Weekly Tech Tips and Tricks for April 28, 2017

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Well it was lovely having spring here for a week or so, now it seems we've zipped straight to fall. Definitely Pure Michigan! Cooler weather takes some of the temptation away so we can get our spring cleaning done. While we're cleaning our windows and yards, and organizing our closets, we can also do some digital spring cleaning. Tips are included here to make your critical Google Drive folders stand out, connect your work and personal calendars, and help you control what you see in your Facebook feed. Other useful tips include teaching your students critical fact-checking skills and creating literature tours in Google Earth to coincide with novels they are reading. There are several other tips packed into this week's post. Take a look!

• Help Your Students Fact-Check the Web Like Professionals
• Connect Your Personal and Work Calendars in Google Calendar
• Reorganize Google Drive with Emojis
• How to Annotate Images on a Chromebook
• Lit Trips on Chromebooks with the New Google Earth
• How to Create your Own Placemarks in the New Google Earth
• Stop Motion Animation with Google Slides
• How to Distribute Digital Stickers Through Flubaroo
• How to Control What Appears in Your Facebook Feed

Help Your Students Fact-Check the Web Like Professionals

Connect Your Personal and Work Calendars in Google Calendar

Connect Your Personal and Work Calendars in Google Calendar, from Better Cloud Monitor
It's best to keep your personal and professional appointments in separate calendars, but you can easily link them so they appear together for you, but separately to co-workers.

Reorganize Google Drive with Emojis

Looking for a way to make some of your Drive folders easier to find? Add an emoji to the folder name, and it will automatically appear at the top of the list. There is a handy Chrome extension called Emoji for Google Chrome, available in the Chrome Web Store.  Once you've installed this extension, simply click on the extension icon (yellow face) to search for and copy or insert emoticons. You can actually insert the emoticons pretty much anywhere, not just in Drive. As illustrated in the .gif above, to rename your Drive folders, right click on the folder and select Rename. Click at the beginning of the name - this is where the emoji will appear. Click on the emoji extension icon and search for the emoji you'd like to use. Click on the emoji and it appears in the name of the folder (or wherever your mouse cursor is). Click OK, and your folder now appears at the top of your list of folders in Drive, with the emoji in the name. You can also use these emojis as digital stickers for student feedback, in the subject line or body of your emails, in your docs, or anywhere you can copy/paste.

How to Annotate Images on a Chromebook

How to Annotate Images on a Chromebook, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne

Here is another useful tip for Google Keep - a pretty simple way to mark up images and photos.

Lit Trips on Chromebooks With the New Google Earth

Lit Trips on Chromebooks With the New Google Earth, from Control Alt Achieve by Eric Curts
See how to plot locations from a novel on Google Earth to create a 3D geographic tour of the story. This post also contains a tutorial video explaining the entire process. Google Lit Trips already exist for many student literature books. You can search by grade level or alphabetically. You'll download the file and share it with your students, push it out through Classroom, or even just import it into Google Earth yourself and show it to your students.

How to Create your Own Placemarks in the New Google Earth

How to Create your Own Placemarks in the New Google Earth, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
While you can bookmark locations in the new web version of Google Earth, you cannot create your own placemarks (yet), like you could on the desktop version. Say you want to create placemarks for all the battle sites of the Civil War, or volcanoes of the world for your students to see. Richard Byrne has suggested a work around for this using Google Maps and easily importing that map file into Google Earth.

Stop Motion Animation with Google Slides

Stop Motion Animation with Google Slides, from Control Alt Achieve by Eric Curts
Google Slides are not just for traditional presentations, they can be used for animation as well. This is a creative alternative for your students to demonstrate their knowledge of a particular topic.

How to Distribute Digital Stickers Through Flubaroo

How to Distribute Digital Stickers Through Flubaroo, From Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne

Although Google Forms now natively allows you to do basic grading, the Flubaroo add-on allows for more advanced grading, like multiple correct answers, partial credit answers, and more. Last December, Flubaroo also added the ability to give student feedback via stickers and badges as well. This Google Forms add-on can make your grading life much easier.

How to Control What Appears in Your Facebook Feed

How to Control What Appears in Your Facebook Feed, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
Although Facebook isn't technically an ed tech tool, it is used by many as a personal learning network (PLN). You can take control over what appears in your feed, and weed out the posts you are less interested in.