To A Teacher...it's the Future

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Home Button in Chrome & ClassLink

To set your home button in Chrome...

Go to your Chrome settings

Enable the show home button.

Type the website you want to open whenever you hit the home button.

Hint: If you want it ti be the ClassLink page for RTSD26 staff, type http://launchpad.classlink.com/rivertrails

If you want to be able to use the Sign in with Google button on ClassLink, you must
1. Log into ClassLink
2. Go to the profile dropdown arrow on the top right
3. Click My Profile
4. Click Sign In Options
5. Connect to Google.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Read&Write for Google Part 1 - Read Aloud Tools

Read&Write for Google is an extremely powerful Chrome extension. One of its many abilities is the the text-speech feature that can read aloud websites, google docs, google slides and PDFs.

The read aloud tools are super simple to use.

Open any website, doc, slide or PDF.
Click the Read&Write Extension to open the Read&Write tool bar
(If you do not have the extension, search for it at Chrome Web Store and add it to Chrome.
Highlight the word/sentence/paragraph where you want to start reading.
(Tip: To highlight one word, double click the word. To highlight a whole paragraph, triple click any word in the paragraph.)
Click the play button.

Bt default, Read&Write is set for continuous reading. To stop you must click Pause or Stop. However, some students may benefit from having only one sentence or paragraph read at a time.

To turn off continuous reading, go to the Read&Write Options by clicking the arrow on the right of the tool bar.

Under Speech, uncheck the continuous reading box.

You can also change the readers voice and reading speed.

To pause a read aloud, click pause.

To clear a selection and start over, click stop.

When you click the Hover Speech Button,

Read&Write will read aloud most sentences, captions or titles you hover over. There is a fraction of a second delay, so be patient! To turn off Hover Speech, click Stop.

Coming Soon...
Part 2 - Vocabulary Tools
Part 3 - Highlighter Tools
Part 4 - Word Prediction and Translations
Part 5 - Audio Tools

Friday, September 1, 2017

Gmail Signature

Add a signature to your Gmail

In Gmail, click Settings settings and select Settings.
In the General tab, scroll down to Signature and click the button next to the text box.
Type your signature, and use the format toolbar to add font styles, colors, images, links, and more.
Click Save changes.

Want to get your signature little fancier? Create a signature in Google Drawings. Download it as a .png. Then insert that image in the signature box in your gmail settings (see above).

There are is also a chrome extension I wrote about a while ago that help you create signatures:

WiseStamp

Monday, April 3, 2017

Science Friday

The Science Friday website has articles, videos and podcasts about relevant and interesting science topics!

http://www.sciencefriday.com

Students can use the EXPLORE section of the website to read, watch or listen to cool science stories.

The EDUCATE section offers free STEM activities, lessons, and resources!

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Turn Your Classroom into a MakerSpace!

Looking for something innovative, fun, creative and intellectually engaging for after Spring Break? Check out http://makercamp.com/projects! Pick a project and start making!!! Step-by-step directions included!