Wednesday, June 5 - SC tech
Thursday, June 6 - Spanish - no tech hours
Friday, June 7 - NC tech
Feel free to drop-in, email or call me anytime on Wednesday and Friday.
1. - My extension (4670) rings into both offices, and it does have a voicemail now, so you can call anytime on my tech days to get ahold of me.

Chromebooks will be with all freshmen and sophomores next year!

Here is the presentation I gave at the Chromebook PCT in May, if you're interested. If you have questions about anything (I gave more information than is in each slide), please reach out.
The other bonus of having all the students on the school-managed Chromebooks is the ability to use Securly Classroom.
- Here is a "cheat sheet" on what you can do with Securly Classroom. I'm happy to come help you out next fall when you want to try it.
- The unfortunate part of the way it runs is that you can't really "play with it", as in order to do anything you have to start a class. If you do that, you will be pulling those students' Chromebooks into whatever you do, whether they're at school or not.

I hope you have a wonderful summer!

May 28, 2024 - Shortcut to hyperlinking

How do you currently create a hyperlink? Most of us highlight the text we want to make into a hyperlink, and then either click on the hyperlink tool icon or use the ctrl+k shortcut and then paste the URL and save it. No, this isn't a huge use of time, but I stumbled onto something by accident this week that will remove part of even that short process!

This works in both Canvas and Canva, but unfortunately not Google Docs. (But do revisit the tip on a shortcut for hyperlinking other Google files here!)

To use this shortcut, simply do the following:

Copy the URL you to which you want to hyperlink.
Highlight the text you want to turn into that hyperlink.
Use the ctrl+v keyboard shortcut. The text will become the hyperlink automatically and you don't have to go through the hyperlink process.

Also, as we head into finals week, here's a reminder of my schedule for the remainder of the year. You can drop-in, email me, or call 4670 (it rings in my office at both campuses and now has a voicemail).

Today - Tuesday, June 4:

Hours 1-3 @ South Campus
Hours 4-7 - Spanish
Hours 8-10 @ North Campus

Wednesday, June 5:

All day technology - I will be located at South Campus but have the flexibility to visit wherever I am needed!

Thursday, June 6:

All day Spanish - no technology availability

Friday, June 7:

All day technolgy - I will be located at North Campus, but again will have the flexibility to visit where needed.

May 21, 2024 - Quick screencasting with the WeVideo Chrome extension

We all became familiar with making screencasts at record speed during Covid. And there were a lot of tools to choose from. Screencastify, Screencast-o-Matic, Loom, etc. Some have set time limits, some have no editing capability, and some have stopped being free to teachers.

Fortunately, WeVideo has a screencasting feature, and you don't even have to go into the program to use it! If you install their Chrome extension on your browser, you can begin a screencast by just clicking on that extension. Here are some of the features:

Just a couple of clicks to start your screencast.
Drawing tools available.
Track and highlight cursor options.
Recordings are stored in your WeVideo account, so you can edit them all you want or use them in longer videos.
We have a site license for WeVideo, so you have access to all the tools.
Students also have access to WeVideo, so this can be another way for students to show their learning in class.

You can find a more thorough tutorial on this page. Let me know if I can help you explore WeVideo further!

May 14, 2024 - Updating PDFs in Drive without having to change your link

One of the greatest parts about Google Drive files is that once you link them somewhere for your students and/or observers, you can make as many changes as you want to that original file without having to update your links.

But, if you change a PDF that you have linked and then upload the new version, it will create a new link as it is a different file. Cue finding everywhere you've linked it and replacing that link.

Except you don't have to! Follow these steps to replace the previous PDF with the updated version and leave the link intact!

Find the original PDF in your Drive.
Right click on the PDF, choose File information, and Manage versions.
Click on Upload new version, find the new version of the PDF, and click Open.
Once the new version has uploaded you will see that labeled as "Current version".
If you want to keep the original version (it will otherwise auto-delete after 30 days), you need to click on the three dots next to it and choose "Keep forever".
If you want to revert to the original (if it is still listed and hasn't been deleted), you would delete the new version (in the three dot menu), restoring the first version as the Current version.

By using this method, you won't have to worry about changing the link in Canvas or in an agenda!

May 7, 2024 - Pulling images out of Google files (and Teacher Appreciation freebies!)

Today's tip is a quick way to pull all the images out of a Google Doc. Perhaps you've got a doc you made a while ago or have a doc from someone else that you'd like to pull the photos from. Obviously you can cut and paste them into another document/program, but if you want the images as files, that isn't quite so straight forward. Fortunately, there is a quick way to pull all images from a doc as .png files.

Open your doc
Click on File, and then Download.
Choose Web Page (.html, zipped). Your download will start right away.
Open the zip folder that comes from the download and drag the photos out of there to your Google Drive or wherever you want to store them. They are now .png files that you can use anywhere that accepts that file type! (If you find somewhere that will only take .jpgs, you can always convert the .png file on a site such as this one.)

And now for the freebies! The first two links below are lists of discounts for teachers - many are year round, not just for teacher appreciation week. The last two are specific - Stitch Fix is offering a $50 credit to all teachers - whether you're new to them or not, and Peacock is offering their streaming service at a discount, even f you already subscribe! So if you already have an account on either of these, you can still claim the credit/discount and add it to your account.

