Google's Santa Tracker/Advent Calendar

Google's Santa tracker has more to offer than meets the eye!  Like an advent calendar, new activities "open" up every day to help you count down to Christmas.  So far, activities include learning about holiday traditions, creating a snowflake, Santa selfies and my favorite, coding activities for k-3 students!

Thanks Sheila Creaser for the heads up on this site!

https://santatracker.google.com/village.html 

Show What You Know

Looking for some creative ways to publish student work?  Wesley Fryer has compiled resources that can help you understand just what programs and apps students can use to show what they know!!!

Show it With Media

Personally, I like the 5 Photo Story idea... It can be a fun, quick way to retell a story, explain how to do something or review for a test.

http://showwithmedia.com/

IG IT Teacher Menu

Looking for ways to integrate technology into your classroom?  Order up some tech-licious activities!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Kn0b0r0KPoR2l4QmZVWUlTUDA/view?usp=sharing

Staff Meeting 11/9 Gmail tips, Google Keep & New Laptops

Create a calendar event from an email:

1. Open the message. 
2. Click the More drop-down menu. 
3. Select Create event from the menu that has shown. 
4. Edit and enter details as needed manually. 
5. Click SAVE. 

 Create a Task from an email:

1. Open the message. 
2. Click the More drop-down menu. 
3. Select Add to Tasks from the menu that has shown. 

Google Keep

New Lenovo Yoga Laptops

Staff Meeting 11/9 Gmail tips, Google Keep & New Laptops

Create a calendar event from an email:

1. Open the message. 
2. Click the More drop-down menu. 
3. Select Create event from the menu that has shown. 
4. Edit and enter details as needed manually. 
5. Click SAVE. 

 Create a Task from an email:

1. Open the message. 
2. Click the More drop-down menu. 
3. Select Add to Tasks from the menu that has shown. 

Google Keep

New Lenovo Yoga Laptops

Twitter Cheat Sheet

important hashtags

#iginspires

#rtsd26learns

#euclidexplores

3M Young Scientist Contest

MAIN CONTENT

MAYBE ONE OF YOUR STUDENTS CAN BE INSPIRED BY THESE 5TH-8TH GRADE CHILDREN!!

The Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge is the nation’s premier science competition for grades 5-8. This one-of-a-kind video competition has sparked the imaginations of hundreds of thousands of students and enhanced science exploration, innovation and communication across the United States.

2016 DISCOVERY EDUCATION 3M YOUNG SCIENTIST FINAL EVENT

Tuesday, October 18, 2016 from 11:00AM - 1:00PM ET
Live from 3M's Innovation Center

THERE ARE 10 FINALISTS BUT ONLY ONE WILL BE NAMED AMERICA'S TOP YOUNG SCIENTIST!

Register for the live Broadcast

MEET THE FINALISTS BEFORE THE BIG EVENT!

The 10 finalists have been working all summer long to bring their innovative ideas to life with the help of a 3M Scientist mentor. Meet the finalists and follow their journey to the final event on theYoung Scientist Challenge blog!

BeeLine Reader

BeeLine Reader

This cool Chrome app will simplify an most web pages by removing ads and color coding text in a way that helps a reader's eyes smoothly move from the beginning of a passage to the end!

Before:



After:

Too Many Extensions?

The Chrome Web Store has so many great extensions that enhance the functionality of the Chrome browser.  Extensions can help keep you organized, make it easier to share information, save you time, declutter websites... the list goes on.  Unfortunately, having too many extensions running can slow down your machine.

I can admit, I have way too many extensions.  I don't use all of them everyday, but I know once I delete one, I'll need it in a day or two and have to go to the store and download it again.  So they keep piling up and taking up space on my tool bar.

Introducing the Extensity extension!  (Yes, it is a little ironic that getting yet another extension will solve my problem.)

Extensity allows you to easily turn on/off extensions from your extension tool bar!  It can declutter your toolbar and give you more room to see website addresses!  

Look these AMAZING results!!! 

Before Extensity




After Extensity


The extensions are still there... within seconds I can turn on anyone I need.  They just aren't wasting space or memory when I'm not using them.  I love it!!!

Contact Groups - Gmail

Create a contact group in Gmail to easily send out emails and share google docs to groups of people.

Create a contact group:

1. On the top left of your email screen click the word Mail and change it to Contacts.
2. Under Contacts you find New Group.
3. Give the group a name.
4. The group is then listed under Contacts, click the group.
5. Click the Add People Button. 
6. Type or paste email addresses.  (Use a comma or semicolon to separate emails.)
7. Click Add.

When composing an email, simply start typing the name of your group in the To: field!

Get a list of parent/student emails from PowerTeacher to copy and paste into a Group:

1. Sign into PowerTeacher.
2. Click the Backpack next to the class you want to create a group for.
3. Click Email Addresses in the top left corner of the screen.
4. Select the students/parents.
5. Click Build List. (You can leave the delimiter type set to Existing.)
6. Copy the list from the box.
7. Find/Create the group you want to add the list to in your Contacts (See above).
8. Click the Add People Button. 
9. Ctrl+V  to paste the email addresses. 
10. Click Add.

For more detailed directions on how to group and sort contacts please visit Google's Gmail Support

Clean up your inbox!

It's the beginning of the year and time for a fresh start in your email inbox!  Clean up your inbox without deleting your emails, by using the ARCHIVE function. When you archive an email, it gets moved from your inbox to a label called "All Mail" and isn't deleted. 

