CometTe.ch

The Coloma Instructional Tech Team is getting creative! In a fun way to share some tech that we are familiar with that may help in the classroom, the team will be competing for a traveling trophy based on the Appy Slappy - a championship fight-club style competition on the team - to share relevant, helpful and really cool technology tidbits in short, approachable videos.  Watch the entry's below. Ben shares how you can easily create helpful GIFs for your students. Dan shares a way to help keep kids on task with YouTube, and Tonya shares how to stop Microsoft Teams in it's tracks from opening when you start your computer!  Once you have watched the entries, follow the link at the bottom to cast your vote so that we can award the trophy. Be on the lookout for the next round when the defending champ will have to risk the trophy as the challengers try to get it.  Ben's Entry - Adobe Express to GIF Dan's Entry - The Yout-ube URL Hack Tonya's Entry - Stop Microsoft Teams

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