybe you need to post pictures of single slides on a website or as work examples, etc.

Now that we know it is a handy trick, let's talk about how it's done.

First - using Microsoft PowerPoint:

Open your slide show, and then click the Office Button (menu button).  Choose "Save As", and then "Other Formats".

A box will pop up asking where you'd like to save.  Chose the location where you'd like to save your files and then change the "Save as type" option to be the image file of your choice - JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, etc.  If you have no idea what the differences are - just choose JPEG.  

Once you click "Save", it will prompt you to see if you would like to save just the current slide or all of the slides as images.  You can make your choice. 

 If you choose "Every Slide" it will save all of the files in a folder and confirm the location of that folder.

If you open up the folder, you will see all of your slides saved as individual image files.  

You can now do whatever you wish with your files like import them into a video creation app or email out individual slides to specific people.  

This process is a little different in Google Slides.

At the time of this post, Google Slides only allows you to save one slide at a time.  You can't save the whole show all at once like you can in PowerPoint.  If you want to save every slide, I suggest you download the file as a PowerPoint document, open it in PowerPoint, and complete the process I shared with you above.  If you just need a few of the slides, or you don't have access to the PowerPoint program, you can follow the directions below.  

Open up your Google Slides Presentation.  Click on "File" and choose "Download as".  You can then pick PNG, JPEG, or SVG.  Again, if you aren't sure what those all are, just choose JPEG.  

Once you click on the file type you want, it will automatically download your file.  Chances are downloads will automatically go into your "Downloads" folder unless you have changed the default location for downloads.

I had my students create a slide in a shared Google Slides Presentation for their parents that I set in a revolving slideshow on our Open House night.  I will be converting that slideshow into a PowerPoint, saving all the slides as JPEG images, and emailing them out individually to parents in case they missed it at the event.  This process will make that very easy.  

I hope this tip was helpful for you!  Stop in again soon for more handy tech tips!