CometTe.ch

  Google Docs has recently launched a new feature that is perfect for a world in which our students are not printing! The Pageless Feature allows for larger photos, graphs, and tables without worrying about page constraints, as well as being able to move seamlessly through a document.  Applicable features in the classroom would be looking at large sets of data, large images, and formatting in tables without worrying about page breaks and how things might get messed up. In order to add it to your Google Document, you can use the GIF below to navigate to the Page Setup Menu and then select pageless. 

In our last post, we introduced the idea of adding a - between the t and the u in YouTube.  This got me to thinking about a few other cool URL tricks that I thought I would share.  If you or your students need to quickly create a new document, presentation, or spreadsheet, you can use this trick. Simply type in docs.new, slides.new, or sheets.new into your browsers URL bar, and you will be taken blank document ready for you to create! Try it out!  This can be useful when a thought comes to mind, or your class takes a turn for something amazing. I know that while I was in the classroom, we would take a turn for something and then have to get something to take some notes. 

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

Google Docs recently just added the ability to add a watermark, or an image behind the text of the document, to their already widely popular online word processor. A watermark can be useful for adding context to a series of documents, marking the specific order students are to work in, helping with branding, or, my personal favorite, creating “highly classified” documents for a social studies class simulation.  Check out how to do this in the video below!