Tech Tuesday Tips

Spreadsheets are an everyday tool for some of us. Google sheets has often been criticized for having less features that MS Excel, but this really is no longer the case. Google has quietly been making changes to sheets to make it more versatile for gSuite users. You can now rotate the text in a cell in Sheets (Format > Text rotation). This is especially useful when you need to fit long header names into thin columns, or when you simply want to fit more text on a single screen. Another feature added this week is the ability to format text with accounting number formats. The currency symbols as well as numbers, decimal points and repeated characters can be formatted to line up correctly. Late last year they added alternate row colors as a feature. Select a range of cells and choose  (Format > Alternating Colors).  Options for color combinations are loaded in a side pane. These are just a few of the new great features that have been added to Google s...

For years, teachers have requested to ability to use videos in Google Slides, without the need to host them on YouTube. Yesterday, Google finally made this possible! Just add your video to Google Drive. Then Insert Video within your Slides presentation. You'll see a new option for Google Drive. Once you’ve added a Drive video to your presentation, you can choose when to start and end it, whether it should autoplay when presenting, and whether it should be muted or play with audio. Simply right-click on the video and select Video options. If a person viewing your presentation doesn’t have permission to view a video embedded within it, they’ll be prompted to request access. Note that while you can play Drive videos in Slides on the web and mobile, you can only insert them from the web application. For more details, visit the Help Center . This feature should be rolling out to users within the next two weeks.

Google Calendar is helping many people organize their digital lives. The web calendar version allows you to see and display multiple calendars in one easy to use interface.  Don't want to see a calendar, simply click the checkbox in the sidebar and it is hidden. Want to add a coworkers calendar to your calendar page? Just type their email in the box at the top of Other Calendars. So far so good. But when viewing your Google calendars using any of the calendar apps on mobile apps (iOS and Android)  its not quite so simple. The only calendars that show up in your apps are the ones you have write access to (my calendars) the other calendars are not visible... or are they? To the rescue is a little known setting buried deep in the bowels of the Google help system. Visit a URL on your mobile device or PC or Mac and you can choose which calendars are visible and which ones are hidden. https://calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect Simply click the one...

A favorite online teacher rubric is OrangeSlice.  OrangeSlice: Teacher Rubric increases the teacher’s grading productivity by eliminating repetitive clicks, presenting the rubric selections in an easy to use format and presenting the final grades in a consistent, professional format.  OrangeSlice also works with Google Classroom.  Click here to view step-by-step instructions on how to install and use OrangeSlice.

In Google Classroom, you can now give assignments to all students, individual students, or groups of students just with a few checkboxes.  Go to Google Classroom and click on the plus sign to start a new announcement, question, or assignment. When it pops up, you will notice a new drop down menu.....All Students.  Here you can decide which students will receive your post. By default, each post is set to All Students. If you would like to only have a few students receive it, click on the All Students drop down menu and select the students that you want to send it to.  

When you attach a well-designed signature to your emails you raise your credibility level and professionalism. At the very least, your signature should include your name, title, organization, and phone number and/or email where you can be contacted.  It's easy to add a signature to your Gmail account. This tutorial will walk you through adding a non-HTML signature, which should be fine for most people. If you really need a HTML signature, visit our blog for more info . First, go to the Settings menu (the icon that looks like a gear). Click it, then choose Settings from the pull-down. Scroll down through the Settings, to the Signature area. Click inside the box, and begin typing your signature.  You can use the icons above the box to change the font, size, style, color, add links or an image, choose the justification, add a list and more.  If you mess up and want to start over, use the last button to remove the formatting. One las...

Do you have a quiz or a test in a Google Doc, and you want to quickly move it to a Google Form?  You can do this with the Add-on called Doc to Form.  Open up your quiz or test in gDocs, and select the Add-ons menu. If you don't already have Doc to Form, go to Get Add-ons and install Doc to Form. Once it is installed, it will appear in your list of Add-ons. (You only need to do this once.)  Go ahead and start it up by selecting Create Form from Doc. Here, a wizard will appear on the side of your page, and you need to follow the prompts.  Answer the first three questions by deciding if you want to collect the user names, and if you want questions in your form asking for the student's name and also the teacher's name.  Next, highlight your first question in your google doc, and click on the blue link in the wizard that says Use Selected Text. You will see it appear in the text box below Question 1 in the wizard.   Select what Type...

One of the best features of Google Forms is the ability to use templates to quickly create various types of forms. There are templates available for Education, Personal and Work.  To access the templates, you'll want to connect to Google Forms through the http://forms.google.com URL. Once you get there, you'll see a few of the templates. To see all of them, you'll need to click on the little arrow. When you click the arrow, it may open a window of templates for your organization (which will probably be blank); just click on General to see all the templates.  As you can see, there are a variety of useful topics. We'll take a look at the Exit Ticket one under the Education topic. You can use the questions that are there, change them, delete or add just like any other form.  When you've got it looking the way you like, go ahead and use whatever method to send it out (post in Google Classroom, email, etc.). Here's an example of a filled-out ex...

