WEEKLY BULLETIN TECH TIPS
(that haven't already been shared on other pages on this site)
Embedded Files
2021-2022
May 13, 2022
Google’s My Maps enable you to create and share custom maps that are accessible on any device.
Draw: Add points or draw shapes anywhere.
Search: Find places and save them to your map.
Import: Instantly make maps from spreadsheets.
Personalize: Show your style with icons and colors.
Add photos and videos to any place.
Share: Embed maps in your website or blog.
Collaborate: Work on your map together, just like Google Docs.
Organize: Store your maps alongside your other documents in Google Drive.
April 30, 2022
As the school year winds down and you begin to clean up your physical spaces, don’t forget to organize your digital spaces as well.
Clean up your Gmail inbox by adding labels and archiving old emails.
Move downloaded documents from the desktop and downloads folder on your laptop to your Google Drive.
Clean up your Drive by deleting files that are no longer currently and organizing documents into folders that can be categorized, color-coded, and dated.
April 8, 2022
If you’re looking for new podcasts or quick educational inspiration, here are a few lists of popular podcasts for educators:
Edutopia: 13 Educator-Approved Podcasts to Listen to This Year (Aug. 2021)
We Are Teachers: 15 of the Absolute Best Podcasts for Teachers (Oct. 2021)
Education Corner: The 17 Best Education Podcasts for Teachers 2022
March 31, 2022: Did you know that YouTube has the following features?
⏱️ Adjusting Playback Speed
Click on the settings gear icon for the video you are watching and click "Playback speed" from the menu.
Choose a slower speed such as 0.25, 0.5, or 0.75 or a faster speed such as 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, or 2.
You can even click "Custom" if you need to tweak it more.
🖼️ Picture-in-Picture Mode
Right-click on the current video you are watching.
A pop-up menu will appear but DO NOT click on any of its options. Instead, right-click a second time.
A different pop-up window will now appear. Click the "Picture in picture" option here.
Watching in picture-in-picture mode:
The video will appear in its own floating window.
You can watch the video by clicking the play button in the floating window.
You can click and drag the video around the screen and drag the edge of the video to resize it.
You can move to other tabs and windows, and the video will continue to be visible and play.
When done with picture-in-picture mode you can close out of the floating window.
Click on the settings gear icon for the video you are watching.
From the pop-up menu click on "Subtitles/CC" and select your language.
YouTube captions can also be translated into a wide range of languages.
Click on the settings gear icon for the video you are watching and click on "Subtitles/CC".
If the "Auto-translate" option is not available, temporarily choose "English (auto-generated)" to enable the option.
Next click "Auto-translate" from the pop-up menu.
You can also adjust the caption font, color, size, and more.
Click the "3-dots" button underneath the video.
Then click "Show transcript" from the pop-up menu.
The full transcript will be displayed in a panel on the right, with a timestamp for each line of text.
Using your mouse, click and drag down to select all of the transcript text. Once you have all of the text selected, you can copy it and paste that text into a Google Doc or Google Sheet or any other tool you prefer.
First watch your own video and take note of the spots where you want to add timestamps. You will need to write down the exact time each spot is in your video in hours, minutes, and seconds, as well as a title or description for that spot.
Now go into the edit mode for your video through your YouTube Studio page.
In the description simply add timestamps in plain text in the format hh:mm:ss followed by a description of that part of the video.
March 18, 2022
Although the PHS staff has predicted that Wordle will no longer be a trend in 2023, it is still quite popular in March 2022 and it is a great way to test your vocabulary. Flippity.net offers more than two dozen templates for creating all kinds of online activities including a Wordle-style game called WordMaster. All you need to do is enter a list of five-letter words specific to your content or unit and Flippity will handle the rest. Your game will be assigned its own URL that you can share with your students.
March 11, 2022
Pi Day is March 14th (since the date is 3/14 and Pi starts out with 3.14). Here are some Pi-themed educational activities from Google Innovator, Eric Curts. Click here for details, templates, and more.
