Tech Notes

I have just discovered an awesome tool for those of us that are iphone/ipad users and had to share with you all. There is an app called Wifi Photo Transfer You install the app on your device. You must be connected to wifi. Open device and enter the web address that appears into your browser and instantly your entire photo stream/camera roll is now in your browser for you to download any pics you need. This is great for so many reasons, but it really simplifies getting pics off those ipads you are using in your classrooms without having to install drive and login to your accounts to upload. As always, please let me know if I can help:) Have a great Wednesday!!

NEWSELA is an awesome tool I shared with you last year. Remember, ​students can access news articles digitally and access them at individually appropriate reading levels. The articles are available with the same content on various lexile levels. There are questions associated with most articles or you can use them however you see fit in your classroom. So now for the new stuff.....NEWSELA has recently announced a new feature called "Write." Now, each article has a prompt associated with it that students can respond to. Check out the link below. This is a really awesome product. If you haven't spent at least 10 minutes investigating you should!!! http://support.newsela.com/hc/en-us/articles/203161979-Quick-Start-Guide-for-Write-Teacher-

This morning as I was creating a new Google Form, I noticed a few new options that I have never seen before. You now have the option to shuffle question order and collect only one response from each user as an overall option on the whole form rather than on individual questions in the past. This will help greatly for those who use forms for student assessment. Check out this update from Google:  https://support.google.com/docs/answer/160166?hl=en

Check out this awesome new game by Google, using Google Maps.   http://smartypins.withgoogle.com/ Players are presented with trivia questions that they have to answer by placing a pin on a map. Players earn and lose miles for correct and incorrect answers. Questions are from five different categories including: arts & culture, science & geography, sports & games, entertainment, and history & current events.  Beware this game is so much fun and very addictive. 

Do you ever have emails that you need to follow up on later? Would you like the ability to schedule emails to send at another time? Boomerang for Gmail is an add on service that operates seamlessly within your existing gmail and works like your personal assistant. Watch this quick video for an overview. If you need help getting set up let me know:) This link will take you directly to the Chrome Web Store where you can add Boomerang. http://goo.gl/UI8XW

I found an awesome resource that I want to share with each of you. I have heard about www.newsela.com in the past but never took the time to truly check it out until today. What is newsela.com? A FREE website that delivers daily news items for your students to study current events. It is an excellent tool for improving reading comprehension and practicing non fiction reading. All articles are available in five different lexile levels (3rd grade and up) to allow all of your students the opportunity to read the same content regardless of their reading ability. Most articles are also accompanied with a quiz to test the reader's understanding of the content. When you register with this site you can create classes so that you can "push" content to your students. If you don't want to (or don't have the means) to use this resource digitally you can also print the articles for your students. This is an awesome resource to develop critical thinking skills as well as ...

I had a teacher ask me about blocking the short ads that appear at the beginning of a youtube video. They are sometimes inappropriate or use some language that we don't want to hear our students repeating. Well, I found a chrome extension that will block the ads on youtube and other ads throughout the internet. I tried it and it seems to be working great. So I wanted to share with all of you. You will need to add the "Ad Block" extension to chrome. Here is how you do that. Go to the chrome webstore .  In the search box near the top, search for Ad Block. Your results will look like this. Make sure you select the Extension for Ad Block and click the add button  (it says +FREE) You will see a pop up window asking you to confirm adding the extension, click ad.  It will take a few seconds, then you will see confirmation that AdBlock has been added. Now in the top right hand side of your chrome browser you will see a small icon for Ad Block. This confir...