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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 Tab shortcuts, like this:


This way when you open a new tab (Ctrl t) you are greeted with these and any other option you have added with the “Add shortcut” button you see on the bottom right. It’s a good place to put some of your most used pages. 


Google for Education Teacher Certification Training


If you didn’t fill in the survey last year and didn’t get an invitation you can still join us for GCE L1 here on Google Classroom.
https://classroom.google.com/c/MTQ5Mjg3ODQ1MjZa?cjc=hm4w4iw

I have decided to run it as a blended self-paced course. I think it is the best way and maybe the only way considering everyone’s needs.  We can discuss meeting in person soon. I already added the WELCOME section to get you oriented and started and yesterday I added the Topic: GCE L1 Test to show you where you are going.
I will be filling in the topic content as we go.  I plan to add a topic per week with each topic being a specific Google Workspace for Education (GWfE) App. By this time next week I will have added the first app topic, Google Chrome (the browser). 
Here is a 73 question GCE L1 Quizziz I found if you would like to test your knowledge of GWfE app and practices.
https://quizizz.com/join?gc=56536322
A few people have already taken it and the excellent reports Quizziz provides really helps me focus my teaching.

Have a great week!

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