Lemon Tech Tidbits

For the past several years, I have collaborated with the science teachers on a Biology project where students create stop-motion animation. We have been using a Chrome Extension called Stop Motion Animator and then taking the video and installing it into WeVideo so students can edit, add sound, and text. This is a great project but there are limitations such as students working in groups not being able to access the video on their own devices very easily.  This is why I was excited to learn about Cloud Stop Motion . This is a free stop motion animation package that runs directly from a browser on any device. There is nothing to install and videos are saved to a secure cloud platform. Teachers can set up student groups and accounts, organize them, and even download the student's videos into an mp4 file. But to be honest, what really excited me was the fact I could create a stop motion video and then ADD TEXT and SOUND too! Right in the same program! It was easy to use. Watch th...

Mentimeter was designed as a way to create interaction between a presenter and the audience. The presenter or teacher first creates a question using different types such as multiple choice, image choice, who will win, scales, open-ended, 100 points, 2 x 2 scale, and word cloud. It will then create a slide of your question along with a link to Menti.com and a six-digit code. The students go to the site, enter in the code and then their answer. As they do, the data is updated on your slide for all to see. This can then lead to class discussions with all participating.  So let’s say you want to talk about copyright and plagiarism before students start their huge research project in your class. With Mentimeter , you can pose the question “What is the first word that comes to your mind when I say Plagiarism” and chose the word cloud. The words that are mentioned the most will appear larger than others creating a visual representation you can then discuss. Mentimeter has a free and tw...

I saw this post on Twitter being shared by many others so I decided to check the original post on Matt Miller’s blog titled Ditch That Textbook and found it was by a guest named Paula Martinez. Paula Martinez is the creator of SlidesMania , a place where you can find templates for both Google Slides and Powerpoint. This is a hobby for Paula and something she likes to do to explore her creative side when she is not at work. Luckily for us, she not only likes to create special themes but she freely shares them as well. In her post, Paula Martinez shares 20 special themes for teachers. These include themes such as: Desktop Organizer for Bell Ringers Bulletin Board for Brainstorming Potter Theme for Genius Hour Doodles for Visual Notes Digital Notebook Theme Ogawa Theme for Notes Farm Animals And so much more…. Check it out all of the different themes here: http://bit.ly/381Cb21

If you have a worksheet in a PDF, it can be tricky to share it via Google Classroom and have students complete it online. In the past, I have suggested using the add-on called DocHub but there may be another (and easier) way…. On the Facebook Group titled Teachers Using G Suite for Education , a teacher named Caye Milstead made a quick comment about how she uploads the PDF worksheet into a Google Slide with text boxes and then shares in G Classroom. I was intrigued and decided to give it a try and it works! First, convert the PDF into a JPEG. The easiest way on a Mac is to open the PDF in Preview and click on Export. Change the format from PDF to JPEG and save it to your desktop.  Next, in a new Slides, go to File and select Page Setup. Change it to Custom and finally 8X11.  Next, insert the PDF as an image and add a text box everywhere you want the students to type. You don’t have to have anything inside the text boxes itself, just a box.  Once done, share the sl...

Libro.fm is a new audiobook platform that allows you to purchase audiobooks directly from local bookstores. It has the same features as Audible but the difference is you know you are supporting local businesses instead of a huge conglomerate. Libro.fm offers three different subscription services to choose from. You can either pay a monthly subscription of $14.99 and listen to a new audiobook every month from a list of over 125,000 titles no matter what the actual retail cost is or you can purchase audiobooks on an A La Carte basis. But what! There’s More! As an educator, you can sign up for a special education account with Libro.fm where you can access audiobooks FOR FREE! The Audiobook Listening Copy Program (ALC for short) provided by Libro.fm allows all librarians and teachers access to different audiobooks every month. The titles are tailored specifically for each group. Each month, there are twelve titles to choose from. The purpose behind this is to hope to build up inter...

One of the professional groups I follow on Facebook is called Teachers Using Google Suite for Education , many people have posted about a new add-on called Magic Exercise Book. This had me intrigued so I decided to check it out. What is Magic Exercise Book? - It is an add-on that was made specifically for Google Classroom to add pages to an existing Doc shared to the students as an assignment. Why would I Need It? - If you are a teacher that likes to present students with a workbook, this may be a better solution than having to constantly add assignments. You can create one single assignment in Google Classroom and then use this add-on to add “pages” whenever you need. Does it only work with Docs? - nope, you can use it to add slides to an existing Google Slide presentation as well. Click here for the add-on. This add-on is relatively new as there are not a lot of reviews or tutorial videos available. But if you want to give it a try, go here to download the add-on . The people w...

This post by Lisa Johnson on her blog titled TechChef is making the rounds on other tech blog posts and tweets. It is about how she decided to create a template in the same style as Instagram to be used across the curriculum. Lisa created the template in Keynote but does have it available in other formats. In addition, she has two different templates with one being generic and the other being specific with prompts. In her blog post, she provides some ways the template could be used from art to math to science to english and so much more. Here is one example to share: “Social Studies: One idea might be to have them create a fake Instagram for a cause or a historical figure. They could also use it to depict 9 important events.” To access the templates, you do need to sign up to follow her blog to retrieve them from the “Doc Locker.” I signed up and received a confirmation email that contained a password to access not only these templates but many others as well. These included items...

When students are creating presentations, they often use Google Images to find pictures without the understanding that many of these are copyrighted. If they use these images, not only are they breaking copyright laws but are guilty of plagiarism as well. It may be easy to justify it as simply a school assignment but we are doing a huge disservice if we don’t teach students, even in grade school, the proper way to access and use digital sources online...even images. Luckily, there are many different places where a person can find images in the public domain. It is still important to properly cite where the images come from but there are no copyright violations to worry about. Here are two of my favorite sites to use: Unsplash : There are currently over 1.5 million photos available but the best feature is the collections making it easier to find exactly what you need. Pixabay: There are currently over 1.1 million photos available to download and use from this site for free. One sm...