Accessibility options to closed captions in Google Slides. Move to top/bottom and change text size.

Google Slides' closed captions received a nice update. You now have the ability to move the text to the top or bottom of the screen as well as change the size of the text (Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large)

ATTN educators: we've added new accessibility options to closed captions in #GoogleSlides. You can now customize captions by moving them to the top or bottom of the screen, and change the text size. Learn more → https://t.co/s9xWp1WCV1 #a11y pic.twitter.com/i9yWKdZ5Bi

— B👻👻GLE for Education (@GoogleForEdu) October 14, 2019

Embedded below is a second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,
Brad

On a Windows device and want to change the file type of an image? Try to edit image with Paint.

The past few days a number of people have asked about how to edit an image's file type. While there are a number of ways to make this happen, a simple solution (if on a Windows device) is to do the following:

• open image
• select he three dots in upper right 
• open with Paint
• select File > Save as > choose file type

Embedded below is a 53 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

The simplest way to add Q&A and polls to your Google Slides presentation. Try the Slido Add-on

An amazing way to run a poll or ask questions within your presentation in Google Slides is to use the Add-on Slido.

Once the Add-on has been added you will then need to enter into your Google Slide and select Add-on> Slido.

Once Slido is selected you will then have the options to add a question with options for the audience to answer. Once ready you will need to select Present with Slido and be presented with the poll, code for your audience to type into sli.do and see live results. Participants can also ask questions. Embedded below is a screenshot showing what the results look like as well as a 1 minute and 59 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

How to search for Tweets from other users as well as your own.

If you would like to search for a specific Tweet (or Tweets)  try try the Advanced search built into Twitter - https://twitter.com/search-advanced

You have the options you see below

Embedded below is a 35 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,
Brad

Google Calendar - Create a new event from your browser. Type cal.new + Reminder about Office 365 and Google

To go along with the news Google shared last October revolving around how to quickly start a Doc, Sheet, Slides, or Form - see Tweet below.

What a great saver when want to open a new Doc, Sheet, Slides, Site, or Forms in Google.
Try https://t.co/apkY9LiRWB https://t.co/3oZbGs8Nj6 https://t.co/t632JvOBAC https://t.co/t1oDsMbX9X https://t.co/er0BfopZmb (to name a few). @GoogleForEdu https://t.co/9iiwvqEtGK pic.twitter.com/NFMVMn1iOf

— Brad Dale (@bradjdale) October 27, 2018

 Google recently announced the ability to create a new even directly from your browser by typing in cal.new

Embedded below is a 35 second YouTube tutorial.

Also, a reminder is below that a lot of people are not aware of. Click here for blog post https://www.timetotalktech.com/2019/08/teachers-and-students-have-access-to.html

Teachers and Students have access to Office 365 apps with Google Edu Account. Access to Word, Excel, Sway, PowerPoint, etc!! Thank you to @mtholfsen for sharing! @MicrosoftEDU @GoogleForEdu pic.twitter.com/wgtEkcdMes

— Brad Dale (@bradjdale) August 3, 2019

Take care,
Brad

Epic's Monthly Activity Calendars

Epic is an amazing site that offers over 35,000 books (and videos) to students for free during school hours.

Epic has also supplied you with a school calendar with activities for students to try. Many times these activities are ones that ask them to try something new or learn about something they did not know. This is worth printing out in your classroom as well as handing to each student to have at their disposal.

Click on this link to have access to the calendar -  https://www.getepic.com/calendars

Embedded below is a GIF showing you briefly what the calendar looks like.

Take care,

Brad

Google Hangouts How to add the extension as well as how to send a message and start a video chat.

Google Hangouts is a simple way to send messages and video chat with others. Once you select add to Chrome you will then need to add extension. A welcome window will appear and then you can get started.

In the upper left you will find the three lines which will bring up some options (see below).

When you are ready to send a message or video chat simply select the + New Conversation. You will then be able to type in name, email, or phone number to get started. Once selected you will then see the options to send a message (bottom right) or start a video chat (video in upper right).

Embedded below is a 2 minute and 2 second YouTube tutorial on the ins and outs of the extension.

Take care,

Brad

Microsoft Translator - communicate with students and families instantly. Even allows for a free flowing conversation using 2 microphones.

Microsoft Translator is an amazing tool to communicate with students and families. The app (in the example below is on an iPad) allows for translating using a keyboard, microphone, as well as the awesome ability to have a back-and-forth style communication utilizing 2 microphones. In fact listen to my conversation with my wife Leah! 😀

Microsoft Translator also provides live transcripts of a teacher’s lectures in many languages, including English. These transcripts enable deaf or hard of hearing students (DHH) and language learners to follow and participate in group discussions using a personal computer, laptop, tablet, or smart phone. Learn how students can join multilingual conversations using the app.

