Making Facebook More Enjoyable in the Short Term

We all have that friend and/or family member who is posting too many memes from other sources that you are tired of seeing or simply find disgusting. How to solve the problem? I'm going to show you a trick that has been around a long time, but that most people still seem oblivious to — snoozing or hiding a non-friend. By snoozing or hiding a non-friend, you get to continue your relationship, but silence the disgusting content that you are sick of seeing on your feed. When your friend/family member re-posts that ugly meme or article, go to the three dots on the upper right-side of the post. A drop-down menu will appear with choices of how to deal with the trash. I am a huge fan of the snooze option. Once you choose it, now — no matter how many times in the next 30 days your friend or family member re-posts or shares "Nathan's" content — it will not appear in your feed. If you are really sick of seeing things from "Nathan", you can hide all and never see Nathan's garbage again, but still have the posts from your friend or family member. I have been using this trick for a long time and it has made my Facebook experience acceptable. Ideally, I would delete my Facebook account, but too many friends and family stay in touch with me through it, and I just can't see my mom learning how to use Twitter or Instagram at this point. Facebook has become a necessary evil for at least a little while.

Custom Avatar & Wallpaper on Chromebooks

 

If you work with students who use school Chromebooks, you will find that some of them go crazy changing their avatar and wallpaper. Sometimes they choose very inappropriate things. I'm not a huge fan of banning something, but sometimes it is a decision from leadership or the school board. Our elementary school director asked me to set the avatar to our school logo and the wallpaper to the school logo as well. Several of the teachers were tired of seeing crazy avatars and wallpaper, so this is how you can make a universal avatar or wallpaper for your Chromebooks. Sign in to your admin console. Go to Devices-->Chrome-->Settings-->User & Browser Settings. On the General tab, you will find the place to upload the image you want for avatar or wallpaper. These are user settings, so students will need to log out and log in to have the settings take hold.

Cool Features in the Chrome Omnibox

So the Chrome Omnibox has been pretty cool since the beginning, but every once in a while, I notice something that makes the thing even more amazing. Today, for the first time, I discovered the features that allow you to send a website to a device and to create a QR code for the website. No need for an extra program to create QR codes anymore. Just make one from the Omnibox and screenshot it or download it. So easy! To find the features, put your cursor inside the Omnibox and they will appear on the right-side of the box. Enjoy!

Google Admin -- Buildings & Resources

In Google Admin you can add Buildings & Resources, so that teachers can book rooms and materials. The journey starts in the Admin Console where you add the Resource and then people in your domain have access to the Resource in Google Calendar. This video shows how to set of the Resource and how to book one in Calendar. Enjoy!

New Features in Gmail -- Confidential and Signature

You now have a Confidential mode in your Gmail account. On your toolbar it appears as a small padlock. It allows you to set and expiration date for an email and you can require a passcode to unlock it. Pretty cool! There is also a way to control your signature with the email interface. The pen on the toolbar allows you to turn your signature on or off for an email. But there is more! In the upper right-hand side of your email, you also have buttons to create or join a Meet within your email account. And finally, when you are in an email, there is a button to create a task directly from the email. Super cool new features. Thanks Google!

A Calendar Catalog for School

Google Calendars are great for a variety of reasons, but one thing I have noticed is that sometimes at the beginning of the school year (and even during) some people don't end up getting access to all of the calendars they need in an easy way. After thinking about the whole situation for a long time (and very annoyingly re-sharing links and changing sharing options), I came across the a Google solution -- use Sheets to share them.

The presentation will walk people through the process of sharing their calendars this way. The journey starts in the settings for the calendar you want to share with multiple people. First decide what level of permission is required. Is it a calendar that needs to be shared publicly? Is it a calendar that only needs to be shared within your domain? That will determine which option to pick. Then copy the sharable link. If you are using Team Drives, you can place the Sheet in a Team Drive where everyone will have access. If you are not using Team Drives, you can go old school and share it with a group email. My Sheet has three basic columns -- Title of Calendar, Brief Description, Direct Link to Calendar. I broke my Sheet down with four tabs, one for each of the following groups: Whole School, First Program, Middle School, and High School. Teachers/Admin add links to their calendars that need to be shared and teachers go and add the calendars they need. If someone somehow or someway lose access, they simply go back to the Sheet and get the link.

Google Calendar Just Got Better!

Google Calendar just get better! "How?" you ask. Now you can add guests, locations, and descriptions from the initial event creation window. Check the screenshot! Super cool and easy to use. Have fun!

#12dayslearning Day 2: Give a shout out an educator who is transforming student learning

Thanks to @edurolearning

Day 2 -- Give a shout out to an educator who is transforming student learning

Just one? That is going to be tough, because I'm coming off the Google Summit at Chadwick International School where I met some great educators. So this will be a list of people doing great things and you better start following if you aren't already.

