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

I love Flipgrid and have found that with each new update, it is only getting better. Flipgrid recently announced a new feature called Guest Mode. “Now educators can involve families, community members, experts, and more by granting them special permission to specific Topics, without providing access to the other Topics in your Grid. From within your Educator Admin , simply activate Topic Guest Mode on any of your Topic settings!“ (Flipgrid.com) In Guest Mode, you have the option to have a guest be able to view-only or view and comment. You can share the guest code any way you would like. The website provides examples of how schools can use this new feature such as speaking with an expert or doing a school-wide challenge involving community members. Just click here , and scroll down to find out all the information you need to start using Guest Mode in Flipgrids today.

Did you know you can now access Google Maps directly in your Google Drive? This blog post walks you through how easy it is to open up Google Maps and customize it to fit exactly what you need. Google Maps is one of those G Suite apps that doesn’t get that much attention. This app is a fun way for students to understand how to read a map, investigate the world, practice math skills such as figuring out the distance between two points of interest and so much more. On DitchThatTextbook, Matt Miller has a blog post over 20 Ways of incorporating this app into your curriculum. Richard Byrne also has a few blog posts as well. You can find them here and here . Finally, on TeachersPayTeachers , there are many lessons over using Google Maps. Some of them are even free such as these for Spanish teachers. If you would like to know more about using Google Maps in your curriculum, please check out this site from Google: https://www.google.com/help/maps/education/

From the blogpost by Alice Keeler comes a very detailed article about using File - Email Collaborators when working on a document, slide, or sheet in a large group of people. This allows you to send a specific and specialized email to all of the people in your group to assign tasks or to provide extra instructions. In the blog, Alice explains how she uses this feature to make sure students check the feedback she leaves for them on their assigned work.