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EdTech Blog, Tools and Resources for Educators - Class Tech Tips

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Engergize your lessons with classroom technology. Tons of free EdTech resources and tools for educators to use in the classrooom.

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Meet the modern learner. Busy, savvy and hungry to learn. But are they getting what they need? We've pulled together findings from numerous research papers and surveys to help you get to grips with what modern professionals need. Use these insights to make sure your learning solutions will cut through the noise and help people when, where and how they need it.
Our original 'Profile of a modern learner' infographic and blog was published in June 2016. This new version was created with the latest insights in August 2018.
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The modern learner - busy, savvy, and hungry to learn

The terms used by Josh Bersin to describe modern learners still hold. They are still 'overwhelmed, distracted and impatient' ( Bersin by Deloitte). But, they are also hungry to learn and keen to grow their skills to the point that if an organisation isn't enabling them to develop professionally, they'll up and leave. That's right, according to Fosway, learning and development opportunities are the #1 attraction to working somewhere, and can make or break employee retention and performance. But the learning and development opportunities have to be good.

The modern learner is savvy - hunting out the best answers to their problems, in the moment of need, mostly on Smartphones. Learning content has to be useful and relevant to engage them.

Sadly, many aren't finding what they need in their workplace.

The modern learner also has an eye on the future. In an era of rising AI, more fluid job roles and rising contractors, people are reaching out for the kinds of skills that will do them well in the future. Whilst hard skills are, perhaps sensibly, focused on data analytics and machine learning, soft skills are tipping the balance in lists of more popular online courses. What's interesting is that they feature skills such as 'emotional intelligence' and 'critical thinking' - skills that the bots can't offer? - but also 'learning how to learn'.

It seems that the modern learner is crying out to self-develop, but needs extra empowerment and support from their workplaces to figure out how, and where, to go.

Here's the detail and sources behind the facts and stats we've shared.

1. Overwhelmed and distracted

In Insights from IMPACT 2018, Josh Bersin shared that the average worker spends 25% of their time on emails and checks their phone 150 times a day. We spend around 35% of our working week in meetings with more than half deemed unproductive ( The Muse). And, on top of that, we are interrupted around 56 times a day ( Atlassian). Being productive is challenging!

Meanwhile, the average time people have put aside to learn for work, is around 20 mins a week ( Bersin & Forbes). A mere 1%. It's no wonder people are begging for targeted, timely learning content.

2. Keen to learn

Professional development opportunities are essential for attracting and retaining people to organisations. Not only is it the #1 attraction to working at an organisation (Fosway), other studies, such as this one from Brand Learning, show how learning is essential to employee engagement, and in turn, essential to growth in business performance.

According to LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees would stay at a company if it invested in their career development.

But it's not always the case that people are getting what they want. In their 2018 Benchmark Report, Towards Maturity report that only:

15% can access learning directly relating to their job

10% can determine own path through learning

3. Wants personalized, timely, quality content

Relevance is king. The majority of workplace learning is done in the moment of need. And, according to Treion Muller's 7 Consumer Realities report, in moments of need 96% of people turn to their phones and search for the answer.

What's more, increasingly people are getting more focused on quality and relevance. Think with Google reports that mobile searches that include the term "best" and "____for me" have grown by 80 and 60% respectively, in the last two years. People are hunting for the most useful answers, and stripping out what's not helping them.

On top of that, the average person gives content around 7 seconds to decide if a page of content is for them or not, and 70% of users will leave if it's not optimised for them and their needs.

4. Learns as needed, anywhere, anytime

According to Towards Maturity's Bridging the Divide report, which has researched the movements of 43,000+ workplace learners since 2003, over half of people learn at the point of need. This takes the lion's share of the survey. We understand from Treion Muller's 7 Consumer Realities, that the majority of users in this case turn to their smartphones for this.

Mobile learning is also popular with those on commutes, with around a third of people learning whilst they travel to and from work. But there's still a substantial amount (41%) that learn at their desks. Is this an indication that not all content is optimised for mobiles, or the reality that this is where many people are working and so are switching to learning through on the job experience and where it's convenient? It could also be because a lot of learning needs dedicated focus and is easier to do on a larger screen.

5. Turn to their phones

We don't really have to report on the smartphone revolution. It's pretty obvious these days! But it does help to frame just how distracted and bombarded modern learning audiences are to report on some of the stats.

The average person spends 2 hours a day on their smartphone. This rises to 3 hours for 18 - 24 year olds ( Time to log off). The addictiveness of smartphone and social media use is now being recognised by health organisations, like the NHS, who offer treatment for it. The average person checks their phone around 10 times an hour (Bersin).

It's no surprise that in moments of need we turn to our beloved pocket friends for help when it comes to learning.

6. Prefers learning to be through on the job experience

Without a doubt, the majority of people prefer to learn through on the job experience (93%). This comes out top in both the user research conducted, independently, by Jane Hart and Towards Maturity. In fact, 93% of employees want to integrate learning and work (Treion Muller), to up their ability to learn through on the job experience and be more efficient.

Combining the findings of both Jane Hart's and Towards Maturity's reports, we get a list of preference that looks like this:

Learning through on the job experience: 93%

Collaboration and knowledge sharing: 90%

Google and online resources: 76%

Manager support: 74%

Coaching & Mentoring: 65%

Job aids and guides: 60%

Classroom: 61%

Online self-study/elearning: 49%

Webinars: 44%

Videos: 40%

Collaboration and knowledge sharing takes silver, and is probably no surprise as learning from and with others is natural, and highly effective. We're used to turning to others' for advice in the workplace and this is now easier and more widely cast through the use of social networking tools, like Slack.

Google and online resources are equally of no surprise as high rankers, but the need for manager support may be one that's not respected enough in workplace L&D. Only 4% of L&D teams provide managers with resources to support their teams with their learning. according to Towards Maturity's 2018 Benchmark Report. Yet we hear time and time again how imperative managers are to employee engagement and retention, and have already noted how important learning is to these outcomes too. It seems crazy that learning initiatives and manager support aren't knotted together in L&D strategies.

Classroom learning is a challenging one. Towards Maturity find 63% of people find it a useful form of learning, whereas Jane Hart reports that just 31% users find it very important or essential. However, Towards Maturity's survey involved 10,000 users as opposed to the 2000 surveyed by Jane. So the average comes in around 61%.

Self paced elearning is considered essential or very useful by around 49% of users, based on the same logic as above.

7. Most values quality, ease of use and relevance in online learning...

In online learning, users most value quality, ease of use and navigation, and relevance and timeliness. These findings back-up the idea of modern learners being savvy filters of 'what's giving them value, now' as they swiftly and automatically assess if content is worthy, in those first 7 seconds.

Similarly, around 55% of modern learners desire personalized learning, which fits with the idea of 'right stuff, right time to help me'.

All of these stats come from Towards Maturity's Modern Learning Content report.

8. Seeks out learning on soft-skills

Combining the lists of most popular courses from Coursera, LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.com, we found that last year, soft-skills weighed in strongly for modern learners.

What's really interesting is how the list of top soft-skill courses highlight modern learners as people empowered and willing to improve and promote themselves. ' Body language', ' Acing your interview', ' Negotiating your salary' were some of the courses listed in Lynda.com's top 25. These were alongside ' Emotional intelligence', ' Critical thinking ' and other leadership-themed subjects, which show modern professionals as people preparing for their futures and looking to develop deep problem-solving qualities.

Ranking in the top 3 subjects taken via Coursera last year is 'Learning how to learn'. We know modern learners are keen to learn, but is this telling us they don't know how? Perhaps a comment on modern-day education systems, there's signs that performance consultants and training professionals need to help coach, support and empower modern day users to develop professionally.

9. Motivated to learn because they want to do better and be more productive

Finally, we come to what most motivates modern learners to learn. Ranking way higher than hard edged reasons such as promotion or salary increases, modern day professionals are keen to learn primarily so they can do their jobs better and be more productive, and for the innate value within learning itself. Learning brings pleasure, a sense of worth, and has value in itself.

It's no wonder, when done right, it boosts employees' sense of engagement and performance.

Final thoughts

The modern learner may be busy and overwhelmed, but they are hungry to learn and savvy around they type of content that will help them get there and the skills they deem important for the future.

To engage modern learners, performance support and training and development opportunities need to empower professionals to develop their skills easily and flexibly. Learning content must be easy to find, personalized, fit for purpose and help them in those crucial moments of need. Modern L&D is also about enabling people to learn whilst working.

Yet, findings from Towards Maturity Benchmark Report 2018 show that only 1% of users are involved in the design of their learning, and just 10% say they can determine their own path through learning content provided.

What can you do to develop the kind of modern, people-centred learning experiences users need?
References.

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Profile of a modern learner in 2018 [infographic]

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This blog presents research findings to profile the traits of the modern learner. Our original 'Profile of a modern learner' infographic and blog was published in June 2016. This new version was created with the latest insights in August 2018.

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Google Slides is a freely available presentation tool that is already used by millions of people the world over.

It provides a fast and effortless way to create compelling presentations right from our browser (or app). Without the hassle of installing third-party applications, you can easily work on Google Slides to draft your next presentation. It can also help you collaborate with your team and work on a presentation together.

If you are already using Google Slides, then you must be aware of its numerous advantages. Though, there are a few tips and tricks that even the most committed users of G Slides are not aware of.

For instance, did you know you can edit videos on Google Slides or can even dictate a presentation note?

Read on and be familiar with all the remarkable tips and tricks of Google Slides and be a pro in no time!

1. Use Master Slides to save your time

Too many times, we wish to implement a change in all the slides without visiting them individually. This is exactly where Master Slides can help us. Simply go to the View > Master option to access it.

In this way, you would be able to edit all the slides simultaneously. From changing the background to adding the company logo - simply make an edit on the Master Slide and it will automatically be reflected in the entire presentation. You can learn more about Master Slides in this stepwise video tutorial.

2. Start dictating your text

If you have a working microphone on your computer, then you can easily dictate presentation text or notes as well.

Go to Tools >"Voice type speaker notes" to access this feature. This will display a Microphone icon on the screen. Simply click on it to activate the Microphone on your system and start speaking. Whatever you will narrate will automatically be added as the presentation note. Once you are done, close the icon.

This feature will help you multitask and provide real-time feedback regarding the presentation.

Note: This feature is only available in Chrome browser.

3. Integrate Google Slides with Chromecast

Google Slides also provides a quick and easy way to be integrated with Chromecast using the Google Home app. You can download Google Home on your Android device from or on your iOS device from .

Afterward, launch the app and connect your smartphone to the Chromecast device. In this way, you would be able to share your screen with the display. Without including any unwanted cable or wire, you can give your next presentation.

Make sure that your phone is on the Airplane Mode beforehand to avoid any unwanted pop-up or notification while your screen is getting shared with your audience.

4. Do more with Images

If you want to make your presentations more appealing, then you need to take the assistance of some visual aids. Thankfully, Google Slides has tons of features to use images.

You can easily use an image as a background for your slides. Besides that, you can also crop it or add borders to the image to make it stand out. G Slides also has a feature for image masking that can be used to put the selected image in the shape of your choice. You can watch this quick tutorial to learn these tricks.

5. Add sound to your presentations

Most of the people already know how to add images to Google Slides. Though, adding an audio to your slide might be a little tricky. There is no option to "Insert" an audio the way you can insert an image or a text box. Nevertheless, the solution is pretty simple.

Just copy the YouTube link of the audio you wish to add (or the link of any streaming service like Spotify, Apple Music, and more). Later, you can paste the link on the slide and hide it if you want to. This will automatically play the sound in the background. You can learn how to do it in this video.

6. Collaborate with other users

This is one of the most evident benefits of Google Slides. Unlike any other desktop software, you can easily share the Google Slide you are working on with others. This can help users to collaborate together and work on a document in a better way. Simply click on the "Share" button to do it.

You can either share the Google Slide with other users via its URL or by sending them invitations. Simply provide the email id of the collaborator, set privileges, and send them an invite to do it.

7. Maintain your personal dictionary

Even though Google Slides has an inbuilt spell-checker, it is far from perfect. Chances are that it might miss brand names, places, key terms, and more. Therefore, you can maintain your own dictionary and include these terms. Simply go to the Tools menu to access the Personal Dictionary feature. Here, you can add the words of your choice.

8. Create a drop shadow of the text

If you want to take a step-up from the basic formatting tips of text in Google Slides, then try to add a false drop shadow effect. To do this, you need to copy and paste the same text box adjacent to each other. Now, change the color of both the texts and adjust them in the right way to form a shadow-like effect. You can view it in practice right here.

9. Publish your presentation to the web

If you like to share your Google Slide with someone who doesn't have a Google account or would like to embed the slideshow in another web page, then this would be an ideal solution. Just go the "File" menu and click on the "Publish to the web" button.

The interface will have two options. Under the "Link" tab, you can edit how the slideshow progresses when shared with someone else. It is mostly used to share the document with others (without inviting them via their email id).

If you wish to embed the slideshow in another web page, then click on the "Embed" tab. From here, you can alter its size, progress, and more.

10. Restore previous versions of the presentation

A lot of users assume that since Google Slides is all about saving the content on a real-time basis, they can't access a previous version. Don't worry - you can easily restore an earlier version of the document without any hassle. Just go to the File > See Revision History option. This will provide a list of all the latest revisions made to the file. Simply select the one you wish to restore to launch it.

11. Update your slides on a real-time basis

If you want to provide up-to-date statistics to your audience while presenting, then you should definitely use this feature. You can insert a chart from Google Sheets by visiting Insert > Charts > From Sheets option. While selecting the chart, make sure the "Link to Spreadsheet" feature is enabled.

Afterward, you can arrange the chart the way you like and click on the "Update" button. This will automatically reflect the changes made on the original Sheet. Therefore, if you are representing data that is being constantly modified, then this feature will certainly be a life-saver.

Here's a quick tutorial from G Suite to teach you the same in a stepwise manner.

12. Editing a video

Google Slides also provides a fast and hassle-free way to edit videos in its native interface. Instead of editing a video in another tool and later adding it to your document, you can do it all in one place. Simply insert the video of your choice, right-click it, and go to the "Video Options".

This will launch different Video Options on the right panel. From here, you can easily trim the video, mute it, and make other changes. While the tool doesn't provide a lot of options, it can certainly save your time while drafting an interactive presentation. You can learn how to do it in this tutorial as well.

13. Link your slides

It is quite easy to create a hyperlink in Google Slides. Though, you can also link different slides as well. If you are working on an extensive presentation, then this can help you jump from one slide to another pretty easily.

Simply insert a link and choose to link "Slides in the presentation". From here, you can select the slide you wish to link pretty easily.

14. Make the Q&A session a winner

The Q&A session is often considered the most mundane part of any presentation. With this advanced tool, you can certainly change that. The Slides Q&A tool can make the session fun, interactive, and time-saving. By sharing a link with your audience, you can automate the entire process. They can simply go to the URL and submit their questions. It also allows them to ask anonymous questions as well.

Later, you can go to the Presenter view to access these questions. Your audience can even vote up or down a question as well. If you think it's complicated, then you can learn how to implement it in this tutorial.

15. Import and Export Files

Unlike other applications, Google Slides allows a seamless way to import and export documents to and from different formats. For instance, if you have already have a PowerPoint presentation and would like to edit it on Google Slides, then go to File > Import option. Select the presentation you wish to edit and launch it. Though, you should review your content as there would be a change in its overall formatting.

Similarly, you can export the document in the format of your choice as well. Go to the File > "Download As" option. From here, you can export the presentation as PPT, PDF, ODP, and other formats.

16. Use readily available templates

If you wish to stand out from the crowd while drafting a visually stunning presentation, then you should take the assistance of Google Slides templates. The tool supports readily available templates that can easily be loaded. Later, you can customize these slides and come up with a final presentation in less time. SketchBubble also has a wide variety of Google Slides templates that can help you step-up your game by drafting stunning presentations.

I'm sure that after getting to know about these amazing Google Slides tricks, you would certainly be excited to give them a try. Go ahead and implement them while working on your next presentation. If you also have a secret tip regarding Google Slides that you like to share with the rest of us, then feel free to drop a comment below.

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16 Time-saving Google Slides Tips & Tricks (Even Experts Don't Know)

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Google Slides is a freely available presentation tool that is already used by millions of people the world over. It provides a fast and effortless way to create compelling presentations right from our browser (or app). Without the hassle of installing third-party applications, you can easily work on Google Slides to draft your next presentation.

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Working with PDFs has become as common as working with Word docs, but to get the full editing capabilities in Adobe Acrobat you must shell out $449 for the desktop Pro 2017 version, or almost $180 per year for a Pro DC subscription. While there are plenty of alternative PDF editors, the simplest solution might be a tool you already use: Microsoft Word 2016.

While previous versions of Word let you save a document as a PDF, Word 2016 allows you to open an Adobe formatted file, modify it and then re-save it back to the PDF format without using Acrobat. Microsoft calls this new feature PDF Reflow, and here we'll show how it works with a file containing text and an image.