1. Mr. Craig Kemp (@mrkempnz) -- Craig is just a super nice guy, but he also knows a ton about technology integration and how to move it forward in a school. His keynote presentation on The Changing Face of Education: Connecting, Engaging & Empowering was very inspiring and a great way to launch the event.
2. Mr. Rob McElroy (@EdTechMac) -- Once again bedazzled me with the possibilities of VR in the classroom with his presentation Take a Trip With Google Expeditions and Google Tour Creator. It can us a chance to play with Google Tour Creator which is simply a great way to build some cool explorative journeys with your students.
3. Mr. Sethi De Clercq (@sdcthailand) -- I met Sethi for the first time during this Google Summit and I was immediately impressed with his knowledge and skill. In his Youtube ins and outs session he taught me some super sick things with analytics in Youtube that were beyond my imagination.

You can read Day 1 here.

Takeaways & Shout Outs -- AppsEvent at Chadwick International School December 1-3, 2017

The AppsEvent at Chadwick International School during the weekend of December 1-3, 2017 was an great professional development opportunity based around Gsuite for Education. I offered two presentations at the event: Tracking Student Discipline with Forms, Sheets, Docs, and autoCrat and Student Portfolios with Google Sites. The first session didn't really go as smoothly as I would have liked, but I was able to receive some solid feedback that will help reshape my presentation for the future. The second session went great and people were very positive about the content and pacing of the session. Enough about me!

The best part about AppsEvents is the networking and opportunity for learning about new Gsuite products and new ways to use them. I got to code a drone thanks to Rob McElroy's (@edtechmac) session about Parrot Drones. What makes the little Parrot Drones amazing is the ability to use Tynker to code the drone thus tying coding and drone robotics together. Super cool! The simple Tynker programming language makes drone flight available to young and old learners. It opens up endless problem solving opportunities by creating challenges with everyday objects that drones must dodge or land on. Thanks, Rob!

Brett Petrillo's (@brettpetrillo) session about bringing out your school's inner Google was inspiring and an affirmation of the current work we are doing at Cheongna Dalton School. Brett explained how educational leaders need to use Gsuite to actually run the school and improve efficiency with the organization. Once again I was reminded of how lucky I am in my current position having an admin team of David Hill, Ben Scoville, and Malcolm Harrison who all use Gsuite with ease. This year they made the commitment to use Gmail less by using Classroom as a communication tool within their divisions. Everything can be easily found when needed this way, rather than everyone trying to search through all their emails to find documents, links, or announcements. One super cool thing I learned is that Brett uses Slides to create his weekly newsletter by changing the Slide size to 8.5 x 11.5. Genius! It was also nice to meet Brett face-to-face for the first time because we have been collaborating on Twitter for several years. Thanks, Brett!

Megan Godek's (@MEGodek) session on Google Drawing gave me many new ideas on how to use Drawing with our elementary students. Teaching kids to recognize shapes, patterns, and colors while also introducing elements of design and making their own images rather than simply copying something from the internet. Super cool! I'm looking forward to sharing her ideas and enthusiasm with my elementary team at CDS. Thanks, Megan!

And finally there is Dean Stokes (@deanstokes). What can I say about Dean? I feel like my IQ goes up by simply being in the same room with this guy. I attended three of Dean's sessions. The first was about supporting literacy with Gsuite and third party products. The voice recognition software now built into Docs was a mind blower. The last time I played with Google voice recognition, I left thinking I'll wait until this gets better. It is now much, much better. It was typing my spoken comments with a very high level of accuracy. Very useful for many things, but especially for students who have difficulty typing or have trouble with spelling. It could also be a great tool for helping ELL students learn about correct pronunciation. The second tool Dean introduced us to was Chrome's Read & Write extension -- AMAZING! It is free for teachers, but there is a small fee for students, but even just having the teacher version for yourself would open up tons of learning opportunities for your students. The Read & Write tool bar comes with a regular dictionary that allows you to find a definition of any word you highlight. There is also a picture dictionary. There is a function for the Read & Write tool bar to read aloud a highlighted passage and much, much more. It is definitely a help tool for supporting literacy in a variety of ways. Awesome!

The second session I attended was Dean answering any question you have about Google. If you have the chance to simply sit down with Dean and talk, you should always take that opportunity. We had a very good discussion about a variety of topics, but my big takeaways were about Jamboard and Google Timelapse. If you haven't heard about Jamboard, you better look into it. It is Google's redesign of the old school digital whiteboard. Remember how most of the education world decided that digital whiteboards were mostly useless for a variety of reasons I will not get into now? Well the folks at Google found a way to make them useful by taking away the parts that sucked. Digital whiteboards didn't allow for more than one person (usually the teacher) to use them, but Jamboard does allow more than one user and the user doesn't have to be in the room or the building or even in the same country. Thanks, Google! Timelapse takes satellite images of the earth going back to 1984 and plays through them showing how an area has changed over time. Really cool!

The final session of Dean's was the closing keynote and it was totally worth the price of the event all on its own. It introduced me to Google ReWork. I website where Google explains how they make and maintain their culture of innovation. Dean took Google's lessons and applied them to education. It is a major change in the way education is currently done in most institutions around the world, but it is time we start moving in this direction. Considering the incredible success of Google and companies like it, we can clearly see that the world of education needs a serious rework. Super amazing! Thanks, Google for sharing your approach and I hope that educators start reworking our schools in this image. And thanks, Dean.