This tip is for those of you that find yourself having to flip between different tabs often while working. In the past, I did share a way to organize various windows on your screen. And that still works, and would be necessary if you're going between a web browser and something else like Microsoft Word. But if you're looking at different Chrome tabs, it means splitting them out to separate windows.

But, recently Chrome has added a built in way to split one Chrome browser window into two tabs. To do so:

• When you're in one tab that you want to have open, right click on the other tab you'd like to also view. 

• You will see there is a new choice - New split view with current tab.  When you click on that, you will get the split window without getting a full duplicate of all your bookmarks, the address bar, etc. The screenshot to the right is a little hard to distinguish, but trust me. 😊

• Once you're in the split view, you'll have a turquoise icon to the left of the URL address bar. From there, you can separate the view back into two separate tabs, close one or the other, or reverse the order in which it is displaying them.

• You can also close out one tab with the x in the bottom corner of the tab.

• If you are docked, this could easily give you four open tabs at once if you use the monitor and your laptop as an extended screen.

Nothing earthshattering, but I have used this multiple times a day since discovering it last week. Hopefully it will help you have less clicks in your day!

Recently, Google opened up some handy study tools for students under 18 years of age. So, students can now just give Gemini a topic or bring in notes, vocabulary lists, etc. in and ask for Gemini to:

• Create a practice quiz

• Create flashcards

• Create a study guide

The examples to the right show what it gave me when I did the following.

1. "Give me a practice quiz in English to test my knowledge of this Spanish vocabulary." (And then I pasted in a vocabulary list from Quizlet.)

2. "Create a set of flashcards on the Bill of Rights." (The black cards are the "question" and the blue are the "answer".)

3. "Create a study guide on the basics of HLA." (In this case, Gemini produced a text version, giving me the option to export to Docs. Here is that doc. You can see it needs a little cleaning up, but this is a VERY quick way to create study resources!)

You can just type in a topic, copy and paste materials/notes, or attach a Google file for Gemini to work from. (Attach a file by clicking on the Plus sign icon next to "Tools".)

One thing to keep in mind is that Practice Quizzes and Flashcards sets can't be "shared out" like the Doc. You could share a prompt for kids to use, but the quiz and flashcards function within Gemini and can't be shared out with a link from your AHS account. 

Today's tip is actually just passing on a resource that I found by Tony Vincent. It's a simple handout that you can use or adapt to help your kids learn to use AI to help them think and study, rather than to AI do the work for them. It gives prompt examples for students to use when they want to:

• Study/Review for a test

• Understand or Explore a topic better

• Get feedback on the work their doing

• Think deeper about the topic they're working with

 They could come in handy for us in teaching, too! I hope you find something on here helpful.

QUICK TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS:

• If you have students that aren’t showing up as being online, even though you can see they are - have them restart their Chromebooks.

  • Pro tip - before any online assessment where you want to be able to see everyone in Classroom, have the whole class restart before having them start the assessment. This will guarantee that they’ve got the most updated settings for Chrome and for the Chromebook operating system. 

• If you have not renamed your classes in Canvas, you may want to do that as otherwise you will see the same Skyward name for all years of classes. Once you know which classes are your current classes, you can "pin"  them to the top of your Classes dashboard.

GENERAL REMINDERS:

• Remember to deselect any students in your class that are not in class during your session. If you don’t and they are elsewhere trying to use their computer, it will take their computer over and not allow them to work. So, be sure you’re not taking control from afar!

• Don’t be afraid to explore! You will see as you use the program that there are many options to enable and disable to customize how you use Securly Classroom. Click around!

• But, don’t forget that you cannot run a “just for fun” session to do that clicking around. Any session you start will take over their Chromebooks wherever they may be.

• Also - be sure you’re either making sure to close the session when you’re done OR set it to end after a certain period of time/at a certain time if you think you’ll forget. If you don’t release a class session, those students will not be able to use their Chromebooks properly in their subsequent classes.

