Thursday, February 23, 2023

Tech Tips and News for February 24, 2023

Learn more about #DLDay at All4Ed
March 15, 2023 is Digital Learning Day (#DLDay)! This is the 12th annual event sponsored by All4Ed to highlight how educators across the country are utilizing digital learning tools to create authentic connections and personalized learning opportunities for every student, everywhere. The All4Ed website includes digital learning tools, as well as a webinar on March 15th featuring their favorite digital learning tools. Take the opportunity to explore some new tools with your students. Not a teacher? You can still celebrate by learning a new digital skill. 

Using Your Real Email to Sign In? Your Privacy is at Risk

Using Your Real Email to Sign In? Your Privacy is at Risk, from How-To Geek by Jason Fitzpatrick
It's such a convenient practice to sign in with Gmail to a site, or use your primary email as your user name. Unfortunately, as with most conveniences there is a huge privacy trade off. Solution? Alias emails.

>Search Tabs, Bookmarks & History from the Address Bar

This is a great time saver. I don't know about you, but I'm a bit of a bookmark hoarder. Every once in awhile I get organized and create bookmark folders to make them easier to find. Between those organization whirlwinds, it can be a bit of a free for all finding them again. This tip definitely helps!

>Celebrate Digital Learning Day 2023 with Applied Digital Skills

Digital Learning Day is March 15th. Encourage students to try new digital tools with a ready-made lesson from Google's Applied Digital Skills. You could try them yourself to learn a new Google tool. There are 15 lessons in the collection, which you will find here. Beyond Digital Learning Day, Applied Digital Skills is a useful repository of lessons using Google Workspace for Education tools. 

Celebrate Digital Learning Day 2023 With This Collection of 14 New and Exciting Digital Learning Experiences and Choice Boards!

I love that she refers to the activities as stations for the digital playground. There's lots to choose from here, including choice boards, digital art, building coding, digital citizenship, comic creating, storytelling, reading & research, music, robotics and more. Keep in mind, if you've never used one of these digital resources before, test it on a student chromebook to make sure it works with the GoGuardian filter. 

Teach Students Internet Search




REMC Digital Toolkit Offers a Collection of Curated Resources to Help Educators

If you are looking for additional digital citizenship resources to use with your students, REMC has created several toolkits for educators to use. Learn all about these toolkits in the REMC newsletter.

Book Creator Pen Tools - Let Your Inner Illustrator Come Alive

Looking to share photos of your class that you've taken throughout the year? Do your students want to create a class book of poetry or short stories they've written? This post contains a video tutorial for using Book Creator. Teachers can set up a free Teacher account and share the class with students using a code. The free account allows one library with up to 40 books. 

Lumen5 - Quickly Turn Your Writing Into Videos

Lumen5 - Quickly Turn Your Writing Into Videos, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
This is a handy tool for creating polished, professional videos, but the terms of service indicate users must be at least 16 years of age, so it is not an appropriate tool for our students. 

Free Shapegrams from Tony Vincent

Free Shapegrams from Tony Vincent, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
This is actually a great tool to use for anyone who is unfamiliar with the drawing tools in Google Slides and Google Drawings. There are several free how-to Shapegram lessons, and timed "zipper" challenges. If you plan to use it with students, you can create a teacher account and share links to specific lessons with your students - students should not create their own accounts. The free version gives you access to 4 shapegrams, several Zippers, a license to share with students - all without creating an account. If you really like Shapegrams, you can purchase a $35 annual membership, which gives you full access to all 60+ lessons, tutorials, all zippers, and the ability to download all the Shapegrams PDFs. 
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Thursday, February 16, 2023

Tech Tips and News for February 17, 2023

Patch your iPhones, iPads and Macs!
The big IT news this week is the just discovered and patched Apple vulnerability on iPhones, iPads and Macs. If you own or use one, update it NOW. Gone are the days when Apple products were isolated from patches and hacks. Now that iPhones and iPads are so widely used, they've become as big a target as Microsoft, and can be just as susceptible to attacks. Speaking of patches, Open AI, the makers of ChatGPT say they have created a tool that will detect writing that has been generated by ChatGPT. A word of caution, none of these tools are completely accurate, so I'm not sure how useful they really are. Teachers will have to detrmine the usefulness of these tools. While it's blocked at school  for students due to the age limit in the usage policy, it doesn't mean students won't have access to it at home. 

Apple Issues Emergency Security Updates for All Platforms - Update Now

If you own an iPhone, iPad or a Mac, update it now to patch a new vulnerability. 

Show Your Students How Easily They Can be Catfished

Show Your Students How Easily They Can be Catfished, from the Bark Blog by Haley Zapal
People aren’t always who they say they are online. Show your students how easy it is for an online predator to create a fake social media account and pretend to be a child. We’ve even included discussion questions to help parents continue the conversation at home. 

PSA:  Your Wi-Fi Camera Might be Streaming to the Whole World

If your Wi-Fi cameras (home surveilance cameras, nanny cams, dash cams, etc.) are 10 years old or more, you should definitely take action. 

Is Your Phone Listening to You? 

Is Your Phone Listening to You?, from How-To Geet by Jordan Gloor
You might be surprised by the answer. 

EDU in 90:  Black History Month and Google Meet



What's New on IXL - January 2023

What's New on IXL - January 2023, from IXL Official Blog
New features include ELA video tutorials, IXL games now available on mobile devices (phones and tablets), printable student quiz report, games tracked in live classroom and much more. 