Import, export, and edit PDFs in Microsoft Word

1. Open Word 2016. Select File > Open, then Browse to the folder that contains your PDFs. Select a file and click the Open button. Notice the selected file appears in the View window on the right. For this example, select a file with text and graphics.

JD Sartain / IDG Worldwide

Select a pdf file and click open

2. Once you click Open, the following dialog box appears:

JD Sartain / IDG Worldwide

Convert to Word Dialog Box

NOTE: The message warns that large files take longer to load, and the layout in Word may not look exactly like the original PDF. That's because margins, columns, tables, page breaks, footnotes, endnotes, frames, track changes, and special format options such as font effects (among other things) may differ between the original software used to create the PDF file (such as InDesign or Microsoft Publisher) and Word.

Microsoft suggests that text documents transfer and reflow better than documents heavily laden with charts and graphics, tags, bookmarks, footnotes, and/or track changes. These additional text blocks often land in the middle of paragraphs or tagged on to the end. Be aware of these limitations so you can plan for the outcome and make adjustments as needed.

Many of the layout attributes, however, are compatible and transfer from the PDF directly into Word with no problems. For example, the following image is a copy of the original PDF we opened in Word 2016.

Modify PDFs in Word

You can easily add new paragraphs and edit and delete data, and the document reformats automatically as you type. You can even remove, replace, or reposition the graphics, and the text-wrap feature re-wraps the paragraphs around the image at its new location. You can also change the page size, the margins, the line spacing, the font and font size plus all the font attributes, and much more.

In the "edited" version of this document, the font and font size in the title, subtitle, first, and last paragraphs were all changed. In addition, the yellow paragraph was added and the image was moved from top right to bottom left, all without any problems.

In fact, Word 2016's PDF compatibility is so good, you can right-click the image and view an entire list of editable graphic options including cropping, sizing, formatting, positioning, adding captions, and even attaching hyperlinks.

With all these new features, you can now use Word 2016 as a desktop publisher, save the finished product as a compiled/condensed PDF, then ship it directly to the printer for mass production. This is a real plus for small offices and home businesses who can't afford to purchase another software program for every special function that occurs.

The real benefit for everyone else is the convenience of copying data from one document to another that previously originated within incompatible file formats. PDFs are smaller, easier to email, and much more efficient for printing because the format is portable, therefore, all the necessary elements to produce the finished product are collected into a single file.

The downside of Word's Reflow feature is that some companies use the PDF format to ensure some measure of copyright protection on the documents they distribute. There is a solution for these groups as well. Password-protect the document in Acrobat for Read Only, so the file cannot be copied or converted.

Save or export a Word document to PDF

1. Once the document is altered to your satisfaction, choose File > Save As, navigate to the appropriate folder, then choose PDF from the Save as Type dropdown list.

2. Immediately, the system displays the following PDF file type screen. Choose: Optimize for Standard (publishing online and printing) and check the box for Open File After Publishing, then click Save.

3. Another option for saving or re-saving a document as a PDF file is to export it. Choose File > Export, select Create PDF/XPS Document in the left column, then click the button with the same name.

4. Again, the system displays the following PDF file type screen. Choose : Optimize for Standard (publishing online and printing) and check the box for Open File After Publishing if you want the PDF to open after it's saved. Then click the Publish button and your new PDF is created.

Repairing PDF errors in Word

If you find errors in the republished/re-saved PDF documents, you may have to go back and reformat the pages. Text will likely re-flow with no problems, but the graphics using text-wrap may disrupt the text flow. If that happens, break up the paragraphs so that one text box ends before the image, then another, new text box begins again after the image. Once that's accomplished, hard-code the position of the graphic box.

1. Right click the image, choose Wrap Text > More Layout Options, and the following screen appears:

If your text is moved and rearranged in your new PDF, you may want to choose a Relative horizontal and vertical position. This allows the image to move with the text. If you want the image to remain absolutely at the bottom-left side of page one, then choose an Absolute horizontal and vertical position. You don't have to locate or guess the position, just move the image and the new position coordinates appear in the above box. All you have to do is click Absolute or Relative, then click OK.

Once these decisions are settled, repeat the steps above to re-save or re-export the file to a new PDF.

Export PDFs from Acrobat to Word

1. Open the new Adobe Acrobat DC (Document Cloud), and sign in.

2. Open a PDF file. In this case, we opened the file called Tea.pdf

3. Select File > Export To > Microsoft Word > Word Document (or Word 97-2003 document), if applicable.

4. On the Save As PDF screen, name your file (or use the same name), choose the Word extension (docx for 2007 through 2016 documents), and click Save.

NOTE: The first time, it takes a few seconds to a minute while the Conversion Engine gets started. But, generally, after the first one, they convert fairly fast.
This article originally published June 19, 2014.

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Working with PDFs has become as common as working with Word docs, but to get the full editing capabilities in Adobe Acrobat you must shell out $449 for the desktop Pro 2017 version, or almost $180 per year for a Pro DC subscription.

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SAMR is a model designed to help educators infuse technology into teaching and learning

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Dr. Puentedura graciously Creative Commons-licenses some of his papers to allow for reproduction on other sites with attribution.

I have taken one of the PDF files and turned it into a slideshow below. I have included links to the original PDF files in case you want to download it from Dr. Puentedura's site.

Bloom's and SAMR:
​My thoughts based on the work of R. Puentedura, A. Churches and L. Nelson

I feel teachers need to both create tasks that target the higher-order cognitive skills (Bloom's) as well as design tasks that have a significant impact on student outcomes (SAMR). A visual to illustrate that follows.

Educators will argue they have seen redefinition tasks that only target the remembering level or have a creative assessment that is only at the augmentation level. Of course that is true, but I believe we should be planning for technology tasks, activities, and assessments that include both the higher levels of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and the transformation area of the SAMR model.

My vision of how the Bloom's and SAMR models work together and intersect follows below.

Bloom's and TECH: My thoughts

Work by others

Videos by others

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SAMR is a model designed to help educators infuse technology into teaching and learning. Popularized by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, the model supports and enables teachers to design, develop, and ...

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Best Ways To Spell-Check As You Go In Chrome

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Proper spelling is more than a courtesy; it's also a sign of intelligence and good education. These days, you don't actually need to know how to spell to make a good impression.

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Collated by CS Edu

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Top Tech for Using Augmented and Virtual Reality

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Immerse students in new worlds with AR and VR. Explore this Top Tech for Using Augmented and Virtual Reality Top Picks list of 13 tools curated by Common Sense Education editors to find relevant and engaging edtech solutions for your classroom.

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How to duplicate screen on multiple monitors

Windows makes it surprisingly easy to work with multiple monitors, but in most cases you'll be working with two, or perhaps three at a push. Two is great for having several applications visible at once, while three is great for gaming - if your graphics card is up to the job. You might occasionally connect a projector to your laptop, but as Windows sees this as just another monitor, the process is exactly the same.

How to duplicate the screen in Windows

When you first connect a second monitor, Windows should detect it and automatically shows the screen on both displays. This is the case regardless of whether you have a PC with two monitors or a laptop with a screen or projector attached.

If you don't see an image on the second screen, look for a function key on the top row of keys on your laptop which shows two monitors. Press the Fn key and the appropriate function key (F5 on the laptop below, for example) and it should toggle through the various configurations: laptop display only, laptop + external screen, external screen only.

You can also try pressing the Windows key and P at the same time for the same effect.

If you still have no image and your second screen is displaying "No signal" then try selecting a different input as it might not automatically select the one you're using. You'll have to check your monitor or projector's manual to find out how to do that if it's not obvious from the available buttons and menus.

If all else fails, go to the Windows desktop, right click and choose Screen resolution ( Display settings in later versions including Windows 10). If you see only one screen in the drop-down Display list, try clicking the Detect button to force Windows to scan for the second screen. In Windows 10, scroll down until you see Multiple Displays and click the Detect button.

How to configure multiple screens in Windows

When all screens are detected, you can choose how Windows uses them.

If you want to duplicate the screens and have the same image on both, make sure 'Duplicate these displays' is selected in the Multiple displays drop-down menu. It's much the same in Windows 8 and 10.

In Windows 10, you won't see the Resolution setting. This has been moved to 'Advanced' so you have to click 'Advanced display settings' to see the drop-down menu.

It's worth noting that duplicating displays is often a compromise if your screens have different resolutions or aspect ratios. For example, if you hook up a 1024x768 projector to a laptop with a1366x768 screen, both will run at 1024x768, and you'll end up with black bars on the left and right on your laptop screen.

Here's how to connect two displays to a laptop via DisplayPort

How to extend the desktop across multiple monitors

If you're not using a projector, which is when it makes most sense to duplicate the screen, then you probably want to extend the desktop to have different things on each screen.

To do that, simply choose 'Extend these displays' instead of 'Duplicate these displays'.

You can select a monitor in the diagram at the top and drag it to the position it's in on your desk. Here we've put the second monitor on the left of the laptop because it defaults to the right. You can move the smaller screen up and down, too. This affects where your mouse cursor can cross the screens.

You'll also notice you can select different resolutions for each screen, but you much select each screen in turn. Only one of the monitors can be your main monitor, but it doesn't matter which: you choose by clicking on the screen in the diagram and then checking the box next to 'Make this my main screen'.

In Windows 7, that means it will be the only monitor with a task bar and start button. In Windows 8 and 10, you get those on all screens, but only the notification area and clock on the main screen.

Here's how to enable 2560x1440 resolution on a monitor via HDMI and how to connect a 4K screen to a PC.

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Here's how to duplicate or extend the screen across multiple monitors in Windows

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Windows makes it surprisingly easy to work with multiple monitors, but in most cases you'll be working with two, or perhaps three at a push. Two is great for having several applications visible at once, while three is great for gaming - if your graphics card is up to the job.

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Relevant for Moodle

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E-Learning Blog for Croydon College and University Centre Croydon.

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Download free background music for your videos, movies, and websites. Free for personal and commercial projects.

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Free online word cloud generator and tag cloud creator

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Wordclouds.com is a free online word cloud generator and tag cloud generator, similar to Wordle. Create your own word clouds and tag clouds. Paste text or upload documents and select shape, colors and font to create your own word cloud. Wordclouds.com can also generate clickable word clouds with links (image map). Save or share the resulting image.

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More than 5 things to do with LEGO in the classroom

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More than 5 things to do with LEGO in the classroom

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Firstly, I'd like to put this post into some sort of context. In 2002, I landed a dream job (at the time) working at the LEGO Company. The next five years were so much fun and those little coloured bricks became part of my everyday life. Now I feel I need to give the studded plastic something back and perhaps offer them another raison d'etre. At the LEGO Company, when I attended any kind of meeting, there was, 99% of the time, a bowl of LEGO bricks on the table. They weren't just decoration - they were to be fiddled with - and I defy anyone not to feel the tension drop in their shoulders and the inner child not to emerge when given the green light to tinker with those little blocks of primary-coloured plastic during a business meeting. 'LEGO' by the way is not a typo, but brand requirement in any written reference to the toy and yes, I was brainwashed by a zealous marketing department.

So, this guest post is me attempting to give something back to a toy that gave me so much pleasure as a child, and as a working adult. It is not something I am doing for the sake of a whacky post. In a cynically corporate world, LEGO remains a family business with a genuine set of wholesome values that runs through its core. The company began in the 1930s with a 17 year old Danish boy, Ole Kirk Christiansen, carving wooden toys. The word 'LEGO' itself comes from two Danish words "LEg GOdt" meaning "play well". Over the years it has become a huge brand with worldwide appeal and has the well-earned status of "Toy of the Century" (Fortune Magazine and the British Association of Toy Retailers). It has, I believe, a unique ability in today's toy market, to transcend age, language and gender barriers and encourage a therapeutic feeling of familiarity and comfort in adults and children alike. So given the smiles it so often brings in our hands, why not bring some brick-shaped joy into the ELT classroom?

So without further ado, here are my five suggestions of things to do with LEGO in the ELT classroom. By the way, for some of these activities, it may be worth checking whether any of your students suffer from colour blindness.
LEGO Running 'Bricktation'
This activity works in a very similar way to the well-know 'running dictation' ELT activity. However, rather than a text pinned up on the wall, students refer to a picture of a LEGO model from a set of building instructions.

For some model pictures ideal for this activity, you can visit the LEGO Instructions Site at http://us.service.lego.com/en-US/BuildingInstructions/default.aspx. Filter under the "Select a Brand" drop-down box for "Creative Building System" (LEGO Creative being the sets that come unthemed - they are often sold as a box of bricks with an Ideas Book). Choose one of the Ideas Book pdf files. The models in these pamphlets are usually of a good size and difficulty for this task.

This activity is aimed at encouraging good verbal communication and looking at some of the language needed to give clear instructions and make suggestions.

Divide the class into teams. It doesn't matter how many people in each team as students can take it in turns to be the runner if necessary. If the class is small, this activity can also be in pairs with one person the builder and the other the runner. I have found however that the energy is far greater, the more people on each team.

Give each team a box of LEGO, ensuring obviously that each box contains the necessary bricks needed to build the model (don't laugh - I've not checked before and it's a disaster!).

Pin the picture of the finished model to the wall or outside the classroom in the corridor.

Each team selects a builder and the first runner and off they go!

Each runner heads to the instructions memorises a section and returns to the builder with the next set of verbal instructions on how to put the model together.

The teacher observes, collecting language, focussing on good examples and instances which need refining. You could choose to focus on a particular language point such as imperatives or questions forms and then look at how the successful teams functioned as a group.

At the end of the activity look at how each group's model compares to the one on the wall.

Writing instructions activity
Students begin by building a model together as a class. In teams, they then build their own model and write out instructions so other teams can try and replicate it. The idea here is to develop the skill of writing concise instructions and working together with other students towards a common objective.

The task begins with the class helping to build a larger model together. Distribute the bricks needed randomly around the class so that each student has a few. Show the written instructions on the board and invite students to put the model together as a class. With the instructions on the board, this stage exposes the students to some of the language they will need to perform the writing task later on in the lesson.

After the class model is completed, the teacher gives students boxes of LEGO with assorted bricks in.

In pairs, students build a model of something. They can let their imaginations run wild here!

The teacher goes around the room, observing and helping with language between the pairs if necessary.

When students have finished their models, students then write up instructions on how to build their models.

While students are writing up their instructions, the teacher takes a quick photo of each of the finished models.

Students dismantle the models and hand in their box and instructions to the teacher.

The teacher then redistributes the boxes to different pairs.

With their new box and set of instructions, students set about building the models designed by the other teams.

While students are building their new models, the teacher will need to hook up the camera to the IWB/PC and upload the model pictures. When everyone is finished, the final models are compared with what they should look like.

It's nice at this point too if students can give feedback on how easy the instructions were to follow. Did they have any difficulties? What differences are their between the original design and their attempt?

Be sure to check back tomorrow for more great teaching ideas with LEGO®!

Note: This article by Emma Herrod originally appeared on Teaching Village, and is licensed under a Creative Commons, Attribution-Non Commercial, No Derivatives 3.0 License. If you wish to share it you must re-publish it "as is", and retain any credits, acknowledgements, and hyperlinks within it.

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More Than Five Things to do with LEGO® in the EFL Classroom Part 1

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Firstly, I'd like to put this post into some sort of context. In 2002, I landed a dream job (at the time) working at the LEGO Company. The next five years were so much fun and those little coloured bricks became part of my everyday life.

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Your Step-by-Step Guide To Design High-Impact Blended Training - Featuring 7 Success Stories [2018 Update]

In Oct'17, I released the eBook Your Step-by-Step Guide to Design High-Impact Blended Training Programs (you can read about it in this article).

In Mar'18, I did a webinar on the same subject and have used the pointers to update the eBook.

The notable changes in the updated release of Your Step-By-Step Guide To Design High-Impact Blended Training Programs - Featuring 7 Success Stories are:

1. The inclusion of top 5 challenges associated with the transformation of ILT to blended training.

2. How can these challenges be offset through our step-by-step toolkit that can guide you through a successful transition?

3. 7 success stories that outline how high impact blended training were created.

The updated eBook provides several insights including:

1. The definition and the factors that are increasing its adoption.

2. The benefits that organizations and learners will see as ILT programs transition to blended training.

3. The key challenges that you may face as you transition from ILT to blended training.

4. A step-by-step guide that you can use to offset these challenges.

5. Tips and best practices that can help you transition to blended training effectively.

6. 7 examples that show you success stories of effective transition from ILT to blended training programs. The featured examples include instances of 5 corporate training needs and two examples from higher education segment.

While there are several reasons why organizations are looking at moving their ILT training programs to blended training; the top 3 reasons are:

1. Business need to train a wider audience in a shorter time.

2. Training budget cuts or need to use the available budgets optimally.

3. Learners are seeking higher flexibility in the way they want to learn (on the go, self-paced, and on the device of their choice).

