Tab Glue & Tab Scissors
If you are working on a Chromebook or a single monitor, you know the frustration of needing to look at two tabs at the same time. Enter Tab Scissors and Tab Glue. By installing these Chrome extensions, you are able to easily display two windows side by side with the click of a button. These are great extensions for students who are using one tab to acquire information and another tab to record information. The computer in the video below is a Chromebook, but if you install the extensions on the Chrome browswer on your desktop, they work the same.
Time Saver for Sending "Canned" Emails
If you find yourself sending emails with the same content over and over, you can simplify your workflow by adding the canned response lab to your gmail account. Type the email once, and the next time you need to send the same or a very similar email, just select the canned response, edit, if necessary, and send. Here's how.
G-Suite Updates
Google announced some amazing updates recently that will improve our ability to collaborate, communicate, and create.If you're a power Google user on your campus or in your department, you will appreciate both of these updates as they become fully functional.
1. Team Drive is coming! Team members will share access to all team files, and giving a new team member access to the files is as simple as adding him/her to the group. That should make life easier for departments and grade levels as personnel changes over time. Google is still refining this product, so it's not immediately available, but it's going to be awesome when we have access. Stay tuned for updates!
2. Google Sites has gotten a major overhaul. Not all features are fully functional yet, but if you've struggled with creating a Google Site in the past, you will love the ease of the new drag/drop interface. There's still a little bit of a learning curve, but the new Sites is significantly more intuitive to use than the old version. Content added from your Drive (including Docs, Slides, and Forms) is updated live on your website when you update the file in your Drive. The new Sites allows for easy collaboration, so teams/grades can maintain one website. Click HERE to get started. Click HERE for a written tutorial. See the video below for a three-minute how-to. (Access to the new sites is through Drive right now. See video for details. Clicking on the Sites icon in the launcher takes you to the old sites. The launcher will change when the new sites becomes fully functional.)
Your Voice is Important!
If you or someone on your campus is using technology in an innovative way or is using technology to simplify the things we have to do in the course of our work day, please shoot me an email so we can spotlight BISD awesomeness. If you're interested in integrating technology into something that you're teaching and want someone to plan or co-teach with you, I'd love to play! Sometimes it's nice to have an extra set of hands in the classroom on tech days!
