Weekly Tech Tips and News for December 21, 2017

2017 K.Szczytko 
William Peace University, Raleigh, NC

Here we are, the last day of school before Christmas break, and the final days before Christmas. The anticipation level keeps rising in the classrooms and hallways, culminating with the students bursting out of the school this afternoon, ready for their week and a half break. I'm sure the teachers will not be far behind. As you go forth, ready for family, fellowship and celebration, stay safe and find time for some relaxation, peace and rest. When the excitement of Christmas subsides, maybe you'll be ready to tackle some new tech tricks in the new year. Make sure you check out the Santa Tracker before Christmas, and the site for getting rid of all your junk snail mail. Peace and blessings to all of you!

• G Suite Updates:  Menu and Toolbar Changes in Docs and Slides
• Google's Santa Tracker is Back with More Holiday Goodies
• An "Ah-Ha!" Moment Using my Favorite Text to Speech for Emergent Readers in G Suite
• A Tip for Unorganized Google Drive Users
• Crash! Bang! Boom! How to add Google Drawings Comic Strips to Your Class
• Three Good Ways to Create Instructional Animations
• Say Goodbye to Paper Catalogs and Junk Mail

G Suite Updates:  Menu and Toolbar Changes in Docs and Slides

Changes have been made to the menus and toolbars in Docs and Slides to make them more consistent. According to the G Suite Updates blog, the following changes have been made:

• In Docs and Slides, “Lists” in the Format menu has been renamed “Bullets and numbering.”
• In Docs and Slides, “Show spelling suggestions” has been renamed “Spelling” and moved from the View menu to the Tools menu.
• In Docs, “Document outline” has been renamed “Show document outline” and moved from the Tools menu to the View menu.
• In Slides, “Import slides” has been removed from the Insert menu.

These changes are expected to appear shortly after the first of the new year.

Google's Santa Tracker is Back with More Holiday Goodies

Google's Santa Tracker is Back with More Holiday Goodies, from Chrome Unboxed by Gabriel Brangers
Think of the Santa Tracker as a digital Advent calendar, with a new interactive activity every day. On December 24th, it will track Santa's progress all night. Now there is also a Santa Tracker Chrome extension for your Chrome browser so you can defrost your screen and keep a count down going to Christmas. If you are out and about on Christmas eve, there's also a Santa Tracker app for Android.

An "Ah-Ha!" Moment Using my Favorite Text to Speech for Emergent Readers in G Suite

An "Ah-Ha!" Moment Using my Favorite Text to Speech for Emergent Readers in G Suite, from Teaching Little Techies by Robin Limpert

Continuing with her Text to Speech series, Ms. Limpert explains the usefulness of having words from websites read aloud. 

A Tip for Unorganized Google Drive Users

A Tip for Unorganized Google Drive Users, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne

If organizing your files in folders doesn't come naturally to you, check out these search tips for finding them again. 

Crash! Bang! Boom! How to add Google Drawings Comic Strips to Your Class

Crash! Bang! Boom! How to add Google Drawings Comic Strips to Your Class, from Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller
Comics always catch kids' eyes, and they can be instructional too. They love reading them, and they love making them, so why not use them in both ways? Step by step instructions are included in this post.

Three Good Ways to Create Instructional Animations

Three Good Ways to Create Instructional Animations, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne

Here are some free, simple tools when you need to quickly animate a concept - no artistic ability required.

Say Goodbye to Paper Catalogs and Junk Mail

I don't know about you, but I hate receiving paper catalogs - especially here at school. We receive multiple copies of the same catalog, none of which are ever read. The same goes for other unrequested junk mail. It's such a waste of money and natural resources, but trying to remove yourself from all these mailing lists is such a huge time commitment. Not anymore. I recently discovered the wonder of CatalogChoice.org. This is a free service, but you will need to create an account and sign in.  After your account is confirmed, start cancelling catalogs and other junk mail. It helps to have the mailer(s) in front of you so you have all the pertinent info ready. For each one you cancel, you will be directed to that company's opt out web page, and even provided with the text to copy/paste into the message. In the dashboard you can view your Opt-Out History and see how many natural resources CatalogChoice has saved.