For many of these, you will be asked to verify your teacher employment through ID.me. This is totally fine - many businesses now use this service to verify employment for teachers, nurses, police, etc. so each business doesn't have to do that verification separately. (I actually signed up through this to get a plan discount at Verizon.)

Check out the deals!

68 Discounts, Deals and Resources (list from Rutgers University)
Deals and Discounts (list from Teach for America)
$50 free from Stitch Fix! (Use ID.me to get your code to apply to your account if you already have one, sign up to get the code if you don't.)
Peacock (This one will have you verify employment through another website [SheerID] but it will again be fine to do!

April 30, 2024 - A couple of keyboard shortcuts

Today I have just a couple of quick keyboard shortcuts for you.

The first is a way to copy your formatting onto existing text in a doc/slideshow/etc. If you've formatted a block of text and want to copy just the formatting (font, font size, font color, etc.), highlight part of that text and press ctrl+alt+c. Highlight the text you want to make match that formatting, and press ctrl+alt+v. This should save time as you won't have to reset every individual formatting option.

You can also do this if you want to move exisiting text to another area in the doc and want it to match the text that is already there. To do this, highlight the text you want to move or copy (ctrl+x to cut, ctrl+c to copy). Put your cursor where you want to put this text and press ctrl+shift+v. This will paste the text there and also make it match the formatting of the text in the area where you're pasting.

The other is something some of you may have stumbled on accidently, as I have in the past! When you're on a website (NOT one that you are editing, just a website you are visiting), you can press the spacebar to jump a "page" down, and shift+spacebar to jump a "page" up. So if you're mouse is being annoying and/or you don't want to deal with the scroll bar on the left, this is a quick and easy way to scroll quickly through a longer website.

April 23, 2024 - Image creating in Canva

As most of us are seeing, the world is being flooded with about a dozen new AI platforms daily. And many of them are aimed specifically at teachers. Some are great, some are not. Some are free, some are not. And some are safe, and some are not!

One area that is often covered is AI-generated images. You type in a detailed description of the image you want to find and it creates it for you., saving you tons of time searching the internet for a copyright free image to suit your vision. But, many of these sites charge you for their best work or do not keep your data safe. Fortunately, we have a space to do this already. Canva has a built in AI image generator, we already have all their premium services and it is a safe, supported platform.

To generate an image in Canva, you will want to open a new project. A presentation, doc or any social media template should do. (If you're having a problem getting into Canva, remember that you need to go in through Launchpad to login.)

On the left, click on Magic Media. It will pop out its image generation panel.
Type as thorough a description as you'd like of what you'd like to see. You can go very basic, or include lots of deatil, right down to colors, elements and style. Here is my first example. (And yes, it is inspired by the nature outside my home currently!)
- "a long exposure realistic image of two baby sandhill cranes drinking from a small pond near their parents"
The first two examples on the right are from this prompt. As you can see, sometimes they turn out great, and sometimes things get a little wonky... In that second photo we have a random leg and a two headed crane. 😲
You can change your wording to tweak its output, including the style, details, colors, etc. The third example is what I got when I asked for an anime version of the same prompt. There are a couple of tiny "oddities", but overall, pretty good!

Beyond the Magic Media image generation, Canva has a lot of images, videos and graphic elements. The search bar on the left when you're in any project allows you to access all of these, and as we have a premium school-wide account, you will not run into anything you can't use.

One thing to keep in mind is that as these are all designed to be used within the Canva platform, you can't just copy and paste these elements out to another product/platform, like Google. But you can download your projects as a jpeg, a pdf, a power point file, and other formats. Once you've downloaded it, you can use it anywhere you can use that type of file normally.

To download a project:

To the right, click on Share.
Click Download
In the File Type dropdown, pick the output you'd like.
Click Download and it will automatically start the download to your Downloads folder on your computer.

Please consider using Canva to get copyright free imagery and video, and have fun exploring!

April 16, 2024 - Practice quizzes in New Quizzes

In the past, the workaround for putting a practice quiz into New Quizzes without it affecting a student's grade was just to make it worth zero points. But, this didn't really give kids a good idea of how well they were doing.

Now, Canvas has an option to have a New Quiz have a point value, but not be included toward their grade. When entering the details of your quiz, there is a checkbox option to enable that will keep it from counting. That way students get an idea of what their grade would have been, but it won't affect any grade totals in Canvas.

Also - for those of you with practice quizzes in Classic Quizzes, this option will be automatically enabled on any practice quiz that you migrate to New Quizzes.

April 9, 2024 - Condensing and organizing your Google Forms results

Many of us have used Google Forms for years to survey students and staff and to gather information in one spot. All of those results wind up in a spreadsheet and sometimes those can get overwhelming. Today I have two tips for organizing your responses into a more condensed and organized version.

You can link multiple forms to the same spreadsheet.

Maybe you want to use a few different forms throughout the year, but it's all data on one course or group. Left alone, this would create a separate spreadsheet for each form. But, after you create one spreadsheet off your first form, you can link each subsequent form to that same sheet, with a tab for each form.

In your first form, go to the Results tab and click on Link to Sheets. Choose Create a New Sheet and give this spreadsheet a name for the whole group of forms.
In any subsequent form, go to the results tab, click on Link to Sheets, but choose Link to an Existing Sheet. Choose the spreadsheet you created off the first form. This will open that spreadsheet and you will see that the newly linked form created a new tab. You can rename the tabs for the different forms.

