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 Google Sheets spreadsheet.
Press Shift and T to launch a new Google Docs document.
Shift and P will give you a new blank Google Slides presentation.
Shift and O will take you into the Google Forms creation tool.
And Shift and D will open up a new blank drawing canvas.
Weekly Tech Tips
Continuing with tips for Sheets, here are some intermediate to advanced level tricks:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90334451/google-sheets-tips
Looking for something to do with kids on hot boring days this summer?
Try Google Arts and Culture Activities from Applied DIgital Skills:
This Week’s Apps and Resources
This week I learned about a new app created by a pair of high school seniors. They're both going off to college this fall to study computer science and one of them is going to Georgia Tech. Go Jackets! This app is called Hitsnag and it allows you to link your inbox to some of your favorite note taking apps like Trello and Notion. Support for Evernote, One Note and others is in the works. You will have read about Trello and Notion in this newsletter before on the edition on note-taking and “To Do” apps. Hitsnag lets you send a “card” to Trello, or an entry to a Notion notebook, or even text to an existing Google Doc in your Drive. I think a lot of us use our inbox as a kind of To Do List / Notepad, but Inboxes are not really designed for that. There are some great tools alongside your Gmail inbox (Tasks and Keep) to help you get emails into lists or notes quickly, but if you like a more full-featured note taking app like those mentioned above, Hitsnag is a really cool way to access them from your inbox. Just install the app, link them to your Trello, Drive, Notion etc… accounts and now you can send an email to hitsnag.com that will create a new note or append to an existing one. Without ever leaving your inbox. Pretty cool.
Wanna try another free GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer)? This one is called GPT-Neo and unlike GPT-3 it is free. Trained on 2.7 billion parameters, the results are pretty impressive. You will need a little computer savvy to install it, but it shouldn’t be too hard
https://huggingface.co/EleutherAI/gpt-neo-2.7B?text=My+goals+as+a+teacher+for+the+year+have
An interesting and reasonable explanation of why books are better than tablets:
Why we remember better when reading print than digital media
Just look at the charts. I hope these trends continue. I always support more student freedom and choice:
How the Pandemic Prompted More Teachers to Give Students More Choice
A little comic relief for those who like web strips:
Teacher Web Comic Series (Elementary School)
Announcements
Don’t forget that the Weekly Tech Tips are now all online for you to reference if you ever want to go back and look up something that caught your eye but can’t remember.
https://drwsweeklytechtips.blogspot.com/
Thanks to the teachers that came out Saturday for our GCE L1 Exam Cram Sesh. On Teacher’s Day no less. That’s dedication! Good luck to those taking their exam soon. You can join the self-study course I made any time by going on Google Classroom and inputting class code: 76trm2u or going here:
https://classroom.google.com/c/MTQ5Mjg3ODQ1MjZa?cjc=76trm2u
I will be making a new course this summer to reflect the changes that Google has made to the apps and to the suite as a whole now that it is Google Workspace for Education. I will also have many more live f2f sessions next year. CoVid and busy schedules made it hard this year, but I will be sure to plan well ahead for the 2122 SY.
Let’s keep the discussions going. It has been a while since I posted, but I hope to discuss and debate with you over the summer. I made a new post on the GSIS 2020 Google Group. Let me know what you think of this new “definition” of education.
Quote of the Week:
“If we see ourselves as predominantly teachers of curriculum – even exemplary curriculum – we have forgotten half of our professional role. We are teachers of human beings. The essence of our job is making sure that the curriculum serves as a catalyst for powerful learning for our students who, with our guidance and support, become skilled in and committed to the process of learning.” – Tomlinson & McTighe
Have a great week!
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