Weekly Tech Tips

  Dear Friends! Last week we looked at some apps to help teachers increase productivity in their inboxes and calendars. In my opinion, the reason for increasing productivity is really just to save time that can then be spent making fun impactful lessons and providing students with specific timely feedback. Tech can be a great tool for all of these tasks. This week we continue with a few calendar and Keep smashes as well as a site that can make social media pages for fictional and historical characters. Weekly Tech Tips Below I have used Google Keep to turn my syllabus into a checklist. By copying my detailed syllabus into Keep and then selecting the Add Checkboxes feature I made my syllabus a list that can be checked off as the year’s lessons progress. In the image below I have used the sidebar on Google Docs to bring up the checklist alongside my daily planner. As I plan and complete lessons I can check off the syllabus items to help me insure complete coverage. This could work ...

  Dear Friends! In this week’s edition of Weekly Tech Tips we focus on productivity centered around your inbox and calendar and scheduling those Zoom meetings.  Also, I found a way to get permissions added for apps and addons that are blocked by our GSIS Google Suite for Education Account. Thanks Jan and Mr. Lush! I have a few that I want to green light (Adobe for Chrome, Timify, Brainpop), but before I request the key to the kingdom, I would like to know if there are folks out there with an app, addon, or extension that they have wanted to try but were denied due to the permission settings on our GfE account. Please let me know. I will try to get those permissions granted by the end of the week. Mr. Kwon and I will be sending out a Wifi  / Zoom survey to help ascertain the status of connections and bandwidth throughout the school. I will attach the survey to the end of this newsletter and send it out a separate email as well. Weekly Tech Tips  Scurrying back and for...

  Dear Friends! Welcome to this week’s edition of Weekly Tech Tips. The inaugural edition was well received and the feedback was encouraging. Thank you to all who wrote with words of appreciation, encouragement and content for this week’s edition. Weekly Tech Tips  Printers: If you are new to not-the-US, then you should know that standard paper size is A4, not US-letter. If you send a job to a printer as US-letter, it will not print and throw a “paper source” error. This will cause every job behind yours not to print until you or someone else comes and clears the job by either switching the source to A4 or canceling the job. Even if you have been here for a long time it is not uncommon to download something from the US and have the print settings default to US-letter (happened to me last week). So please check especially if you have just downloaded something from the US. If you have an error on the printer you can usually press Continue Job and select one of the A4 bins on the...

  Dear Friends! Will it ever stop raining? I am beginning to wonder if we need to find some gopher wood.  Late last year I started occasionally sending out a few tech tips on Friday afternoons. There have been calls for more pd on ed tech, and if we have to go remote again, tech skills will be essential. I have come across this graphic from Education Week several times over the past few weeks. Maybe you have seen it too. I don’t necessarily agree with all of these items, but I agree wholeheartedly with items 1 & 2 on the Teacher list. With all this in mind I thought I would make it a regular thing to share with you the tech tools and training I have found to be helpful and applicable to us here at GSIS. 🎇🏆🏁🎉🎆🎊🎪🎦🎼🏃🏄🎇🏆🏁🎉🎆🎊🎪🎦🎼🏃🏄 It is with great hope and the very best  intentions that I introduce you to the first installment of:  Weekly Tech Tips I hope this newsletter will provide you with usable technology tips that will be applicable to you...