Lemon Tech Tidbits

We are only half-way through the school year but with 2019 on the horizon, now may be the best time to do a few things with our laptops to make our lives easier. Empty your Trash Bin in Google Drive : Google gives you plenty of storage but every video, picture, document, etc. can add up. Take a minute to empty your trashcan to regain lost storage. Clean Up Your Google Drive: Make things easier in the long run by spending a little bit of time organizing your Google Drive.  Clean Up Your Desktop : Some of you like to place files and folders on your laptop desktop so it is easier to find and open. But after a while, your desktop is so full of files, it’s hard to find what you are looking for. Drag them into Google Drive or put them into folders. It will save you time. Wipe down your Laptop screen and keyboard .

Khan Academy Kids is a free app created with the help of the Standford Graduate School of Education. It was designed to inspire students from the ages of 2 to 6 with whimsical characters guiding the way. A classroom teacher will create the account and provide each student with their own avatar. Each student will meet and be invited to play with an animal character. Activities revolving around math, English, and logic depending on the student’s age. Each time a student completes an activity, they collect a fun reward for their animal. The focus of Khan Academy is on individualized instructional approach. This is provided through animated videos, interactive activities, books, and creative lessons. For more information, click here: https://www.commonsense.org/education/app/khan-academy-kids To watch a short informational video, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqZfM2W6tSQ&disable_polymer=true

One of the lessons I learned from my high school days was a trick in proofreading a paper before submitting it. This trick was to have someone else read it to you as it was sometimes easier to hear the mistakes and corrections that needed to be made. But what do you do when there is no one around?....you use the add-on Speakd! Speakd is a free Google Doc add-on created to read your documents aloud to you. The voice is in a very robotic tone which is not the best but it is very easy to use. All you have to do is simply press play. This add-on can be used for students who struggle with reading and comprehension as well. Once the document is uploaded to Google Drive, it can be converted into a Google Doc . Once it is in a Google Doc, this add-on can be deployed. BTW: there are many different accessibility features available in Google and Chrome. One of those features is called Google Docs Screen Reader which does exactly as it sounds. The only difference is this feature will read ever

Google announced earlier this summer they were looking at making two huge improvements to Google Classroom. One that had many teachers at USD 473 excited was the ability to have student Chromebooks “locked down” while students take a quiz or test using Google Forms. This feature is now available in Beta form. Teachers can enable locked mode by clicking a simple checkbox in Google Forms. Click here to learn more about this new feature: http://bit.ly/2B8DnlK Another change is you can now create the Google Forms directly from Google Classroom . The best part? You can have it import your grades from the Google Form directly into Google Classroom. Another new Beta feature is a new built-in Gradebook. You can find all the information about this feature here: http://bit.ly/2Uye1GB