Monday, December 9, 2019

December 2019 Tech Tips

Just a couple this month:

Cool tips to get more out of Google Docs, Sheets and Slides:
https://gizmodo.com/21-tips-to-make-google-docs-sheets-and-slides-work-for-1840196294



Canva is now free for educators:https://www.canva.com/education/

How Canva can help in your classroom, Infographics. Presentations. Posters. Documents. With Canva, you can create anything you can imagine.

Get all the pro features for free.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

November 2019 Tech Tips


Google Slides:
I know this should have been available a long time ago but by the end of the month you will be able to insert audio in Google Slides


Google Earth:
Brand new Google Earth Stories feature allows you to build a story from different locations adding interesting facts or build a narrative. Collaborate with others to build an amazing experience. Only on Google Earth Web via a laptop/desktop but the experiences can be shared to IOS or Android devices as well.


Phishing:
Just a small reminder against phishing attacks such as the one we got this week with Hal's Email address, here is a brief article to help detect these attacks.


For a brief quiz to try to beat the scammers try Google’s Phishing Quiz




Presenter Coach:
A free service from microsoft and available to everyone (you will need to setup a Microsoft account, you can use your selwyn email to generate this). This service allows you to run a presentation and an AI will give you pointers and a grade approximation on how well you did.

You can read Richard Byrnes analysis of the service and how to convert your slides document to work with the service as well.


Green Screen: 
I found this great ressources that outlines very easy, classroom projects and tools (mainly doink green screen) with loads of links.


Wednesday, September 25, 2019

September 2019 Tech Tips

ios 13 and iPadOS: Apple has released a new version of ios on iPhone and iPad. on iPad especially we have a bunch of changes to multitasking, gestures and pencil tools. Here is a video that goes over all the new stuff, it's quite long but you can skim through sections. IOS 13 Features & Gestures

Kahoot!: Kahoot has a new creator tool to build even better quizzes. 

Seesaw: New Creative Tools allow to have a sort of Explain Everything(Whiteboard) features.

Remixed Conference hosted by LEARN, this free conference is a great mix of presentations and presenters. The conference takes place at Concordia downtown.

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

June 2019 Tech Tips

Smart compose on mobile
You will notice after the recent upgrade that google has added Smart Compose, that cool function that kind of knows what your about to type in a light grey colour. Just swipe to autocomplete.

Resources pour créer des jeux d’évasion

Branché et futé
Le Commissariat à la protection de la vie privée du Canada a produit une bande dessinée romanesque intitulée Branchés et futés : Internet et vie privée pour aider les jeunes à naviguer en ligne en comprenant bien les risques d’atteinte à leur vie privée. Lien

Google Education PD: 
Google has released a global status report on education and added a series of videos by teachers about how to take advantage of ed tech to enhance your lessons.

Seesaw Update
Seesaw has a few interface changes https://web.seesaw.me/creative-tools

Three fun Games

GeoGuesser
Based on a street view image, try to guess the location.

QuickDraw
Quickly Draw and have an AI try to guess

Akinator
Think of a character and have Akinator figure it out using a bunch of Yes and No Questions, some questions are a bit risky but it works.

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

May 2019 Tech Tips



Annoncé au Sommet du numérique par le ministre de l'Éducation :

le Cadre de référence de la compétence numérique


Ce cadre de référence vise à favoriser le développement de la compétence numérique dans l’ensemble de la communauté éducative pour que les Québécoises et les Québécois soient autonomes et critiques dans leur utilisation du numérique. Cette habileté est primordiale dans le contexte actuel, marqué par des innovations technologiques qui transforment le marché de l’emploi et influent sur les compétences recherchées par les employeurs. En ce sens, il est nécessaire d’adapter la pratique enseignante et d’inclure la compétence numérique dans les programmes éducatifs pour préparer les futurs travailleurs et travailleurs aux défis de demain.

Ce document est en lien avec le Plan d'action numérique annoncé l'année passée et va être bonifié dans les mois à venir.

Google Classroom student picker 

Available on the IOS version, you can randomly choose a student to answer a question or choose to skip or hide a student if he is absent.

