Reeve EdTech Tips

Bonus Tech Treat! A 21st Century Christmas Carol! Sleigh Rides? Sugar Plums? Partridges? If you feel like your traditional Christmas Carols are still living in the 1800s, take a moment to enjoy this new Christmas song that reflects the best of modern communication! Kristen Bell  (of  Veronica Mars  and  Frozen  fame) and the a cappella group  Straight No Chaser  bring you " Text Me Merry Christmas"  for your 2015 holiday pleasure! It's catchy, has a classic stop-motion video, and will warm the WiFi of your heart! ​ Text Me Merry Christmas - YouTube Video BTW, it's perfectly safe to play in class, and students might get a kick out of it, too! Happy Holidays! 

Bonus Tip! Text Alerts for Snow Closings and Delays My school, here in the greater Boston area, does not call teachers or activate the emergency phone tree in case of snow cancellations. Instead, fire up your  AM radio  and listen to the announcer read through the cancellations list. Just kidding!  Instead of sitting next to the radio,  sign up for Text Alerts!  As soon as Dr. Jackson notifies the broadcast media, you will get a  text message on your cell phone  notifying you about the cancellation or delay. This is a free service offered by WBZ in Boston. Many of us signed up for this service in past years, but if you are new, or never signed up, or need to update/conform your settings, I've typed up step-by-step instructions on how to do it. ​>> School Closing Text Alert Instructions ​ Of course, if you don't have a cell phone, I always post the cancellation or delay on the HHS website, Facebook, and Twitter feeds, just as so...

For the last  day  of tech tips, I wanted to give you  some fun stuff  you can share with your students (or savor for yourselves in free minute or two). This year, Google  expanded its Santa Tracker program  into  series  of online games, learning activities, and cartoon animations. They call it Santa's Village: it started with five activities, and they added a new one every  day  in December. ​ Google Santa Village and Santa Tracker This is  great for students (and adults)  with a little time to kill waiting for the Winter Break. It is designed as a "fun for everyone" kind of event, suitable for all ages. Here is a list of  my favorite parts  of the Santa Village activities: Learn Code Lab  - kids  learn basic coding  my moving your elf around the map #1 Season of Giving  - online coloring book about environmental issues #3 Santa Selfie  - give Santa a haircut, beard t...

There's a lot of talk about web apps and the Googleverse lately, but I thought it might be nice to share a tip about the teachers' tried-and-true friend,  MS Word . Today's tech treat is about  Special Characters . Not the special characters sitting in the back row of your B Block class -- I mean  special invisible symbols  that MS Word uses for formatting and spacing. I field this question a lot: " Why is Word spacing or formatting strangely? " Without knowing exactly what the person was typing, it's sometimes hard to say.  For example , let's troubleshoot this page of text. What's with the weird spacing? My first step in troubleshooting is to  Show Special Characters . I do that by clicking the button that looks like a  "Paragraph mark" , like so: Word 2007/2010/2013 ​ Word 2003 ​ Now I see the  "invisible special characters"  that are telling Word how to format the page. Recognizing the sy...

12   Days  of Techmas,  Day  10: Winter Break Backup As part of a tech person's traditional "sales pitch" to get people to  backup their files , we usually describe horror stories of how you could lose all your stuff. Because this is the festive holiday season, I'm going to  skip the doom and gloom , and assume  you know all the reasons  to back up your files.  OK? Are we agreed? You know why it's important to backup your files? OK, let's move on to the "how." As a Google for Education district, each teacher gets  unlimited storage space  in the  Google Drive for storing files. It's not really designed to serve only as a backup, but why not use it if you got it? Winter break is a great time to do a backup. Copying all of your files takes a long time (hours or  days ) and temporarily slows your computer, so it's most practical to do it when you don't need to use the computer for a  day  or two, ...

In Gmail, you can  organize your inbox so that your most important stuff is near the top. There are a few different ways to set up it, but I'll show how I set up my Inbox and let you experiment from there. ​My Inbox shows email in this order of priority: 1. Starred Emails, both read and unread 2. Important and Unread 3. Everything else "Importance" is determined automatically by Google, and it does a really good job. Stars are marked by me. If I read a message that I know I need to come back to I click the Star icon on the message (as shown in the two images below). By starring emails, I know I won't lose forget about important messages as new email comes in.  ​  To set this up for your Inbox, click the Settings Gear and choose "Settings." Then, click the Inbox tab, and adjust the settings until 1-4 look like mine. ​ As you set yours up, you will notice that there are other options that you may pref...

12   Days  of Hanutech,  Day  8: Chromebooks FAQ Since Chromebooks became a major topic of conversation at my school, there have been lots of questions about how Chromebooks work. As today's tech treat, I'm sharing a little FAQ sheet that compares how laptops and Chromebooks work. Here are a few examples: Can students work without an internet connection? Laptops: yes, they can create, edit, and save files on the hard drive Chromebooks: yes, they can create, edit, and save files in “offline mode,” which will sync next time they are online How long does the battery last? Laptops: 2-3 hours Chromebooks: 8- 12 hours You can check out the rest of the questions and answers in the doc below! ​ Chromebooks FAQ ​ Have suggestions for other questions? Comment below!

