Lemon Tech Tidbits

SCREENCASTIFY + FEEDBACK = Wonderful Things One of my favorite Chrome Extensions is Screencastify. It is so easy to use and comes with a free and paid version. I have found it is the best way to communicate with staff and students when it comes to answering technology questions. But I never thought of using it as a way to provide feedback to a student before I read the Twitter post by Jake Miller. Jake Miller has created a short gif and video showing how easy it is to provide feedback to students using the Screencast Chrome extension. You can even have students do the same with their fellow classmates. Take a look: https://goo.gl/2RWHEo

HOW TO SAVE A FACEBOOK VIDEO Last night, a friend shared a very short but excellent video explaining why it is important to always fact-check the sources on Facebook. I teach a unit over Information Literacy and wanted to save this video so I could share it with the students. The problem was the video was created by someone and only shared on Facebook. It was not on youtube or any other place where I could easily bookmark the site or download the video. So here is what I did. I followed the directions provided by Computer Hope: https://goo.gl/73P2Ny I found these instructions were easy to follow and once I had the video saved to my download file, I was able to then upload it into my Google Drive making it easy to not only find when I need it but to also add it to any of my other presentations. HINT: Right-click on a MacBook laptop is two fingers pressed down together on the touchpad.

Padlet Update Another update you might not be aware of is the ability for teachers and students to provide feedback to post and comments on a Padlet. It’s called Padlet Reactions. For more information, click here: https://youtu.be/4ts5l3z1qz8 *A trick I found with reactions. If you want to delete or reset the reactions without losing any content, change the style of the reactions to something else and then switch it back. Padlet is a place to create an online bulletin board of information to share with others from links to websites, video, images, comments, and more.  There is also a new component called the Padlet Backpack . This is a paid service that was created specifically for schools. The paid version differs from the free by having more security options, extra security, and better user management and access control. *I still use the free version and it works very well.

Google Doc Update If you haven’t discovered it by now, when you make a copy of a document in Google Drive, you can now include all of the comments and notes as well. All you have to do is make a copy like you usually do but check the box that says “Copy comments and suggestions” or “Copy comments.”

OUTLINE MAPS From the blog Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne Outline Maps is a free site that offers very simple games to help students realize where countries, states, cities, or rivers actually are in the world. ” A very simple game that helps you realize where countries, states, counties, cities or rivers actually are in the world.” You can search for the game by either name of the country or by feature. Once you make your selection and start the game, a stopwatch will be displayed in the top right-hand corner. The object of the game is to correctly identify all areas on the map in the shortest amount of time.

This is a very short video on how to take data that is in Google Sheets and create a graph for science class. It also explains how you can then insert the chart into your Google Slide for your presentation.

OPEN-UP Resources provides standard aligned curriculum for math and ELA. OER, Open Educational Resources, is becoming bigger and bigger every year. The purpose of OER is to provide teaching and learning materials to the public for free. Open-Up, creating OER resources, has developed an ELA curriculum for grades K-5 and just released a math curriculum for grades 6-8. Each curriculum includes: Student and Teacher Materials Unit plans, lesson plans, assessments, and embedded professional learning Curriculum maps or Scope and Sequence Integrated, lesson-specific supports for ELLs Lesson-level supports for students with special needs Family Resources For more information, visit: http://openupresources.org/

VISIT SPACE WITH GOOGLE MAPS We all know about Google Maps and how easy it is to use to find our way to a location. But did you know it can also be used to “travel” through space? Each planet, moon, and location is available in a 3D model perfect for viewing. Like other Google Maps, you can zoom in close to certain features or expand the view. Many of images come from the spacecraft Cassini as it traveled across space to record images of Saturn over 20 years ago. Others, such as images of Pluto, Venus and other moons were put together with the help of NASA. For more information, click here: https://goo.gl/WHNwSR To visit Google Maps in Space, click here: https://www.google.com/maps/space/earth

CHANGE YOUR DEFAULT FONT IN GOOGLE DOCS Do you hate having to change the font and type in Google Doc whenever you create a new document? I mean really, who uses Arial 11 point on a daily basis? What happened to 12 point? And why Arial? If this has been a daily problem for you, follow these steps by Jake Miller to change your default settings in Google Doc. Type some text. Change the style of that text to what you’d like your default to be. Click the Text Styles dropdown, go to Normal Text (of whichever you’re changing). Click “Update Normal Text to match.” Optional: Repeat 1-4 to change any other text styles (i.e. Title, Subtitle, Heading 1, etc.) that you’d like to change. Click the Text Styles dropdown again. Go down to options and select “Save as my default styles.” For a handy step-by-step video, visit: https://goo.gl/UHdvrh (and be sure to follow Jake Miller on Twitter. He’s great)

G SUITE UPDATE Image Function You can now insert images more easily in Google Docs, Slides, and Drawing. Before, when you clicked on the Insert - Image search, a box would open with many different options. The problem was the box would open up on top of what you were working on. With this new update (soon to be rolled out to everyone), the choices of where to find the image will be from a drop-down box. Any searches of images will create a menu on the right-hand side of your screen making it easier to use. See below: While we are talking about G Suite updates, did you notice the change in the Revision History ? You can now easily name the different Revisions right from the toolbar. This is great for those doing research. They can name their revisions Draft 1, Draft 2, Final Draft, etc. See more: https://goo.gl/imz1DW