Weekly Tech Tips and News for November 3, 2017

The school year is moving right along, with conferences, Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day in the rear view mirror. What a busy few weeks it's been! The next few weeks should hold fewer interruptions from instructional time. While you are settling back into a normal routine, here are several tech tips to help you out. Take a few minutes to learn about what NOT to do with email and how to keep up with your email, or save lots of time by learning a few keyboard shortcuts. There are also teacher-specific add-ons for Google apps, providing the bells and whistles that are missing from the core apps. Take a look at the topics below to see what else might be useful to you.

• Gmail Survival Guide for Busy Teachers
• 6 Ways to Write Bad Emails
• 22 Killer Keyboard Shortcuts
• 25 G Suite Add-ons for Teachers
• Self-Editing Tools for Student Writing in Google Docs
• Teaching Kids to Edit Images in Google Docs & Slides
• How to Prevent Plagiarism in Online Learning:  Unicheck and Google Classroom
• Games to Sharpen Geography Skills

Gmail Survival Guide for Busy Teachers

Gmail Survival Guide for Busy Teachers, from Ditch that Textbook by Matt Miller
Don't be a slave to your email - make it work for you and save yourself some time in the process.

6 Ways to Write Bad Emails

6 Ways to Write Bad Emails, from Control Alt Achieve by Eric Curts

Keep in mind this tongue in cheek post is a great list of what NOT to do when dealing with email.

22 Killer Keyboard Shortcuts

22 Killer Keyboard Shortcuts, from Ditch that Textbook by Matt Miller

Keyboard shortcuts will save you lots of time. Try these one at a time, and pretty soon you'll be shortcut savvy! There's even a cheat sheet to tape on the bottom of you monitor.

25 G Suite Add-ons for Teachers

25 G Suite Add-ons for Teachers, from Practical Ed Tech by Richard Byrne
Add-ons for G Suite apps provide the bells and whistles that may be missing from the core app. Features such as searching a huge image library, a bibliography creator, inserting graphs and mathematical equations, automatic grading, and more, are available through Add-ons. Here is the complete list in a Google Doc.

Teaching Kids to Edit Images in Google Docs & Slides

Teaching Kids to Edit Images in Google Docs & Slides, from Teaching Little Techies by Robin Limpert
This post will help you show your littlest Google users how to resize their images and flip them.

Self-Editing Tools for Student Writing in Google Docs

Self-Editing Tools for Student Writing in Google Docs, from Control Alt Achieve by Eric Curts
There are four tools here that students can use to take ownership of the editing process in their writing work.

How to Prevent Plagiarism in Online Learning:  Unicheck and Google Classroom

How to Prevent Plagiarism in Online Learning:  Unicheck and Google Classroom, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
Plagiarism has always existed, and now it's much easier for students to access those resources. Google Classroom now integrates with Unicheck to allow teachers to easily check for plagiarism in student work.

Games to Sharpen Geography Skills

Games to Sharpen Geography Skills, from Free Tech for Teachers by Richard Byrne
I've highlighted Smarty Pins and Geoguessr before, but did you know you can create your own Geoguessr, custmizing it to 5 of the locations of your choice with Geosettr? There are also other games for kids, including kids of all ages included in this post.