How to Customize Your Gmail Interface



The Makers of ChatGPT Have Launched a Tool to Detect Text Written with AI

The Makers of ChatGPT Have Launched a Tool to Detect Text Written with AI, from Free Technology for Teachers, by Richard Byrne
Several of these tools have been developed recently with spotty success. Even this one is not 100% accurate, so use with caution. 

Gamify your Lessons and Review Sessions with JeopardyLabs



Each winter the Michigan chapter of the Google Educators Group (GEG Michigan), hosts a 9-week GEG MI Tech Challenge. Each week a new challenge is issued. This week's challenge was to build a Jeopardy game using JeopardyLabs.com.  I created one for Online Safety (of course). Feel free to play it using this link and let me know how you did. It was very easy to do. Simply click on a square, then enter your clue and answer. There is also the option to add video and images. Users do not need to sign in to play. This FREE resource is very easy to use - no spreadsheets involved as with the Flippity template. If you don't wish to create your own game, you can use one of the many games that have already been created. As a teacher, you can either choose to create a free account, or use the Quick Build feature without one, you just simply create a password for the game in case you need to edit it in the future. Of course if you love this tool, you can always sign up for a lifetime membership for $20 to get full features. Did you play the game? How did you do? By the way it's easy to join GEG Michigan if you are interested. Just click the first link above to join. This is a useful group for asking advice, getting ideas and networking with other Google Educators. 

Focusable - Fitness Tracking for Your Mind

Focusable - Fitness Tracking for Your Mind, from Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne
This is a great tool for challenging yourself to remain focused and stop procrastinating. It also has guided activities to give you breaks when you need them. Caution regarding using this with students - there is no privacy policy. I asked Focusable what their policy is regarding children, and they replied that students should only use Focusable without logging in, meaning this seems to be more of a tool for adults. 
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Thursday, February 9, 2023

ASA Tech Tips and News for February 10, 2023

Would your Google Drive look like this
if it were paper on your desk?
Image generated by Dall-E 2
A message from the Diocese last week regarding a Drive storage error prompted me to remind everyone about the new storage limits in Google Workspace for Education.  Previously, Drive file storage has been unlimited, so we never gave cleaning out old files a thought. Those days have now come to an end. When you open Drive, you can now see how much storage you have used so far. Chances are, if you've been using Drive for many years, you could stand to remove old files you no longer need. I don't know about you, but after 10 years of using Google Drive, it looks like a hoarder's house in there! Before anyon starts an intervention, I've started the habit of deleting any files I happen to see during my routine use of Drive. You can also sort files by Last Modified, by clicking on that heading. If you click on it a second time your oldest files will be listed at the top. That makes it very easy to select the files in bulk and remove them.

Unpaid Invoices are One of the Easiest Ways Hackers Can Trick You - Here's What Happened to Me

Keep a cool head, and don't fall for this scam!

5 Tips to Stay Safer Online with Chrome

5 Tips to Stay Safer Online with Chrome, from The Keyword by Andrew Kamau
This will walk you through Chrome's Privacy Guide, Safety Check, password manager and more. 

Google Workspace Updates


Google Calendar:  Check Availability when Using Appointment Schedules


Previously when using Appointment Schedules (formerly known as Appointment Slots), it wasn't possible to to see calendar conflicts in other calendars. With this update it will now be possible. You should see this feature by mid February, if not sooner. If you're not sure how to set up appointment schedules or slots, check out this help page. You can find full details about this update here. 

Google Meet:  Share Content While Presenting



If you are sharing your screen and presenting a file, such as a doc or slide deck, you be able to easily share it with Meet attendees while you are presenting. A new share button will be available to share a link to the file in the chat. While sharing, it will also prompt you to share with any users in the Meet who don't yet have access to the file.  More info is available here. 


Google Meet:  Include Captions with a Google Meet Video Recording

If you are recording a Google Meet, you'll now have the option to include captions in the recording. This is beneficial if someone who will be watching the recording is hearing impaired. When you start the recording, there will soon be an option to select the language for captions as well. You should see this new option by March 1. Details are available here. 

No More Unlimited Space - Managing Your Google Workspace Storage Limits



Within the past year, Google has started enforcing storage limits for all Google Workspace users. Gone are the days of luxurious unlimited storage. This means we all need to be mindful of how much storage space we are using in Google Drive. Google Drive is where all your Docs, Sheets, Slides, PDFs, images, videos, etc. are stored when you upload them to Google. How can you tell how much space you are using? Open Google Drive and take a look at the storage section near the bottom of the left column. That is how much storage you are currently using. Are the old files you no longer need that could be deleted? Get rid of them! You can delete multiple files at once by highlighting (clicking once on) each file you wish to delete, then clicking the trash can icon at the top. You can also press the delete key on your laptop, or right click the hightlighted files and select Remove from the context menu that pops up. 

Set Expiration Dates for Google Docs

For those times when someone needs access to a sensitive file temporarily.

Hearts and Charts Google Sheets Math Activities

Hearts and Charts Google Sheets Math Activities, from Control Alt Achieve by Eric Curts
Valentines day conversation hearts and math are a delicious combination. 

PSA:  You Can Email Books and Documents to Your Kindle

PSA:  You Can Email Books and Documents to Your Kindle, from How-To Geek by Jason Fitzpatrick
There are also apps and programs to help you sideload reading files to your Kindle. 

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