Weekly Tech Tips

  Dear Friends, I present to you the penultimate edition of this academic year’s  Weekly Tech Tips A reminder to those leaving that you might want to use Google Takeout: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout and or Transfer: https://takeout.google.com/transfer to take the contents of your Google account with you. Google has made docs smarter with a technology called Smart Canvas , Here are three new capabilities (you may have already noticed them): Checklists added to Google Docs. Used to just be box shaped bullets, but are now actual functioning checkboxes. Later these checklists will be able to be assigned and shared making them really useful in group projects. Link suggestions suggested by the AI when you highlight a text fragment: Smart Chips for docs and events. When you type the @ symbol you get not only email contacts, but also relevant files and calendar events to possibly insert. Read more about these three new "smart canvas" features here: https://workspac...

  Dear Friends, I hope everyone is doing well as we close out another tough year. This week I share how to zip up your Google account and take it with you if you are leaving. For those staying at GSIS I have a quick survey I hope you will take so we can make next year’s Ed Tech PD more useful and meaningful. Not much else other than a few articles from EdWeek that talk about what technical PD should look like next year. Good to read before you take the survey even if you just scan the charts summarizing trends and feelings in the Ed Tech space. Weekly Tech Tips Those leaving might want to use Google Takeout: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout and or Transfer: https://takeout.google.com/transfer The app takes you through the process step by step, but I am happy to help if you need it. If you are moving to another school that uses Google Workspace for Education you will want to use Google Transfer and will need some info from your new school’s IT Department. Those EdWee...

  Dear Friends, According to the theory of general relativity we are all traveling through spacetime at the speed of light. The faster we move through space; the slower we move through time and vice versa. The vector sum of these two velocities is always equal to the speed of light. This means that if we're standing perfectly still, then we are traveling through time at the speed of light. And yet it often seems the more I run around the faster time goes. That certainly seems to be the case these days near the end of the school year. I hope I can save you some time and make a little extra space in your life with this week's Tech Tips.  Weekly Shortcuts  These are some shortcuts I learned about recently for you while you are in Google Drive. They do not work in other places, only while you are in Drive: Select a file in Drive (click once, do not open) and press "p" for a quick  preview in Drive without opening the file. Press Shift and S together to start a new G...

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?)...

  Dear Friends, Back in the saddle 100% and T minus 5 weeks and counting! Weekly Shortcuts  This is one of those 4 times a year when our attention turns to spreadsheets. Here are a few sheet shortcuts in case you didn’t know. From The Verge: Five Little Google Sheets tricks I Taught my Dad. If you want to power up (way up) your sheet skills may I recommend Better Sheets . This guy has turned sheets into a full fledged programming language. You’d be amazed at the stuff you can do with a simple spreadsheet. Weekly Tech Tips Educase Horizon Report Teaching and Learning Edition: Every year it lays out teaching technologies and practices that are most likely to have an impact. This year’s report drew on the expertise of more than 70 panelists who hold a range of teaching and technology positions in higher education. Among technological trends, Educause’s panelists considered the most important to be widespread adoption of hybrid learning models, increased use of learning techno...