Once you’ve checked it out, please fill out the form below! Create a Doc to share with your new fonts!
Google for Education Help Forums
Did you know that Google has a whole host of help forums for it’s products? Have a question about any of the Google Apps for Education products, like Google Classroom? The help forums are a great way to get a specific answer! Click the image below to go to the Education forum (there’s lots of other forums as well).
On Reddit, Geoff Hinton talks Google
One of my #GTAMTV friends posted this link on Twitter today, and I wanted to share it here! Interesting interview with Geoff Hinton! Click on the image below to go to the article.
Flipped Classroom
I love the idea of Flipped Learning Environment! I came across this video by Edutopia.org and FlippedClass.com and wanted to share it! What would you do with the extra time you had with students?
Updates to Google Forms!
Google Forms really are among my very favorite tools! I was so excited this fall when Google updated Forms! There’s lots of new themes, and the themes can include a custom header! YAY!! Plus, they just added “Add-ons” for Forms as well!! Check out some of the new seasonal headers! Just create a new Form and click “Change Theme” at the top, a window will open on the side with the available new themes… If you click “customize” and then “Header Image” and then “choose image” you’ll see the seasonal images that are available, and can also choose your own!!
Happy Form-ing 🙂
Go Google Drive Collaboration
Here’s another of the workshop resources from last week’s Professional Development Day… This one is an overview of the ways that you can use Drive to collaborate with teachers and students.
Harness the Power of Google
This past week I had the pleasure of presenting 3 Google workshops to the staff of my district during a full Professional Development Day. I wanted to share the presentations that I created. This first one is called “Harness the Power of Google and Free Your Lessons” which is an overview of many Google services and how they can be used in a classroom. For the class, I address each issue and then go online and create/discuss it live. But, the basics of the presentations are here 🙂
Great Ideas for Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts can be a wonderful resource for teachers and students! Check out this recent article on Edudemic featuring 4 Ways to Enhance Your Class with Google Hangouts You do need to enable G+ to use hangouts on your account, and G+ is not available if you’re younger than 13. But you can use Hangouts as a teacher and create a “virtual field trip” with an expert over Hangouts! What a great idea.
Don’t forget to check out this week’s Try Tech Tuesday Challenge!
Welcome to Try Tech Tuesday!
Welcome to the first edition of Try Tech Tuesday!! Every first and third Tuesday of the month I will post a “Try Tech” challenge! The second and fourth Tuesday I’ll post samples of the previous week’s challenge results. Once you complete the challenge, go ahead and share it via twitter using the #trytechtu and fill out the form at the bottom of the challenge page! Once the challenge closes I’ll be sending out digital badges for participation! I hope you’ll join in the fun and try some tech 🙂
This first challenge is one that I love to play with! When I first started touting Google Docs, the biggest push-back I got from people was the “lack” of cool fonts. Because it’s web based, the fonts were limited… Well, now there’s a TON of fonts that you can play with!! Happy Monkey is my personal favorite at the moment 🙂 This week’s challenge is to create a Google Doc using some cool fonts and share it. Make sure that your sharing setting for the Doc is set to “anyone with the link can view” and paste that link in the form below!
To access the fonts, log in to your Google account, go to Drive and either create a new Doc, or open one that you’ve already created. Up in the top edit menus, click on the current font (probably Ariel if you haven’t changed it), and in the drop down, click on “more fonts” at the bottom. There’s a whole host of fonts that you can add… Once you add them to your Doc, they are available in all of your drive… You only need to add them once. You can also use that same menu to remove them from your common font list (if you have too many to scroll through).
Please share this via twitter using the #trytechtu and also fill out the form below if you join in! When I post the next challenge (on the third Thursday) I’ll be sending along digital badges for this first challenge (as long as you share your email address… Emails will not be shared, just used to send out the badges).
Calculator Tip
Happy #NaBloPoMo !!
Here’s another quick and easy tip for your search bar! If you need a calculator, of course you can search for the word calculator in any google search bar which will bring up a working calculator right in your search! But, did you know that you can simply type the expression into the search bar and get the answer? Try it! See, Google does have the answers to everything 🙂 This also works for all kinds of things, like word definitions too!
Also, I’m so excited that another of my #gtamtv cohort is taking up the #NaBloPoMo challenge!! Michelle Green looked through the list of participating blogs, and as far as she can tell, we’re the only edtechies 🙂 that are participating! Michelle started a Google Sheet that we can make a list in… I’ll also add a link over in my sidebar to any other ed tech blog that’s participating! We’d love to have lots of blogs to read! If you want to join in the bloggy fun, just add your info to the list on the Google Sheet and check out any other blogs listed!