Kahoot  is the cool new review app that is  raging through classrooms  across the country. It combines quick review question quizzing with the  best elements of gaming. ​ The idea is that you make  short multiple choice questions  based on quick recall -- vocabulary review is a great example. On  your computer and projector , you display the question, and students can respond on  their laptops or smartphones . There is music and a timer, and the students get points based on how quickly they answer. What's difficult to express in a post like this is  how fun it is for students  to play. The Kahoot makers have really added some of the  secret sauce that makes video gaming fun , and it has a  wide appeal  for grades 3- 12 . Don't let the bright colors fool you --  high school age kids  really enjoy reviewing with Kahoot (my 9th grade daughter and her friends say that Kahoot reviews are the best part of...

Audio and video formats   are a pain in the neck. It happens too often that we find a great audio or video clip, but then when we try to do something with it (upload to Moodle, email, play on a computer, download, or whatever), the audio or video format is wrong and it doesn't work. There are downloadable programs for converting files, but they are usually complicated and hard to use. That's why I really like  http://convert-video- online.com/  It is  super simple . You  upload  an audio or file (or import it from your Google Drive),  choose  the format, and click  Convert . It spends a few minutes processing, and then downloads the converted file to your computer.  Nice and easy. ​ It's not super fast, since it has to upload the file, process it, and then download the conversion; however, it's  free , it's very  reliable  (in that the conversions nearly always work), and it's  easy . Also, it's in the C...

12 Days of Techmas, Day 5: Generic Entrance/Exit Tickets Pt. 2 Today's tech treat is a continuation of "12 Days, Day 4." It's more like a tutorial than other days, but it makes those entrance/exit tickets really easy to analyze.  Tomorrow's "12 Days" tip will be much shorter, I promise! After your students submitted their Entrance/Exit tickets, you would like to  know how well the class did . As an  example , let's say students from two different classes submitted exit tickets on two different days.   ​ A copy of the spreadsheet I'm using for my examples can be found  here . If you want to follow along with this tutorial, open the link and then choose "File > Make a copy..." ​ There is a cool little feature in Google Sheets called the  "Filter" tool . You turn it on (or off) by clicking the  little funnel-shaped button  on the far right. This changes the top row of your spreadsheet, to g...

12 Days of Techmas, Day 4: Generic Entrance/Exit Tickets Part 1 Entrance and Exit Tickets  have grown significantly in popularity because of their  wide range of utility . They are great for  formatively assessing student learning, they are a good  classroom routine  for the first or last 5 minutes of class when the teacher is otherwise busy, and they are easy to set up. Google Forms is a digital tool that works great for entrance/exit tickets. Used  incorrectly , they are fussy and time consuming. Teachers feel like they spent more time creating and checking the tickets than they would have if they had just used paper. But what if you only had to  set up the digital ticket once , and used the same one all term long? Generic Entrance/Exit Tickets to the rescue! [Lazy teacher's tip : click  here  and make your own copy of the form without having to follow the steps below. The form and results spreadsheet will both copy into...

12 Days of Hanutech, Day 3: Semi-public Speaking Today's Tech Treat is a  lesson idea  for a way to add some variety to homework: have students  record a speech . The ability to  write and deliver a well-constructed, well-considered speech  is an important part of 21st Century learning (actually, it was an important part of all of the other centuries as well!). Delivering a speech  forces the speechwriter to reflect  on their word choice, organization, and language construction in ways that are similar to but  critically different  from writing text.  Unfortunately, the traditional "oral report" is a huge time-killer in class, and speaking in front of peers can be stressful for many students. What's great about our technology tools is that students can  easily record themselves  with laptops and smartphones, and upload and share these videos with you digitally. This means students can  deliver their spe...

Thanks to the add-on system in   Google Docs , students (and teachers) can create mathematical formulas to insert into their math and science documents. It's using a Google add-on called   gMath , and it lets students click to build complex formulas, equations, and mathematical graphs.  When you install and turn on the add-on, a sidebar pops up giving students  clickable buttons , much like the old  formula editor  in MS Word. After you create the formula, just click "Insert" and it pops the formula right into the Google Doc. Another option is to create  graphs  of mathematical formulas. The Builder Sidebar Some examples I created using gMath: ​ [ For math nerds:  it actually teaches as well as helps. The click-button system is really a  Latex expression builder , and students will learn the basics of Latex while making and editing equations.] OK, so I wouldn't recommend this for nightly math homework, but if ...

Children and adults all over the country love this time of the year, because it's time for Mr. Reeve's 12 Days of Techmas!  :)   Throughout December, I'll be posting little tech tips and hints to make your season bright! Day 1:   "Insert Comment" Google Docs Keyboard Shortcut Many frequently used functions in Google Docs have  keyboard shortcuts . They allow you to quickly edit/comment/format a document with a few handy keystrokes, cutting down on the (relatively) slower process of moving and clicking the mouse. As an example, my favorite keyboard shortcut within a Google Doc is the  "Insert Comment"  shortcut . As you read through student work, simply click where you want the comment to go, hit  Ctrl+Alt+M    ( ⌘+Option+M  on a Mac)  on your keyboard and start typing! The "mouse way" to do this requires 3 clicks, which adds up to a lot of time when done for 5 comments each in 50 student writing samples. ...