As some of you might have heard, Google recently released a new version of Google Sites. It is so slick!  You have the Edit panel that allows you to put all of your items in your site.  Then, you simply drag and drop the items to where you want them on your page. To create new pages, click on the Pages tab of the edit panel and create your new page. Then, just drag it and drop it wherever you want it in your navigation. Select a theme to add some color and choose an image for your header background. Google will also automatically adjust your background image and text for readability. To get started with the new Google Sites, go to your apps launcher and select Sites, then select the New Google Sites. OR, if you are in your Google Drive account, click on the blue new button, then more, then Google Sites. **For the full Google Sites manual, click here **For the full list of instructional videos, click here

Do you use both Google Chrome and Calendar?  Need to quickly add a meeting to your calendar? Don't  open a new tab and enter it manually... just add it  right from Chrome’s address bar! This trick will take a few simple steps of setup, but once you’re done, you can type an event in natural language right in the address bar—such as “Faculty Meeting on Thursday at 3 pm”—and a new event will be created. We will use Chrome's ability to have special search engines to set this functionality up. First, right-click on the address bar and select “Edit search engines”. Once you get to the Search engines dialog box, under Other search engines , enter a name, such as “Add Event” , in the first box. In the middle box, enter a keyword, such as “cal” , to type into the address bar to activate this custom search engine.  Next, copy the following URL and paste it into the last box (it should be all on one line). http://www.google.com/calendar/event?ctext=+%...

During a recent Google Slides training, teachers mentioned that they miss MS PowerPoint's "record audio narrations" feature. The following instructions help you accomplish a similar outcome through video. ViewedIt, a Chrome extension, is an easy way to create , share , and track video views. Do you want to record your device screen or browser tab? Do you want to add narration / music to Google Slides? Or, do you want to create a webcam recording? ViewedIt does all of this with just a few simple clicks. After video is created, it can be shared via email and social networks. ViewedIt is integrated with Gmail. It will add a thumbnail image of your video in a Gmail message. When you send a ViewedIt video using Gmail, the viewer's email address is tagged to each view. You will receive notifications stating what percentage of the video was viewed. Videos sent through other types of email or social networking will not be linked to a specific user. You can trac...

One of the best features in Google Docs, Slides and Drawings was the Research Tool. Through the Research Tool, which allowed authors to do research simultaneously as they write or edit a document. From one place, you could search different Google services including: Scholar, Images, Quotes, Dictionary.  The great thing about the Research tool is that it allowed an author to easily insert citations and links to a document. Once an image, document, or resource was picked , the user click on “cite” and Google Doc automatically inserts the citation according to the style wanted ( MLA or APA, or Chicago).  Unfortunately, in September 2016, Google dropped the Research tool for the Explore tool in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. While this tool still provides the insights, design tools, and research recommendations that the old tool did, the citations feature was mysteriously missing!   Last week, Google improved upon the Explore tool and brought citations bac...

Quizlet Live is an in-class, team based learning game. It puts the students in randomized teams (automatically) and gives each group different questions within the study set. Each team is made up of 3 or 4 students with a randomly assigned animal team name. (You can reshuffle the teams until you are satisfied with the groupings.) Each member of the group has different answers and only one person has the correct answer. The group needs to work together to get the correct answer to get the points.  Incorrect answers reset the team’s progress to zero. The first team to match all 12 terms correctly in a row wins. At the end of the game, teams see what they matched correctly and incorrectly. In the teacher mode, you must have the following to do Quizlet Live: At least 12 questions and answers in the set At least 6 students ready to play 10 to 20 minutes of class time To create this on your own: Website to set up your Quizlet account:   https://quizlet.com...

I was doing some research for a resource visit last week, and I came across this great resource from the University of Colorado Boulder. It is called PhET and it provides free interactive math and science simulations.   Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery. The simulations are written in Java, Flash or HTML5, and can be run online or downloaded to your computer. All simulations are open source and are free to all students and teachers. They are great to show on your interactive board. Here's a short video introduction to the PhET simulations: A couple of my favorite simulations are the Plinko Probability simulation, Balancing Chemical Equations simulation, and John Travoltage . Check out PhET and see how you can use it in your classroom!

This idea comes from working with Kathy Laney at Hicksville. We were looking at how to convert a paper form presentation rubric and came up with the idea of using a google form and submitting a record each time the student does a presentation. The results are tabulated in a spreadsheet  Here is a link to make a copy of the Form https://goo.gl/KHNgTA Once you have the copy of the form in your drive you will need to open it and click on the responses tab and create a new spreadsheet to hold your results. (click the Green icon)  You will notice that the questions from the form correspond to columns in the spreadsheet. Each question has one answer (a checkbox) with the value X. Checking a box will result in an X in that column in the spreadsheet which makes it easy to see at a glance who has been assessed and what they scored. To customize you can delete the demo students and add your own by editing the first question. ...

Have you ever heard of Google Keep? Its a little known google app that lives in your gSuite account and if you have not tried it for few months it may be worth your while to give it another look. So what is Google Keep? If you are familiar with Evernote or even Apple's notes app then you probably have some idea. Basically a note taking program that syncs across all your devices. So what are some of the uses that you can put it to? Save your shortened urls or QR codes Take notes at a parent teacher conference. Capture photos of a conference presentation. Record a voice memo Make a shopping list Share action items with your team. Google Keep is available in apps and as a chrome application. It works in iOS and Android as well as in your favorite browser. Give it a try and see if you find it useful. I certainly did this week.