Lemon Tech Tidbits

My new favorite thing this year might just be digital escape rooms. I find they are addicted to create and to solve. What I like the most about them is they can be done in class and virtually. Here are a few more digital escape rooms created by other people that I thought were worth sharing. 3 Free Halloween Digital Escape Rooms by Matt Miller (bonus - has the answers!) Dog Man Escape Room Famous Americans Native Americans Save Sports (mini Math escape room) States of Matter Middle School American Revolution : Pick your side Civil War (8th Grade) Genetics and Heredity High School Ultra Mega Super Death Escape Room - math problems. Romeo and Juliet Escape Room Escape the Factory (Industrial Revolution) The assassination  of Abraham Lincoln Spanish Vocab Digital Escape Room

Google has undergone a few changes recently with some being good and a few being just plain annoying. NEW Name: yes, Google is changing the name for G Suite for Education yet again. You might be seeing the term Google Workspace in blog post and websites. This will be the new term for G Suite for Education in the future and is already being used on the business side. LOGO’s Changing: Much to many people’s annoyance, the logos for Sheets, Slides, etc. are changing. Take a look at this post for more information. This means all of those tutorials will need to be updated. Ugghhh… ACCESS Request: In the past, if someone asks for permission to access a document or file in Google Drive, you would have to open it up to change the permissions. Now, you can do it all in GMail. SMART FILL in Sheets: Using Machine-learning, you can autofill more cells in Google Sheets. Click here for more information. PLAY VIDEO in Slides: Before, you had to set this option up. Now, all videos will be s...

When the weather gets colder, leaves start to fall, and night seems to come earlier every day, I’m always in the mood for a good scary story. However, horror is not for everyone so on this post, I plan on providing you with links to great Fall activities you can do with your students that are free and ready-to-use. Build a Monster: I created this based upon Eric Curtis Build a Snowman. Make a copy and share it with students. Build a Jack-O-Lantern: From the man himself, Eric Curtis Halloween Haunt Digital Escape Room: A fun digital escape room where students will need to work together. Halloween Magnetic Poetry : From Kasey Bell. Download the template, make a copy, and share it with your students. Halloween Apps & Activities with an iPad: Perfect for elementary students. Spooky Halloween MadLip : Perfect for older students. 2 Sentence Horror Sentences : for High School students. Here is the lesson plan and here is a template to use .

Generation Genius is a website full of ready-to-use science videos and lesson plans designed for students in grades K-8. It was created by Dr. John Vinokur and Eric Rollman as a modern take on the wonderful Bill Nye videos of yesteryear.  The site contains not only videos and lessons but reading material, DIY activities, and educational games. Everything is aligned with the NSTA Standards. You can sign up to try it out for free to see how well your students enjoy the videos but this is a subscription based service. Click here to see the prices available for an individual teacher, classroom or district. For more information on this site, take a look at the short video available here (video is a paid commercial for the site) Even though the website does require a paid subscription to access all of the lesson plans and more, you can watch clips of the videos for free off of the GenerationGenius youtube channel. You can access it here. Remember though, these are just clips so they ...

With all of the new technology, there are times when we forget about older tools and websites that are still wonderful to use. One of those is Adobe Spark. If you have not used it before or need a refresher, here is a quick breakdown. What is Adobe Spark? It is a free mobile design app that allows you and your students to quickly create social graphics, webpages, and videos. How can I learn more? In a guest post by Claudio Zavala on DitchThatTextbook, you can find step-by-step instructions on how to use each feature available in Adobe Spark. In addition, she gives some suggestions on how it can be incorporated into your classroom such as having students create a comic strip to show understanding of a concept, creating a book trailer, or creating a presentation using a combination of images and text that goes beyond a few simple slides. Are you an expert already? If you are already familiar with Adobe Spark or if you want to learn even more about it, sign up to take the FREE Adobe Cre...

Sometimes, all we need to do to liven up a worksheet or Google Doc is a cool title. It can catch a student's eye and set the tone for the entire worksheet. Instead of spending a lot of time trying to design a spicy title, simply type in the words using textgiraffe.com ! Once you enter in the words for the title, the site will display it in many different designs. If you find one that you like, simply click on it. You will be prompted to choose a small, medium, or large logo. Once you make your choice, the words will appear as a png. Drag it onto your desktop and then insert it as an image into your Google Doc. Bonus: To change the color, click on the image in Google Doc. Next, go to Image Options and finally select Recolor. It’s that easy. Below are just a few of the different designs available:  

Just a few tricks I wanted to share with all of you about Google Classroom. Missing assignments: A teacher assigns an assignment to all students in Google Classroom but it doesn’t show up for one or two students. It looks blank even though things look okay on the teacher’s side. A trick is to type in a private comment to those students. The assignment will then show up for those students. Help organize information by using Emojis: This is something built in to Google Chrome and can be used not only in Classroom but can be used almost everywhere. When you go to type in a name, at the beginning of the title, do a right click. You will notice a choice to select Emoji. Click on the Emoji you want to use and select it. Here is a video to show you how.  Create a Google Classroom Shell: This tip was shared by Adam Juarez . A Google Classroom Shell is a class with no students invited to join. The purpose is to allow you to create assignments, posts, topics, forms, etc. ahead of time as...

Mrs. Cochran tagged me on an Instagram post about MOTE and I thought I would share it with all of you. What is Mote? : Mote is a freemium Chrome Extension that allows you to leave voice comments on G Suite tools from Google Docs to Google Slides. It works really well in Google Classroom as it will leave voice comments as private comments to a student. If you use a rubric (or not), you can use Mote to provide feedback to students. Mote for Students? Yes, students can use Mote to leave feedback when doing peer review or leave comments to teachers such as asking for more help or responding to a teacher’s mote. Where can I get more information? Browse their website, justmote.me , for more information about the free and paid versions. This video is under ten minutes and provides a brief introduction to MOTE. This video is around 20 minutes long and provides in-depth instruction on how to use MOTE. (fyi - she says you have 60 sec but you actually only have 30 sec per note)