FTT - Trick or Treats!

 Trick or Treat!

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

Well, it's 10:00 pm on Halloween night and my household just survived what seemed like an eternity of Halloween-related activities. Sugar-loaded toddlers are finally asleep and perhaps it's time for some tech treats for you! Here is a hastily put-together list of some of my favorite websites of all time for educational fun. If you find at least one of these websites useful, it'll be worth the price of admission. So enjoy!

• Absurd Trolley Problems: A fan favorite in economics class - the internet's take on the classic Trolley Problem thought experiment. Incentives matter and the rest is commentary. This website gives you increasingly complicated/absurd ethical dilemmas to solve as you progress through the site. 
  
  
• Radio Garden: Ever thought you'd be interested in what radio stations were playing all across the globe at any given point in time? Radio Garden gives you instant access to what's on the radio anywhere on Earth, from Faridabad, India to Rio Branco Brazil. It's shocking how many stations out there are blasting English Pop!
  
  
• TypeLit.io: Need to improve your typing skills AND want to get caught up on some classic literature? TypeLit records your words per minute, accuracy, and progress as you type through any part of a variety of classic books. You can even import your own book by signing up. This is a personal favorite that I never seem to have enough time for.
  
  
• Ventusky: This incredible website gives you beautiful, updated meteorological data visualizations anywhere on Earth. Temperature, wind, clouds, precipitation, and more. 
  
  
• Musclewiki.com: Pick a muscle, any muscle. Click on any major muscle on the human body and this site will immediately give you a variety of featured exercises and stretches with detailed instructions, GIFs, and videos specific to that muscle organized by difficulty. 
  
  
•  QuickDraw: A fun interaction with Google's A.I. neural network! You are given 20 seconds to draw a random object to see if Google's powerful A.I. can guess what you're doodling before time runs out!
  
  
• Onelook.com: Have you ever had a word on the tip of your tongue but couldn't quite think of the word? This "reverse-dictionary" lets you type in a description of a word and the program A.I. offers a suitable list of potential answers.
  
  
• SuperCook: This helpful website gives you recipes for dinner based on what available ingredients you already have on hand. Tens of thousands of recipes on hand with specific instructions!
  
  
• Pie Chart Maker: That's it. That's the description. This site helps you make great looking Pie Chart Graphs. Interactive ones at that. Downloadable PNGs, JPEGs, and SVG files. Values, Colors, 
  
  
• UnSplash: Need a picture of something? High quality something? Unsplash has millions of high resolution pictures of almost anything you can think of. Test them out!
  
  
• FreeLearningList: A recent addition to this list, this site is a resource aggregator designed to organize and score the best education-related resources available free on the internet. This non-profit sought to help parents and guardians fill in the gaps for their children's education during the pandemic.

That's a lot. The internet is a fascinating place. I hope you were able to find some utility in at least one of the websites above. Do you have a personal favorite to share? Comment below!

FTT - Google Smart Chips and Building Blocks

Google Smart Chips And Building Blocks

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

As educators, we know the importance and value of interconnectedness. When we are learning new things, brain science tells us that if we can connect a new concept to one we already know, it is more likely to stick. Relevance and connection matters in learning. I have had several experiences over the years where I have gone to workshops or taken courses on topics that were really exciting to me. However, if I didn't have immediate use of those skills and information it quickly collected dust and never really made a difference in my work with students. My hope is that these posts come to you at a time when they are relevant, can be connected to things you already know, and are easy to apply right away. 

In order to help with connections, we need to be organized and able to access all of those pieces easily; and while I am talking about concepts and skills, this same applies to our digital files, documents, calendar events, and contacts.

You may have noticed that when you are utilizing Google docs, which for purposes of this post includes docs and sheets, there are some new options.  These new features were added to make our digital elements more connected and easy to locate. There are a ton of new little nuggets of functionality here in Google docs. I will show you a few of my favorites. Let's take a look at those and the best ways to use them.

@Menu

When you are working in Google docs, type the @ symbol (fun fact: it's official name is asperand) and you will see a mini menu appear. This is one way to access the new Smart Chips and Building Blocks features. It will also give you easy access to text formatting options, entering tables, bookmarks, equations, and more. 

Use the @ menu to link to people, files, and events, and add items to a Google doc. You can add Smart Chips that link information and suggested actions for people places, files, and events. The @ menu also lets you add building blocks that give you the opportunity to create email drafts, meeting notes, table templates for tracking projects, and more. 

Building Blocks

Building Blocks can be accessed by the @ menu or by clicking "insert" in your Google doc. These allow you to insert templates within your document such as email drafts or project management trackers which can be so helpful when you have students or course teams working collaboratively.  

Your options within the Building Blocks menu are meeting notes, email draft, product roadmap, review tracker (one of my favorites), project assets, and launch content tracker.

Tip: When you type the @ symbol in Google docs, start typing the first few letters of what you want to narrow the suggestions. For example, to insert an email draft type @email and press enter.

