- 3 Real Phishing Attacks your C-Suite Needs to See
- Just Read Extension Pushed Out
- 4 Hidden Chrome Tricks to Increase Your Efficiency
- How to Create a Pivot Table in Google Sheets
- Mobile Storyteller, and How Your Students Can Tell Stories, Too
- Use Tagul to Get Creative with Word Clouds
- How to Create Kahoot! Games
- Augmented Reality for the Classroom
3 Real Phishing Attacks Your C-Suite Needs to See
3 Real Phishing Attacks Your C-Suite Needs to See, from Better Cloud MonitorPhishing is when a hacker sends emails that look legitimate in an attempt to gather your personal information or login credentials. The hacker then uses those credentials to infiltrate the company network and steal information. This is the number one way companies are being hacked and personal information, such as customer names, addresses, social security numbers, are stolen. It is very important that everyone know how to spot a phishing email, so please take the time to click on the link and read this article. There are good images explaining what to look for. When hovering over links is mentioned, the article is referring to the method of hovering your mouse over a link, and looking in the lower left corner of your screen, where the actual URL address is displayed.
Just Read Extension Pushed Out
I just pushed out to all faculty, staff and students an extension called Just Read. The extension icon looks like this 
in the upper right of your browser window. By clicking on the icon, it allows the user to clear away all the distractions from around an article. Not only can you use this when projecting articles from your computer, but you can also encourage your students to use it when they are reading news articles as well.4 Hidden Chrome Tricks to Increase Your Efficiency
4 Hidden Chrome Tricks to Increase Your Efficiency, from Better Cloud MonitorThere are some very helpful tips here, including pinning tabs so you can't accidentally close them, organizing your tabs in bulk, keyboard shortcut for specific tabs and creating a shortcut on your desktop.
How to Create a Pivot Table in Google Sheets
What is a Pivot Table, you ask? A pivot table allows you to pull specific data out of a spreadsheet. In the video example in this blog post, it's the number of students at each age, or the number girls and boys in a class list. It's a useful tool when you are trying to make sense of a lot of information in a spreadsheet.
Mobile Storyteller, and How Your Students Can Tell Stories, Too
Mobile Storyteller, and How Your Students Can Tell Stories, Too, from Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller
Matt reminds us that stories are everywhere, and our students can take video for them anywhere with simple equipment. Hopefully, our smart phone drive will give us the flexibility to allow students to take them on field trips, to Art Prize, service projects, or anywhere there is a story to tell.
Use Tagul to Get Creative with Word Clouds
While Google Docs has a very utilitarian word cloud add-on, it's not very fun and you cannot really customize the word cloud or change its shape. It works really well for visualizing the words you use most often, but not much else. If you want to be able to select shape, color, animation, font and more - without the need for your students to login - Tagul is your answer. Simply click the Create button, and you are on your way. Without creating an account and logging in you will not be able to save your creations in Tagul, but you will be able to download them as image files. Click here for a demo.
For many of you this is review, although it does cover some nice points you may not know, such as properly citing photos you use in your questions, and customizing public Kahoots. For those of you who have not yet tried Kahoot!, your kids will love this kind of quiz. It has been very popular in child care for the K and up crowd as well.
I've spoken before about Pokemon Go, the game you play with a mobile device. It is a good example of Augmented Reality. Simply put, by pointing your mobile device (smart phone, iPad, tablet) at a trigger, such as a Pokestop or a Gym, you are able to see additional information with which you can interact. Believe it or not, there are some wonderful educational applications for augmented reality, such as displaying student work, or providing extra instruction, using Aurasma. Catholic Central's Mary Ottenwess talks about them in her blog post. When she talks about "triggers" - those are the symbols users see when they look through their device, which tell them there is more information in that spot. The "auras" she mentions are the extra information that pop up when the user hovers over the triggers.
Use Tagul to Get Creative with Word Clouds
How to Create Kahoot! Games
How to Create Kahoot! Games, by Richard ByrneFor many of you this is review, although it does cover some nice points you may not know, such as properly citing photos you use in your questions, and customizing public Kahoots. For those of you who have not yet tried Kahoot!, your kids will love this kind of quiz. It has been very popular in child care for the K and up crowd as well.
Augmented Reality for The Classroom
Augmented Reality for Classroom, from Ed Tech Interchange by Mary OttenwessI've spoken before about Pokemon Go, the game you play with a mobile device. It is a good example of Augmented Reality. Simply put, by pointing your mobile device (smart phone, iPad, tablet) at a trigger, such as a Pokestop or a Gym, you are able to see additional information with which you can interact. Believe it or not, there are some wonderful educational applications for augmented reality, such as displaying student work, or providing extra instruction, using Aurasma. Catholic Central's Mary Ottenwess talks about them in her blog post. When she talks about "triggers" - those are the symbols users see when they look through their device, which tell them there is more information in that spot. The "auras" she mentions are the extra information that pop up when the user hovers over the triggers.
