Lemon Tech Tidbits

We teach kids all the time how to be safe when using the internet or social media accounts. So shouldn’t we be following the same advice? In an article by Alice Keeler titled Digital Citizenship Alert , she addresses some of the bad habits she sees teachers make everyday. These include clicking on a sentence between parenthesis, not analyzing a link before clicking, and unintentionally sharing false information. Alice states, “I took a defensive driving course as a teen. They told us “assume everyone is out there to hit you.” Assume everything you click on the internet and especially from emails is out to get you.” Often, we are in a hurry and quickly glance at our Social media feed without spending the time to analyze exactly what it is that we are seeing. Take a moment to read the advice given by Alice Keeler in her article and start incorporating it into your own daily habits. After all, if we want our students to be good digital citizens, then we must model what we preach.

Jon Fortney was a guest host on DitchThatTextbook and wrote this post I thought was interesting to share with all of you. Jon is a fifth-grade teacher and in the post explains how he was able to convince his students that writing isn’t that bad by using a website called Wakelet for students blogs. In the article, Jon goes through all of the steps required for you to do the same with your own students. This can be used for students in grades 4 - 12. Wakelet was built as a way for people to find, share and organize information. Think of it as an alternative to Padlet which is no longer free to use. With Wakelet, you can bookmark sites, videos, podcast, resources, etc. To see a short guide to using Wakelet, click here: http://bit.ly/2MARXcy Wakelet is more than a simple digital pinboard. Students can use it to share information they curate with each other or as a digital portfolio of their work. It can be used to create and share newsletters and for digital storytelling. In addition,

What is Elementar.io? It is an online platform that allows students the ability to create and illustrate interactive stories. Watch this short introduction video to see it in action: http://bit.ly/2IQyHFA . How much does it cost? You can sign up for free using your G Account or filling out a few boxes of information. The free version allows you to have one class with 30 students. You are limited in the illustrations and sounds available but there are still plenty to choose from. If you want to upgrade, you can choose an $8.00 or $25.00 a month teacher plan or the $99.00 a month for a school account. Is it easy to use? Yes and No. If you want to create a simple story with no sound or animation, it is very simple to use. But if you want to spice things up, there can be a learning curve. For example, if you want to add in animation, you will need to use and understand how to use blocks of code. What grade level? This site can be used for upper elementary students in its basic form

Google Sheets already has the ability to easily take the data and present it into a chart that is customizable. The chart or charts can then be added to a Google Doc, Sheet, Slide, and/or Sites while being linked to the data. This means if you change some of the data on the spreadsheet, the chart will automatically update accordingly.  You can customize the charts how you want but to be honest, it can be challenging. This is why I am so excited about the new update that will be rolling out to everyone in a few short days. “Now you can click directly on data labels, chart titles or legends and drag to reposition them. Or you can easily delete these elements using the delete or backspace keys.” - Google “Why you’d use it? : These features give you more ways to control the look and feel of your charts. For example, you can now easily reposition data labels that overlap to avoid clutter and ensure that key data points stand out. Or you can reposition the legend inside the chart area in

Do you have a student or two that is a little bit hard of hearing? You might be surprised to find that you do. One of my sons, Erik, has hearing loss in both of his ears that makes it hard for him to hear higher pitch voices. If you were to look at him, you would have no idea. His hearing loss is right at the edge before he needs hearing aids. But he is not alone. There are many students who might be struggling to hear that often go unnoticed. Luckily, there are adaptive tools available online. One of those is VidReader . VidReader allows you to enter in the url of a youtube video and will then provide a searchable transcript in English of the video for you to share with your students. This allows those that may be hard of hearing to follow along with the text while watching the video. It also allows you to be able to pull key parts of the transcript to share with the students. It typically takes around 2 minutes to pull up the transcript. But if you can’t wait, you can type in your

Last week, I talked about a few new updates concerning Google Slides. Today, I want to share with you a way to find cool Google Slide templates that will help to spice up your presentations. My favorite site to find different themes and templates is SlidesCarnival . I like how the website is clean and very user friendly. There are not a lot of ads filling up the space and it has a nice search bar at the top that allows you to easily find the template to match your theme. Another good site to use is GoogleSlidesPPT . Again, the website is clean and user friendly to use. It also includes a search bar at the top to allow you to easily find the template to match your theme. One of the things that makes it unique is how it shows you each slide included in the template before you download which can be handy to know. The last one to share is SlidesGo . This website is very similar to the others. It contains 145 different themes with some of them created for current events. Like GoogleSli

Has Emoji fever caught on at your school? Students love to use emojis when sharing information with each other on social media so why not incorporate them into your instruction? In this blog post by Matt Miller , he shares ten ways you can use emojis in your classroom. Visual Summaries Feedback Fun Smiley Strategies Google Classroom Questions Emoji Retelling Digital Exit Ticket Emoji Annotations Emoji Check-in Emoji IceBreaker Emoji’s Beyond English For more information on each of the ten ways, please visit Matt Miller’s blog post: http://bit.ly/2p1vImN So you may be asking yourself one question, using Emojis sound fun but how can you access them without having to go to a certain website or accessing a special keyboard? Well, it is simple! Install the Google Chrome Emoji extension.

Google has announced a few updates to help when you are presenting a Google Slide presentation.  On rapid release will be an update that will allow you to easily switch to a black or white screen in the middle of a presentation. All you have to do is use a keyboard shortcut: B for Black or W for White.   Why would you want to switch to a blank screen? Well, let’s say that during the middle of your presentation, there are some questions that you want to answer or quickly go into more detail. You can also use this feature as a way to do a quick review with the students. Simply go to a white or black screen and ask them a few questions to check for understanding. Another new feature is the ability to autoplay and loop a Google Slide presentation. This is easier than the old method. Now, all you have to do is to go to the settings (the gear icon) in the presentation navigation bar. For more information on how to use these new features, go to this site: http://bit.ly/2oank42 Before