We have all wrestled with drafting an email in Gmail and oops! You accidentally hit send. No? Is it just me? I love the new ability to draft an email in Google docs. You can also work on it collaboratively by sharing the doc with your colleagues. Once you are done, just click the Google docs symbol and it will open in your email application. No need to cut and paste! Don't worry, you still need to click send for it to go.

Another Tip: If you want to send to yourself you can just type @me and it will add your email address.

Smart Chips

Smart Chips give you quick access to items within your document. The functionality is similar to inserting a link with a few upgrades. Your options within Smart Chips are people, file, calendar event, and place. All of these will create nice little links within your document and will have icons to show what they link to. When you hover you will see a preview. 

• Add Smart Chips by going to the "insert" menu within Google docs OR typing the @ symbol. 
• Once the Smart Chip has been added, anyone with access to the document can hover to see a preview of what is linked in the Smart Chip. You can also click to open it. 
• You will notice that when you use Smart Chips, you can see the file type in the link.
• Adding a Smart Chip does NOT give everyone access to the document. You will still need to utilize the share button within Google docs to ensure access. 

 

Ever send students a set of instructions and wish you could include a dropdown menu? Now you can!

Tip: Add a dropdown to your Googledoc by typing the @ symbol and start typing "dropdown" or go to "insert" and select "dropdown". When you do this, you have the option of creating your own or using some pre-set dropdown menus.

Wishing you could create checklists with boxes in your docs?  You're welcome.

Tip: Add checklists to your document by typing the @ symbol and start typing "checklists"

This list could go on and on but we all have things to do and places to be. I would encourage you to explore by using the @ symbol in your docs and see what tools you like. Are you already using Smart Chips and Building Blocks? Let us know. We'd love to hear more about what you are doing. 

 

FTT - Troubleshooting IC-Schoology Syncs

 Troubleshooting IC-Schoology Sync

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

You don't know what you don't know

The sneaky thing about this sync is that it may seem like everything is working well, but then you get that dreaded email from your chair (or me) that your grade book isn't syncing! You think, "oh gosh, I could've sworn I did the thing that I needed to do to get the thing to sync to that other thing!!!" As we approach some important grade deadlines, we need to be able to know whether or not our grade books are syncing the way we want them to.

• View Sync Status Log

Click on the clipboard icon in your Schoology grade books every once in a while to audit your sync status. It's a quick, easy way to see if your sync is working as intended. Otherwise, the only other way to audit your syncs is to manually check your grade books in Infinite Campus (although that's not a bad idea). A red dot will appear on your clipboard to alert you to an issue.

• Cross-Linked Courses
  We've found that the majority of our persistent sync issues have been with courses that are cross-linked. The issue: make sure that every single section, whether it has active students in it or not, is set up identically with the other sections. That means the grade calc options AND categories need to be IDENTICAL. Please refer to slide 6 for Grade Calc Option instructions, and slide 16 for category setup.

• Composite Scores in IC vs Schoology
  You should also periodically check to make sure that your composite score in Schoology matches your composite score in IC. While there are slight variations to account for differences in rounding (e.g., .01%) your composites SHOULD MATCH. 
• What could account for statistical differences in your composite scores? 
• Factor'ed grades in Schoology DO NOT sync over to IC. You'll need to manually set the multiplier in IC.
• If you've deleted an assignment in Schoology, it will NOT delete the assignment in IC. 
• Make sure your assignment total values are identical in both spots. 
  
  
• Schoology-Infinite Campus Configuration Page
  This page "IS" the sync. You need to make sure that your categories are matched up correctly. 9 times out of 10 simple sync issues can be cleared up here. Additionally, if you are section-linked multiple sections of a course on Schoology, remember that you will need to set up the configuration for each section.
  
  
  
  
  
• Finally, make sure you've followed the initial instructions.
  Here is the LINK to the initial presentation guide. I know this is a lot of extra steps. I know most of this is not intuitive and not to mention incredibly boring, tedious, and insipid. We really appreciate your patience, and let's hope second semester is smooth sailing.

FTT - Google Integrations that'll make you happy!

Google Integrations That Will Make You Happy!

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

 Sometimes I like doing things the long way. For example, I might take the scenic route home from Chicago to enjoy the beautiful scenery on Sheridan Road. Or, if I am making a new recipe I will make sure to follow all of the instructions and not use any shortcuts until I have made it at least once.

One area where I really don't want to do things the long way is when working in Google products. I appreciate all the shortcuts and I'm super excited to share some with you that you may not know about.  You think you need all those tabs open but maybe you can close some!

 These shortcuts are little things that can add up to big time efficiency.

Let's get into it!

First, let's take a look at gmail. Look at the right side of your screen and you will see some icons.  Don't see them? Click the arrow in the bottom right corner of your screen to open the side panel. You will see a similar side panel within most Google products. 

These icons probably look familiar to you but just in case they don't, here is a quick rundown.

At first glance, you can see that by clicking on these icons the coordinating product will open up in a side panel. But if you continue to explore you will see that there are many time saving features now embedded within the Google environment. I would encourage you to go ahead and click and try a few things. You may be surprised at how easy it is to discover the new capabilities. 