You can create multiple tabs in one sheet off the same form.

Perhaps you use the same form each year or semester and you don't want each year's data to just keep piling into the same place as the previous years. Rather than copying the form and creating a new sheet every year, you can simply unlink and then relink the form to the original spreadsheet. Each time you relink it will create a new tab.

In the responses tab in your form, click on the three dots next to View in Sheets.
Choose Unlink Form and confirm that you want to unlink it.
Now you will see Link to Sheets again. Click on that, then Link to an Existing Sheet, and then choose the sheet you just unlinked.
This will open the spreadsheet, and you will see that there is a new tab. That tab does have all the old data in it, so you will need to just delete all those responses in that tab. Then you have a fresh tab for all new responses, and the old responses will remain untouched in the original tab.
- IMPORTANT - You need to actually delete the rows those responses are in, not just the data. Otherwise, your new responses will show up way down the spreadsheet after a bunch of blank lines.

April 2, 2024 - Tab groups in Chrome

Today's tip is a recent update in Chrome that allows you to do even more with tab groups to organize your workflow.

Perhaps you're working on a couple of different projects or have documents open for different courses you teach during the day. Or perhaps you work on your school computer here but have another device at home and you'd like your work to flow between devices. Saving your tab groups for later allows you to open them up on another device and makes it easier to clean up your tab strip and focus on the work you need to get done right now!

To create a saved tab group:

Right-click on a tab you want (or Shift+click on all tabs you want) in the group and select "Add tab(s) to new group".
Create a new group and give it a name. (You can even color code.)
Turn on "Save group". This will make the group appear in your bookmarks bar. (Go to your Chrome settings / Bookmarks and lists to show the bookmarks bar if you don't already have it showing.)
You can always add more tabs by right clicking and adding them to the group, and you can remove tabs in the same way.

If you click on the group header, it will collapse/open all the tabs in the group. When collapsed, the group header tab will still show.

If you right-click on the group header and click Hide, it will remove all tabs and the header from your tab strip. This allows you to visually remove it from an overly crowded bar completely.

If you sign-in to Chrome on another device, you will see that group in the bookmarks bar and you can pick up right where you left off without creating a permanent bookmark group.

Shutting down Chrome will not remove these groups until you turn off the save group option. Even if you close all the tabs or ungroup them in the browser, the saved group will remain in your bookmarks bar and you can reopen those tabs. It is similar to having a bookmarks folder, but a much quicker way to get there!

March 19, 2024 - AI: Spring Break Edition!

Today's tech tip comes to us from the Hello Door Country website, which I heard of through Jake Boll of CESA 5. It's themed around spring break, but could be a very useful model for a lot of future use of AI!

On the site is a list of travel themed prompts for AI that will help you will all sorts of travel planning. You can just plug in your trip's specifics to create walking tours, road trip itineraries, helpful foreign language lists, etc. This list is also a great lesson in all the ways we can prompt AI to create what we want quicker, including how much you want it to produce, the format of the output (such as a chart, list, etc.), and other parameters for the information it gives, such as time limits or available resources.

I hope you all have a restful break and enjoy the time to rejuvenate!

March 12, 2024 - Migration of Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes

Over the last few months there have been a few updates to the migration of Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes that should be helpful to those still transitioning over. (Although the deadline for transitioning has been removed for now, Canvas is not developing or adding to Classic Quizzes anymore.)

You can bulk migrate classic quizzes from a previous course.
- When you import content from another course, there is now an option to convert all your classic quizzes to new quizzes during the import.
- The only thing I ran into when doing this to a full course load of classic quizzes was that what used to be a "Text No Question" header was turned into a stimulus. The only thing you need to do to make this still visible is add the next question to that stimulus and it will still sit in the middle of the quiz. You may actually want to move all questions related to that bit of text into the stimulus as it keeps that info on screen as the students move through the questions for that section.
Feedback for classic quiz questions/answers will copy over into the New Quiz now.
Any question banks that are used in a Classic Quiz will be automatically turned into/saved as an item bank. If you had the Classic Quiz set to choose a certain number from the question bank randomly, these settings will copy over to the New Quiz as well.

March 5, 2024 - A Hodgepodge of tips

Today's tech tip is a quick rundown of a few updates and helpful tidbits that don't warrant their own tech tip. Hopefully you'll find something of use in here!

You can access an emoji keyboard from anywhere in Windows by pressing the window logo key and the . key. Once the little pop-up appears, just start typing what you want and it will narrow it down for you. This will put emoji into just about anything you are typing in. 🙌🏻
You can drag and drop a photo to the edge of a Google Slide to make it the new background image. You will see the edge of the slide "highlight" when you hover the photo there. Google will fit the photo to the slide and make it the background, as opposed to just a photo on the slide.
You can shut down and reopen editing access to a file you've previously shared with just a couple of clicks from right inside Drive.
- Find your file in your drive and right click on it.
- Go down to File information and choose Lock.
- To reopen the document for edits, you again right click, head to File information, and choose unlock.
- Why might you use this? Perhaps you've shared a doc with a class for kids to sign up for something, and you want to shut it down at a certain point without revoking their access. Or maybe you want to shut editing down overnight on something that you only want them working on in class, but you don't want to have to keep changing permissions. This will be a quick way to do so without having to go into sharing settings.
You can now make your text bold and underlined in Google Forms, along with hyperlinking. I know in the past I've wanted to hyperlink a reference document into a form and wasn't able to. No longer! All these functions are now available.