This is also reaffirmed by a research:

According to the 2016 Benchmark Report: The State of Online Training, 'Technology has not decreased the demand for Instructor-Led Training but gives instructors new tools to reach learners...The trend in Instructor-Led Learning is enablement through technology, both in hybrid and fully virtual delivery.'

How Will This eBook Help You?

The transition from ILT to blended training offers several advantages. However, it also has several associated challenges too.

In Your Step-By-Step Guide To Design High-Impact Blended Training Programs - Featuring 7 Success Stories, I introduce our step-by-step toolkit that you can use to handle the challenges and create a successful transformation of your existing ILT to blended training.

This is not all. I also list out a list of practical tips and best practices that will provide further cues to manage the transformation and offset the challenges.
The eBook addresses questions like:

1. What is blended training?

2. Why are we seeing an increase in adoption of blended training over traditional ILT?

3. What are the benefits for organizations and learners as they opt for blended training?

4. What are the challenges associated with the transformation from ILT to blended training?

5. What are the possible delivery models in blended training that you could opt for?

6. What is our Step-by-Step toolkit and how can it guide you successfully through your transformation?

7. What are the tips and best practices that can help you create high impact blended training?

About The eBook

The eBook features the following 5 sections:

Section 1 - Basics

The first section starts with the definition of blended training and then examines why is there an increase in the adoption of blended training.

Section 2 - Benefits

This section outlines the key benefits that organizations and learners will see as the ILT programs move to a more flexible, blended training approach. It also outlines the top 5 challenges that you are likely to encounter as you begin the process of transformation.

Section 3 - Deployment

This section outlines the key models that can be used to determine the "blend" of training from ILT to varied degrees of online training mix. More significantly, it provides cues on how to use our Step-by-Step toolkit that you can use to chart your way forward.

Section 4 - Tips And Best Practices

This section outlines the practical tips and best practices that can be used to increase the impact of blended training. These cues in addition to the Step-by-Step toolkit will assist you in creating a successful transformation.

Section 5 - Featuring 7 Success Stories

The last section of the eBook features 7 success stories that will give you a food for thought and practical insights for blending a similar ILT program.

This includes:

1. 5 examples featuring corporate training on how you can enhance the impact of ILT by adopting a blended training approach.

2. 2 examples featuring how you can enhance the impact of ILT by adopting a blended training approach in higher education.

Do download this free eBook Your Step-By-Step Guide To Design High-Impact Blended Training Programs - Featuring 7 Success Stories and use this to craft the right strategy and approach plan to offer blended training. Use our Step-by-Step toolkit, tips, and best practices to design high-impact blended training programs in your organization.

The Impact

Blended training can create a significantly different impact than traditional ILT program. The key is determining the optimal blend and crafting the right plan to support its design and implementation. This eBook aims to assist you in this mandate. More significantly, the examples show you how blended training can create the required impact.

If you have any specific queries or would like to see how you can use blended training in your organization, do contact me at [email protected]

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Free eBook: Your Step-by-Step Guide To Design High-Impact Blended Training - Featuring 7 Success Stories [2018 Update] - eLearning Industry

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In Oct'17, I released the eBook Your Step-by-Step Guide to Design High-Impact Blended Training Programs (you can read about it in this article). In Mar'18, I did a webinar on the same subject and have used the pointers to update the eBook.

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5 Office 365 Business Tools to Skyrocket Your Productivity

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Office 365 comes with lots of different tools, but here are a few that can help your team be more productive and collaborative.

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Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Google knows where you've been

Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone. You can see a timeline of where you've been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/maps/timeline?...

Here is every place I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. You can see the time of day that I was in the location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one.

Google knows everything you've ever searched - and deleted

Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, it may still have data saved from other devices.

Click on this link to see your own data: myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Google has an advertisement profile of you

Google creates an advertisement profile based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lb in one day?) and income.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/settings/ads/

Google knows all the apps you use

Google stores information on every app and extension you use. They know how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with. That means they know who you talk to on Facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time you go to sleep.

Click on this link to see your own data: security.google.com/settings/secur...

Google has all of your YouTube history

Google stores all of your YouTube history, so they probably know whether you're going to be a parent soon, if you're a conservative, if you're a progressive, if you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, if you're anorexic ...

Click on this link to see your own data: youtube.com/feed/history/s...

The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents

Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I've requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.

Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you've taken on your phone, the businesses you've bought from, the products you've bought through Google ...

They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you've purchased, the Google groups you're in, the websites you've created, the phones you've owned, the pages you've shared, how many steps you walk in a day ...

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/takeout

Facebook has reams and reams of data on you, too

Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information. Mine was roughly 600MB, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents.

This includes every message you've ever sent or been sent, every file you've ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you've ever sent or been sent.

Click here to see your data: https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

'A snapshot of the data Facebook has saved on me.' Photograph: Dylan Curran

Facebook stores everything from your stickers to your login location

Facebook also stores what it thinks you might be interested in based off the things you've liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic "girl").

Somewhat pointlessly, they also store all the stickers you've ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It's just a joke at this stage).

They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device.

And they store all the applications you've ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I'm interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was single between X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.

(Side note, if you have Windows 10 installed, this is a picture of just the privacy options with 16 different sub-menus, which have all of the options enabled by default when you install Windows 10)

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Privacy options in Windows 10. Photograph: Dylan Curran

They can access your webcam and microphone

The data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.

Here are some of the different ways Google gets your data

I got the Google Takeout document with all my information, and this is a breakdown of all the different ways they get your information.

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Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you | Dylan Curran

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Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it. Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone.

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Use your mobile device as a vector converter to turn photos into colour themes, patterns, type, materials, brushes and shapes. Then bring those assets into your favourite desktop and mobile apps - including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Dimension, XD and Photoshop Sketch - to use in all your creative projects.

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Photo to vector converter app for iOS, Android | Adobe Capture

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Turn any photo into a colour theme, Look, vector graphic or unique brush that you can use in your creative projects with Adobe Capture.

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17 tricks and hacks using Google in the classroom

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17 tricks and hacks using Google in the classroom

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17 Little-Known Tips, Tricks and Hacks for Using Google in the Classroom - EdSurge News

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Here's a slightly Orwellian way to check whether your students may have plagiarized part of their essays: the Chrome extension Draftback, which plays back the revision history of any Google doc you can edit-down to the keystroke.

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Use this beginner's guide to start your experience with Microsoft Excel. The basic spreadsheet tips here will help you start learning Excel on your own.

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Other than Evernote, the other most popular note-taking application for Android devices is Google Keep. Part of this is due to the fact that the app is pre-installed on many devices, while another reason is that the app comes directly from Google.

Today, we're going to take a look at some of the best tips & tricks to fully maximize your experience and take full advantage of Google Keep.

Starting us off with these tips & tricks for Google Keep is the ability to color code your notes. If you're like me and take notes that fall into different categories, color coding can make your life much easier.

The best part is that color-coding these notes is extremely simple, and organization of these notes is much simpler. In order to color code one of your notes, you'll need to follow these steps:

1. Open your note

2. Tap the overflow button in the bottom right-hand corner

3. Select a color of your choice

When it comes organization, color-coding can only go so far. That's where labels come into play. You can add and create labels by simply using #hashtags when creating each note.

Then, once you need to go back and find a specific note, you can simply search for the label name that you used, and it will appear. This is extremely helpful if you end up taking a lot of notes and need to find something from a specific category.

Set reminders

In addition to just taking notes, Google Keep also acts as a traditional to-do list. You can create checklists within notes, and you can even add reminders to said notes.

The best part about these reminders is that you can go the traditional route of choosing a date and time, but you can also opt to use location-based reminders. This will ensure that you never forget to take the trash out once you get home as Keep will remind you.

Additionally, when these reminders have been set, you will see the notification appear on any device that your Google account is logged into. This will ensure that the task gets completed and that you can knock another to-do off the list.

Here are the steps to set a reminder:

1. Open your note

2. Tap the 'Finger with twine' icon in the top left-hand corner

3. Select 'Time' or 'Place'

4. Save

5. Profit!

Use Images as notes

This next feature is something that I didn't realize was so useful until I started getting older and my memory started getting worse. If you are using Google Keep for just about everything, you can also "take notes" using pictures.

This may come in handy if you want to check out a specific product later on for price-matching purposes, or if you need to remind yourself to pick something up from the store. There are two methods in which you can use Keep to save pictures as notes/reminders.

The first of which requires you creating a new note in Keep, tapping the '+' icon next to the text input, and selecting "Take Photo". The next method comes after you've already taken the picture.

Once you have taken the picture that you want to add to Keep, open your Gallery, tap the 'share' button, and scroll until you see Keep. Then, you will be taken to Keep where you can add a title, label, or description before saving.

Collaborate

Google has really made life easy for those who work remotely and need to be able to collaborate with others that aren't in the office. As is the case with Google Drive, you can share your notes with others, making collaboration extremely simple.

Once a note has been created, you'll want to follow these steps to share it:

1. Open your note

2. Tap the overflow button in the bottom right-hand corner

3. Select 'Collaborator'

4. Enter the email for the contact to share the note with

After the note has been shared, the other party will then be able to see what you are working on. This feature would also be useful for partners who want to quickly and easily share or edit grocery/shopping lists.

Audio Notes

I don't know about you, but from time to time, I get tired of typing on my devices. This is where voice dictation comes into play.

Voice dictation has been a live-saver on multiple occasions, and it's built right into Google Keep. As is the case with taking pictures as notes, there are actually two methods to activate dictation in Keep.

The first is found when tapping the '+' icon in your note. When tapping the icon, you'll see a section called 'Recording' which will allow you to quickly dictate your notes.

The second option comes from your keyboard. Yup, simply open up your note of choice (or create a new one) and tap the microphone icon. Then you'll be able to talk until you're blue in the face, or at least until you get the point across.

Bookmark tool

This next feature is the ability to use Google Keep as a way to keep track of your favorite bookmarks. You can think of this as another alternative to Pocket or Instapaper, and even works with your desktop browser.

Your mileage may vary depending on which browser you use on your smartphone, but the steps to save a webpage for reading later is easy. Simply open the link you want to share in your browser, tap the overflow menu button (in Chrome), select 'Share'.

From there you'll need to select Keep, and you will be able to add labels or add more notes to the listing.

Export to Google Docs

It comes as no surprise that Google makes all of its productivity apps able to work together and talk to each other. The same rings true for Google Keep and the Google Drive suite of services.

If you start working on a project and want to move things to a more open service like Docs, Google makes things simple. Simply open up the note of your choice, tap the three dot overflow button, and select "Send".

From there, you are presented with two options - "Copy to Google Docs" and "Send via other apps". Obviously, you will want to select "Copy to Google Docs" and then you will see a notification at the bottom of the screen when the note has been moved to Docs.

Recover archived notes

The final tip that we're going to share today is for those who want to drudge up the past. We kid, but there are times when you accidentally archive notes and you need to get them back into the list.

Here are the steps you need to take to unarchive a Google Keep note:

1. Go to the main screen for Keep

2. Tap the hamburger menu button in the top left-hand corner

3. Scroll down and select "Archive"

4. Open the note that you want to be unarchived

5. Tap the 'archive' button in the top right-hand corner

6. Profit!

Conclusion

Of course, these are just a few of our favorite tips & tricks for Google Keep, so we'll be turning it to you. Let us know some of your favorite tips and how they may have helped you to become a more productive person!
Read more: Top 7 Android writing apps for students
If you want to give Google Keep a shot for yourself, hit the button below!
Download Google Keep!

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Nine tips & tricks to master Google Keep

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Other than Evernote, the other most popular note-taking application for Android devices is Google Keep. Part of this is due to the fact that the app is pre-installed on many devices, while another reason is that the app comes directly from Google.

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Accessibility for Docs editors - Computer - Docs editors Help

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The Google Docs editors are designed to be accessible by everyone, regardless of the device you're using. You can use screen readers, Braille devices, screen magnification, and more. Use a screen rea

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Microsoft Windows may get all the press coverage, but when you want to get real work done, you turn your attention to the applications that run on it. And if you use spreadsheets, that generally means Excel.

The current version is Excel 2016, released in late 2015 when the entire Office suite was upgraded. But although you may have upgraded to the latest version, you might be missing out on some worthwhile features introduced in Excel 2016 -- that's what we'll look at in this story.

Your copy of Excel 2016 may have been purchased as standalone software or as part of an Office 365 subscription. But that doesn't matter; all the tips here apply to whatever version of Excel 2016 you're using.
Share this story: IT folks, we hope you'll pass this guide on to your users to help them learn the Excel 2016 ropes.
Using the Ribbon

The Ribbon interface that you came to know and love (or perhaps hate) in earlier versions of Excel hasn't changed much in Excel 2016. Since the Ribbon has been included in Office suite applications since Office 2007, we assume that by now you're familiar with how it works. If you need a refresher, see our Excel 2010 cheat sheet.

As in Excel 2013, the Ribbon in Excel 2016 has a flattened look that's cleaner and less cluttered than in Excel 2010 and 2007. The 2016 Ribbon is smaller than it was in Excel 2013, the title bar now is now solid green rather than the previous white, and the menu text for the Ribbon (File, Home, Insert and so on) is now a mix of upper- and lowercase rather than all caps. But it still works in the same way and you'll find most of the commands in the same locations as in Excel 2013.

To find out which commands reside on which tabs on the Ribbon, download our Excel 2016 Ribbon quick reference. Also see the nifty new Tell Me feature described below.

Just as in previous versions of Excel, if you want the Ribbon to go away, press Ctrl-F1. To make it appear again, press Ctrl-F1 and it comes back.

And if for some reason that nice green color on the title bar is just too much for you, you can turn it white, gray or black. To do it, select File > Options > General. In the "Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office" section, click the down arrow next to Office Theme, and select Dark Gray, Black or White from the drop-down menu. To make the title bar green again, instead choose the "Colorful" option from the drop-down list.

If you're working in a workbook you've saved in OneDrive or SharePoint, you'll see a new button on the Ribbon, just to the right of the Share button. It's the Activity button, and it's particularly handy for shared workbooks. Click it and you'll see the history of what's been done to the spreadsheet, notably who has saved it and when. To see a previous version, click the "Open version" link underneath when someone has saved it, and the older version will appear.

And there's a very useful difference in what Microsoft calls the backstage area that appears when you click File on the Ribbon: If you click Open, Save or Save As from the menu on the left, you can see the cloud-based services you've connected to your Office account, such as SharePoint and OneDrive. Each location now displays its associated email address underneath it. This is quite helpful if you use a cloud service with more than one account, such as if you have one OneDrive account for personal use and another one for business. You'll be able to see at a glance which is which.

Tell Me makes Excel simpler to use

Excel has never been the most user-friendly of applications, and it has so many powerful features it can be tough to use. Excel 2016 has taken a good-sized step towards making it easier with a new feature called Tell Me, which puts even buried tools in easy reach.

To use it, click the "Tell me what you want to do" text, to the right of the View tab on the Ribbon. (Keyboard fans can instead press Alt-Q.) Then type in a task you want to do, such as "Create a pivot table." You'll get a menu showing potential matches for the task. In this instance, the top result is a direct link to the form for creating a PivotTable -- select it and you'll start creating the PivotTable right away, without having to go to the Ribbon's Insert tab first. If you'd like more information about your task, the last two items that appear in the Tell Me menu let you select from related Help topics or search for your phrase using Smart Lookup. (More on Smart Lookup below.)

Even if you consider yourself a spreadsheet jockey, it'll be worth your while trying out Tell Me. It's a big time-saver, and far more efficient than hunting through the Ribbon to find a command. Also useful is that it remembers the features you've previously clicked on in the box, so when you click in it, you first see a list of previous tasks you've searched for. That makes sure that tasks that you frequently perform are always within easy reach. And it puts tasks you rarely do within easy reach as well.

Smart Lookup helps with online research

Another new feature, Smart Lookup, lets you do research while you're working on a spreadsheet. Right-click a cell with a word or group of words in it, and from the menu that appears, select Smart Lookup. When you do that, Excel 2016 uses Bing to do a web search on the word or words, and displays definitions, any related Wikipedia entries, and other results from the web in Smart Lookup pane that appears on the right. If you just want a definition of the word, click the Define link in the pane. If you want more information, click the Explore link in the pane.

For generic terms, such as payback period or ROI, it works well. But don't expect Smart Lookup to research financial information that you might want to put into your spreadsheet, at least based on my experience. When I did a Smart Lookup on "Inflation rate in France 2016," for example, I got results for the UEFA Euro 2016 soccer tournament, and other information telling me that 2016 was a leap year. And when I searched for "Steel output United States," Smart Lookup pulled up the Wikipedia entry for the United States.

