Weekly Tech Tips and News for March 24, 2017

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Hang in there, my friends, only one more week until Spring Break. Many of you are counting down the days, hours, minutes...until you have a week-long break. Whether you are going to a warmer climate, enjoying a staycation, or are part of the year-round crew who are working through break, hopefully you can find ways to relax and recharge your batteries. Of course, your students are looking forward to their break as well and will probably be bouncing off the walls the closer we get to next Friday. In today's post there's a tool to help with noise levels in your classroom as the students' excitement grows, as well as a way for you to make a preemptive April Fools strike, since April 1 is on a Saturday. There are also more tips for a variety of tech tools that I hope you find useful on a day to day basis.

• Have Some Fun With Your Students This April Fool's Day
• 32 Genius Google Tips and Tricks That Most People Don't Know About
• How to Add Music to Google Slides
• How to Differentiate Questions with Google Forms
• How to Use Zero Noise Classroom
• Real News, Fake News or Opinion? Teaching Our Students to Discern the Difference
• 5 Ways to Show YouTube Videos Without Related Content

Have Some Fun With Your Students This April Fool's Day

Have Some Fun With Your Students This April Fool's Day, from Chrome Unboxed

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Ah, sweet revenge. We all know how much students LOVE to play April Fool's Day jokes on their teachers. Well, now teachers can play too! There are several Chromebook related pranks you can pull on the students. Since April 1st falls on a Saturday, you can really surprise your students by pranking them on March 31st. If you'd like to play, please let me know, I can make it happen for you. 

32 Genius Google Tips and Tricks That Most People Don't Know About

32 Genius Google Tips and Tricks That Most People Don't Know About, from Distractify by Mark Pygas

Some of these Google search tips are new and some are a review from several of our training sessions. It never hurts to have a refresher, but there are some interesting tips I hadn't heard of before, such as ways of filtering recipes, searching 100 years of digitized newspapers, song searches, and more. It's always a good idea to hone our search skills.

How to Add Music to Google Slides

How to Add Music to Google Slides, From Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
Unfortunately, Google has not yet added this much requested feature, but there is a work around. 

How to Differentiate Questions with Google Forms

How to Differentiate Questions with Google Forms, from Shake Up Learning by Kasey Bell
You can "branch" your questions in Forms, meaning you can send the user to a different form sections based upon their answer to a question. It's easy to do, you just need to map it out to stay organized. We use several of these types of forms to gather information from our ASA parents, such as the Family Information Change form, and the Faith Formation Updates form. (I definitely created a flow chart when building the Family Info Change form!) Both forms take parents to different sections based on the type of information being updated. In this blog post. Kasey Bell demonstrates how she uses form branching with a review quiz, and also suggests other variations. It sounds more complicated than it really is. If you'd like help or a demo, please let me know.

How to Use Zero Noise Classroom

How to Use Zero Noise Classroom, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
Zero Noise Classroom is a Chrome app that lets you display a timer and a noise meter at the same time. What a great way for your students to visualize the class noise level.

Real News, Fake News or Opinion? Teaching Our Students to Discern the Difference

Real News, Fake News or Opinion? Teaching Our Students to Discern the Difference, from KQED Learning by Alice Chen
It is becoming increasingly difficult for students to tell factual news from opinion or sensationalism. This is a terrific resource with practical application in the classroom, lesson plans and more, to help your students learn how to tell the difference.

5 Ways to Show YouTube Videos Without Related Content

5 Ways to Show YouTube Videos Without Related Content, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
There are several approaches here:  embed the video in Google Slides, use a web tool, or a Chrome extension. Pick your favorite to make showing videos less distracting for your students.