Embedded below is a 1 minute and 30 second YouTube tutorial as well as a collection of resources from Mike Tholfsen of Microsoft. 

Mike Tholfsen is a Principal Product Manager on the Microsoft Education team focusing on Inclusive Classroom, Learning Tools and OneNote Class/Staff Notebooks.

View text from articles directly in Wakelet. Best news of all - Immersive Reader is available to make your collections more inclusive and accessible!

🚨Introducing Read Mode!🚨

You can now view the text from articles directly within a Wakelet collection!

Best of all - we’ve combined it with @MicrosoftEDU's Immersive Reader, making your collections more inclusive and accessible than ever! 💙 #BetterTogether pic.twitter.com/pCZAb1acmx

— Wakelet (@wakelet) October 23, 2019

That's right, all articles posted in a collection in Wakelet have the ability to be read directly in Wakelet. As stated above, the articles have the power of Microsoft's Immersive Reader. You can:

• Text can be read-a-loud
• Change text size
• Change text font
• Change theme (colors)
• Ability to see syllables
• Ability to see parts of speech (with labels if interested)
• Line focus
• Picture Dictionary
• And the best of all - translate single words or the entire document into over 60+ languages (many with the ability to be read-a-loud.

Embedded below is a GIF showing all the languages available in Immersive Reader as well as a 1 minute and 4 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

Post-It Note Art + Pixel Art. Have your students create amazing art work using Post-It Notes and a Google Sheet

The other day Julia Dweck shared a tweet discussing Post-It Note Art and gave a shout-out to Kristina Holzweiss

Have you ever tried Post-It Note Art with Ss? Check out the Post-It Note window art at the Denver Public Library posted by the inspiring @lieberrian whose FB and Twitter feed nurture the creative spirit. Now I’m off to STAPLES. 🏃‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/iXteT6vxaX

— Julia Dweck (@GiftedTawk) October 9, 2019

This is really cool and student's creativity could soar with this. It started me thinking about Pixel Art and Alice Keeler's post Google Sheets: Pixel Art Template.

If students could create their Post-It Note design inside of a Google Sheet, the ability to "play" with their design would be something they could work on if interested when they would like to. Plus they could work together on this with others.

I showed this to my family and my daughter and son instantly were excited to do this. Of course we created what you see below (my son is a huge Mario fan). The possibilities are endless; however, a few trips to Target or orders through Amazon will need to happen!

A few tips to remember when students create their sheet.

• Make sure when they use conditional formatting they need to create their text and fill color the same.
• They can add more colors as they need to - but don't focus on making more than 5 or 6 colors at first (especially noting the color Post-It Notes you have).
• Just like in Google Sheets (or Excel) students can drag the formula to apply to other nearby cells. Click the small blue square at the bottom-right of the cell and drag it down across all the cells you want to apply the formula to. When you release the click, the formula from the first cell will be copied into every cell in your selection.

Embedded below is a 2 minute and 18 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

Google Forms - How to receive email notifications when your form has been filled out

In Google Forms you may want to receive notifications when someone has filled out your form. To enable this feature make sure to:

• Select responses (top of form next to questions)
• Select the three dots - top right
• Toggle on Get email notifications for new responses

Embedded below is a GIF followed by a 29 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

Educandy - Create and share fun interactive games with your students.

Educandy is a fun (free) website that allows you to create fun and interactive learning games with your students. What is great is there are options on how to create your game (type in, upload file, or copy and paste exported data from sites such as Quizlet).

There are then options on the game to be played (see below).

You can share the URL (with a code) as well as embed directly into your website.

Embedded below is a 2 minute and 28 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,
Brad

Want to learn more about G-Suite for Education? Register for Google's 8 week email series to learn more about Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, etc.

If you want to learn more about G-Suite for Education - simply click on this link and fill out the form.
In this link you can register for Google's 8 week email series to learn more about Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, etc. Each lesson (emailed every Tuesday) takes less than 15 minutes to complete and provides basic training videos to get you started with G Suite for Education.

Embedded below is Google's Tweet about the opportunity as well as a 30 second YouTube video.

Looking to get started with #GSuiteEdu tools like #GoogleClassroom, Docs, Forms, Slides and more? Sign up for our bite-sized tutorial videos delivered to your inbox every week for eight weeks → https://t.co/7IUxE7oDTI pic.twitter.com/yy1HzwvRhz

— Google for Education (@GoogleForEdu) October 16, 2019

Take care,
Brad

How to add personalized text to your Bitmoji

Pretty cool update in Bitmoji - the ability to add personalized text to some of the Bitmojis - play around with them.

Open up the Bitmoji Chrome Extension and start typing in your phrase and then add some personalized text. Of course it will not work with all, but play around with it and see how creative you can be.