Note that in order to use Smart Lookup in Excel or any other Office 2016 app, you might first need to enable Microsoft's intelligent services feature, which collects your search terms and some content from your spreadsheets and other documents. (If you're concerned about privacy, you'll need to weigh whether the privacy hit is worth the convenience of doing research from right within the app.) If you haven't enabled it, you'll see a screen when you click Smart Lookup asking you to turn it on. Once you do so, it will be turned on across all your Office 2016 applications.

Charting the new chart types

Spreadsheets aren't just about raw data -- they're about charts as well. Charts are great for visualizing and presenting data, and for gaining insights from it. To that end, Excel 2016 has six new chart types, including most notably a histogram (frequently used in statistics), a "waterfall" that's effective at showing running financial totals, and a hierarchical treemap that helps you find patterns in data. Note that the new charts are only available if you're working in an .xlsx document. If you use the older .xls format, you won't find them.

To see all the new charts, put your cursor in a cell or group of cells that contains data, select Insert > Recommended Charts and click the All Charts tab. You'll find the new charts, mixed in with the older ones. Select any to create the chart.

These are the six new chart types:

Treemap. This chart type creates a hierarchical view of your data, with top-level categories (or tree branches) shown as rectangles, and with subcategories (or sub-branches) shown as smaller rectangles grouped inside the larger ones. Thus, you can easily compare the sizes of top-level categories and subcategories in a single view. For instance, a bookstore can see at a glance that it brings in more revenue from 1st Readers, a subcategory of Children's Books, than for the entire Non-fiction top-level category.

Sunburst. This chart type also displays hierarchical data, but in a multi-level pie chart. Each level of the hierarchy is represented by a circle. The innermost circle contains the top-level categories, the next circle out shows subcategories, the circle after that subsubcategories and so on.

Sunbursts are best for showing the relationships among categories and subcategories, while treemaps are better at showing the relative sizes of categories and subcategories.

Waterfall. This chart type is well-suited for visualizing financial statements. It displays a running total of the positive and negative contributions toward a final net value.

Histogram. This kind of chart shows frequencies within a data set. It could, for example, show the number of books sold in specific price ranges in a bookstore.

Pareto. This chart, also known as a sorted histogram, contains bars as well as a line graph. Values are represented in descending order by bars. The cumulative total percentage of each bar is represented by a rising line. In the bookstore example, each bar could show a reason for a book being returned (defective, priced incorrectly, and so on). The chart would show, at a glance, the primary reasons for returns, so a bookstore owner could focus on those issues.

Note that the Pareto chart does not show up when you select Insert > Recommended Charts > All Charts. To use it, first select the data you want to chart, then select Insert > Insert Statistic Chart, and under Histogram, choose Pareto.

Box & Whisker. This chart, like a histogram, shows frequencies within a data set but provides for a deeper analysis than a histogram. For example, in a bookstore it could show the distribution of prices of different genres of books. In the example shown here, each "box" represents the first to third quartile of prices for books in that genre, while the "whiskers" (the lines extending up and down from the box) show the upper and lower range of prices. Outliers that are priced outside the whiskers are shown as dots, the median price for each genre is shown with a horizontal line across the box, and the mean price is shown with an x.

For more information about the new chart types, see PCWorld's " What to do with Excel 2016's new chart styles: Treemap, Sunburst, and Box & Whisker" and " Excel 2016 charts: How to use the new Pareto, Histogram, and Waterfall formats."

Improved collaboration... sort of

When Office 2016 was released at the end of 2015, the most trumpeted new feature was real-time collaboration that let people work simultaneously with each other on documents no matter where they were, as long as they had internet connections. When you collaborate with others live, everyone with access to a document can work on it simultaneously, with everyone seeing what everyone else does as they edit.

But Excel was left out in the cold for live collaboration. Only Word, PowerPoint and OneNote had that feature, with Microsoft saying that at some undetermined time, Excel would be given live collaboration.

In late July of 2017, Microsoft at last rolled out real-time collaboration to the Excel 2016 desktop client - but only to Office 365 subscribers who have updated to Version 1707 Build 8326.2058 or later. See "How to use Excel's new live collaboration features" for a complete walkthrough of how to use them.

If you're not an Office 365 subscriber, you can't yet collaborate live in the Excel 2016 desktop version; however, you can collaborate live using the web-based version of Excel, and I'll show you how to do that here. As for collaboration using the non-subscription desktop version, there is a kludgy way to do it after a fashion, called Simple Sharing. I'll cover that after explaining how to use the web-based version of Excel to collaborate.

Collaborating using Excel Online

To collaborate using the online version of Excel, the file you want to share needs to be in OneDrive, SharePoint or Dropbox. To start, head to Excel Online by going to office.com; then sign in using your Microsoft ID and click the Excel button. When Excel runs, open the file you want to share.

Next, click the Share button at the top right of the screen. A screen pops up over Excel. In it, enter the email address of the person with whom you want to share. If you want to share with more than one person, enter multiple email addresses. Then type in a note if you want, and click Share. The people you share the document with can edit the document by default. However, you can give them read-only access instead by clicking the "Recipients can edit" link under the Share button and choosing "Recipients can only view" from the drop-down list.

When you're done, a screen pops up confirming to whom you've sent the email, and whether they can edit or only read the document. On this screen you can also send another email to share with others, by clicking the "Invite people" link. When you're done with the screen, click Close.

Note that your experience with sharing in Excel Online may vary slightly, although the basic steps should be similar. When my editor tested these steps, she clicked the Share button and then chose the Share with People menu option before seeing the pop-up screen. She was also able to select "Can edit" or "Can view" from that initial screen, before sending the email invites. To invite more people, she clicked the Share button again and repeated the sequence.

Excel now sends an email to all the people with whom you want to collaborate. When they click the "View in OneDrive" button, they'll open the spreadsheet. At this point, they can view the spreadsheet, but not edit it. To edit it, they need to click Edit Workbook and select Edit in Browser. They can then edit the document right in their browser window.

Everyone using the document sees the changes that other people make in real time. Each person's presence is indicated by a colored cursor, and everyone gets a different color. As they take actions, such as entering data into a cell or creating a chart, their work instantly appears to everyone else.

On the upper right of the screen is a list of everyone collaborating on the document. Click a name to see the location of the cell they're currently working on (for example, G11). You can also hover your mouse over someone's colored cursor and see their name.

Chat isn't available. But if you click the Skype icon on the upper right of the screen, you can launch Skype, see if they're on the service, and communicate with them that way.

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Microsoft Windows may get all the press coverage, but when you want to get real work done, you turn your attention to the applications that run on it. And if you use spreadsheets, that generally means Excel. The current version is Excel 2016, released in late 2015 when the entire Office suite was upgraded.

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Virtual College

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As the new GDPR legislation comes into place in May 2018, Virtual College have put together some free resources to help your organisation prepare.

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For visually impaired

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There's no getting away from it, Microsoft's focus on driving new technologies forward to help those with accessibility needs have been pretty groundbreaking in recent times. The Immersive Reader that works within Office Lens is one such example. Simply take a photo of a document within Office Lens and have the built-in Immersive Reader read the document to you. Add to that the recent launch of the Seeing AI app which featured in my January Newsletter which can describe scenes around you amongst other features; Microsoft are working hard to improve accessibility for all.

Yesterday, Microsoft launched another new app to help those with visual impairments. The app, ' Soundscape ' aims to improve navigation by improving perceptions of the surrounding areas by calling out information about the surrounding scene. It is available from the App Store and is free with an age rating of 4+.

They describe it thus:

" empowers more people to explore the world around them through a 3D audio experience. The app enriches your perception of surroundings as you walk, helping you get where you want to go. Rushing between classes, going for coffee with a friend or touring a new city with the family are all common experiences that could be more rewarding and cause less anxiety for nearly 300 million people with sight loss worldwide.

Microsoft's technology enables you to set audio beacons at familiar destinations and landmarks, and then use 3D audio cues to improve your ambient awareness as you make your way to the destination. By simply connecting a stereo headset, you can explore the outdoor world with more independence. With 3D audio, the sounds are perceived as coming from the point of interest, so the user can build a mental image of what's around from the sounds in the environment and the Soundscape app. "

Such is their commitment to these kinds of endeavours, it is really heartwarming that, like the Seeing AI app and Office Lens, these are apps that are being designed for iOS first. Yes... that's right... Apple who are Microsoft's competitors are having apps developed by Microsoft for their platform before anyone else. Now that's commitment.

What can it do and how does it work?

The audio that is read out to you about what is around you is read using 360° audio. That means that for example if a landmark was to your left, you'd hear it in your left ear. If it is behind you, it'll sound like it's behind you. You get the picture.

There are other features too such as the ability to be able to leave audio markers on objects. This means that if you want to explore an area but have guidance to get back to where you started, simply leave an audio marker which you'll always be able to hear through this spacial audio to assist you getting back to where you started.

In summary?

Another great move by Microsoft to help everyone with their assistive technology. I'm really impressed! You can download the Soundscape app for free from the App Store here.

Thanks!

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New Microsoft App which calls out landmarks to help the visually impaired

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There's no getting away from it, Microsoft's focus on driving new technologies forward to help those with accessibility needs have been pretty groundbreaking in recent times. The Immersive Reader that works within Office Lens is one such example. Simply take a photo of a document within Office Lens and have the built-in Immersive Reader read the document to you.

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Today, I read a really great blog post by Bill Ferriter called Simple Truth: Technology Changes. The Skills We Believe in Don't. It's a reminder to edtech enthusiasts that good instruction starts with the skills and ideas we want students to learn, and not with the latest tech tool that we saw on twitter or heard about on a podcast. This is something that we strongly believe in at Grant Wood AEA. It's a mantra that we try to reinforce in everything that the Digital Learning Team does.

As Ferriter rightly points out, technology is always changing. There will always be new and interesting apps and websites for teachers to use for things like formative assessment, digital storytelling, student feedback, digital portfolios, and more. Sometimes we can see an immediate connection between the tool and the learning objectives we have for our students. Other times, it's harder to make that connection, or we need to think deeper about it's true relevance and possible impact.

Recently I have found myself drawn to the wave of enthusiasm that surrounds augmented and virtual reality. I think that there is huge potential here. I really believe that these mixed reality tools could be something that we look back on one day as a way that technology made fundamental changes to the ways that students learn and interact with content. It might look like science fiction now, but one day it may well be science fact.

I say this with personal experience, because if you've been to an edtech conference in the last six months, you've probably seen something like an HTC Vive or an Oculus in the vendor hall. I did. I tried one on at the ITEC Fall Conference and was blown away. It was immersive, engaging, and unlike anything else I have ever done. However, as I flew high above a forest on a winged horse, and drove around a desert in a tank, I reflected later that it was also lacking in any real educational application. It was an amazing experience, of that I have no doubt, but it was not one that I could immediately see a need for in the classroom.

So, I remain cautious. Josh Allen says that if technology is an event in your school, you're doing it wrong. Does technology become and event in your school when you break out the Google Expeditions? Is AR & VR just another way of presenting content, or is it truly transformational? Does it encourage a learning approach that emphasizes consumption over creativity? Is the content that is being produced for AR and VR systems targeted enough to support classroom instruction, or are they really just educational games. Can AR & VR be used to personalize learning? Will it ever get to a point where it is affordable for all schools and be scalable?

These are some of the questions I am starting to wrestle with. I'm not going to tell you that I have all the answers here, because I don't. I have some ideas, but nothing more concrete than that. You see, part of my job at Grant Wood AEA is to look for emerging edtech trends. I get to be an early adopter of new technologies and research ways that they can be used to enhance teaching and learning. It's an exciting and invigorating thing to do, but despite the grandiose claims of a visionary startup's marketing department, not every app, website or product is going to be the game changer it might sound like. Some improve and evolve over time. Others just die and fade away.

So, if you haven't done this for a while, take a few moments to calibrate your edtech compass. Think critically about what you want your students to do with technology, and how you are using the technology that you have access to in your classroom. If you need some ideas, take a look at Bill Ferriter's image below and remember that technology is a tool, not a learning outcome.

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Thoughts on #ARVRinEDU & Technology in Schools

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Today, I read a really great blog post by Bill Ferriter called Simple Truth: Technology Changes. The Skills We Believe in Don't. It's a reminder to edtech enthusiasts that good instruction starts with the skills and ideas we want students to learn, and not with the latest tech tool that we saw on twitter or heard about on a podcast.

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When I read that Google Classroom was open to everyone, I was most excited by the possibility of bringing together educators from different school systems for professional learning. I invited educators to join my Classy Graphics with Google Drawings class. Seventy-five participants from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Greece, and South Africa enrolled. I learned a lot from teaching a six week course in Google Classroom, and I'd like to share tips and advice for using Google Classroom to lead professional learning. If you are already familiar with Google Classroom, you can skip ahead to to Professional Learning Possibilities and Professional Learning Workflow.

Create a Class

You can create a class in minutes. Go to classroom.google.com and sign in (if you're not already signed into Google). If you have multiple Google accounts, be sure you are signed into the one you want to use with the class. Note that a G Suite for Education account might be configured so that only users in the same domain can join classes. Or, it might be configured so that those with personal Google accounts cannot join. My advice is that unless you are certain you G Suite for Education account will allow everyone you want to join, start a class with a personal Google account.

Click the + at the top of the page and click Create class.

If you are using a personal Google account, you have to agree not to use the class at school with students.

Name the class. You can leave Section and Subject blank. Click the Create button.

Your class is created! You have options to select a theme or upload a photo. I prefer to upload a photo to give my class a unique look. Since the class's header image will be displayed with various levels of zooming and cropping in different browsers, pick a photo that will look good no matter the size or zoom. You can find some really great high resolution photos at unsplash.com. If you are creating your own header image, set your canvas size to 1600 x 400 pixels.

Note that the color scheme of the classroom is automatically generated from the photo you upload. The only way to change the color scheme is to use a different photo.

Two Ways to Join a Class

Google Classrooms classes are not public. In order to see anything in the class, a person must be a member and signed into a Google account. There are two ways to get others to join your class as students.

One way is to click the Students tab and click the Invite Students button. You can enter one or multiple email addresses before clicking the Invite button. Invited students receive an email. Clicking the Join button in the email opens Google Classroom, and prompts the invitee to join your class. The invitee can sign into to Google using any account-it does not have to match the email to which the invitation was sent.

Another way for others to join your class is via class code. Your class's code can be found under the Students tab. You can click the code and choose Copy. Then you can distribute that code through email, online, on paper, on a whiteboard, etc. To join, students go to classroom.google.com, sign in, click the + button, and choose Join class. They enter the class code and click Join. You can disable or change your class's code. If you are expecting people to join with a class code you have already provided, do not change the code. The previous class code stops working when you reset the code, and there is no way to revert to a previously used code.

I chose to invite educators into my class using a class code. I emailed the code with instructions, and everyone was able to eventually join. A road bump to joining my class was that many wanted to join with a G Suite for Education account. G Suite Edu accounts are not allowed to join classes created with a personal Google account. Google Classroom would simply say there was an error joining the class when others tried to join with a G Suite Edu account. I wish the error message was more specific as some thought that I had reset the join code or that the class had filled. Joining with a personal account works, but that means that many educators are using Google Classroom with two different accounts.

I encourage all G Suite for Education administrators to open their Admin panel and go to Apps → G Suite → Google Classroom and make changes so that teachers may join classes created on other domains. This won't allow them to join classes created with personal accounts, but it will allow teachers to join classes created with G Suite Edu accounts outside their home domain.

Professional Learning Possibilities

Creating and joining a class is a simple process. What can be done now that you can gather a group of professionals together in Google Classroom?

📖 Book study: Gather a group together to discuss a book online. You could even invite the author to join the class.

📨 Alternative to group emails: Instead of making announcements and sharing resources through a series of emails, professionals can post those to a class. The class can serve a a repository for memos, documents, links, etc.

👩‍🏫 In-person presentations, trainings, and workshops: A presenter can invite her audience to join a class that is created for just that specific event. She can distribute her slideshow and handouts with Google Classroom. She can ask questions to get to know her audience and periodically check for understanding. Participants can post responses, ask questions, exchange ideas, and share resources related to the topic. The class can be used as a way to follow up after the event as well.

🥇 Digital badges: Learners can be awarded digital badges for completing various tasks. For example, participants are tasked with creating a Google Slides presentation that demonstrates the application of a variety of skills. After the class's teacher reviews the assignments, he can send successful students a graphic that recognizes the accomplishment.

💻 Online courses: Professionals from around the globe can join the same class and learn online. The instructor can post videos, slideshows, documents, and links from which participants can learn. Then the instructor can post assignments, quizzes, and discussion questions. Even when the class is over, it can remain online as a valuable resource.