February 27, 2024 - AI Tools for Teachers

Today we are headed back to highlighting the platforms and tools supported at Arrowhead. As most of you have seen, there are new AI Tools aimed at teachers popping up all the time. In December I saw a tech blog that counted down over two dozen before the holiday break, and that didn't even cover them all. So this list is but a handful of what's out there, but they are the tools that have been suggested by well known ed tech people, and that we have tried and found to be useful.

A couple of reminders:

MagicSchool AI is the platform that we have invested in as a school, and we have full access to all features on this platform. It has tons of different functions, so I invite you to just poke around. (This is the platform Eric Larson mentioned at inservice in January.)
Brisk Learning is the only platform on the list that is actually a Chrome extension instead of a website. The middle screen shot to the left shows the options that pop up right with whatever you're working on.
Basically all of these platforms do rely on openAI as their source, so you may see similar results from different platforms. Each of these platforms has created prompt shells to basically take some of the heavy lifting off of educators when they want a certain product and don't want to have to tinker with the prompt language too much.

For the most part, I say play away!! There's tons to explore and fun ideas for everyone.

February 20, 2024 - SWANK video streaming service

Today we continue looking at the tools that are supported by AHS for instructional use by taking a look at SWANK. Swank is an online video streaming service specifically for schools.

Reading that, your first thought might be that it's full of off-brand made-for-the-classroom type videos. Understandable, but fortunately incorrect! Swank is actually full of Hollywood movies from across the spectrum. But unlike our streaming services at home, such as Netflix or Disney+, this is delivered in a way that makes using these movies in class easy and fully legal. When you show a movie from Swank, you are always good to go as far as copyright law and fair use are concerned. (This is NOT the case with Netflix, etc. For example, at Netflix, part of their terms of use specifically forbids showing content from the platform to those outside your household. This would apply to a setting like a classroom.) It even includes licensing to show movies after school to clubs or large groups!

To get started in Swank, go to Launchpad and into the Online Databases file you will see there. Find the Swank app and click to enter. You will need to login through Launchpad so you are connected to Arrowhead. Click on "Sign in with school account, use your school email, and you'll be set to use the platform!

You can search for a specific movie or browse titles. The second screenshot to the right is just an example of movies that pop up when you first get to the platform.

Once you find a movie, if it is already in Arrowhead's library, you will see the options as you see for Dead Poets Society on the right. "Watch" will allow you to show the movie live in class, while the share button will give you a link to give to students to watch on their own. (Yes, you can assign the content from Swank!) The link that you get from this "Share: Copy Link" button can be emailed or hyperlinked into a document or your Canvas site. The link will send them to the entire movie, but you can move through the movie so you would be able to tell them a timestamp to go to if you only want them to watch a segment.

If you find a movie you'd like to use that isn't yet in our library, you will see a Request button, as you see for Valentín on the right. Click on that to fill out the request form. Here are full instructions on that process.

If you're looking for a specific title that doesn't show up in a search, you can click on the "Can't find what you're looking for?" link to send in a request to Swank to see if they can add it to their library.

Once a movie is added to our library, we have access to it for a year. So, if there is something you use annually, you'll want to re-request it each year. This allows us to have the most currently used movies in our library and not lose space to old movies that are no longer used.

I hope you take a few minutes to explore the library of movies Swank offers - there's so much!!

February 13, 2024 - Make a screen recording in Slides

Recently Google added the ability to create a screen recording of a Google slides presentation right in the Slides window. This can be used by teachers to create webcasts and tutorials, and can be used by students for presenting and submitting their work.

RECORDING:

In the upper right corner you will see a "Rec" button just under the share button. This will open a screen where your slideshow goes into presentation mode in the middle with controls below it. Your finished video will have your presentation filling the screen, not with all the empty space around it. As you record, your webcam will automatically show as a small picture in picture video over your slideshow.

The controls are 1 - showing your speaker notes (these don't show in your video), 2 - navigation through your slides, 3 - changing the location of your picture in picture webcam video, 4 - changing the size of your webcam video. You also have buttons for turning the mic and webcam on and off along with the record/stop button.

When prompted, allow access to your screen for it to record, and make sure you have the toggle for sharing tab audio on if you have any audio in your slideshow that you want to be in the recording.

Any cursor movements you make will also be recorded in the video, so be aware of what you're doing with your mouse.

FINISHING THE RECORDING:

When you click the stop button, you will have the option to re-record or to save your video to Google Drive.

ACCESSING YOUR VIDEO:

Once you've made a recording, you can access it right in the slideshow where you made it. Under that same record button you used to start the recording, you will now see any recordings made of this slideshow (third screenshot on the left).

You can also access your video in My Drive, where Google will have created a folder entitled "Slides recordings". (You can move this into another folder and it will still find the right place to put them.)

SHARING YOUR VIDEO:

You share your video just like any other Google file. Click share, set your access settings, and send the link!

February 6, 2024 - Digital creation tools

This week we continue looking at the tools we have available at Arrowhead by looking at four different digital creation tools that we have premium access to, whether through a paid school license or because they are free to educators. In this spreadsheet you will find info about three platforms that you may or may not yet use: Canva, Flip (formally Flipgrid), and WeVideo. There's also a reminder about Google Drive, which we all use regularly, but can sometimes be overlooked as a creation tool for our students as I know I don't often think about things like Google Drawings or MyMaps.

