Lemon Tech Tidbits

  Mrs. Arin Jones recently shared a website her students have enjoyed using to practice their typing skills. It is called NitroType . Students can easily login using their Google account or through Clever. Once logged in, students are able to change the color of their car, give it a sticker, and decide on a exhaust trail.  NitroType is a multiplayer car racing game where you need to type a passage currently and as fast as you can to win. Students compete against each other and other students from around the world. You can play as many times as you want.  It is free to sign up for an account and no email is asked or used. You do get friend request but can turn this feature off which is strongly advised. There are ads that are displayed which may cause concern for some students. 

I have found myself using AI more and more as a tool for creating educational products for teachers. One of the sites I use a lot is Bard AI, created by Google. Recently, there has been an upgrade and a new name. Bard AI is now called Gemini .   Why the change? Google wanted to change the name to make a more unified experience for users. Before, Google had Bard as a chatbot AI and had Duet AI as an AI powered generator. Now, both are combined with the single name Gemini. Why should I be aware of this change? If you use Google Assistant (“Hey Google” on a device such as your phone), it will automatically pull up Gemini. It even sounds like Google will soon be phasing out Google Assistant (and it’s app) and replacing it with Gemini. You can already install the Gemini app onto your phone if you want to give it a try. You Still NEED TO CHECK the content: I wanted to see if Gemini would be able to give information on an event from yesterday so I asked it to explain who won the S...

  PBS LearningMedia builds on the strength of public media and is designed to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Resources are aligned to national standards and include videos and inter-actives, as well as audio, documents, and in-depth lesson plans for grades PreK through 12th grade. You can browse by standards, grade level, subject area, and special collections. You can also favorite and share resources with your class and colleagues. Best of all, PBS LearningMedia’s basic service is free for PreK-12 educators. I especially like the ability to easily add any lesson directly to Google Classroom.

  I found this presentation on one of the Facebook groups I belong to for school librarians. It is was shared by Christina Peet Nunez and all the work is hers. I wanted to share this as I found it to be very helpful and full of great information. The first slide has links to learning more about Google Docs, Drive, Sheets, Forms, Slides, Sites, and Chrome. Once you click on which Google product, you are brought to another slide that breaks down 6 to 8 different tutorials. If you pick one, you are brought to an instructional slide complete with a GIF to show you exactly how to perform that tip or trick. Even though I use Google products all the time, I still found ideas that I either hadn’t known or didn’t consider doing. For example, one of the tips shows you how to have students create a rubric together for a project using Google Forms!   Take a look for yourself.