Lemon Tech Tidbits

I love Flipgrid and have found that with each new update, it is only getting better. Flipgrid recently announced a new feature called Guest Mode. “Now educators can involve families, community members, experts, and more by granting them special permission to specific Topics, without providing access to the other Topics in your Grid. From within your Educator Admin , simply activate Topic Guest Mode on any of your Topic settings!“ (Flipgrid.com) In Guest Mode, you have the option to have a guest be able to view-only or view and comment. You can share the guest code any way you would like. The website provides examples of how schools can use this new feature such as speaking with an expert or doing a school-wide challenge involving community members. Just click here , and scroll down to find out all the information you need to start using Guest Mode in Flipgrids today.

Did you know you can now access Google Maps directly in your Google Drive? This blog post walks you through how easy it is to open up Google Maps and customize it to fit exactly what you need. Google Maps is one of those G Suite apps that doesn’t get that much attention. This app is a fun way for students to understand how to read a map, investigate the world, practice math skills such as figuring out the distance between two points of interest and so much more. On DitchThatTextbook, Matt Miller has a blog post over 20 Ways of incorporating this app into your curriculum. Richard Byrne also has a few blog posts as well. You can find them here and here . Finally, on TeachersPayTeachers , there are many lessons over using Google Maps. Some of them are even free such as these for Spanish teachers. If you would like to know more about using Google Maps in your curriculum, please check out this site from Google: https://www.google.com/help/maps/education/

From the blogpost by Alice Keeler comes a very detailed article about using File - Email Collaborators when working on a document, slide, or sheet in a large group of people. This allows you to send a specific and specialized email to all of the people in your group to assign tasks or to provide extra instructions. In the blog, Alice explains how she uses this feature to make sure students check the feedback she leaves for them on their assigned work.

Jake Miller had an excellent Twitter post about how easy it is to incorporate a Google Drawing into a Google Doc to make the assignment come alive. If you don’t use Twitter, you can see the same information on his blog located here: https://jakemiller.net/insert-drawings-into-docs-being-assigned-in-classroom/ Jake Miller explains how easy it is to have students annotate a Google Drawing that has been incorporated into a Google Doc. There is no need for them to use an add-on such as Dochub. All they have to do is to simply double-click on the image. Take a look at his gif to see how easy this can be:

BIBLIONASIUM Some of you may already be familiar with Biblionasium. But for those who don’t know, Biblionasium is a book review site where kids share book reviews with each other. To login, students can create their own account or sign in using their Destiny account information! That’s right. Students can sign in using the same login as they do to login to the library. If this is not working, they can sign up by selecting the Join Us icon. There are three choices; Educator, Parent, and Student. (Students sign in does require them having a parent email which will guide them towards creating their own account and then creating one for their student). As an Educator, you can manage a book lists, set a challenge for your students to reach, view reports on your students and more. For students, navigating the site is very easy. Watch this short video to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFiC6jRvxBs

FEEDSPOT So you may be asking yourself how I am able to stay on top of technology by following so many different blogs and websites. The answer? Feedspot.com Feedspot.com is a freemium RSS feeder allowing you to see the latest blog posts from your favorite sites through a single email. The cost is relatively cheap at only $24.00 a year. Once you have everything set up, you can designate whether you want to receive an email with the latest posts daily or weekly. In addition, you can visit the website anytime you want if that is more convenient. So who do I follow? Here is a list of my top ten blogs that I follow in order of preference. In some cases, I not only follow the online blog, but follow them on Twitter and Facebook as well. FreeTech4Teachers - Richard Byrne  G Suites Update Blog ControlAltAchieve DitchThatTextbook Teacher Tech - Alice Keeler Education Technology and Mobile Learning ShakeUpLearning ClassTechTips EdTech4Beginners WeAreTeachers

From G Suite Learning Center comes a handy guide to all of the features of GMail…. a cheat sheet if you will! And not only is there just one, but there are also several designed to simplify each feature available on the app to make your life easier. One of my favorites is the ability to add labels so all incoming email messages are automatically sorted for me. Another is the ability to quickly recall an email I have sent. These are just two tips I like to use every day. If you would like to see more tips, take a look at this page from G Suite. Along with the cheat sheets, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has a blog post titled 4 Important Gmail Features for Teachers. These include the following: Do more inside your inbox Integrate with G Suite apps Smart replay and nudging Confidential mode Each feature is explained in detail on the blog post so check it out.

Did you know you can have real-time captions displayed when you show a Google Slide presentation? And the best part is it is super easy to do. All you have to do is go to View - Present and then click on the Caption button located on the bottom left-hand side of your screen. When you have the captions feature turned on, Google Slides will use the microphone on your computer to automatically create captions of what you say. For more information, click here . Go a step further…. Earlier, I talked about how you can record Google Slide presentations using Screencastify . Well, with this change, it will record your presentation as well as the captions! How cool is that! It gets even better. Screencastify recently announced a Google Slide Add-on that allows you to insert a Screencastify video directly into the Slide! So now, you can create a Screencastify video of your presentation with captions. Then, open up a new Google Slide and insert that video on the first slide. Select Format Opti...