Weekly Tech News and Tips for October 21, 2016

It's definitely feeling like fall now. There's a chill in the air, the leaves are displaying their beautiful color show, and Halloween is right around the corner. (Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you.) Here is an assortment of updates and ideas to inform and inspire you in your classroom - or just for general use. Feel free to add comments in the space below to let me know if you found something helpful, or if you'd like to see information on a particular topic.

• G Suite Updates: Action Items and Forms
• 7 Reasons Why You Need to Use PBS Election Central
• 5 Ways Tech can Truly Improve Learning (with Examples)
• 5 Ways Students Can Find Free Images
• Game On World
• Adobe Spark for Simple Multimedia Projects
• Classkick for Chromebook and More!
• Creating Green Screen Videos for Education

G Suite Updates: Action Items and Forms

Recent updates make it easier to keep track of who is taking care of which tasks. You can assign action items automatically and manually. To assign tasks automatically, enter phrases in Docs such as "Andrea to schedule a weekly check in", and a prompt will appear to assign an action item.

You can also manually assign action items to others in Docs, Sheets and Slides by mentioning their name in a comment.

Once those task items have been assigned, it's now easier to find the files that need attention. The next time you visit Drive (or the apps Docs, Sheets and Slides), a badge will appear on any files with action items assigned to them. 

Forms has also recently received a couple handy updates. To save time, when you are entering a common question, Forms will now automatically suggest answers that go with it, and in the correct format (check boxes, multiple choice, etc.). In addition, with forms that are shared within our organization, in our case within DOGR, there is now a new File Upload type question. Respondents can upload a file as part of their response to the question. 

7 Reasons Why You Need to Use PBS Election Central

From Learn Lead Grow by Matt Bergman

This is a great, nonpartisan tool to explain all facets of the current, and previous, election cycles to your students. PBS Election Central includes Election Collection to understand democracy, the US government and why we have elections, The Election Process, Understand the Presidential Debates, a Classroom Debate Toolkit, We the Voters Films, the Electoral Decoder, an Interactive Map, and Virtual Field Trips. There are also posters you can download, videos you can show, and lots of links to related resources. Truth be told, we could probably all use this - especially this year.  Click here to read the full article.

5 Ways Tech can Truly Improve Learning (with Examples)

From Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller

Get beyond the buzz words to see practical ways tech can enhance what and how you are teaching. Click here to read the entire post.

5 Ways Students can Find Free Images

5 Ways Students can Find Free Images, from Practical Ed Tech with Richard Byrne
It's important to teach your students how to find images for their slide presentations and videos, that are free to use without permission. (No it's not actually legal to just pull any image from the internet and use it if they are copyrighted.) It this blog entry, Richard Byrne shows 5 sources for public domain and Creative Commons licensed images that are free to use.

Game On World

From Free Tech 4 Teachers, by Richard Byrne.

This game is similar to Kahoot, and has several types of games in geography and science. Students also do not need to create a login, they just go to gameon.world and enter the class code. As a teacher, you would also go to the same site to start the game. Unlike Kahoot, it does not appear that you can make your own games up, but there are many to choose from. 

Adobe Spark for Simple Multimedia Projects

from The Electric Educator by John Sowash

Here's a first hand account of how John used Adobe Spark with his 8 and 6 year old kids to create a video on pollution. He also includes some cautions when using Spark. This is a great way to use the iPads to take the photos, store them in Google Photos, then use Spark on the Chromebooks to create a polished video quickly with both elementary and middle school students. Read the entire post and see their video here. Access Spark at spark.adobe.com. 

Classkick for Chromebook and More!

Classkick for Chromebook and More! from A Lever and a Place to Stand by Amy Roediger

This is a great program for creating interactive slides that students can work on at their own pace - and you can watch their progress real-time. This app used to only be available on iOS, but now is a web app, so is available for Chromebooks, Macs and PCs too! This can be used by elementary and middle school students, as no account set up is necessary. Students just enter the class code to join.

Creating Green Screen Videos for Education

by Sam Gliksman
We already have the green screens and iPad apps if you'd like to try this fun project for video reports with your students.