📈 Discovering Pi with Google Sheets
✍️ Create "Pi Poems" with Google Sheets
🏙️ Graph a Pi-Line Skyline with Google Sheets
🟢 Celebrating Pi Day with EquatIO Mathspace
January 15, 2022
Canvas Comment Library: Assessing student work and providing meaningful feedback in Canvas is essential, but can be very time-consuming. Remember that there is a speech-to-text feature in Speedgrader and that you can also leave voice and video comments. You can also save frequently used comments and resources to the comment library of Speedgrader and reuse them as needed. Here is a video that walks you through that process.
January 8, 2022
Building a Story Map provides students with a creative way to illustrate connections among geographical locations and historical events, personal achievements, fiction and non-fiction writing, etc. Unfortunately Google deprecated Tour Builder and Tour Creator last year, but StoryMap JS is a good alternative. This video demonstrates how you can use StoryMap JS as an alternative to Tour Builder, incorporating Google Street View imagery into your mapped stories.
December 18, 2021
Our EdPuzzle accounts have been updated. Teachers already on Edpuzzle: Those who have verified their email address and used the district's email domain @pewaukeeschools.org are already upgraded. They will see their "Pro-School" status when they click the circular user icon in the top right corner because the drop down menu will say "Pro-School".
Teachers new to Edpuzzle: For those who have not joined Edpuzzle, or were not upgraded for any reason, can use the Launch URL to upgrade their account: https://edpuzzle.com/schools/join/8q92qf
Resources: https://edpuzzle.com/resources.
November 20, 2021
Copy Specific Pages in Google Sites: Google Sites (the new, current version) has a new feature that could be helpful to those people who make a lot of variations of the same website. The new page copying option lets you select a specific page or set of pages to copy from an existing site into a new Google Site. To do this simply open the editor for your existing Google Site, open the "breadcrumbs" menu next to the publishing button, then select the pages you want to copy.
Applications for Education: If you want to create a new Google Site for each school year, but don't want to start from scratch each year, simply copy the pages that you want to re-use and then build the new site from there. You can also create a template for student portfolios. Watch this video for an overview of Google Sites publishing and sharing settings.
October 23, 2021
You can now quickly start and share a meeting notes document for your Calendar events. Creating a notes document from Calendar will automatically populate the document with the event information and attach the document to the event. This feature is only available to meeting organizers or guests with permissions to modify the event.
While creating or editing an event, you’ll see a “Create meeting notes” button next to the attachment section. You can click this button to create a new document, which attaches it to the event upon saving the changes.
Clicking the “Take meeting notes” button in a scheduled event will create this document, and immediately open it in a new tab so users can get started capturing notes right away. This document will also be attached to the calendar event for future reference.
Once you make these meeting notes, Google automatically links back to the Calendar event from the doc.
You’ll still be able to attach additional documents to the Calendar event.
October 16, 2021
If you’re looking to provide additional assistance to students when they are doing digital work, try this new Google Doc’s feature that allows you to copy any comments that are in the document including: additional directions, hyperlinks to resources, voice recordings from the teacher, or a checklist of items for the student to resolve. Here's how:
Open a document with some comments in the margin that you have included to provide additional guidance and resources.
Now click "File" in the top menu bar.
Then choose "Make a copy".
The "Copy document" window will now open.
Check the box for "Copy comments and suggestions".
Click "OK".
REMINDER: To force a copy with comments, slightly change the web address (URL) of the shared link for the document, changing the "/edit" and the end of the link to "/copy" instead. That trick works great for forcing a normal copy of the document, but it does not include the comments in the copy. So how can we force a copy with the comments included?
To be able to force a copy of a document with comments, first the document has to be shared so that anyone can make comments on it. If you do not do this, the end user will not have the needed rights to get a copy with the comments included.
With the document open, click the "Share" button.
In the "Share with others" window, click "Get shareable link".
This will only give view rights to others. You still need to change this to comment rights.