Google Classroom Fundamentals

If you're going to use Google Classroom for any of the ideas above, you're going to want to know the nuts and bolts of Google Classroom. For one thing, a class can have one or multiple teachers. Anyone in the teacher role can manage the class, students, and posts. Teachers see three tabs across the top of the page: Stream, Students, and About. Below is what can be done under each tab.

view posts in reverse chronological orderpost a questionpost an assignmentpost an announcementedit or delete any postcopy a post's URLadd class comments to posts

add, rename & delete topics

see a list of studentsemail studentsview & copy the class codechange, disable & enable the class codeinvite more students by emailmute or remove studentschoose whether students can post and/or commentinvite co-teachers

add links & files to a list of class materialsview the class calendarview assignments & uploads in Google Driveinvite co-teachers

When a teacher clicks the + at the bottom-right of the the class stream, there are four post options: Create question, Create assignment, Create announcement, and Reuse post. Click the graphic below to download a PDF cheat sheet about posting in Google Classroom.

Good to Know

There are limits when using a personal Google account for Google Classroom. An individual can join up to 100 classes and cannot join more than 30 classes per day. You cannot create more than 30 classes per day under a personal Google account. I don't foresee any of these limits becoming a problem.

One limitation that might be an issue for professional learning is that each class under a personal Google account cannot exceed 250 participants. Classes created under G Suite for Education accounts are limited to 1,000 participants. Participants include all co-teachers and students.

There are more things you should know about Google Classroom and personal accounts...

There does not appear to be a limit on the total number of classes an individual can create.

You can send 100 class-member invitations per day per class. There is not a limit on the number that can join via class codes.

Users under 13 years of age cannot join a class with a personal account. They must use a G Suite for Education account.

You can indicate what email notifications you'd like to receive. When signed in at classroom.google.com, click the menu at the top-left and click Settings.

There are iOS and Android Google Classroom apps, and you can enable them to push notifications to your device. Email notifications have been far more useful to me, so I have turned off push notifications in the mobile app.

Google Classroom contains no ads and never uses your content or data for advertising purposes.

Google classroom will make any detected web address a hyperlink. Make sure the address begins with http so that it will be detected.

A class can be archived. Archiving moves the class to a separate area to keep your current classes organized. Teachers and students can continue to view an archived class's materials, assignments, and posts, but the class cannot be modified unless it is restored.

View the Google Classroom Help Center by clicking the question mark in the bottom-left corner of Google Classroom.

Google Classroom Wishlist

After using Google Classroom with a large group adults, I have thought of many features I wish Google would add. I list them for you here so that you are aware of what's missing.

Threaded Class Comments: When teachers and students reply to class comments, I wish the original comment and replies were grouped together. Currently all class comment replies are listed chronologically. Question posts do group replies under the original response.

Rich Text Editing: I want to be able to format the text in my posts-at the very least I want to be able to make text bold. I'd also love to be able to include images in my posts and make text hyperlinked.

Embed HTML: I would like to embed widgets in posts. It would be great to be able to display a countdown timer, Twitter feed, Book Creator publication, PDF, Padlet, TES Blendspace, and anything that provides HTML embed code.

Turned In Assignments Visible to All: Adult students in my class completed assignments that we wanted the rest of the class to see and comment upon. I ended up asking students to paste links to their completed assignments in class comments. This process would be much easier if there was an option to make turned in assignments visible to the whole class. [Dierdre Shetler suggests that the teacher locates the assignment's folder in Google Drive and shares it with the class. I'll have to try this!]

Multiple Topics: Each post may only be tagged with one topic. Some posts fit into multiple topics, so I would like the option to give a post multiple tags.

Student View for Teachers: A class looks different for teachers and students. As a teacher, I would like to easily see what students see. I created a dummy Google account and joined as a student so that I could see the class's student view-and that's not convenient.

Edit Class Calendar: The only way to add to a class's calendar is to create an assignment or question with a due date. I would love to be able to have full control over the class calendar and add anything I want.

Notifications List: While Google Classroom can email me notifications, I would like to access a listing of all notifications from within each class.

Rename Web Links: Google Classroom pulls in the title of a web link and displays it with the URL. I would like to be able to edit titles and add my own descriptions.

Google invites users to leave feedback about Google Classroom. I've given them my suggestions, and you can too. To suggest new features, click the question mark in the bottom-left corner of Google Classroom and select Send feedback.

I have used Schoology and Edmodo as online spaces for professional development workshops. Both have more features than Google Classroom and might be better choices for facilitating an online class. What are the differences among these three platforms? Scott Winstead compares Schoology, Edmodo, and Google Classroom in his June 2016 eLearning World post.

I will say that I will be using Google Classroom again for my Classy Graphics with Google Drawings online course. Educators in Classy Graphics have appreciated learning on the same platform as their students. There is certainly value in experiencing a class from a student's point of view. Participants have also told me that they appreciate Google Classroom's simplicity. Perhaps the lack of features is a feature?

"Google Classroom was a good format for the course and I'm glad that I got to be a participant for a change instead of an instructor!"
-Jennifer Hicks

"Google Classroom is a simple, somewhat less-threatening interface for those adult learners who may be uncomfortable with technology. If they develop an ease in using this platform as a participant in professional development courses, they may be more willing to attempt it as a teacher. "
-Jason Harriman

Professional Learning Workflow

Since Google Classroom was originally designed for K-12 education, using it for professional learning may require some tweaks and workarounds. In my first run of Classy Graphics, I experimented with different ways of posting and interacting in Google Classroom. Here is what ended up working for my online class...

📺 I post instructional videos on YouTube. At first I added videos from my Google Drive. That worked ok, but YouTube allows me to include time links. When students click Show More on a YouTube video's page, they can see a listing of the topics and the times when each topic begins in the video. The times are hyperlinked and jump right to that part of the video when clicked.

📣 I post discussion questions as announcements. If you add a Question post, a student must answer the question before she can view classmate responses. This is not great for a discussion where it's better that participants read what has already been posted before responding. Instead, I write discussion questions in announcement posts, and encourage students to respond in a class comment. Everyone in the class can see class comments, even if they have not yet responded themselves.

💬 I ask learners to post assignments in a class comment. I want all the adult learners in my class to be able to see each other's weekly assignments. If they are turned in as a standard assignment, then only I as the instructor (and any co-teachers) can view them. So my instructions for assignments included pasting a shareable link to the completed assignment in a class comment. Class comments are visible to the entire class, so all classmates can see it.

📅 I post assignments as assignments. Since I did not want my students to "turn in" work as an assignment, I tried posting as an announcement instead. That worked for collecting assignments in class comments. However, posting as an assignment puts the item in the class calendar and lists it in the Work section for students. Since I wanted to remind the students in my class about the assignment, I made sure to publish tasks that they were to complete by a certain date as assignment posts.

🔗 I ask students to share their Google documents so that anyone with the link can comment. Since replies are not grouped together, having students leave peer feedback by replying to class comments doesn't work well. Each assignment in my Classy Graphics class was a Google document, so I coached students to click Share in their documents and choose Anyone with the link can comment. The link is copied and then pasted into a class comment in Google Classroom, and everyone is encouraged to leave comments inside the shared documents. This way my feedback and the feedback from classmates all appear on the documents themselves.

⚙️ I set it so students can only comment. For sure I want learners in my class to be able to comment on the posts I make. However, I've found that it's better for the kind of class I'm teaching that I do not allow those in the student role to start their own posts. The stream can become very cluttered when students can make their own posts. I do make a post where students can ask questions and leave answers in the class comments. I make another post where student can comment with tips, ideas, and resources.

🏷 I tag every post with a topic. As a class progresses its Stream gets longer and longer. By categorizing posts into topics, students and teachers can easily filter the Stream to show just one topic.

➡️ I use emojis to call attention to important posts and ideas. Since Google Classroom has no formatting options for posts, emoji characters can help make text stand out. I give each assignment its own emoji, and I use arrow emojis to emphasize important information. I also use lots of thumbs up and celebration emojis when providing feedback. Emojipedia.org is extremely helpful when searching for jus the right emoji character.

🖇️ I use Google Classroom in combination with other services. I can send students to places outside of our class by including web links in any post. I like to collect responses and reflections in video form using Flipgrid. It's easy to collect and sort images from students on a Padlet wall. I can have students contribute to word clouds, share ideas, and answer survey questions with Mentimeter. Of course, there are hundreds of other websites that blend well with Google Classroom.

Interested in future online classes from me?
Enter your email address and I'll notify you when registration opens for new classes.

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Google Classroom for Professional Learning

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I learned a lot from teaching a six week online class for educators in Google Classroom. Now I'd like to share tips and advice for using Google Classroom for professional learning, including the fundamentals of Classroom, a cheat sheet for post options, and the workflow I used with the adul

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360° videos are available in any format you choose: .mp4, .avi, .mov, etc. All the videos are made and kept in frames, making it possible to encode them into any available format and bitrate with the resolution up to 8k.

360° PHOTOGRAPHY

Our team creates high-quality 360° photo-panoramas with 35000x17500 pixels resolution (in the equidistant projection) and carries out professional post-processing and corrections of any complexity. We develop virtual tours which are suitable for all browsers, support both Flash and HTML5 technologies and are compatible with different mobile devices and virtual reality headsets (including Samsung Gear VR).

We use different types of moving and fixed objects (tripods, monopods, cars, helicopters, building cranes, etc.) to record videos. For aerial shooting we usually use drones with the fully gyro-stabilized unique suspension. Panoramic video covers up all the space around the camera 360x180 degrees without black spots at both nadir and zenith viewing angle.

Ready 360° photo-panoramas cover up all the space around the camera 360x180 degrees without black spots at both nadir and zenith viewing angle.

Info-points (description buttons that can be placed in the panorama), embedded pictures, video and audio can be added to the virtual tour.

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AirPano.com * VR Production Studio * Virtual Travels * 360° Aerial Panoramas and 360° Video around the World

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AirPano is a VR project created by a team of Russian photographers focused on taking high-resolution aerial 360° photographs and 360° video. Today AirPano is the largest virtual travel resource in the world -- by geographical coverage, number of aerial photographs, and artistic and technical quality of the images - featuring 360° panoramas and 360° videos of the highest quality shot from a bird's eye view.

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Research ReportThe road to digital learning

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Research ReportThe road to digital learning

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Fujitsu

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HMH Classcraft pairs ELA and math content with research-based lesson plans resulting in reduced educator planning time and increased student engagement.

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Google's where work starts. It's the first thing you open when researching a new idea-and for every other part of your project, there's a G Suite app to help.

You email partners, contractors, and colleagues in Gmail. You crunch numbers in Google Sheets, write reports in Google Docs, and start Hangouts video calls to get everyone on the same page.

What's missing is connections between each item. Trapped in emails and search history and sheets and notes, the project is something only you can make sense of. That's the best reason to use the new Google Hangouts Chat.

A sidekick to Google Hangouts Meet video calls, Hangouts Chat is G Suite's new business-focused chat tool. Much like classic Google Talk text chat and Hangouts video calls, the new Hangouts Chat is an easy way to discuss ideas with others. This time, the whole team's invited.

Here's a quick guide to using it-and the best hidden tips we've found to make Hangouts Chat a productive place to discuss your work and push projects forward.

Want something to chat with your friends? Check out Google Allo and Duo, its apps for one-on-one text and video chat, respectively.

Using Google Hangouts Chat Conversations

Getting started is easy-all you need is your company's G Suite account, as everyone on your team's already invited. Hangouts Chat is included with every paid G Suite account, so if your company's using Gmail for your company email, odds are you can already use Hangouts Chat.

The first time you open Google Hangouts Chat at chat.google.com and sign in with your company's G Suite account, you'll instantly see any chat rooms you've been invited to. You can reply to conversations, say something new, or directly message anyone else on the team (if they haven't logged in yet, they'll get an invite email-or if they already use Hangouts video chat, they'll get the direct message there or in Gmail).

The first thing you'll notice about Google Hangouts Chat is its focus on conversations. Slack and older chat apps like AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk focus on messages, the individual things we say in chat. You think of something to say, open a chat room, then type it in a new message. Perhaps the thought is related to something you discussed with your colleagues yesterday-no matter, it still goes in a new message that shows up first since it was posted today, preceded by everything else your group's chatted about over time.

With Google Hangouts Chat's conversations, though, only new ideas go in new conversations. Everything else is replies on older conversations. You'll always have the whole threaded conversation together in one place.

Hangouts Chat keeps some things the same. Chats are organized in rooms, the same as chat rooms in older chat apps or channels in Slack. And when you want to talk to someone specific, you'll send them a direct message or DM in a private, message-focused conversation.

In rooms, though, the focus on conversations changes the way you chat a bit. If you want to share something new-an idea you've been thinking about, a document you just completed, a video you came across this morning-you open the chat room you want, click the New Conversation button on the bottom center, and post your new message. But if you just came up with the solution to a problem your team was discussing yesterday-or thought of a witty reply to your friend's joke from last week-you'll want to pull up the old conversation and add the reply directly.

That's easier than it sounds. Google Hangouts Chat automatically brings conversations with the most recent replies down to the bottom of your chat list. Whenever you open a room, you'll see the conversations with the most recent replies first-so if someone started a new conversation 10 minutes ago and someone else replied to a week-old conversation 5 minutes ago, you'll see them both when you first open a chat room.

If you need something older, search is your friend-and in Hangouts Chat, it's conversation focused, too. Click the search icon in the top of Hangouts Chat-or press Alt+/ on a PC or Option+/ on a Mac-to look through your older conversations. The search will check the current room first; select All rooms and direct messages on the left sidebar to look through everything. Then search for what you want-and Hangouts Chat will show the full conversation for context, with a Reply button so you can jump back in and re-start the discussion.

Whether you're replying to an old conversation or starting a new one, sometimes text isn't enough. You might rather jump on a call. Hangouts Meet video conferencing comes built into Hangouts Chat as well. To start a call with everyone in a room, click the Meet button (the icon with a chat bubble and video camera) in any Reply or New Conversation box-or to call just one person, open a direct message with them and click the Meet button there.

Share Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive Files

Google Hangouts Chat is designed for work-so it's no surprise that it's best with Google's other work apps. There's an ever-present Google Drive icon in the New Conversation and Reply boxes. Click it to see the document selection window you've used before in Google Drive and Sheets. You can select recent files or search through your entire Google Drive account to find any file you need.

Or, if you already have the link to a Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Drive file you want to share, just paste it in the thread or reply box to instantly preview it.

The fun thing is, that's all you need to do to share a Google Docs or Drive file with others in Hangouts Chat. Whenever you share a file, Google will automatically add everyone in that room with viewing and commenting permission so they can see the thing you shared. You'll never have to wait to view a document because someone forgot to turn on sharing in Google Docs again.

It's also easy to find any documents your team is working on. Hangouts Chat's search lets you look for any conversation-and then you can filter for Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, PDFs, or other files. That shows the file in question along with the conversation about it, so you'll know right where to pick up the work.

Stay Focused with Hangouts Chat Notifications

Team chat's one of the best ways to talk with everyone on your team-but it's also one of the most distracting apps you could use. With conversations going on about everything all the time, it's easy to get pulled into far too many discussions and never get the actual work done.

Hangouts Chat tries to calm the storm a bit in a number of ways. First, the bell. Odds are, when you start a new conversation, you'll want to get notified about it. So, Hangouts Chat shows a bell in the top corner of every conversation-and it'll be red by default on every conversation you post. Click the bell to turn off notifications from that conversation (or, click the grey bell on any other conversation to get notified about its replies, if you want). And, if anyone mentions you or sends you a direct message, you'll get notified about that, too.

Those notifications will show up in the top right corner of Google Hangouts Chat and other newer G Suite apps, including Google Photos. Click a notification to see the message and jump right into the conversation-or click the back arrow to clear the notification.

You can make things even calmer if you want. By default, Hangouts Chat will notify you on web and mobile-and will send you an email of all your notifications if you haven't opened either app in over 12 hours. If you don't want to be notified about conversations, or want to turn off all notifications, click the gear icon in the top right corner of Hangouts Chat and select Notification Settings to option options for your web, mobile, and email notifications.

Or, if one room is particularly chatty, click its menu and select Turn off notifications. That'll let you get notifications for mentions, along with conversations from other rooms, but will keep that room from distracting you. It's a calmer approach to chat.

Do More With Hangouts Chat Hidden Features

Once you're used to chatting with your team in conversations, sharing Google Docs files to get work done, and taming your notifications, using Hangouts Chats will be second nature. But with a few more minutes to study, you can get a lot more out of it.

Here are the best extra features we've found in Google Hangouts Chat, and how to get the most out of them:

Format Hangouts Chat Messages

If you've ever used Google Talk and Slack, you'll find both experiences combined in some ways in Google Hangouts Chat. First, formatting. You can add italics and other formatting much as in Google Talk and Google Docs comments.

To add italics to a Hangouts Chat message, add underscores around the word or phrase like _this example_. Add bold by adding asterisks around the word or phrase, like *this*. Need to correct something and want to strike out a word? Add tildes around the word or phrase like ~this~. And if you're sharing code, add backticks around the code like `this`.

Then, to add emoji to your Hangouts Chat messages, type a : then start typing the name of your emoji (as you would in Slack). Hangouts will start filtering through the emoji options; when you find the one you want, press Enter to add it to your message or just type its full name and add a colon on the other end.