Google Earth Timelapse

Go anywhere on earth and replay the last 34 years of satelitte footage to see areas grow, environmental disasters impact, etc...

Medieval Fantasy City Generator

Create a random medieval town, which you can change colors, add text, change shapes, etc...

Monday, April 15, 2019

Google NEXT announcements

Google made a lot of announcements at Google NEXT

Here is a list of the popular one https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/education/googlecloudnext-edu/ I have outlined my favorites and added one not annonced but really awesome.

1. Insert Audio in Google Slides
https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/04/add-audio-to-slides.html

2. Edit Office Files including Word, Excel, Powerpoint without needing to convert to Google format and allow to collaborate as well.

https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/04/office-editing.html

3.Live Captions in Hangout Meet: First introduced in Google Slides, closed caption allows you to have a have a written bar at the bottom with everything being said. The system uses your microphone to use text to speech, and write what your are saying. This is now available to online sessions using Google Meet. Currently only available in english.

https://gsuiteupdates.gooork gleblog.com/2019/04/live-captions-in-meet.html

4. Schedule Email,  write now send later: https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/04/write-now-send-later-with-schedule-send.html

5. Google Assistant with Work and School accounts: The Google Assistant is what powers your android device but also your Google Home and minis. For unknown reasons you could not use your school account calendar with these devices. Now you can,
https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7219584?hl=en


April 2019 Tech Tips

Wooclap: Awesome, free live quiz and audience interaction tool, https://www.wooclap.com/
You can ask multiple choice questions, polls, find on image, word cloud, open questions, guessing, matching....

Sign out of all other Google sessions, sometimes you login to many devices with your user login information. If you ever doubt that maybe you forgot to log off of a device you can simply go to Gmail, scroll allthe way down bottom right corder and click on details. You will be able to see all your open sessions and force a log off all of them at once.

Google @ or + mentions: If you are in a google docs, slides or sheets file and want to bring to the attention a specific passage or block of text, you can highlight do a comment. Within you comment add @ or + followed by the name of the person you wish to send a specific email notification to about the comment. It also informs other collaborators who the comment is for.

Google @ and + signs followed by a name can be used anywhere within the body of an email to automatically add recipients in the To: field.

The @name also becomes underlined and blue and is clickable to instantly compose another email to just that person, the blue is a quick indicator for people to see what part of the email concerns them.

Here is an example:

Quickly create a new Google document:  Just type these into your  web browser to launch a new document, spreadsheet, slide, or form.

Docs: doc.new, docs.new, document.new
Forms: form.new, forms.new
Sheets: sheet.new, sheets.new, spreadsheet.new
Sites: site.new, sites.new, website.new
Slides: slides.new, deck.new, presentation.new

Slight variations also seem to work. For instance, you can type “docs.new” instead of “doc.new” to open a document. Want to have quick access to these shortcuts? Just save them as browser bookmarks.


Monday, February 11, 2019

February 2019 Tech Tips


Its been a bit too long since my last update but here is a bunch of cool tech tips. and I am already working on the next batch for next month.

Google Canvas, not to be confused with Canva the free banner, poster creation tool. Google Canva is like an online version of Paper53 or Paint you can use to create quick drawings and export them to use in your projects.

https://canvas.apps.chrome/

App Launcher: Create an easy to access Chrome app launcher that can also have all your apps (Google Tools)  organised the way you like and even add quick commands for google.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/apps-launcher/ijmgkhchjindcjamnckoiahagecjnkdc?hl=en

Adobe Color CC: Ever wanted to search up a colour and see what would be complementary or work best for presentations, layouts ,etc... Adobe has a great colour tool that helps you make those decisions.
https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/


Genially https://www.genial.ly/en
A great platform to create interactive images that can link to sites, pop up videos.


17 little known tips, tricks and hacks for google in the classroom presented by Edsurge


Google Earth Educator Portal: Loads of resources on how to harness the power of Google Earth and Maps to enhance education. https://www.google.com/earth/education/resources/?All+categories=Voyager


Google Etch a Sketch: Just for fun a digital version of the old Etch a Sketch.

October 2020 Tech Tips

  See the future, I always like sharing these hints at what the next 5-10 years could look like. Microsoft just showcased a video and it eve...