• Calendar/Gmail:
• When you have Gmail open, click on an email message and then click the Google Calendar icon. At the bottom of the side panel, click Create An Event. You will notice that the new event is automatically populated with the subject of the email. You can grab the details from the email and include them in the description of your calendar event. Click save to save your new event to calendar without actually opening calendar.

• Keep/Gmail:
• When you have Gmail open, click on an email message and then click the Keep icon. At the top of the side panel, click "Take a note". A new Google Keep note will be created. You can title the note and add whatever relevant information you need. You will notice that on the note a link to the email is automatically created for you. No more copy/paste from gmail into keep! While we're here talking about Google Keep, if you open that note in Keep you can click the bell and set a reminder. It will auto-populate to your calendar. 

• Tasks/Gmail:
• When you have Gmail open, click the Tasks icon.
• You can then click and drag an email into Tasks and it will automatically create a new task for you with the same title as the subject of the email.
• Once your task is created, you can add a date and time and it will automatically add it to your calendar. If you have notifications enabled you will get a calendar notification on that date and time.

• Contacts/Gmail:
• When you have Gmail open, click on an email message and then click the Contacts icon. 
• On the side panel you will now see the contacts of everyone on that email thread.
• Within the side panel you can add them to your contacts with one click on the add to contacts icon.

You will notice similar functionality within Google calendar. If you click on a calendar event and then click the Google keep icon and click "Take A Note", you then have a Google keep note with the calendar event linked directly to it.

These icons are also available in Google docs, sheets, and slides. If you have a doc open and click the calendar icon and click "add event" it will automatically give your event the same title as your document and gives you the ability to seamlessly attach that Google doc to your calendar event. 

Here's the moral of the story, if you see a little icon while you are using Google applications, go ahead and click on them. I promise you won't irreversibly break anything and you just might discover your new favorite productivity tool. 

Check these out and let us know what you think.

FTT - Adobe Acrobat: Edit your PDFs like a PRO!

 Adobe Creative Cloud

Using Adobe Acrobat Pro for PDFs

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

Why PDFs? 

I suppose PDFs have become so ubiquitous in our digital worlds that most of us probably don't wonder at the rise of Portable Document Formats and how they became one of the standard electronic methods of conserving and sharing data online. It was initially a proprietary format created by Adobe in the early 1990s and is now THE dominant electronic writing document. We rely so heavily upon it because PDFs typically guarantee reliability. Once created, PDFs can lock in the formatting and size of whatever images or text in the exact manner of its inception. Once you save a Word doc into a PDF, there is some sense of permanence or finality associated with its creation.

But that benefit cuts both ways. Things change and so should our PDFs. Have you ever languished at your inability to "edit" a PDF? Well now that staff have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro at District 113, your PDFs should be as malleable to your fingertips as Word Docs or Google Docs (sort of).

Installing Adobe Acrobat

• Depending on whether or not you have a Mac or PC, your process might be slightly different, but generally the same. It begins with Adobe Creative Cloud. Search for the Adobe Creative Cloud icon. It is a rainbow-colored icon that MacOS users can find by opening their "Launch Pad" and Dell users can find the icon on their desktop. 
• Open Creative Cloud. It may ask you to log in. Here are the simple steps to do so. Once you log in, you will find "Acrobat DC" under "Available in your plan." Click "Install." Disclaimer, this may take 5-10 minutes to complete. 

Opening Adobe Acrobat DC

• Find a PDF on your computer and open it with Adobe Acrobat. You can right-click on it and choose the "open with" option:
  
  
  

Option 1: Edit PDF

• Assuming you've made it thus far and were successfully able to open a PDF with Adobe Acrobat, you should now see an updated list of functions on the right. One such function is labeled, "Edit PDF" and should be a fan favorite. Click on "Edit PDF" and you will be able to make changes to your PDF much like you would a Word document.
  
  
• Double click on whatever text or image you are interested in editing and you can now rewrite PDF text.  (If this is not immediately available, you may have to OCR the text first. See below) You can click and drag, resize, change the font, etc. 
  
  

  

Option 2: Organize Pages

• Clicking on the "Organize Pages" function allows you to change the layout AND order of your PDF pages. Additionally, you can add and remove pages of your PDF, or even split a PDF into mulitple files.
  
  
  
  
  

Option 3: Scan & OCR

• If you want screen-readers to be able to access your content, scanning and OCR'ing your files are critical for ADA compliance (and best practice). Click on the "Scan & OCR" option to begin.
• For simple OCR you can click on "Recognize Text" at the top and choose your file. It will then convert all of your block images into readable (and searchable) text.
  
  
  
  
  
• MAKE SURE YOU SAVE. Unlike Google Docs, any and all changes to your PDF must be saved.

Conclusion

This is just an introduction to Adobe Acrobat Reader Pro. Some of you may have had difficulties even installing Adobe Reader on to your computer. Please know that this blog is just an introduction, letting you know that this capacity exists. If you need any additional assistance installing and utilizing Adobe Reader, PLEASE let us know!