Mentioning people in your message works like Google Docs comments and Slack: type an @ followed by the name of the person you want to mention. Hangouts Chat will start filtering through the names of people in your company, with those in this room on the top and others you could invite on the bottom. Press Enter to select the person you want.

Sharing stuff is easy too. Paste links in a new conversation or reply box, and most of the time Hangouts Chat will automatically show a preview of the image or a description of the article you shared. It's best with Google links-paste a YouTube video and it'll embed a playable video, or add a Google Maps link and you'll get an image preview of the overall route. Links to GIFs don't play right now-but you can upload your GIFs to play them in Hangouts Chat, or upload any other file you want to share.

Ever need to edit a message? Press the ↑ arrow while typing in the New Conversation or Reply box to open the last thing you've posted and edit it.

Add Bots to Hangouts Chat Rooms

Google Hangouts Chat isn't just for talking to people-it's also a great place to chat with your apps, too. They can help you book meetings, find flights, poll your team, check your calendar, request time off, and much more-and are more interactive and powerful than bots in many other chat apps.

In Hangouts Chat, you can add bots to a specific room, or you can chat with them directly on your own. There are a handful of bots already built for Hangouts Chat today, including ones for Giphy, MeisterTask, Wrike, Zenefits, Dialpad, Kayak, and more. To find bots, click the Find Rooms button in the top left corner, then select Message a Bot. That will show a number of popular bots where you can search through them. Select one to message it privately.

Chatting privately with a bot is a great way to get work done in other apps while you're using Hangouts Chat. Say you're planning a trip. The Kayak bot lets you ask about flights for an upcoming trip in real language, and it mostly gets things right. You can browse through the offerings, then click a flight that looks good and book it from Kayak's site.

Google's own Meet bot does something similar for meetings. You can ask it to check your Google Calendar or book a meeting with someone else on your team.

Other bots, like the Giphy one to find GIFS or the Polly poll bot, are better in rooms. To add a bot to a room, type @ followed by the bot's name in a new conversation or reply. The bot will then typically give you a quick description of how to use it, then will be ready whenever your team wants to mention it.

Say you want to poll your team about what to eat for lunch. Add the Polly bot to your room, then mention it in a conversation, and it'll turn your message into a poll. Or, liven things up with a GIF by replying @giphy fireworks.

You can build your own Hangouts Chat bots, too-or, for an easier option, you can add webhooks integrations to any room. Webhooks are a way to get notifications from many web apps, so you can use them to update your room when you get a new sale, close a deal, start a new project, and more. To do that, click the room's menu and select Configure Webhooks, then add a name and optionally an icon for your webhook.

Hangouts Chat will then give you a unique webhooks URL for your chat room. Copy that and add the link to another app like Zapier to send notifications into your Hangouts Chat room. And speaking of Zapier, there's a full Google Hangouts Chat Zapier integration coming soon.

Learn more about Webhooks and how to use them to send notifications into Google Hangouts Chat from hundreds of app with Zapier's Webhooks Guide.

Manage Hangouts Chat Rooms

You'll likely start using Google Hangouts Chat when a colleague or manager invites you to a new Hangouts Chat room, perhaps for a new project or to keep track of your team's work.

Hangouts Chat is unique from most team chat apps in that its rooms are private-you have to be invited to them in order to start chatting. That keeps things focused, though it also might mean you need to ask others to add you to rooms when you join a project.

Or, if you're the one starting a project, you can make your own room. Click the + button in the top left corner of Hangouts Chat, select Create Room, then type in the name of your new room.

Hangouts Chat will then ask you to add people to your new room. Select anyone you want-or type their name or email to search through the list. You can add bots at the same time, to bring your favorite apps into the conversation, too.

Ever need to add more people? Just mention them in a chat message, and Hangouts Chat will offer to invite them to the room.

Or, click the room's name in Hangouts Chat's menu, and select View Members to see everyone who's in a room-including bots. That's an easy way to directly message someone, remove bots your team no longer uses, or to delete someone from a room if needed.

Over time, you'll likely end up in too many rooms. But it's not Hotel California. You can leave anytime. From that same menu in the header, select Leave to jump out of a room. If you ever want to come back, you'll find it in the Browse Rooms menu, where you can join in again without needing a new invite.

Another option: Click the Star button in a Hangout Chat room's menu, and it'll show up on the top of your room list in the sidebar. That keeps your most important rooms near the top, no matter how many rooms you're in.

Navigate Hangouts Chat With Keyboard Shortcuts

One of Google Hangouts Chat's best features are its wide range of keyboard shortcuts. Much like how you can navigate your Gmail inbox and organize email without ever touching a mouse, you can do the same with your chat conversations in Google Hangouts Chat.

Say you're looking at a chat room and haven't clicked anything yet. Press the ↑ arrow on your keyboard to go to previous conversations, or the ↓ arrow to see newer conversations. Find something interesting? Press the → arrow or Enter to select that conversations, then use arrows to go up and down through the conversation.

Hangouts Chat combines messages sent around the same time to save space-but if you want to see them, just click down until you come to a numbered message and press Enter to expand all the messages.

Replying is easy, too. If you've selected a conversation or a message inside a conversation, press your r key and start typing to add a new reply, then press Enter to send it. Make a mistake? Press the ↑ arrow anytime to edit your last message in a conversation. Or, to start a new conversation, select a recent conversation and press Tab a few times until the New Conversation button is selected.

Done in this conversation and want to switch rooms? Press the ← arrow to switch to the sidebar, the press your up and down arrows to switch between chat rooms and direct messages, and the → arrow or Enter key to select that room. Pretty quickly, you'll get used to using arrows to move around Hangouts Chat rooms and conversations naturally without ever needing your mouse.

Or, for a quicker way to switch rooms: Press Ctrl+ K on a PC or CMD+ K on a Mac to open the Find people, rooms, bots menu, and type in the room or person you want to chat with. That's the quickest way to jump into a conversation.

Need to find stuff? Alt+/ on a PC or Option+/ on a Mac opens Hangouts Chat's search where you can look through chat conversations, documents, files, and more.

→ Find more Google Hangouts Chat keyboard shortcuts in Google's documentation.

You've done it-you've mastered the newest G Suite app and found new ways to communicate with your team without letting team chat be so distracting. Hangouts Chat is an exciting new way to keep things focused on conversations, share your work more easily, and work faster with a fully keyboard shortcut focused interface. And over the coming months, it'll be exciting to see the new powerful bots that come out for it, tools that let you do even more directly from chat.

You'll still want to use Hangouts video calls to talk directly with your team. Learn how to get the most out of Hangouts video calls-then find out how to schedule calls better with Google's new Hangouts Meet.

Image Credits: Header graphic includes photo from Laszlo Kiss via Unsplash

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Everything You Need to Know About the New Google Hangouts Chat

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Google's where work starts. It's the first thing you open when researching a new idea-and for every other part of your project, there's a G Suite app to help. You email partners, contractors, and colleagues in Gmail. You crunch numbers in Google Sheets, write reports in...

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Google Lens is a handy little tool. Announced at Google I/O 2017, Lens is essentially a visual search engine. Take a picture with your phone, and Google will do some clever analysis and provide insights into what you're looking at. Now, it's getting even better, and can store information from business cards as contacts, and even describe landmarks you've spotted.

Rolling out today, Android users can try Google Lens to do things like create a contact from a business card or get more info about a famous landmark. To start, make sure you have the latest version of the Google Photos app for Android: https://t.co/KCChxQG6Qm
Coming soon to iOS pic.twitter.com/FmX1ipvN62

- Google Photos (@googlephotos) March 5, 2018

If you've got a business card, just open a photo of it in Google Photos and navigate to Lens. With just a tap, Lens will automatically create a contact for you using the information printed on the card.

This is handy because it addresses the two things I really hate about business cards. Firstly, people at conferences eventually run out of them, meaning you've got to write their contact details down on a slip of easily-losable paper. I always lose them. Always.

Secondly, it means you don't actually have to take the card, because you've already got the information stored electronically.

This is music to my ears. An unavoidable hazard of this job is that my apartment is littered with literally hundreds of business cards, which almost always show up in the most unexpected of places. You could describe business cards as the glitter of the working world.

(Side note, I wanted my Secret Santa to get me a Rolodex for Christmas, but he didn't, possibly because it's 2018 and nobody uses Rolodexes anymore.)

If you've never used Google Lens before, and are worried about it being laggy or slow: don't be. It's blazingly fast. I tested this feature out on a mid-range Honor phone using cellular data. It took about five seconds from start to finish.

Anyway, I digress. The other cool new addition to Google Lens is the ability to identify and provide context to famous landmarks. So, if you're in the Italian city of Pisa and you see a tower skewed at an awkward angle, Lens will tell you "Hey! That's the Leaning Tower of Pisa."

And if you're in Slough and you see... something ... well...

Look, Lens will get back to you, okay? It doesn't work miracles.

In addition to identifying buildings, Lens also gives you information you might need. This includes things like a description of the place, or its opening hours, thereby saving you a Google search.

The latest and greatest version of Google Lens is found in Google Photos. If you don't have it, you can download it here.

If you have the app installed (which you probably will, as Google Photos comes pre-installed on most Android devices nowadays), but can't find the feature, you might need to update it.

Sadly, iOS users will have to wait a bit to use this. Google announced a version of Lens for Apple's smartphone platform at MWC 2018, but hasn't given any concrete dates for when it might land. It said it'll drop "in the coming weeks."

And I won't make a joke about Windows phone because I did that yesterday.
TNW 2018 is coming soon, and we want to see you there. Read all about our conference and how you can attendhere.
Read next: Opera's built-in cryptocurrency price converter is actually pretty useful

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Google Lens now describes landmarks and creates contacts from business cards

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Google Lens is a handy little tool. Announced at Google I/O 2017, Lens is essentially a visual search engine. Take a picture with your phone, and Google will do some clever analysis and provide insights into what you're looking at. Now, it's getting even better, and can store information from business cards as contacts, and even describe landmarks you've spotted.

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@ Lancaster Uni

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Digital Skills Certificate | Lancaster University

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BBC - BBC launches its first augmented reality app - Civilisations AR - Media Centre

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The BBC has launched its first augmented reality app, Civilisations AR. Developed by BBC Research & Development, BBC Arts and Nexus Studios, the app features over 30 fascinating artefacts from museums across the UK that have been digitally scanned and are now available to view in 3D as part of a new virtual exhibition.

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By: David Stiner

G Suite has revolutionized education for last few years and Chromebooks have given schools the ability to deliver G Suite to the masses. Have you been part of this revolution? Have you had problems with teaching with Chromebooks? Have you been teaching in front of class where students have Chromebooks and you don't? Did problems occur? Why take the year-long Chromebook Challenge? This is what will be discussed today.

At the end of the 2015-2016 school year I got my first Chrome cart. While trying to fumble my way into introducing Chromebooks and G Suite to my students, I noticed they had a lot of questions and troubleshooting issues. Granted Chromebooks we're new to me as well, however, I didn't have one. So, as I tried to help them I was trying to explain everything using a Windows PC. Well that did not work. Totally didn't OS systems. This made me think I need a teacher chromebook that I can take home and learn the ends and outs. So I begged and pleaded with my IT coordinator and he got me a Chromebook to pilot as a teacher computer. I decided that day when I get this Chromebook I am going to learn everything I can to help my kids. Then came the 2016-2017 school year where I decided to challenge myself in using a Chromebook as my sole teacher computer. Boy can I tell you it was a challenge.

When I first started using the Chromebook it was easy to get use too. If you know Google Chrome from your Windows PC then you can maneuver a Chromebook. However the more I used it the more I started to discover different aspects to the machine. These aspects came about different troubleshooting issues I had to discover when a student accidentally used certain combinations of keys. The ones that really had me in a frenzy was the accessibility features. I have seen screen magnifier and high contrast mode. I had to find my way to learn how to solve the issue quickly. The one aspect that helped me was to learn shortcuts. If you press Ctrl+alt+? you will be able to find all the shortcuts that Chromebooks have, which is around 50 different shortcuts. ( The Geek Stuff has a good list all the shortcuts.) However there are only some key ones that you need to know.

More Investigation

The more I worked on the chromebook the more I had to find ways to do the same thing I could do on a PC. The biggest solution I found where extensions and add-ons.

There are a couple extensions that I absolutely love that really brought my adventure to life. The first one is url shortener called goo.gl. Since, I was using only G Suite and had to share documents in presentations this url shortener was a real lifesaver. Here is how the url looks: https://goo.gl/GCxvnq. The link will get you the web store to download the extension.

The second extension that I couldn't live without was Crafty Text. This extension displays text in a large font. It is great when a student ask you for a spelling or even directions. Below is how it works.

Add-ons

I found a couple add-ons I could not live without in my adventure. The first add-on comes from Google Doc called Avery label maker. There are two ways to use this add-on. One you open up the Avery label maker and a new document opens up and shows you how to use is. From there you can just put what you want on your label and a full document of that one creation will be created.

The second way is the merge data from a Google Sheets. This one has come in handy for many things. I use it to make login cards for my students. It was easy to merge the data. Watch the video below to see how Avery Merge for Google Docs works.

From the video you can see you have few templates to choose from. My personal favorite is the name badge templates. They are great for login cards. The only disadvantage to this label maker is there are only a few templates you can choose from. They do not have a return address template or others that you might want. However, if you are using it for basic use it is great.

The second add-on I like is formMule. This add-on is an email merge that has become life blood in my school when I started using it. This video will give you an idea what formMule is.

What I do with this add-on is two-fold. I set this up at our school to communicate with teachers on how students are doing in our non-intentional learner club. We call this club Cougar Club. Teachers use a Google Forms to have a student come to the club that is either not finished with in class work or that intentionally does not do the work. Once the form is submitted it is connected to a Google Sheet.

Then we use formMule to keep communication with the teacher. We give the teacher feedback and based on that feedback we use a certain type of template.

In conclusion Chromebooks have become the new norm in education. We as teachers need to get used to using Chromebooks to help our students succeed. As discussed above I took a year long challenge where I only used a Chromebook. It was an eye opening experience and it was extremely beneficial when it came to help my student with their Chromebooks.

In that year I discovered Chrome extension and G Suite add-ons that really helped with getting around using a PC. So, I have two questions for you: Are you ready to make the plunge to use just a Chromebook for a year? Are you ready to be challenged? Today, I challenge you to take the year-long Chromebook challenge.

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By: David Stiner G Suite has revolutionized education for last few years and Chromebooks have given schools the ability to deliver G Suite to the masses. Have you been part of this revolution? Have you had problems with teaching with Chromebooks? Have you been teaching in front of class where students have Chromebooks and you don't?

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Our ongoing commitment to create more inclusive and collaborative learning environments continues today with the arrival of a number of powerful updates to Office 365 Education. Building on the momentum of OneNote Class Notebook, which has surpassed more than 15 million notebooks created since the beginning of this school year, and the launch of Microsoft Teams for Education, we have worked with students, teachers, and research institutes to ensure that Office 365 continues to deliver the best learning outcomes. This week at Bett, we'll share how Office 365 Education enables teachers to engage every learner-ensuring equality and inclusion in schools to empower all students to do their best work.

Today's updates to Office 365 Education include enabling students to write a paper using only their voice, thanks to Dictation in Office, the latest feature to join Microsoft Learning Tools, as well as improved access to assignments and class collaboration with the Microsoft Teams iPhone and Android apps. What's more, we are delivering on the number one most requested feature from teachers, page locking in OneNote Class Notebook-allowing teachers to provide students with read-only access-and we will further help teachers save time through assignment and grade integrations with leading Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Student Information Systems (SIS), including Capita SIMS in the U.K. Office 365 Education gives teachers and students the power to unlock limitless learning. And best of all, it's free for teachers and students.

Inclusive Learning Tools for better student results

Classrooms are diverse. Seventy-three percent of classrooms have students with reading levels that span four or more grades, and up to 50 percent of instructional time can be lost managing the students' varying needs. Learning Tools is proven to help, and we are humbled by the results. In a recent study, it was shown to increase reading speed and comprehension for students of all abilities, leading to test scores that were 10 percent higher than students who did not use Learning Tools.

We are incredibly excited to see strong adoption of Learning Tools with more than 7 million monthly active users across Word, OneNote, Outlook, Edge, and Office Lens. Based on feedback from teachers, students, and parents, we have been working on extending the capabilities of Learning Tools even further-and today we are excited to announce several updates.

Dictation in Office-This simple yet transformational tool will help students of all abilities to write freely by using only their voice. Starting in February, Dictation will be available in Word, Word Online, PowerPoint, Outlook Desktop, OneNote Windows 10, and OneNote Online-and in more than nine languages.

Read Aloud-Allows students to hear the contents of an email while each word is highlighted in sync. It will soon be available on Outlook Desktop in more than 30 text-to-speech languages.