For Canva and WeVideo, be sure to log-in through Launchpad to get connected to the Arrowhead organization so you get the benefits of our school license.

Canva and WeVideo are potential topics for future training/tutorials, so please let me know if you'd be interested in learning more about either or both!

January 30, 2024 - Game platforms

As with so many other tech sites that took off during the virtual learning phase of the pandemic, many of the game-based sites that teachers began to use for review games have begun to put certain features behind paid subscription walls or limit how much you can create on the free version.

Fortunately, there are a variety of sites providing similar functions, and by combining the free versions of them, you not only get more creation space, but create more variety for your students. (Remember how Kahoot was the greatest thing ever and then everyone got sick of it? But don't worry, Kahoot is still around and still has a free version!)

This spreadsheet lists 7 different game platforms that can be used for free. It shows their uses, their limitations, and how to log-in. None of them require a student log-in for the free versions, so you won't need to worry about student data privacy with any of them.

I have personally used all of these sites in my Spanish classes, so I am willing and able to support you on any of them and am happy to come in and help you explore a new tool if you'd like!

Next week we will be taking a look at the digital creation tools that Arrowhead has invested in for all of our students and staff.

January 23, 2024 - Compare Documents Tool in Google Docs

Today we're going to look at a tool in Google Docs called "Compare Documents". This tool allows you to take two documents and see how much of the text is the exact same while also seeing what the differences are. This would be most useful if you have two or more student submissions that you feel may have been copied/plagiarized in some way.

To use this tool, you need to have both documents in your Google Drive. To create the example to the right, I created one document with a copied and pasted section of an article I found online about vaping. I then created a second document where I followed the article's sequence, changing words here and there. If you're comparing student docs, you'd need both of those. If you think a student plagiarized from something online, you can copy that online source into a doc like I did here.

In one of the documents you want to compare, click on Tools at the top and choose Compare Documents.

It will ask you to choose the document you want to compare this document to from your Drive, which is why you need both documents in your drive.

Once you select the second document, Google will create a new document (like the example on the right) that basically overlays the document you just choose over the one you started in. It will make "changes" to show where things don't match. (In this example the pink writing is the article. The black crossed out parts are my paper.) So, if your resulting document is full of crossed out passages, you don't really have a match. In my example, you can see there are stretches of text with no or few differences. It's not perfect and you do need to analyze it a bit, but it's pretty good at lining things up.

This document is stored in your Drive, so once you have run the comparison, you can access it again in the future.

January 16, 2024 - Anonymous grading in New Quizzes in Canvas

Happy Finals Week! This week's tech tip is a recent addition to New Quizzes in Canvas. If you have a quiz that includes any essay questions or other things that need to be instructor graded, you can turn on anonymous grading so you won't know whose submission you are grading until you are finished grading the class and post the grades.

To use this option:

Go into the details for your quiz (where you would put the due date, etc.) and click on the Anonymous Grading option. Please note that you can't turn it off once you set that. The only way to get out of anonymous grading will be to post grades (described below).
Build your quiz as usual.
When you go to grade submissions, you will see that in the Gradebook, the whole column is shaded gray and the assignment is marked as Anonymous rather than seeing the point total.
In speedgrader, your students will be mixed up and given a number. In my trials with this, I submitted the quiz as the Test Student. In one trial, that submission showed up as Student 34. In the second one I ran, as you can see to the left, the test student showed up as Student 7. The submissions are mixed up so you won't be able to use your alphabetical list to figure out who is who.
Even after grading submissions, when you return to the gradebook, you will see a greyed out column. You and students will only see the grade given once you post grades. (Do that by clicking on the three dots by the assignment title and choosing Post grades.) After that is done you will also see student names in Speedgrader.

January 9, 2024 - End of semester reminders

Semester one is almost done! Today's tip is just some end of the semester reminders.

SKYWARD: Becky sent these Skyward reminders the other day, but please contact me if you need any assistance finishing out this semester or getting your classes started up for the next.

CANVAS: Please be sure to publish your second semester courses before the start of the semester!

Transferring content in Canvas to a new course

SECURLY CLASSROOM: This is for the teachers that have all freshman that may want to use the Securly Classroom features to lock down exams and monitor students on their devices. I'll send this each year as our Chromebooks role out to each incoming freshmen class!

Securly Classroom "cheat sheet"

During exams, I will be available all day on Tuesday in person at South Campus, and via email and phone (4670). Wednesday I will not be available for tech as that is the day of my exams. Thursday I will be in person all day at North, and again reachable via email and phone.

January 2, 2024 - Insert GIFs and Stickers into your Google Slides!

Happy New Year and welcome back! Today's tech tip is a recent addition to Google Slides. Under the insert menu, you will now see the option under Image to insert GIFs and stickers. You could already do this through searching for a GIF/sticker online, saving it and then importing it as an image. This will just save you all those extra steps! You'll be able to search for the GIF or sticker you want in the same way you've been able to search for images through the Explore tool for years.

