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The Chromebooks that our students use just got a huge update in regards to speech to text accessibility! Now, a simple keyboard short (search + d) will enable dictation for the students! This is a huge game changer when it comes to our students that have a difficulty typing responses.  In order for this to work, you will have to enable accessibility features, specifically the voice to text option. Then, students will be able to have speech to text available in any input field! 

Google Docs has recently added the Smart Chips to allow for more functionality in a document, allowing you to tag other people, pull templates, and have a document in a more collaborative environment. Now, Google has added the ability to draft an email in Google Docs and easily transfer this to Gmail for sending.  This update is extremely useful if you have an important email to send and you don't want to accidentally send it prior to it being done, you have an email to send as a team and you want everyone to have the ability to craft and have their say, or you have a list of running items that need to be included in the email over the course of time. Once you are ready to send it, click the Blue Gmail Logo and it will open in your Gmail. Once it is open, you only have to click send! No more accidentally sent too early emails! 

One of the things that always had me worried in the classroom is the suggested videos that would pop up after sending a student to YouTube to watch a specific click. Having fallen victim to the YouTube never-ending rabbit hole, I know that you can watch one video and it feeds you another video and so on, and each one tends to go further into the topic or to an opposite extreme. In fact, there is even reporting about this exact effect .  If this is something that you have worried about with your students, I want to share with you a trick that I recently learned about in a book study of the book Building Blocks for Tiny Techies . An amazing educator from the middle part of the state shared this awesome trick: by altering the URL prior to sharing, you have more control over what the students see.  Take a classic YouTube Video . When you follow this link, you are taken to the YouTube that most of us know. You have the video in the middle, a side bar with suggested videos, and maybe an area

As a former Project Based Learning teacher, I would routinely have students draft proposals, work on driving questions, and push the boundaries of what we were trying to accomplish in our project. Even without a project based learning approach, there is a lot that can be accomplished with the approval feature.  For instance, you could approve and review paragraph by paragraph as students work. You could approve hypothesis statements prior to starting a science experiment. You could approve a logo design for a project. You could approve student dress up days or positive behavior interventions and support awards. There are many things that can be done. In addition, it can be used for a help function as students work through complex activities.  Below is a short video of how the process works. I asked myself to approve something, which adds a little extra, but you can see some of the options and features on how this new tool works!  If you have additional questions about this feature, be

Over the summer, our district had the opportunity to participate in a book study of Dr. Phillip Schlechty’s book, Engaging Students: The Next Level of Working on the Work. While the work was originally published in 2011, many of the ideas and thoughts in the work continue to drive what we should try in education. The fascinating thing about this authors work is that the qualities in engaging work have nothing to do with driving technology or a specific tool, instead, it is about what we offer to our students on a regular basis and how we can change it up.  While I would love if you were to read the book, I have provided the slides from our second session this summer that talk about the design qualities of engaging work. Feel free to check it out below. If you have any questions, please let me know! 

Putting together an engaging and visually appealing slideshow can be a daunting task. While Google (and PowerPoint before it) provided users with templates to help the process, times have changed and the templates have not kept up! Enter some amazing resources to gather up some excellent templates. One great way to help me while I was in the classroom is to use a different template for each unit, so that if my naming structure was clear, I could visually see what was what.  Slides Carnival Slides Carnival was one of the first on the scene. They offer hundreds of slide show templates, including holiday templates, for free with no restrictions or account sign up necessary. (To provide credit to the creators, you have to leave the last slide providing credit to the creator(s) in your slideshow to abide by the license rules). You simply make a copy of the slideshow presented on the website and you are free to design to your hearts content. They offer plenty of options depending on what yo

The Chromebooks offer a variety of supports for our students, including the ability to type with our mouths and to have the Chromebook read to them! These features are both built into the student Chromebooks, and in the document linked below, you can learn about how to support your students with these tools.

 In a quick move at the onset of the pandemic, the Coloma Technology Department unveiled this quick guide to help prep for online learning and content delivery. Check it out below.