WEB LINKS / BLOCKING PLANS:

• Consider your class/material and choose which makes more sense for you and what you’re trying to accomplish.

  • If you have a specific set of websites that your students need to be able to access for an assignment/project, create a list of those. For example, in our Adobe class, they would need access to Adobe, a couple of sites for free HD photos, etc. 

    • Before your class, click on “Web Links” on the left side of your dashboard. 

    • Click on “Add collection” in the upper right corner.

    • Name your collection and describe it (this is for your information when you go back to use it again) and then add the links you want to keep your class in on the right.

    • Once you’re in class, you’d click on the “site lock” icon at the top (a chain with a padlock), and choose the collection you want to have them work within.

  • If you have a particular site/group of sites that you DON’T want them to access, you can also create a blocking plan. This will allow kids to get to nearly anything, except the sites you block.

    • Before your class, click on “Blocking plans” on the left side of your dashboard.

    • Click on “Add blocking plan” in the upper right corner. 

    • Give the blocking plan a name and description and then add any sites or apps that you want to block.

    • Once you’re in a class, click next to where it says “Blocking plan” and choose the one you have created.

SUPER QUICK CANVAS ASSESSMENT TRICK:

• If you are giving an assessment in Canvas and the students do not need to be able to move elsewhere online after they finish that assessment, you can push that Canvas assessment from the Push URL menu to them all at the same time and they will not be able to access any other sites until you release that lock.

• You might use this if students will be moving to paper based work after they finish.

NEED THEIR ATTENTION QUICKLY?:

• If your students are all working on their screens and you need to grab the class’s attention for something, simply click on the Screen lock icon (screen with lock - first icon on the left). That will basically block anything they’re looking at and show them a message (you can set what it will say). You can also set it to auto release after a minute or two if you just want to send a message and don’t need their attention.

GENERAL INFO:

• Check out Securly’s “Cheat sheet” for a basic explanation of what you’ll see when you’re in Securly Classroom. 

Welcome back! Today's tech tip is less tip and more just a Canvas update. I promise to be more exciting after next week's testing day. 😄

Canvas:

• Two new integrations are available to everyone this year: Canva and WeVIdeo. Basically this means you can assign projects to your students that they would complete with those platforms, right in Canvas. Training opportunities to come!

• It's not you, it's Speedgrader. Many of you may have noticed that when you try to switch between sections in a course in Speedgrader, it instead goes from showing you one section to showing you multiple. The Canvas discussion boards are flooded with complaints about this. And Canvas says they're working on "a fix". Unfortunately, that means that for now we have to deal with some extra clicks. Here is what's happening:

  • When you go to Speedgrader from the gradebook view, it will take on the same filters. So, if you're only looking at your 2nd block, only your second block will initially show in Speedgrader. If you're looking at all of your sections, they will all show. Etc.

  • Once you're in Speedgrader and go to where you'd normally switch sections, imagine there is an invisible set of checkboxes. When you click on a different section, instead of switching to it like it always has, it now activates/deactivates it.

    • Which wouldn't be so bad if you could activate and deactive sections all at once. When you click on a new section, it adds it and closes that dropdown. You then have to open it again to deactivate the original section to just get the new section you want to view.

  • Yes, IT IS VERY ANNOYING. 🤪

  • You can see which sections you are viewing in that dropdown because those that are activated are bolded while those that aren't active are not bolded.

  • If you deactivate all sections, it defaults back to viewing all sections.

  • I promise to keep you posted on any changes to this.

• In good news, they did add more functionality to accommodations and modifications, including the much desired ability to add extra time to a quiz while the student is taking it. Here is a doc for you with instructions for setting accommodations permanently for a student, how to add time to an attempt in progress, and how to let a student close an attempt and pick it back up in the same spot later on.

• As we start a new year, you may get requests from parents for a pairing code in Canvas. Instructions to generate one are here. 

And in case you missed it in the body of the email, here is the link to my survey I'd really appreciate you all filling out. I'd love to dive into more hands on tech training for you and more integrations with your students this year. Thank you in advance!