Weekly Tech Tips and News for December 2, 2016

On the heels of Thanksgiving, we begin our wait for Christmas. I hope you find time for some reflection and peace during this busy holiday season. Here are some time saving tips, ideas to use in your classroom, as well as some resources or ideas to use either for yourself, or with your students. Especially important is the Creative Commons post, that explains how to legally use images and videos in our own work, with out any copyright violations. This is not only something we all need to be aware of, but we need to teach our students that it is illegal to use for free any photo or video from the internet unless it is licensed for free reuse. In some cases, it's as simple as giving the creator/owner of the image credit, in other cases they expect payment to use the image. As always, if you need help with any new tech ideas, please let me know, I'll be happy to help!

• Tic-Tac-Toe, Solitaire & Animal Sounds: All Now in Google Search
• 9 Ways to be a Good Digital Citizen
• Creative Commons Explained in Simple Terms
• How to Quickly Copy Formatting in Google Docs
• How to Hide Private Info in a Shared Google Doc
• Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets
• Create Narrated Map Tours on a Chromebook
• 18 YouTube Channels for Elementary Math
• Sir Richard Attenborough's Story of Life App

Tic-Tac-Toe, Solitaire & Animal Sounds: All Now in Google Search

Tic-Tac-Toe, Solitaire & Animal Sounds: All Now in Google Search, from Better Cloud Monitor
Need a break? Here are some entertaining diversions that you can quickly access from a Google search.

9 Ways to be a Good Digital Citizen

9 Ways to be a Good Digital Citizen, from GoGuardian Blog, by Cammie Allen
Here are some great talking points to use when reminding students about digital citizenship. This is something we need to remind them of so often it should become a mantra. Most of us are lucky in that our awkward stages and youthful transgressions were not recorded for posterity. This generation has so many advantages, but that can be a double edged sword when every interest and phase of their lives is on display for the world to see. We need to teach and remind them from a young age to protect their current and future selves online.

Creative Commons Explained in Simple Terms

Creative Commons Explained in Simple Terms, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne

Did you know it's illegal to copy and paste any image from the internet into your newsletter or presentations? It's an infringement of copyright laws. This is an important distinction we need to be teaching our students as well. The photos I use in this blog are all either my own, or labeled for reuse in a Google search. (Search Images, click Search Tools, select Usage Rights, then Labeled for Reuse, or Labeled for Noncommercial Reuse.) Please take a moment to familiarize yourself and your students with this law.

How to Quickly Copy Formatting in Google Docs

How to Quickly Copy Formatting in Google Docs, from Better Cloud Monitor

The Paint Format icon is a terrific time saver when formatting a document.

How to Hide Private Info in a Shared Google Doc

How to Hide Private Info in a Shared Google Doc from Better Cloud Monitor

DocSecrets is a handy add-on for Google Docs when you need to share a document, yet still keep some of the information hidden.

Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets

Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets from Control Alt Achieve by Eric Curts
Students love emojis, and because they are pictures, even the youngest students can use this prompt. The best part is, you don't have to create the spreadsheet prompt, it already exists for you to copy and use.

Create Narrated Map Tours on a Chromebook

Create Narrated Map Tours on a Chromebook, from Free Tech For Teachers by Richard Byrne
There are 13 short videos included here that result in a very in-depth tutorial for MyMaps and Tour Builder, as well as other mapping resources. Learn how to add places to your map, adding layers to compare information, uploading photos or video to attach to your places, customizing place labels, sharing the map so it can either be viewed or edited for collaborating, importing data from a spreadsheet, as well as the drawing and measurement tools.In video 5, Tour Builder is also covered, where you can created a guided tour of your map.You can either choose to have students use a screencasting app, such as Screencastify, Nimbus Screenshot or Capture Cast (I'll need to push the app of your choice out to students, so let me know if you want this option), or they can simply record a video of themselves talking about each place, and upload it to the place marker.

18 YouTube Channels for Elementary Math

18 YouTube Channels for Elementary Math, from Control Alt Achieve by Eric Curts
Looking for resources to enhance your math instruction? Here is a list, with descriptions, of YouTube channels to which you can subscribe for more ideas and instruction. If you include links to them on Infinite Campus or your web page, you can also make them available to parents who may be trying to help with homework.

Sir Richard Attenborough's Story of Life App

In honor of Sir Richard Attenborough's 90th birthday, BBC Earth has released over 1,000 of the best wildlife moments filmed by BBC documentary crews. This app is available in both the App Store for iOS and the Play Store for Android, and it's free! All the videos have been narrated by Attenborough himself. You can not only view the videos in various collections. but you can create your own collection and share them as well. You can search by species, behavior or habitat. These videos are not only wonderful educational resources, but just plain amazing to watch. I can't wait until I get home to stream them - I sure hope our increased bandwidth arrives at ASA soon so all of you can stream them in class!