December 19, 2023 - Set students up to use Youtube and Google Docs in one screen

Today's tech tip piggy back's off of last week. If you have a Youtube video that you want students to watch as part of an assignment while simultaneously taking notes, answering questions, etc. in a Google Doc, you can link the video in the doc as explained in the December 12 tech tip below. Then, show kids how to open that video as a preview rather than in a whole new screen.

When students hover over that link, they should see something like you see on the left here, with an "Open preview" button over the video preview. (They do need to move their mouse down over the video photo to get that to pop up.)

This will open the video in a pop-up window where they can play the video while working on the Google doc. You can see in my example that the questions are still visible while the video plays, and the document can be scrolled up and down behind the video. Hopefully this will help students stay a little more focused rather than having to hop between tabs or devices.

December 12, 2023 - Easier hyperlinking of Google files

Hyperlinking within Google drive files has been possible for a long time, but for most of that you've had to go to the original file and make sure our share settings were correct, copy the link from the original file, type what you need where you want to link it, highlight that and either use the menu or a ctrl+k to open the hyperlink pop-up. You paste your link, and now we have a hyperlink.

Recently, Google has added a new way to hyperlink your Google files and YouTube links that streamlines the process immensely. When you're in a doc, you can just paste the URL for the video, doc, slides, etc. You will see a quick little popup saying "Tab to replace with (file/site name)". When you hit the tab key, you will see the name of the file and icon for the type of file, or the name of the YouTube video. You can see some examples to the side.

Also, you can skip the sharing part, because once you add a link to a shared doc, when you hover over it, it will show you if anyone in the current doc does not have access to the file, and you can change their access settings right there! Just click on Share, and you'll get the options shown to the right.

December 5, 2023 - Create your own "Connections" activity like the NYT!

This week's tech tip is a website where you can create your own "Connections" activity like you can play on the New York Times games app every day. (If you're a wordle fan, Connections popped up this summer in the app.)

If you're not familiar with Connections, it's a word game where you start with 16 words that must be separated into 4 groups, with all four words in the group falling into some category. There are always distractors, and the categories are never "simple" like "Starts with D" or anything like that. (Here is the NYT version for today.)

On this site, you can create your own Connections activity. And here is the activity I created on the site. You can see it looks different, but as far as function it's pretty similar to the NYT version!

This could be a good activity to create for students to use to categorize new vocabulary or concepts that are confusing. It could also be a great way for kids to show their own learning by creating the Connections activity!

November 28, 2023 - That pesky Google warning you may be seeing...

Some of you may have begun to see the warning about Google Apps LTI (pictured to the right) when you go into certain pages or assignments in your Canvas course. Do not worry - we've been preparing you for this! This is just Canvas's official notification about the "Google Apps" external app and the cloud assignments that we've been talking about. Canvas will not be supporting these tools at all as of June 2024. These are the tools I've been nudging you away from since our visibility issues started a year or so ago.

The good news is you don't have to change everything at once. I've listed below the two areas this could show up and how to remedy it. I'd recommend just doing it when you go to use that resource so you're set for the future.

Here is where you will see this warning pop up and what to do about it:

If you have something Google embedded via the old Google Apps extension.
- This is already causing issues because it means that observers cannot see your Google files in Canvas as it is putting them through the authorization cycle. Hopefully these have already been changed out, but this warning will point out very clearly to you any you may have missed.
- To fix this, simply delete the current embed, and then click on the plug icon at the top of your text box, and choose "Google Drive (LTI 1.3)" from the list. (Second screenshot to the right.) If you see "Google Apps", DO NOT choose that one. That's the one causing visibility issues and going away in June.
If you have a Google Cloud assignment.
- These are the ones I have recommended converting to Google LTI 1.3 assignments where you have more control over your capabilities in viewing the submitted docs.
- To change this, go into the exisiting assignment settings and delete the current external app address that is in the box. (Third screenshot to the right.) Then follow the instructions for Google Assignments found here.

Please feel free to stop in, email or call (Ext. 4670 - I have voicemail now!) with any questions.

November 21, 2023 - Item Bank updates in Canvas

Today's tip is just a couple of updates that have happened to Item Banks in Canvas that should hopefully remedy some of the initial annoyances that came with them when they were initially introduced.

The first is that now when you want to share an item bank with another instructor, you are given the option right away whether you want them to be able simply to view the questions or if you want to give them full editing rights. (In the past, they could either edit or not have any access.) This way another instructor can have viewing access so they can see the potential questions that may be pulled into a quiz you've shared with them, but cannot alter your item bank.

The second is that you can now duplicate an item bank in its entirety. (In the past, you had to duplicate question by question into a new bank. Click heavy and time consuming!) Just click on the copy icon next to an item bank and duplicate it.

Together, this will now let you give viewing access to a colleague so they can duplicate your bank and edit it to their needs and preferences without having to risk the full editing rights you needed to give them in the past.

One final update is that when you copy your course materials over at semester, any item banks used in a quiz you copy will automatically be added to the course. You won't need to to search for it in your full list of item banks.

November 14, 2023 - Text Giraffe

Today's tech tip is another quick, fun one that allows you to easily create "logo" type designs for titles or buttons on your Canvas page or in your docs/presentations. Text Giraffe is a free website with 10 pages worth of designs that you can type your title into and download (in 5 different sizes) for free! To the right you'll see four I just did in under a minute.