Immersive Reader-To further support students of different backgrounds, Immersive Reader now supports an additional 10 new languages. It is also coming to even more platforms in 2018 and will soon be available on Word for Mac, iPhone, and Android, as well as Outlook Desktop and OneNote for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

New features for teaching and learning in Microsoft Teams

Since delivering Microsoft Teams for Office 365 Education last year, we've seen educators around the globe boost collaboration and learning outcomes using Teams as their digital hub. In addition to our recent announcement, we're releasing a number of features that will make setting up, collaborating, and managing a classroom in Teams easier than ever before.

Assignments support-Using the Teams app on their iOS and Android mobile phone or tablet, students can now access upcoming assignments, receive new assignment notifications, and turn in their work. Teachers can create new assignments, as well as review and make edits to existing assignments all while on the go. We also improved the search function on mobile to ensure both students and teachers can quickly find and navigate to individual assignments.

On Demand Translation-Students and teachers will soon be able to turn content in a chat or in a team channel into the language that their tenant is configured in. This powerful feature allows teachers and students to converse comfortably in their chosen language and removes all language barriers.

Assignment Analytics-Now teachers can track assignment engagement in real time-at a glance-to see who's viewed and turned in their work.

Join Codes-Saves teachers valuable time by allowing them to simply invite students to a class. This capability will also prove helpful for staff and PLC teams, ensuring an effortless start to collaborating with co-workers.

Reusing a Team as a Template-Teachers can reuse an existing team as a template when creating a new team and can customize what they want to copy over-from channels, tabs, team setting, apps, and even users.

Decimal Grading-Teachers can provide grading feedback in their preferred way using Decimal Grading.

New OneNote features for teachers

OneNote is also receiving helpful new features, which we know are going to prove popular among teachers.

Capita SIMS-Updates to Class Notebook include assignment and grade integration with more than 35 of the most widely used LMS and SIS, including Capita SIMS in the U.K. These integrations are coming to OneNote for Windows 10, OneNote Online, and OneNote iPad, and will reduce administrative burden and save teachers time.

Page Locking-To further simplify classroom workflows, we are delivering on the number-one request from teachers for Class Notebooks-enabling lock pages. Teachers can now lock pages as read-only after giving feedback to the student.

Interactive math calculators-In OneNote, we are also enabling Desmos interactive math calculators, a set of popular applications for STEM teachers.

New stickers-We also added four new fun sticker packs: Feathered Friends, Science, Circus Animals, and Arrows.

Teams integration with PowerPoint and Microsoft Stream

Our improvements to class collaboration don't stop here. Teams has also joined forces with PowerPoint and Microsoft Stream to make it easy for teachers and students to create and share interactive content in just a few steps.

A teacher can use PowerPoint to build immersive class content (that includes ink, animations, and audio/video narrations), publish it to their Stream channel as a video, and have it surface in their Teams class to distribute to their students. Furthermore, Stream will also add automatic captioning to the videos to make them accessible to all learners.

We are incredibly excited to showcase these features and more at Bett this week. We believe that through inclusive and collaborative learning environments, Office 365 Education is built to support every type of learner to empower them to do their best work. To learn more about the exciting updates coming to Microsoft Education, check out the Windows blog.

-Eran Megiddo

Dictation in Office will begin rolling out in our Office Insider program this month, and then to all Office 365 customers in coming months.

OneNote assignment and grade integration with C apita SIMS will be available in February 2018. Assignment and Grade integration for OneNote for Windows 10, OneNote Online, and OneNote iPad will be available worldwide in February 2018.

Recording a PowerPoint and publishing directly to Stream is now available to all Office 365 Education customers.

If you're #notatbett this week and would like to learn more about the other exciting updates coming to Microsoft Education, check out our summary of today's big news here!

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Office 365 Education delivers the next wave of innovation

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Our ongoing commitment to create more inclusive and collaborative learning environments continues today with the arrival of a number of powerful updates to Office 365 Education.

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When you get your hands on a chromebook, the first thing that you'll notice is the keyboard looks different.

Chromebook is missing DELETE and CapsLock Key (along with few other keys) that you are used to seeing in a keyboard.

This tutorial explains everything that you need to know about your Chromebook keyboard shortcuts.

Note: The link to download chromebook keyboard shortcut cheatsheet in PDF format is at the end of this article.

1. Missing Keys in Chromebook Keyboard

Note: The above keyboard is from my Acer Chromebook CB5 laptop (15″ Full HD IPS screen, 4GB RAM, 16GB SSD hard disk).

As you see from the above picture, the following are some of the keys that are missing in the above layout.

The biggest annoynace is that chromebook is missing Delete Key and the CapsLock key. Also, while editing a document (or while browsing), you'll also miss the PageUp and PageDown key.

The following table gives the alternative keyboard shortcuts for missing keys in the chromebook.

For the CapsLock, when you press Alt + Search, it is really a toggle for CapsLock, and you'll see in the bottom panel, it will show the following to indicate that CapsLock is On.

It will also display a "Up Arrow" kind of symbol in the taskbar as shown below. When you turn CapsLock off, you will not see this Up-Arrow symbol in the taskbar.

To turn-off the CapsLock, you can either Press "Alt + Search" (or) simply press the "Shift" key.

2. Chromebook Keyboard Shortcuts

To get help on keyboard shortcuts, You have to follow these two steps:

Step 1: press "Ctrl + Alt + ?", which will display the following message saying how to get further help on keyboard shortcuts. Hold Control, Alt, Shift, or Search to see keyboard shortcuts for those modifiers. Use Ctrl+Alt+? or Escape to hide this help

Step 2: Now, when you are seeing the above message, press Ctrl key which will display keyboard shortcuts for Ctrl keys. You can also press Alt to see Alt's keyboard shortcuts, or press Search key to see Search's keyboard shortcuts.

3. Ctrl Keybord Shortcuts

The following layout shows the Ctrl key keyboard shortcuts:

4. Alt Keyboard shortcuts

The following table lists the Alt key keyboard shortcuts:

5. Search Keyboard shortcuts

The following table lists the Search key keyboard shortcuts:

6. Shift Keyboard shortcuts

The following table lists the Shift key keyboard shortcuts:

7. Ctrl+Shift Keyboard shortcuts

The following layout shows the Ctrl+Shift keyboard shortcuts:

8. Ctrl+Alt Keyboard Shortcuts

The following table lists the Ctrl+Alt key keyboard shortcuts:

9. Alt+Shift Keyboard Shortcuts

The following table lists the Alt+Shift key keyboard shortcuts:

10. Top Row Special Keys

The 1st row on the top of the google chromebook keyboard contains the following 12 special keys in this sequence.

The 1st row keys also can be combined with Ctrl, or Alt, or Search, or Shift for some useful functionality as explained below.

11. All Chromebook Keyboard Shortcuts in PDF

Download the chromebook keyboard shortcuts cheatsheet in PDF format

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like..

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Google Chromebook Keyboard Shortcuts Reference Guide (Download Cheatsheet in PDF Format)

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When you get your hands on a chromebook, the first thing that you'll notice is the keyboard looks different. Chromebook is missing DELETE and CapsLock Key (along with few other keys) that you are used to seeing in a keyboard. This tutorial explains everything that you need to know about your Chromebook keyboard shortcuts.

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New employees

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To help new employees get up-to-speed quickly, create centralized resources like an onboard checklist or company backgrounder in Google Keep or Docs.

Your new team member can track to-dos by listing out key tasks in Keep. Create a note in Keep and select "Show checkboxes" in the three dots menu. Type in to-dos like "set up HR benefits," "outline goals" or "meet with Anish about process."

Pro-tip: Keep integrates directly into Docs. If you're in Keep, pick a specific note, click the three dots menu and select "Copy to Google Doc." Or if you're in Docs, drag-and-drop your note over from Keep.

You can also prepare a more detailed company background for your teammate in Docs. List upcoming projects, assign action items or include other reference material like key contacts. Once you've created these resources, be sure to save them to your Team Drives so that the "newbie" knows where to find or upload files for team use.

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Work hacks from G Suite: onboard new employees like a boss

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To help new employees get up-to-speed quickly, create centralized resources like an onboard checklist or company backgrounder in Google Keep or Docs. Your new team member can track to-dos by listing out key tasks in Keep. Create a note in Keep and select "Show checkboxes" in the three dots menu.

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One of the coolest PowerPoint slideshows I have ever seen is one of PowerPoint's own templates; it's called " Duarte's Five Rules." It uses animation, graphics, fonts, layout, design, sound, narration, and timing perfectly. The tips below explain and illustrate how many of the effects in this slide were created.

First, open PowerPoint, type Duarte's Five Rules in the Search box, then press Enter. Click the Duarte icon when it appears, then click the Create button in the popup window. When the presentation appears, select Slideshows > From the Beginning or press F5. Click through the first two slides (the rest is automatic), turn up the sound, then sit back, watch, listen, and learn how to create a very professional presentation. And if you're wondering "how did they do that," the tips below will help.

JD Sartain

Set up an automatic, self-running slide show

If your slideshow is going to run at a kiosk, at a trade show, at a sales presentation, or a training seminar, it must have the capacity to run without human intervention.

1. Go to Slide Show> Set Up Slide Show.

2. Under Show type in the Set Up Show dialog, click the Browsed at a kiosk (full screen) button.

Notice the first check box under Show options is grayed-out because, when the slide show runs automatically, this option is always allowed (in order to pause and exit).

3. You can also set up a slide show that allows viewers to advance the slides themselves (inside a window). For this feature, select Browsed by an individual (window).

Select the option Presented by a speaker (full screen) if you or one of your colleagues is doing the presentation manually. The rest of the options are self-explanatory and selected based on individual needs.

Note: Don't forget to select slide transitions and match the timing with the narration.

Create custom sizes for your slides

The default size for slides in PowerPoint 2013 and 2016 is now 13.333 inches by 7.5 inches, which is called Widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio). It's designed to accommodate the more popular widescreen monitors and televisions. Previous versions used the Standard (4:3) aspect ratio to accommodate the older square monitors and televisions. Some have complained about the new default Widescreen size, but-guess what-it's easy to change.

1. Go to Design > Customize > Slide Size.

2. Choose Custom Slide Size from the dropdown menu.

3. In the Slide Size dialog box, click the down arrow beside the first field box: Slides sized for (the default is Custom), and choose a new size from the dropdown list. Or...

4. Enter a custom size in the Width and Height field boxes.

Note: You can also use the Number slides from field box to specify which slide number will begin using this new size. With this feature, you can vary the slide sizes throughout the presentation.

5. Click OK, and another dialog box opens, prompting you either to Maximize the size of your info and graphics on each slide or resize it to Ensure Fit (that is, ensure the fit onto the new slide size). There is no right or wrong answer here, other than whether your image looks odd when adjusted either way.

Zoom in on important elements

If you're presenting the slideshow yourself (or creating it for another), there are several features the presenter can use to add some style and flair to the slide show. For example, when you're covering an important point, try using the magnifying-glass function to zoom in on the hot points you're discussing at the moment.

1. While in Presenter View, hover over the bottom left side of the screen until the menu appears.

2. Click the magnifying-glass icon, then move the highlighted window around the screen until you've framed the important points inside the highlighted area.

3. Click the cursor once, and that section expands immediately to a very sharp, zoomed-in close-up of the highlighted points.

4. Once you're zoomed in, use the hand tool to move around inside the enlarged area.

5. Click the magnifying-glass icon again to zoom back to normal size.

Animations make the slideshow

We've already covered how to create Motion Paths, which is one method for making objects move in PowerPoint. The other method is using the preset Effects. If you want to see how each animation works in a specific slideshow, open the presentation called "Duarte's Five Rules," and click one of the slides in the Slides Tab panel on the left.

1. Click Slide 3-the slide with the STOP sign and THIS WAY (pointing arrow) sign.

2. Next, select Animations > Animations Pane. Notice the Animations panel that appears on the right side of the screen. All of the animations, effects, and motion paths (when used) are listed on this panel.

3. Note that none of the animations, effects, graphics, or other processes are named in this slide show. Naming the animations makes it easier; however, you can still see which effect is attached to each element by selecting it.

Click the STOP sign; notice the Animation Pane says Picture 4. Also notice the selected button in the Animations Effects menu (at the top) says Fly In. This means the STOP sign will fly into the slideshow screen after the Picture 3 Shape (the sign that says THIS WAY).

4. Position your cursor on the first element in the list: 02_Presentation ... (beside the blue arrow). Click the Play From button, and the animation plays from the beginning of this slide. Move your cursor down the list to the Picture 3 Shape (the sign that says THIS WAY). Click the Play From button again, and the animation plays from that position to the end.

This feature is very useful when you're setting the Timing for each object on the slide. And it saves time, especially if you have a lot of action on a particular slide, because it means you don't have to rewind to the beginning for every single animation event.

Because this slide show has motion paths, animations, or effects on every slide, you can learn more about how these features work by reviewing each slide's effects individually and playing through all the animations and effects on each slide. Notice how many animation effects are on Slide 6 (the dotted lines are the Motion Paths). Then play through the rest of this slide show and, by the time you reach the end (Slide 56), you will be a professional PowerPoint Animator.

Rename the Animation Effects for easy retrieval

Rename your Animation Effects so it's easier to remember which effect is attached to which object.

1. Click the object (such as the STOP sign) to select it.

2. When you click an object, the Format tab appears (far right).

3. Click the Selection Pane button.

4. When the Selection panel opens, the selected object is highlighted in pink.

5. Double-click the effect (e.g., Picture 4) and then type in a new name.

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PowerPoint tips from Duarte's Five Rules Presentation

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One of the coolest PowerPoint slideshows I have ever seen is one of PowerPoint's own templates; it's called " Duarte's Five Rules." It uses animation, graphics, fonts, layout, design, sound, narration, and timing perfectly. The tips below explain and illustrate how many of the effects in this slide were created.

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The bigger and uglier your Excel spreadsheet gets, the more you need to use certain features or tricks to keep a handle on the data. The seven features covered here will help you navigate, organize, and readjust your spreadsheet with as little hassle as possible.

1. Split Screen

One of the most helpful features for large spreadsheets is the Split Screen command. The Split Screen allows you to view two, three, or four windows of your spreadsheet. Use this feature to work on one section of your spreadsheet while you view another section; or use it to compare (side by side) two sections of the spreadsheet. Once you try it, you'll find lots of reasons to use it.

a. First, position your cursor where you'd like the screen to split. For example, if you want to divide the screen into four equal sections, position the cursor in the center of the spreadsheet.

b. Next, select View > Split. Notice the screen splits into four equal sections.

c. If you want to move the split, position your cursor at the apex of the split bars. When the cross with arrow points appears, click and hold, then drag the cross with arrow points across the screen until the screen is divided to your satisfaction.

d. To remove the Split, click View > Split (again).

JD Sartain

Use View > Split to split or unsplit a screen in Excel.

2. Freeze Frames

The other great feature for large spreadsheets is Freeze Frames. People generally freeze frames so they can see the column headers as they scroll down the page, or the first row as they scroll across, as they usually contain the spreadsheet's unique fields such as client name, part number, or item number. Use the following instructions to freeze columns A and B (first and last name) and row 1, the field names (column headers).

a. Position your cursor on cell C2.

b. Click View > Freeze Frames > Freeze Frames. Notice that Excel inserts a thin line below row 1 and to the right of column B.

c. Cursor down, and all the rows scroll up except row 1. Cursor right, and columns A and B are stationary, while the remaining columns move to the left.

d. Now when you update the fees in column K, you can see the names of the individuals who owe those fees.

Note: You can also choose to just Freeze First Row or Freeze First Column.

e. To unfreeze frames, click View > Freeze Frames > Unfreeze Frames.

3. Quickly insert or delete columns and rows

Generally, if you want to insert or delete columns and rows, you position your cursor to the right of the column or just below the row where you want the new column or row inserted (columns insert to the left, and rows insert above, the cursor). For deleting, obviously, you place the cursor on the column or row for deletion.

a. Next you select Home > Insert > Rows (or Columns). You can also insert cells or additional sheets here. Deleting works the same way. Home > Delete > Rows (or Columns, Cells, Sheet).

b. Another, quicker way to perform this same function: Position the cursor on the column letter (such as column D) or the row letter (such as row 5), and when the black arrow appears, right-click.

c. From the drop-down menu select Insert or Delete, and the columns or rows drop in or disappear instantly.

4. Quick Cut and Paste

a. Move your cursor to one or several cells that contain data you'd like to move, and select those cells.

b. Position the cursor over the top-left corner of the first cell in the range (or the top-right, or bottom-left). When the cursor changes to a cross with arrow points, hold down the left mouse button and drag the cells to the new location, then release the mouse button.

Note: You cannot use the bottom-right cell, which has a tiny green square over the corner. This is an access link to the Quick Analysis Tool (notice the icon just below).