Three ways to archive.
1.  Open an email.  Click the Archive button at the top of the message.



2.  In your inbox, check all the emails you'd like to archive and click the archive button towards the top of your screen.

3.  When replying to an email, use the Send & Archive button  This button both sends and archives that message at the same time!  This will save you the time of archiving it via options 1 or 2 (above) at a later time.



Turn on the send and archive feature in your email settings.




Important facts to keep in mind:

• If someone replies to a message you've archived, the message will come back to your inbox.
• Educator gmail accounts have no size limit, so don't worry about archiving too many emails.
• When you search for an email, All Mail and anything you have archived is automatically searched.
• You can move an archived email back into your inbox by opening the message and clicking "move to inbox."
• You can view your All Mail by hovering your mouse over the label list on the left side of the screen and clicking All Mail. (You may have to click MORE to see the All Mail label.)

Go Incognito!

Chrome has a handy little feature called Incognito Mode!

Incognito mode opens a new window that is not logged into Google or any other website.   You can be logged into chrome on your desktop (or a Chromebook), open an incognito window and have a student log into any site you want.   It lets you project the student view of sites like Think Central or SuccessNet and still be logged into the same site as a teacher! 

Incognito mode is also great when students are presenting from their Google Drives.  Students can log into the incognito window and get to their own drives without logging the teacher off.  

When an incognito window is closed, all usernames, passwords, history and cookies get deleted so no extra accounts remain on your computer! Poof!

Here are some other times Incognito mode may be useful.

1.  Checking the permissions and link to a google doc you want to share publicly.  Just paste the URL in an incognito window and see if it opens the way you want it to.

2.  When you are borrowing someone else's computer.  Go Incognito and you can quickly have access to your own accounts without logging your colleague out of theirs.

3.  Searching for gifts or travel deals.  Google is pretty savvy at tailoring advertisements based on your search history.  When using Incognito mode, your search history or cookies are not saved!  If you are incognito, once you close that window, the data Google gathered about your search is deleted! 

P.S.  Student Chromebooks do not have the ability to use Incognito Mode.  :)

Tynker

Tynker.com offers a free 6-course introduction to coding for grades 3-8 and paid coding courses for younger students.  The courses includes lesson plans and project templates to help students learn to program and code by creating games, tutorials  and puzzles!

Youngzine

Current event articles and videos for kids!

Teachers who sign up for an account can have their students comment, and submit articles, book reviews or travelogues. All content is monitored by their editorial staff.

Siemens Science

Looking for some fun, hands-on science activities to keep your students engaged until the end of the year?  Siemens, in conjunction with Discovery Education, has k-6 lesson plans and support videos for earth, life and physical sciences!

http://www.siemensscienceday.com/index.cfm

Smithsonian TT & TweenTribune

Looking for current event articles for kids?  Check out Smithsonian TTJunior & TweenTribune.  This site has interesting daily articles categorized by Lexile.  The articles are clean, with no distracting ads on the side.  Teachers can create a class and have students participate in quizzes and post teacher approved comments!

Ideas for Presenting Information

Free Technology for Teachers: 16 Educational Resources for Earth Day 2016

Free Technology for Teachers: 16 Educational Resources for Earth Day 2016: Earth Day 2016 is on Friday. As I've done in the past, I've compiled a list of resources for teaching about Earth Day and environm...

The 27 Characteristics of A 21st Century Teacher

"The 27 Characteristics of A 21st Century Teacher ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning." The 27 Characteristics of A 21st Century Teacher ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/04/the-27-characteristics-of-21st-century.html>.

Maker Spaces!

Lesson Ideas

DIY.org    MakeZine.com

Tinker Studio

Hands-on, engaging manipulatives and tools that inspire creativity, problem solving and critical thinking!

Tinker Studio

Makerbook.net

Looking for high quality, royalty free photographs, video or audio?  Makerbook.net has links to all the best sites to find resources to create fabuolus presentations, graphics and videos!

Sketch Pad 3.5

Sketch Pad 3.5 is the closet drawing app to KidPix that I've found... and I've been looking for a while. Chose different brush sizes, add text boxes, stamps, shapes, clipart and even use the web cam to take a pic of yourself!  The background can even be transparent in case you want to add a graphic to a website, slide or doc!

Mrs Slater's 5th graders use pictochart to highlight the lyrics of famous blues singers. #rtsd26learns #iginspires https://t.co/aGW4oqjBnq

Mrs Slater's 5th graders use pictochart to highlight the lyrics of famous blues singers. #rtsd26learns #iginspires http://pic.twitter.com/aGW4oqjBnq

— Sondra Cimaroli (@igitteacher) January 13, 2016

from Twitter https://twitter.com/igitteacher

January 13, 2016 at 03:07PM
via IFTTT

Google Forms

Google Forms are a quick and easy tool to help teachers stay organized, collect information and assess learning!

Here is a 5 Step Cheat Sheet to get you started!

Need more advanced tutorials?  Check out the Google Forms Learning Center!


Need some ideas for using forms in the classroom?  Check out this presentation by Tom Barrett.
(@tombarrett)

Great weekend learning how technology can increase learning! #rtsd26learns #iginspires https://t.co/ThrfkLpdkC

Great weekend learning how technology can increase learning! #rtsd26learns #iginspires http://pic.twitter.com/ThrfkLpdkC

— Sondra Cimaroli (@igitteacher) January 12, 2016

from Twitter https://twitter.com/igitteacher

January 12, 2016 at 02:29PM
via IFTTT