Go to the Text Giraffe website. There are two ways to create your design:
- Find the design you want to use, click on it, and then type your phrase/title into the text box that appears and hit Enter when done.
- Type your phrase/title into the text box that appears on the homepage, hit enter, and choose from the designs at that point, already sporting your title! Click on the design to enter the next screen.
Once you have your design set, click on "Download logo" below your design.
Choose which size you want to download and click on that.
Your design will open in an otherwise dark tab. Right click on the design and choose "Save image as..." Choose where you want it to go and give it a name. It is now an image you can use on Canvas, in Google, etc.

November 7, 2023 - Reading Mode in Chrome

This one is for anyone that's ever been annoyed by having to scroll through all the extra ads and photos and videos that pop up all over when you're trying to read an article on a website. So, I'm guessing that's just about everyone!

Chrome has recently added "Reading mode", and it will filter out all the unnecessary junk on a website and just give you the main content.

Accessing it is simple. Once you're on the website you want to read, click on the right panel button in the upper right, the one that looks like a split screen. Once in there, click on the drop-down menu and choose Reading mode. It will take a page like the one you see to the left here, full of ads for Target and a video in the bottom right, and it will pull just the main content out and put it your right panel. You can see below what that will look like. It's not perfect (in my example it didn't pull some bullet points), but it will massively cut back on the clutter.

This would be a great first step in cleaning up an online article for use in your class. Have Reading mode pull the main text out, and then you can format it right in the right panel, including font, font size and spacing. You can then cut and paste into a Google Doc for printing.

October 31, 2023 - Automatic nightly grade sync

Happy Halloween! Today's tech tip is something that doesn't go bump in the night, but instead goes sync in the night. You now have the ability to activate an automatic nightly sync of your grades from Canvas to Skyward. (Thank you to Leesa for letting us know this was something that existed!) Don't worry - you haven't been missing something all along - we had to have Canvas turn the option on for us.

If you'd like to turn this option on, do the following:

In your course, click on Grade Sync on the left. (If you don't see it, go into Settings, Navigation, and enable that tab. Students will never be able to see that tab no matter what.)
Click on Utilities, and then toggle on the Nightly Sync option.
That's it! It's all set!

But, you definitely want to keep a couple of things in mind!

All assignments that have the Sync to SIS option clicked on will sync every night. As your list of grades grows, it will be a good idea to uncheck the assignments that are done and no longer need updating.
Any changes you make in Skyward to a grade after the sync will be undone if you sync that assignment again. So, if you add extra credit points or fill in a missing grade manually, that will be undone by the nightly sync. To avoid this, just uncheck the Sync to SIS function in the grade book. Remember, you can do this right in the Assignments tab by just toggling off the icon. (Screenshot to the right.)

October 24, 2023 - Recent updates to Google Chrome

Many of you have probably noticed a slightly different "look" to your Google Chrome over the last week. (If you haven't, please look at the upper right corner of your browser right now and if you see Update or an arrow pointing upwards, click it and update your Chrome. It takes mere seconds and all of your current open tabs will reopen when it relaunches.) In the latest Chrome update, there are a few new/changed features that could be quite useful!

Bookmarks just got easier to edit and search!
- Click on the right panel button (green box in screenshot). Choose Bookmarks from the dropdown menu (red box). From there you can search your bookmarks, arrange them differently, and edit/manage them (blue box).
There is now a down arrow button in the far upper left corner of Chrome. When you click on that, it will give you a search bar to search all of your tabs, a list of open tabs and a list of recently closed tabs. It's an easy way to find the tab you need if you've got a ton open!
- A reminder on a keyboard shortcut when you accidently close a tab. Ctrl+Shift+T will open your most recently closed tab!
The menu you see when clicking the three dots in the upper right has been updated quite a bit with many more options available right away. Play with it as you see fit!
You can easily reach and edit settings for any site you are on by clicking on the icon to the left of the URL. You can adjust permissions for the site, cookies, etc all in one menu.
The way your Chrome looks has gotten a whole lot more customizable! If you open a new tab, you will see a pencil icon in the bottom right part of the screen. Click on that, and it will open a menu of ways to customize your browser. (You can also get there through the drop-down in that same side panel as #1, but only in a new tab.)
- You can pick a "theme" from Google's library of themes.
- You can upload your own photo file to be the background every time you open a new tab.
- You can choose between light and dark mode (like on your smartphone).
- You can change the color scheme of the browser/tabs.
- You can choose whether or not it shows you shortcut options below the search bar in a new tab, and whether those are chosen by you or if they're a collection created by Google of your most visited tabs.
- And finally, you can choose whether it shows you "cards", including recipe ideas, your current online shopping carts, and a card of recently used Google Drive files.

If you look for any of these options and they are not available, you need to update your Chrome! Chrome updates itself every time you shut it down, and it does so in seconds. If you are not in the habit of closing out your Chrome regularly, please start to do so. Having an out of date browser can cause issues with a variety of websites, so staying updated is very helpful.

October 17, 2023 - Google/Canvas visibility

As promised, today's tech tip is all about how to make things visible within Google to students and observers, along with the best ways to assign Google files to students to streamline it for everyone involved while still having visibility set correctly.

This page explains the best way to create assignments that are based off a Google Doc. The Google Assignments LTI 1.3 has a lot of benefits for both teacher and students.

This page explains the different ways to embed Google items in Canvas to make them viewable.