Click "Anyone at [your school] with the link can view" and choose the "can comment" option instead.
Finally copy the shareable link and click "Done" to close the window.
Now that you have the shareable link for your document, you need to make a small adjustment to it. Currently your link should look something like this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/[a bunch of stuff]/edit?usp=sharing
To force a copy with comments, changing it from "/edit" to "/copy" is not enough as that only makes a copy of the document, not the comments. Instead you need to delete /edit?usp=sharing and replace it with /copy?copyComments=true. Source: Control, Alt, Achieve
October 2, 2021
Feedly is a curation tool to organize, read, and share the information you need to stay informed on topics of interest as well as resources for professional development. You can use Feedly as a “one stop shop” for all of the websites and blogs that you read. Add the URLs to your Feedly account and it will compile all of the most recent articles in one place for you to organize, read, and share. Interested in learning more? Watch this video.
September 25, 2021
Here’s a list of 20 hidden Google tricks and tools for savvy Pirates (IYKYK) 🏴☠️
2020-2021
May 29, 2021
Adding notifications to Google Sheets: This process is useful for remaining up-to-date on any dynamic spreadsheet, including the Mask Exemption List. Add notifications so that you receive an immediate email or daily update of any changes that are made to the sheet. It is important to note that if a form is shared with multiple people, each viewer or editor must set up notifications. To set up notifications, open the Google Sheet. Go to Tools on the menu bar. Select Notification Rules. Indicate your preferences: Notify me at “youremail@pewaukeeschools.org” when... Any changes are made or A user submits a form (This is only if a Google Form is associated with the Sheet). Notify me with… Email - daily digest or Email - right away.
May 15, 2021
Keep, one of Google’s lesser-known productivity tools, is an online note-taking, list-making, organization tool with several great features for educators and students. Access Keep at keep.google.com or download the mobile Keep app for Android or iOS. Add notes, lists, images, drawings, etc. on both the desktop and mobile version. Record voice notes on the mobile app and which Keep will translate your speech into text. If you add an image that has text, Keep can pull the text from the image so you have an editable copy of the text. You can share any of your Keep notes with others for collaboration.
Pro Tip for Educators: Use Keep to save banks of frequently used comments for grading, feedback, lesson plans, standards, or more.You can include hyperlinks in the comment that take the student to a related webpage or video with additional help resources. For more details on using Keep as a comment bank, visit this link: Using Google Keep for Grading Comments in Docs.
March 13, 2021
Looking for your next great read? Check out Google Arts and Culture’s An Ocean of Books.
March 6, 2021
Google Chrome Tab Groups: Keep tabs on your tabs in Google Chrome. Group your tabs together and label them with a custom name and color. Once the tabs are grouped together, you can move and reorder them on the tab strip.
October 31, 2020 👻 Technology can help make Halloween 2020 safe and fun...
🎃 If you still need inspiration for carving your pumpkins, try these free printable stencils.
🎵 Need a pumpkin-carving soundtrack? Try Pandora's Halloween Party Radio.
☠️Here are 8 Virtual Halloween Activities and Games to Play While Social Distancing
🧛🏻♂️Whether you prefer scary or silly, here’s a great list of Halloween movies and where to stream them.
(And don’t forget my favorite, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown - MLH)
🌕 If you’re out observing the Halloween blue moon, learn more about the night sky with these apps?
October 24, 2020
Advanced Google Search Tips:
Search by Voice: Click on the Microphone button and directly speak to Google.
Search by Image: You can use an image to search for related images. This comes in really handy when you have an image but don’t have any context for it. You just click the Camera button in the search bar of Google Images, and paste an image URL or upload a picture from your system to make an image search. You can also find some more alternative reverse image search engines here.
October 10, 2020
Random Choice Generator: This week’s tech tip comes from Aaron Yuskis. If you’re looking for ways to randomize the order of student responses, choices, grouping, etc., simply enter your students’ names into this Random Student Generator.
October 3, 2020
Simple Key Strokes to Increase Your Efficiency
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