Special thanks to Mrs. Chmil - https://twitter.com/mrschmil for posting this! 👏👏👏👏

New Bitmoji update: the ability to add personalized text! pic.twitter.com/HERZPOMFzE

— Mrs. Chmil (@mrschmil) October 17, 2019

Embedded below is a 50 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,
Brad

Khan Academy has ELA - 2nd-8th grade (BETA)

Great news! Khan Academy now offers ELA resources in grades 2-8.

A reminder, this is in BETA and as is stated above it is a work-in-progress and will evolve over the school year.

Embedded below is a GIF showing some of the 5th grade course.

Take care,

Brad

Excel tutorials explained with baseball data ⚾🧢📊📈 (sum, sumif, count, countif, vlookup, value, text, Pivot Tables, and Hot Keys)

In this Wakelet collection is information revolving around the following: =sum =sumif =count =countif =vlookup =value =text Pivot Tables and Hot keys.

As always if you have any questions let me know.

Brad

iOS 13 email options - press firmly for pop-up as well as hold down with two fingers for deletion

Pressing firmly on your email is a nice option when the email pops up and you can get a nice view of the email. You can also forward, delete, etc. The nice thing is the email itself will still show as being not read.

Another quick one is to hold down with two fingers and the option to delete will come up. You can then scroll down and have mass deletion.

Embedded below is a 59 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,
Brad

Add your face to a GIF

If you have ever wanted to add yourself (or family member) to a GIF - you now can using the app Morphin - available in iOS as well as Google Play

Paul West shared this yesterday and it is just awesome - thanks Paul!

Having a little Sunday fun before Fall Break is over. Found this new app called Morphin that puts a CGI version of you into your favorite gifs. It’s a GIFt that keeps on GIFing. Right @JakeMillerTech 😉👍🏻 pic.twitter.com/J6WSWpKxg0

— Paul West (@pdubyatech) October 13, 2019

The app does a nice job of walking you through how to use it; however, you basically just need to do the following:

• select the three lines in the upper right
• select face
• add face from camera or use a photo
• then select the GIF
• answer some questions (might learn a thing or two)
• see yourself in a GIF and share as you see fit

Embedded below is a 58 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

Add (embed) a Google calendar to your website + How to add a calendar from the outside to your site

If you would like to add a Google Calendar to your website (in this example I used both Blackboard and Google Sites) simply follow these instructions.

• Open your Google Calendar
• Top right select Settings
• On the left side of screen, select the name of the calendar you want to embed 
• Look for Integrate calendar on left side
• You will then see options on how to integrate (in this example we are just embedding directly into your website
• Select customize and then copy the code
• Enter into your website and look for the source code icon - look like this < >
• then paste in the code - select ok and then save
• on a Google Site simply select an open area (double click) and select embed - then paste code and publish

If you want to add a calendar from the outside to your calendar there are different options. In this example the school district where I work has embedded their calendar so I need to simply...

• select the Ical feed instructions (upper right above the calendar)
• choose - Android Devices and Google Calendar
• copy link
• go back to Google Calendar
• select the + next to other calendars (bottom left under your other calendars
• select from URL
• paste in the iCal code
• the calendar has been added

Embedded below is a 2 minute and 58 second YouTube tutorial showing how to do the above steps

Take care,

Brad

Capture whole page of doc, webpage, or email using screenshot in iOS13

Any webpage/doc/email you can now send the whole page to the user using the same way you have taken a screenshot in the past.

When you press the two side buttons on your device (in IOS 13) make sure to do the following:

• tap the thumbnail
• look at the top of the page and tap Full Page

You can now mark the page as you see fit and then send that page on to others in an email, text, or save it to your files.

In the example below I save my file into Google Drive. This would be great to then send on to your students in Google Classroom or wherever you share information.

Below is a 1 minute and 15 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

Unbelievable update in Wakelet! Immersive Reader is available on every item you place in a collection!

I do not even know where to start! Microsoft's Immersive Reader is built directly into any item you place in your Wakelet collection. This is live as of the date of this post (10/10/19) for Community members and will be live for all 10/23/19.

This has so many implications, but most importantly the ability to communicate what you would like to has now became that much easier! And isn't communication the most important tool of them all!

Embedded below is a 1 minute and 5 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care!
Brad

How to quickly create a game in Gimkit using their new feature "Create with Flashcards"

Gimkit is an amazing learning site that allows students to answer questions and earn $. The accumulated money can be used to shop for upgrades and powerups. The excitement level of "taking a review quiz" on Gimkit is through the roof. The strategy involved in-game is what really takes Gimkit to the next level.

Below is a brief tutorial showing how you can get started in less than 2 minutes.

