Skip to main content

Weekly Tech Tips 6 December 2020

 Dear Friends!

Thanks for all the words of support and encouragement in response to last week’s letter. It is nice to know that folks are reading. I especially appreciate those who either emailed or came up to me last week to expand upon some of the ideas presented and offer their opinions. No one has taken up the offer to join in the GSIS2020 group, but one step at a time. If, perchance, you did try to get in but were not allowed please email me and I will send you a personal invitation.

Back to hybrid classes so back to tech tips that can hopefully help you make them more fun and impactful while saving you valuable time.

Weekly Tech Tips

First I would like to recommend that you upgrade your Chrome browser to version 87. If you are not sure how to do this I will show you here:

Go to the upper right hand corner of your browser window and click on the “snowman”, the three little vertical dots:

Go to Help >> About Google which will open a Settings window that will show you your current version and ask  you if you want to check for updates. If it is less than 87 you should do so and then install it. The best thing about the new upgrade is a substantial improvement in efficiency. Google says: “This month's update represents the largest gain in Chrome performance in years,...”  and you can read more about it here:

https://blog.google/products/chrome/faster-chrome/

One new feature of this version is Omnibar commands which just means that you can perform basic settings tasks from the search bar. For example, you are supposed to be able now to type into the search bar a command like “Clear browser history” to clear your browser history instead  of going into History or settings and doing it that way. I tried one and it didn’t work. It takes time to roll around the world. Not sure how much I would use this one. You can read more here:

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/83519363

Braintool (https://braintool.org/) came across my radar this week as something I definitely want to try. I love the idea: bookmarks organized in a tree structure like a file system that you can add tags and notes to. I just downloaded the extension today and haven’t really started using it yet, but it looks intriguing. Here is a short video that explains it:

https://youtu.be/UfvceH03iAc

Don’t forget  Jan's Padlet for scores of great tools with information on how to use them effectively for online teaching.

https://padlet.com/middletonj8/dkttjkvc8ast

And finally, you might save some time and headaches with Zoom scheduler if you don't already have it.

Courses, Tutorials, Webinars and Talks

Not the time now, but I will work on a good list that I can get out to you before the holidays when we might actually have a little time to take a course or attend a webinar.



That’s it for this week.

Have a good one.

Scott

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weekly Tech Tips 29 August 2021

  Dear Friends, Welcome to this week’s installment of... Weekly Tech Tips This week is all about speed. See below how you can take a flat file MC quiz and pretty quickly turn it into a  Quizziz. Quizziz is also adding adaptive practice which is nice. Notice how you can copy over ALL the MC options then drag down one at a time to populate the choices instead of copying each one over. I was able to make this 13 question MC quiz from an IB database in about 10 minutes.  So now when I give this quiz tomorrow I don’t have to worry about making copies or if the printer works or forgetting about it because I already scheduled it for exactly 10 minutes after class starts. And my favorite part is that when the student are done I get a fantastic report like this: that tells me not only who missed what, but provides some basic item analysis. I also like the fact that the question pops up in the report so I don't have to note the question and go back to the quiz to find it. Solid...
Post a Comment
Read more

Weekly Tech Tips 9 May 2021

Dear Friends, Man how time flies when you have 1001 things to do!  Weekly Shortcuts  You have to know that if you ever accidentally close one or more tabs in Chrome that you can get them back with CMD + SHIFT + T. You can do this multiple times to get back tabs you may have closed earlier and need back. If you need to go farther back, go over to your history under the “snowman” (three vertical dots in the upper right corner of your browser). Weekly Tech Tips I keep the focus on spreadsheets again this week. I mentioned last week that it's spreadsheet time of year and I think that is the case whenever it's time to log scores and calculate final grades. I don't know of any of my colleagues who use Schoology or PowerSchool to actually calculate grades. I'm not sure how the elementary teachers keep up with it, but as far as I know everyone in secondary has some version of their own spreadsheet to manage all the calculations required by the IB (Intentionally Byzantine?)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Weekly Tech Tips 7 March 2021

  Dear Friends, I hope you are happy. Weekly Shortcut Ever need a scratch pad to work out a calculation or idea on? Especially during grading season I always find that a scratch spreadsheet comes in handy if I am looking at grades and different ways to calculate them. A scratch spreadsheet is always up when I am doing grades. It lets me quickly and accurately copy my grades over from my gradebook and run any calculations or stats I want without fear of messing up my actual gradebook. Instead of going into the matrix (the nine dots in the upper right-hand corner of most Google App windows) or going into Drive and clicking the rainbow plus New button, you can just open a new browser window and type:  sheet.new. You can create a new blank doc with doc.new and yes a new blank slide presentation with slide.new These are by default stored in the upper level of My Drive. If you do this enough you might like to save another step and just make new sheets and docs a part of your New T...
Post a Comment
Read more