#EduGIF Guy. Speaker. Tech Integration Specialist. Google Apps for Edu Trainer. Nerd. #EduDuctTape Podcast Host.
Grading stinks. Anything that we can do to make it better–without sacrificing the quality of the pedagogy or feedback–is worth doing! Here’s a little trick to make it easier to locate student answers in Google Docs (or other files) that you assign in Google Classroom . . .
Ever need to play a video during an Open House or another event where you want people to be able to see the video at various times throughout a time period? Just right-click on the video and click Loop!
The new school year started for my colleagues and I a few weeks ago. One process that I have to go through at the beginning of each school year is getting all of the year’s events onto my Google Calendar. This is a tedious process, but it’s an important one for me. The main task here is copying events from our school’s calendar onto my calendar. The school calendar is jam-packed with stuff and I only need a subset of those events.
While going week-by-week through the school year, I thought “There has got to be a quicker way to navigate through this!” Well, I did a little poking around and found my answer! Keyboard Shortcuts!
If you go into Settings, you can turn on Keyboard shortcuts. First, let’s look at how to do this and then I’ll share some of my favorite shortcuts.
So, that animation showed you our first 2 keyboard shortcuts:
– / brings up the search, all ready for you to find that special event you were looking for.
– ? brings up all of the keyboard shortcuts, for when you forget some of them (which you will).
Here are the other ones that I’ve added to my repertoire:
When edtech rockstar Matt Miller says “Hey Jake, you should make this into an #EduGIF!” you listen. He was right, too. It was an awesome tip.
It was a pickle that I had been in before, but I had never known the solution. You’re preparing something–a lesson, a blog post, whatever–and you need a picture. Not just any picture, but a picture that you’ve used before. It’s in that one Google Doc, but you can’t get to the picture from anywhere else. So, you right-click on it in that Google Doc . . . but there’s no Save Image option.
There are a handful of ways that you can get that image saved as a file on your computer, but the one that Matt sent to me is pretty awesome. It’s just a few steps and super easy. And it’s even more convenient if you have multiple images that you need from the same Google Doc. So, let’s get to it – first an animated #EduGIF and then the steps for those of you who like to read words.
When presenting about #StopMotionSlides, someone inevitably asks about cutting the background out of a picture so that it has a transparent background. Up to this point, my answer has been Microsoft Word, but I wasn’t satisfied with that since it wouldn’t work on Chromebooks or on computers without Microsoft Word. And then I listened to Episode 13 of the Shukes and Giff Podcast. In it, Kim Pollishuke shared about Lunapic.
Lunapic is a free, web-based photo editing platform. Along with a lot of other features (seriously, go to it and explore!), is the ability to make the background transparent. If it’s a solid colored background (i.e., green screen), there are tools that automate it. For images that don’t have a solid colored background (or have backgrounds that include colors that are in the main part of the image), you can also do it manually. Check it out in the animated GIF below! Side note: there’s even a Chrome extension so that you can edit images you find online more conveniently.
When my friend Dave Ternent and I started teaching a middle school STEM course back in 2012, one of the first tools that we selected for the course was SketchUp.
After seeing the awesome Matt England present at a local tech conference about his use of SketchUp with middle schoolers we even had information from someone who had used it about how to best introduce it. Matt was kind enough to share his resources during the session.
Based on Matt’s information, we had our students make shapes with certain dimensions as they learned to use it (see image). After that, they moved up to creating a 3-hole putt-putt (mini-golf) course that fit within a certain area (see image). They got very creative with those courses, which is great, but you could also extend this to tons of curriculum standards! Surface area, Roman architecture, volume, locations from literature, measurement, earthquake-resistant houses, perimeter, developing cities . . . I could go on and on. But I stopped using SketchUp. Why? It didn’t work on Chromebooks.
Until recently! SketchUp is now available on the web, which means that you can use it on Chromebooks! Check out the animated GIF below showing me using SketchUp. Imagine the possibilities for students!
(Note: this post previously linked to an “old” post from SketchUp for Schools. I updated the link to point to a newer post on 9.12.2020)
This post originally appeared on the Screencastify blog, here.
We all know how important it is for students to demonstrate
their understanding of a particular subject or problem by “showing their work.” If your students are using tablets, there are a number of great interactive whiteboard recording apps that allow students to write with a stylus, annotate images and provide audio explanations.
But what about the large student population who are using Chromebooks, not tablets? Some new Chromebooks have touch screens and a small number are ready to roll with Android apps, but for the majority of our students, this type of recording feature is nowhere in their near future. And it’s a great feature! What’s better than telling a student to “show their work”!? Telling them to “explain their work” or, better yet, narrate it.
As an educational technology advocate and problem-solver, I am always looking for a hack. And, here’s my hack for this. Tell your students: “click on the Screencastify extension, select Cam, spin the computer around, aim it at a piece of paper, starting writing or drawing and explain away.” In short, spin it around, write it down, explain with sound.
Check out my hack in action in the video below!
As another school year comes to a close, many schools are packing up their Chromebooks for a 3rd, 4th or even 5th year. These older Chromebooks are likely (or will soon start) experiencing battery issues. This is a great time to check their battery health in preparation for next school year. Here’s how (there’s also a GIF at the bottom of the post):
Of course, a weak or rapidly discharging battery is not a big deal if the device can be plugged in throughout the day. But if you’re in a 1-to-1 school where students carry Chromebooks from class to class, a battery that is under 50% health and discharging faster than 0.10% in 30 seconds won’t make it through the day.
It’s nice to have easy access to lots of sites, but that bookmarks bar can get crowded. Use Bookmark folders on your bar to categorize them while still having convenient access.
Shorter bookmark titles take up less bookmark bar space. Take the title out to just use the sites logo. If the site doesn’t have a logo, or it doesn’t make the destination clear (like a docs logo), use short words or even emojis to save space!
Did you know that docs.google.com/create opens up a fresh new Doc? Or that slides.google.com/create does the same with Google Slides? Create bookmarks for those links and have quick access to that capability.
Do you go to your Starred files often? Need quick access to Shared with Me when someone sends you a file in a meeting? Do you have a folder for all of your students’ assignments that you go to daily? Make a special bookmark for different locations!
Different tabs in Sheets, Headings in Docs and slides in Slides have different URL’s. That means you can make your bookmark (or a link you send in an email or message to someone) direct you (or the recipient) to a specific spot. It’s nice when you want to send someone to today’s meeting agenda in the massive Doc with all meeting agendas in it. It’s also super convenient if you regularly access a certain spreadsheet tab.
Have a certain GMail label you access regularly? Want quick access to your starred or important files? Want to be able to get to emails from your admin or boss quickly? Create a bookmark for that exact part of your Gmail.
Want to be able to access Day, Week, Month, Agenda or a Custom View quickly? Make it a bookmark.
In the episode below of The Chromebook Classroom Podcast, John Sowash interviewed Eric Griffith. Eric had some really great insights for going 1:1 with Chromebooks. Here are a few of my favorite things that are different from what we currently do at my school . . . but may consider adopting in the future: Continue reading Chromebook Management ideas from @MrGrifftastic