Weekly Tech Tips and News for February 3, 2016

ASA Celebrates CSW - A. Mitchell 2017

Our week-long celebration of Catholic Schools is coming to a close. It's been a fun week full of prayer, celebrating Mass together, dress up days, games and special activities. I'm guessing many of your normal classroom activities have been absent as a result. We are so blessed to be able to live and share  our faith every day. Next week, when the routine gets back to normal, and you have time to look at this, here are some tips, tools and ideas for bringing tech into your classroom.

• NWEA Student Profile Report - Better Goal Setting
• G Suite Updates:  Creating Files From Templates Now Easier in Google Drive
• To Find Files in Google Drive, Search Like You Talk
• 10 Google Apps Tricks to Learn for 2017
• Analyze Easily With Explore in Sheets
• Try Connected Mind for Creating Mind Maps
• 10 Ways to Collaborate Digitally + Visually in Class
• 5 Ways to Spot Fake News

NWEA Student Profile Report - Better Goal Setting

The MAP test Student Profile Report has been improved so you can easily work on shared goals with your students. Here is a 9 minute webinar explaining how to navigate through the report and set goals with your students.

G Suite Updates:  Creating Files From Templates Now Easier in Google Drive

gsuiteupdates.google.blog.com

Have you ever wanted a shortcut for putting together a lesson plan, providing your students with a format to follow for a book report, make a calendar or a schedule, or for a certificate of achievement? That's where templates come in, and they are available for Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. You can follow a template that some else has created and formatted and just change the information to make it your own. It's quick and looks great! You can also contribute your own templates for others to use. G Suite is really just now catching up with templates. They've been available for quite awhile now, but have been rather cumbersome to access. With this upcoming update, scheduled to be released in the next three weeks, you will now be able to access templates directly from Drive. When you select a new document, sheet, slide or form, you will have the option to either start from a blank file or a template.

To Find Files in Google Drive, Search Like You Talk

To Find Files in Google Drive, Search Like You Talk, from Better Cloud Monitor
Instead of trying to remember the name of a file you need, you can now search for them in Drive, just like you would ask if talking, such as "find docs from June".

10 Google Apps Tricks to Learn for 2017

10 Google Apps Tricks to Learn for 2017 from Teacher Tech by Alice Keeler
Take them on one at a time, or select a few from the list to learn. The more tips and tricks you know, the more efficient you become in G Suite.

Analyze Easily With Explore in Sheets

This week's G Suite Show offering is a follow up to last week's video, which covered the explore tool in Docs and Slides. This week's topic is how Explore works in Sheets.

Try Connected Mind for Creating Mind Maps

Try Connected Mind for Creating Mind Maps, From Practical Ed Tech by Richard Byrne

Connected Mind is a Chrome, Android and iOS app that you and/or your students can use to create mind maps. (Remember, if you'd like your students to use this app, please let me know so I can push it out to them.)

10 Ways to Collaborate Digitally + Visually in Class

10 Ways to Collaborate Digitally + Visually in Class, from Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller
If you don't have a smartboard - no problem! With A Web Whiteboard (awwapp.com), from pretty much any device you can create your own interactive whiteboard space and either share it with your students' devices, or project it.

5 Ways to Spot Fake News

This short video from Common Sense Media is perfect to share with your students as they are doing research or looking for current events.