Any questions please let me know!
Brad

Mathgames.com - great resource for free math games and skill practice grades Pre-K to 8 (can create worksheets as well)

Mathgames.com is a great free resources  for free math games and skill practice. Users can search by

• Grades - search Pre-K to 8
• Skills - addition, subtraction, algebra, etc
• Games - games are available with a short advertisement if using free version
• Standards - search by standards
• Worksheets - available to be adjusted by number of pages, provides you with an estimated time of completion, download as a PDF, plus an answer key

Embedded below is a 1 minute and 44 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

The 4 (or 5) C's - Google Slides info-graphics plus a course to complete to learn about the C's with Wakelet

1. Critical Thinking
2. Collaboration
3. Communication
4. Creativity
5. *Curation (kind of like the y of vowels) 😅 However, this 5th C is crucial and extremely valuable

Eric Curts tweeted about Meagan Kelly's recent post about the 4 C's that included some awesome info-graphics. Also available here - https://www.i-heart-edu.com/breaking-down-the-4-cs/

🚀 Breaking Down the 4 C’s ... and a free collection of printable posters! https://t.co/jHloKOd30a From @meagan_e_kelly #edtech #edchat #4Cs pic.twitter.com/epshAvdJVR

— Eric Curts (@ericcurts) October 8, 2019

One can also learn about the 5 C's by taking a course run by Microsoft called - Surf the 5 C's with Wakelet.

In this course you can see what the learning outcomes are below.

If you are not already using Wakelet it is something you need to look into. I have to say the platform is amazing as it constantly is looking to make the site better for users. However, what separates them is their willingness to listen to their customers, kindness, and overall general care for the education community. Make sure to become part of their community by becoming a Wakelet Ambassador by clicking here - https://blog.wakelet.com/2019/01/15/ambassador-program/.

As always if you have any questions please reach out.
Brad

Build Your Own Jack-O-Lantern + Halloween Rebus Stories

Eric Curts has crated some amazing resources for teachers and students.
Two fan favorites are Build Your Own Jack-O-Lantern and Halloween Rebus Stories.

Embedded below is a Wakelet that includes these resources + more October fun activities in the future.

Show pictures and videos in iOS using the Slideshow feature

One feature that goes overlooked within Photos in iOS is the slideshow feature. Within the slideshow users have options to change the theme, music, speed, and ability to repeat the images.

Users can choose the image where they would like the slideshow to start and select the share icon (upper right) where you typically send the image to another person in iMessage. If you scroll down a bit you will see the slideshow option.

This is where you can then see the images from the day (or from the ones you selected). If you look in the lower right you will see options (ability to change these, music, speed, and ability to repeat).

Embedded below is a 54 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,
Brad

Reminder to try portrait mode when taking photos

With it being a great weekend here in Pennsylvania with the weather being crisp, leaves falling, etc it is a great time for photos.

Something to try (been around since iPhone 7+) is portrait mode.

When taking pictures of others the first three options are available:

1. Natural Light
2. Studio Light
3. Contour Light

The final three are only available when taking selfies.

1. Stage Light
2. Stage Light Mono
3. High-Key Light Mono

Below are some photos as well as a 45 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

How students can update their avatar (and see other information) in Epic!

Lately students have been asking how can they change their avatar in Epic! You can change the avatar (as well as find out much more information) by clicking here, or by selecting the avatar in the upper right and selecting View Profile.

Students will be able to see their level, how many books they have finished, hours read, videos watched, other achievements, reading log, as well as the ability to change their avatar. The more students read the more achievements which also means the more avatars are available.

Embedded below is a 1 minute and 7 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,
Brad

Try Google's new pause/play button to pause or play music/videos from your open tabs with one click.

If you have ever had multiple tabs open and can not figure out what tab music is coming from - there is a solution!

Enter into your Chrome Browser (make sure you are up to version 77)

1. Open a Chrome browser and search chrome://flags/ in the address bar.

2. Search Global Media Controls.

3. On the dropdown box make sure to select Enabled.

4. Click Relaunch Now (bottom right). 

5. You'll now see a Play button in your toolbar when you start one of the tabs with audio (YouTube/Pandora, etc).

Embedded below is a GIF followed by a 56 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

If you get a ton of unwanted calls, send them directly to voicemail in iOS 13. 🤫☎️

If you get a ton of unwanted calls, send them directly to voicemail in iOS 13. 🤫☎️ 

Simply select... Settings > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers

• Settings
• Phone
• Silence Unknown Callers

Embedded below is a 19 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad

New way to present your items in Wakelet - Mood board

Awesome new feature in Wakelet - the ability to arrange your items in what is called Mood board. Mood board allows more items to be seen quickly and has a nice feel about it.

To enable this layout simply choose the options underneath the description of the collection and choose Mood board (4th option). See image below.

Embedded below is a 1 minute and 21 second YouTube tutorial.

Take care,

Brad