One further thing we have discovered recently is that putting a Google share link into a module via the External tool option* can force it through the authentication process and in that case it would therefore be unviewable to observers, even if it is set to "Anyone with the link can view". To check on this, go into the edit screen for a link and double check that your link still starts with docs.google.com/documents. If so, you should be fine. If it starss with https://google-drive-lti-iad-prod.instructure.com/lti/, you will have the authentication issue.

There are two ways to link to docs and slideshows that aren't that direct share link.

First, you can publish to the web. (This is GREAT for slideshows, less great for docs that have a lot of formatting)

Go into your doc, and click on File, Share, Publish to the Web.
Make sure the file is published and then copy the link given there (not the embed code).
Put this link into your module as an External URL. Leave the "load in a new tab" clicked on.
Now everyone will be able to see the doc/file as it will be treated as a website, not a Google file.

You can also set the link to open a preview version of the doc. This will keep all formatting in place. You can see the instructions for that in the September 26 tech tip.

Please contact me with any and all questions about visibility within Canvas!

*This was originally published saying the External URL option caused this. I was misinformed when we found this situation, and the person had not used that option, but instead the External Tool option.

October 10, 2023 - Text message animator

Today's tip is a fun little website that will create an animation for you that looks like a text message chain rolling. It could be used to animate "conversations" between literary characters, historical figures, pop culture figures... anyone! This is also a tool you could have students use to demonstrate their understanding of a topic.

The site (https://chat-animator.com) is super simple.

There are no accounts to create. In fact, they don't even collect an email address.
You can have up to four "participants", and you can change their picture and their names.
You can also have less than four by just not using one or two of them in the conversation.
The text chain defaults to 7 lines, but you can add more.
The finished product can be exported as a video or a gif.
You can also adjust how quickly the texts appear one after the other.

And my apologies for the content. I do not claim to be an author or a comedian. So this is what you get. 😂

October 3, 2023 - Bulk publish/unpublish modules in Canvas

This one is for those of you who like to avoid unnecessary clicking, and will be particularly useful for those of you who import a lot of content at the beginning of each semester.

In the past, when you did a big import, all the modules and everything in them would be published by default. You could unpublish a module, but the items technically remained published, so you had to individually click every item if you wanted to unpublish them. Also you had to unpublish each module individually.

You can use the new bulk publish feature on a single module or on the entire set of modules in your course. The options are the same whether you click on the Publish All button at the top of the Modules page (first image) or if you click on the publish button on an individual modules (second image): Publish module and all items, Publish the module but no items, or unpublish the module and all of the items.

Note there is no option to unpublish the module while leaving the items published. If this is something you wanted to do, it's probably easiest to unpublish the module and then go to your assignments/pages/quizzes tabs to republish the individual items you want.

September 26, 2023 - More Quick Tips in Google

New search bar in Google files:

In the upper left of any Google doc, sheet, etc you will now find a search bar that will search the menus to find the function you want quicker than clicking through all the levels of menu. This should be helpful for those deeply located tools and for the tools where you're not quite sure where they live. Just start to type the function you want and it should pull up the option.

Share a file for viewing without all the menus showing:

If you copy the share link for a Google file, it will currently end in: edit?usp=sharing

If you'd like to share the document but in a way that it will display just the doc without all the menus and tools, just swap out the "edit?usp=sharing" for "preview". Below is a document shared both ways so you can see the difference.

Regular sharing link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G4xZ2RX6siMv7DUw_-nV8l0tKtD--1H4HNWSo6LjMAg/edit?usp=sharing
Menuless sharing link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G4xZ2RX6siMv7DUw_-nV8l0tKtD--1H4HNWSo6LjMAg/preview

The preview version will be helpful for when you want a cleaner view but don't want to use the embed code or publish to web links. (Sometimes in docs especially the spacing can get wonky with those!) In a slideshow, this will create the look of it being in slideshow mode - no sidebar with the small slides or ability to jump around.

September 19, 2023 - Updates

Today's tech tip is less a tip, and more a group of updates and reminders.

Although not exhaustive lists, I've rounded up a couple of the more helpful and/or larger updates in Canvas and Google from the summer months.

Canvas updates

Google updates

Reminders:

Last year's tech tips, along with a variety of tutorials for Canvas, Skyward, Google, etc can be found in the left sidebar when viewing this site.
My office hours this year are the same as last. I'll be at South Campus during hours 1-3 and North Campus during hours 8-10.
During those hours, feel free to drop in, email me or call me (x4670) with any tech questions you have. Please don't feel like you need to spend an hour trying to solve or research something on your own - I'm here to help!
During my class hours, please email or call (4670 has voicemail this year) and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
If you would like an in-class integration/presentation done, please email, call or stop-in for that as well. We can have the conversation right away and get things set up.

September 12, 2023 - Classroom Screen

I hope it's been a smooth first week for everyone! I will be sending out a summary of the summer updates that took place in the kingdoms of Google and Canvas in the next week, so keep an eye out for those!

Today's tech tip is a "in-the-moment" tool for teachers that could be useful in your classes. It's called Classroom Screen, and it offers a series of widgets to use on the fly in your classroom such as a timer, a random name generator, and polling. You can see the offered widgets to the left here. I recommend playing around to see what each one does!

You DO NOT need a paid version of this to use most of the widgets. Making a free account is fine, though. (Privacy policy) This is not something students would need to use.

And, you can still find last year's tech tips here.

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