5. Format Painter

Format Painter is a great little treasure. You know what a hassle it is to constantly format and reformat cells. Use this feature to do it automatically in seconds.

a. Move to a cell that contains the format you want to use (such as K2).

b. Click the Format Painter icon (it looks like a paintbrush) in the Clipboard group under the Home tab.

c. Cursor to the cell, cells, column, or row that you want to copy that format to-in this case, currency.

d. Place your cursor-which becomes a fat plus sign with a paintbrush beside it-on the first cell in column L (L2), then drag the highlight down through L22 and release the mouse button.

Note that all the cells in this column range are now formatted for currency.

6. One corner click

a. Another fast and easy tip that selects the entire spreadsheet, not just the cells that contain data, is the small green arrow in the top-left corner, between the row numbers and column letters. Click this arrow once, and Excel selects everything, from cell A1 to cell XFD1048576.

b. Typing Ctrl+A also selects all but, in this case, all means just the cells that contain data. Press Ctrl+A twice, however, and it selects the entire spreadsheet.

7. Bonus tip: Leading zeroes

And last, for our bonus tip: how to enter numbers with leading zeros, such as zip codes that begin with zeros. Just enter an apostrophe in front of the number; for example: '02120.

Notice that now there's a green triangle in the top-left corner of every cell where you've made this change. That's because introducing the apostrophe could create problems if you try to use that number in a function or formula, so Excel wants to confirm your intent.

a. To find out your options, click the green triangle. A warning-sign icon (a yellow diamond with an exclamation point) will appear next to the cell.

b. Place your cursor on the warning icon, then click the down-arrow that appears on the right side.

c. Choose Ignore Error from the drop-down menu. Note; however, that this removes the mark only from that specific cell.

d. To remove all the green triangles in this column, select File > Options > Formulas. Scroll down to the Error Checking section and uncheck the checkmark in the box that says Enable Background Error Checking. And just like that, all the green triangles are gone.

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7 Excel tips for huge spreadsheets: Split Screen, Freeze Panes, Format Painter and more

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The bigger and uglier your Excel spreadsheet gets, the more you need to use certain features or tricks to keep a handle on the data. The seven features covered here will help you navigate, organize, and readjust your spreadsheet with as little hassle as possible.

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Voting/polls

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Your browser either doesn't support Javascript, or you've turned it off. To use Mentimeter, please make sure to turn Javascript on. How do I enable Javascript?

1. Create your question

Use our interactive slides to ask your audience any kind of question. Add text and image slides to make full presentations.

2. Your audience responds

Everyone can respond, ask questions, and react on any device. Everything they say is anonymous, so taking part is both easy and fun.

3. Get instant feedback

Responses will immediately appear on screen as dynamic and colorful visuals, helping you better connect with the group.

Works with your favorite apps

Some helpful guides

Need some inspiration? We have a variety of videos, templates, resources, and more that will help you better understand Mentimeter and help you dive right in!

I've used Mentimeter to get my audience engaged and energized during my presentation. The effect is instant and it's so easy to use. Jonas Persson, former CEO of Microsoft Sweden

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes! As a free user, you can add up to 2 questions per presentation and create as many presentations as you want. There is also no limit to the audience size. To add more questions, you will need to upgrade your account.

No installation or download is required. Your audience can join a presentation by entering the voting code on menti.com, scanning the presentation's QR code, or following the voting link. They can then vote using the smartphone or internet device used to join the presentation.

Yes you can import your PowerPoint presentations directly to Mentimeter. To find out how to read more here.

Yes! If you upgrade your account you can download all results in Excel format.

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Let your audience participate in interactive presentations. Have a look at how it works or try voting for yourself to learn how easy it is to use!

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Browser whiteboard

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Witeboard - A real-time whiteboard for your team. No signups required.. (Web App, Design Tools, and Productivity) Read the opinion of 63 influencers. Discover 13 alternatives like Screenleap and Whiteboard Fox

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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which began as a regulatory requirement, is increasingly seen as a long-term opportunity to establish greater trust with customers and further unlock employee collaboration and productivity in many businesses. The intelligent compliance solutions in Microsoft 365 help you assess and manage your compliance risks and leverage the cloud to identify, classify, protect, and monitor sensitive data residing in hybrid and heterogeneous environments to support GDPR compliance.

Updates in Microsoft 365-currently rolling out-help protect sensitive data and include:

Compliance Manager general availability for Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365 Business and Enterprise customers in public clouds.

Compliance Score availability for Office 365.

Azure Information Protection scanner general availability.

In addition to the updates announced today, capabilities in Microsoft 365 help to:

Protect sensitive data in apps and across cloud services.

Support data protection across platforms.

Provide a consistent labeling schema experience (in preview).

We're also going to expand sensitive data types to include a GDPR template to consolidate sensitive data types into a single template.

These Microsoft 365 updates and capabilities are designed to provide you with an information protection strategy to help with GDPR compliance.

"GDPR is coming. But with Microsoft's information protection solutions, we will have a more efficient way to handle compliance."
-Erlend Skuterud, chief information security officer for Yara

Assess and manage compliance risk with Compliance Manager

Because achieving organizational compliance can be very challenging, we suggest organizations periodically perform risk assessments to understand their compliance posture. Compliance Manager is a crossMicrosoft Cloud services solution designed to help organizations meet complex compliance obligations like the GDPR. The Compliance Manager is now generally available for Azure, Dynamics 365, and Office 365 Business and Enterprise customers in public clouds.

"Compliance Manager really adds great additional value for Microsoft Cloud services by providing insights on the relationships between regulation, processes, and technology," stated IT manager Nick Postma from Abrona, a Dutch healthcare organization that helps clients on their journey to becoming strong and confident members of society through social partnerships.

Perform risk assessments with Compliance Score

Compliance Score-a Compliance Manager feature-enables you to perform ongoing risk assessments on Microsoft Cloud services with a risk-based score reference, giving you visibility into your compliance performance. Each control is assigned a risk weight based on the level of risk involved due to control failure, and as you implement and assess controls, you'll see your score change. Compliance Score is currently available for Office 365 and will be rolling out to other Microsoft Cloud services soon.

Learn more about the key capabilities and updates for Compliance Manager and Compliance Score at our Tech Community blog.

Protect sensitive data on-premises

Azure Information Protection scanner addresses hybrid and on-premises scenarios by allowing you to configure policies to automatically discover, classify, label, and protect documents in your on-premises repositories such as File servers and on-premises SharePoint servers. The scanner can be configured to periodically scan on-premises repositories based on company policies. Azure Information Protection scanner is now generally available.

Read " Azure Information Protection scanner" to learn more. To deploy the scanner in your own environment, follow instructions in this technical guide.

Protect sensitive data in apps and across cloud services

Since data travels through many locations-across devices, apps, cloud services, and on-premises-it is important to build the protection into the file so this protection persistently stays with the data itself. Azure Information Protection provides persistent data protection by classifying, labeling, and protecting sensitive files and emails.

Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS) can read files labeled by Azure Information Protection and set policies based on the file labels. For example, a file labeled as Confidential, with an associated policy of "do not forward or copy," cannot leave your network via file sharing apps like Box.net or Dropbox. In addition, the service scans and classifies sensitive files in cloud apps and automatically applies AIP labels for protection-including encryption. To learn more about this feature, read " Automatically apply labels to sensitive files in cloud apps" and the related technical documentation.

Support for data protection across platforms

As part of our information protection vision, our goal is to cover all major device platforms. Building on our efforts to support non-Windows platforms, we are now previewing the ability to label and protect sensitive data natively, with no plugins required, in Office applications running on Mac devices. This enables Mac users to easily classify, label, and protect Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents in a similar manner that you are used to with the Azure Information Protection client on Windows. Considering that a significant amount of sensitive information is in PDF format, as part of our ongoing partnership, we are in the process of working with Adobe to have the same consistent labeling and protection of PDFs available in Adobe Reader.

To learn more about these new information protection capabilities, visit the Enterprise Mobility + Security blog.

Consistent labeling schema experience now in preview

We are previewing a consistent labeling schema that will be used across information protection solutions in Microsoft 365. To start, this means that the same default labels will be used across both Office 365 and Azure Information Protection-eliminating the need to create labels in two different places.

The consistent labeling model also helps ensure that sensitive labels-regardless of where they were created-are recognized and understood across Microsoft 365, including Azure Information Protection, Office 365 Advanced Data Governance, Office 365 Data Loss Prevention, and Microsoft Cloud App Security. Learn more about the preview of the consistent labeling experience.

"Microsoft's information protection capabilities help you protect and manage your sensitive data throughout its lifecycle-inside and outside the organization," stated an analyst from KuppingerCole, an international and independent analyst organization headquartered in Europe.

Detect and classify personal data relevant to GDPR

The ability to automatically classify personal data is a critical part of helping you achieve your GDPR goals. Today, we have over 80 out-of-the-box sensitive information types that can be used to detect and classify your data. Soon we will provide a GDPR sensitive information type template to help detect and classify personal data relevant to GDPR. The upcoming GDPR sensitive information type template will help consolidate our sensitive data types into a single template-as well as add several new personal data types to detect (such as addresses, telephone numbers, and medical information).

To learn more about the current sensitive information types, read " What the sensitive information types look for." To learn more about how to create and customize your own sensitive information types, read " Create a custom sensitive information type."

For sensitive emails, Microsoft 365 enables users to collaborate on protected messages with anyone inside or outside the organization via Office 365 Message Encryption. To provide more flexibility over controlling and protecting personal information shared in sensitive emails, we are rolling out the new encrypt-only policy in Office 365 Message Encryption starting today. Read further about this and other updates in our Tech Community blog.

Get started on your GDPR journey with Microsoft 365

The Microsoft Cloud is uniquely positioned to help you meet your GDPR compliance obligations. Our cloud solution is built for power, scale, and flexibility. Microsoft 365 brings together Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security-offering a rich set of integrated solutions that help you assess and manage your compliance risk by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to protect your most important data and streamline your processes with a sophisticated and holistic solution set.

No matter where you are in your GDPR efforts, the Microsoft Cloud and our intelligent compliance solutions in Microsoft 365 can help you on your journey to GDPR compliance. Learn more about how Microsoft can help you prepare for the GDPR and take our free online GDPR assessment. Get started with your organization's information protection planning by downloading our free white paper and eBook.

-Alym Rayani, director of the Microsoft 365 team

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Microsoft 365 provides an information protection strategy to help with GDPR

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Intelligent compliance solutions in Microsoft 365 support your journey to GDPR compliance by enabling you to assess and manage your compliance posture and leveraging the cloud to identify, classify, protect, and monitor sensitive data residing in hybrid and heterogeneous environments.

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Add emoji's

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Use emojis in Docs, Hangout and Calendar titles | G Suite Tips

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OverDRIVE's integration with Google Drive and Gmail together with the powerful tagging and search capabilities of Navigator made it a great way to develop the portal. **Sam Wilson. Systems...

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CPD slides

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February 2018 - FE College Leadership Symposium (Master Deck).pdf

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CPD live recording

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Live from #EdtechUK Global Summit with @ian_livingstone @urban_teacher @shahneila1

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Recording and PPt of CPD 20/02/18

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This event builds on the huge amount of interest generated by the further education (FE) coalition meeting in October that touched on the issues of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) tools in FE and skills.

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As an organization that is already compliant with current privacy regulations, GDPR is fortunately not a big step. At itslearning, our organizational and technical security is already designed with personal data protection in mind, and we constantly update our services and procedures to maintain the highest level of data security.

For the cloud services we provide to our customers and their end users, itslearning is what both existing and new EU regulation defines as a processor. As a processor we do not decide the purpose or lawfulness of the processing, we merely process data on our customers' behalf. The GDPR regulations force stricter requirements upon all processors of data. We will fully comply with these requirements for all of our services, including itslearning, Fronter and SkoleIntra. In itslearning we have been working with GDPR for a long time to analyse the new regulation, and making the necessary changes to our services, procedures and organization. In the coming months we will make available all documentation, contract addendums and procedures that you might need to prove your GDPR compliance. We expect to be fully compliant by Q1 2018 - well in time for the new regulations.

As a part of our commitment to GDPR you can expect itslearning to:

Ensure organisational and technical security for all services.

Help you with the documentation needed to demonstrate compliance and inform your users.

Provide you with new contract addendums that comply with GDPRs requirements for Data Processing Agreements (DPA)

Provide the necessary support for you when your users are executing their data subject rights.

itslearning has appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) as defined under GDPR. Most of our customers will be required to appoint or contract a DPO as part of their GDPR compliance. In addition to monitoring our own compliance and providing advice and training to our own staff, our DPO will be available to our customers and their DPOs to discuss data privacy issues.

Contact details for our DPO:
John Arthur Berg
+ 47 55 23 60 70
[email protected]

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As an organization that is already compliant with current privacy regulations, GDPR is fortunately not a big step. At itslearning, our organizational and technical security is already designed with personal data protection in mind, and we constantly update our services and procedures to maintain the highest level of data security.

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Microsoft OneNote is an excellent tool for gathering information and collaborating with other users online. While many versions of OneNote are available in the market, OneDrive for Windows 10 app is a bit different. One major difference is that OneDrive for Windows 10 app is updated with interesting new features regularly.

OneNote features

We have already covered some basic OneNote tutorials, now let's cover some of the latest OneNote features you want to know!

OneNote restructured

OneNote has improved its ability to organize your pages, notebooks, and sections on the side of the app separately. This is shown in the image.
Easier to manage page conflicts
A general rule with page conflicts when multiple users are editing a Notebook is that whatever change is made later, is saved. However, OneNote allows you to review all these changes and restore them if needed. They are arranged according to date.

Customize your pens

This is an additional feature on the Draw menu in OneNote. It allows you to customize the type and color of your pens, pencils, and highlighters. Just click on the '+' symbol which is next to the pens and select the element you wish to customize.
Immersive Reader
The immersive reader option is added to the View menu on OneNote. It has options using which the reader can read the text. Voice recognition recognizes the sound and highlights every word as you pronounce it. It differentiates between syllables, nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Multitasking made easy
You could choose New Window in the View tab or press CTRL+M. It opens a new tab in a smaller view. You can work on both of them simultaneously. While creating new windows was always an option, the new feature allows you to create a sub-window along with an existing window.
Page previews

This option allows users to check the first few changes on a page. It is disabled by default. To enable this feature, click on Navigation panes on the View menu and then select Show P age Previews.
Make subpages
If you multitask with Notebooks, it's difficult to handle too many tabs. Making subpages would make things easy. To do this, you may select the pages, right-click the selected pages and select the option Make Subpage. The list of subpages can be expanded or compressed using the forward pointing arrow on the left-hand side.

The Tell Me feature can be accessed by either clicking the light bulb on the top right of the screen or pressing ALT+Q. While it looks similar to the Help feature, it is different and more advanced. It makes learning OneNote easier.

The Researcher option lets you check the for quotes, information, etc. from Bing and copy it while adding the source for credits, automatically. To use this option, click on the Insert tab and check the option Researcher.
Check what has changed in a document

In the newer versions of OneNote, the app highlights the changes that were made. This is brought to the notice of any person who may be editing the note subsequently.
Give a Nickname to your notebook
You can give a Nickname to your notebook by right-clicking on the name when it is open and choosing Nickname Notebook. This makes it easier to find the Notebook. It doesn't change the name of the Notebook but adds a nickname to the search results.

Give different Notebooks different colors

While the Nickname is a good way of classifying Notebooks, a better option would be to categorize different types of Notebooks with different colors. Just right-click on your Notebook, select Notebook color and choose your favored color.
A smarter find option

We know about the Find option, which we can access using CTRL+F. OneNote made it better by allowing the user to search for images, handwritten notes, and other customized features. It is different from the usual Find option.
Print to OneNote directly
This is a feature added to the Send to OneNote app. You will have to download this app from here.
Advanced meeting details
The Meeting Details option under the Insert tab offers more option than its predecessors. You can add a note specifying the date and time and attendee names, etc. It simply makes organizing and managing meetings easier.
Page Versions

OneNote keeps a note of every page version that is saved, along with the date and time. In case you wish to get it back, just click on Make Current Version. Thus, data is almost never lost unnecessarily on OneNote.
Select multiple pages
Click on the top-most or bottom most page in the list, and press CTRL or Shift to enable this mode. Then use the arrow buttons or the mouse to select the pages or Notebooks.
Cut, copy and paste become easier on OneNote
Unlike earlier, we can cut, copy and paste pages within a OneNote Notebook. The options are available on right-clicking the page. This is different from using these options with files in general.

Proof-read text in a different language

In case you have text in a different language and are unable to understand it, or even recognize the language, just right click on it and click on Set Language. Those who use this feature for the first time might get an option to set the default language.
Correct the accidental undo
We often depend on the CTRL+Z feature to undo unwanted changes. But what if we do it accidentally? OneNote has introduced little-curved arrows on the top that let you scroll forward and back through the changes.
Want more? Take a look at these OneNote Tips and Tricks. Incidentally, the OneNote Windows 10 app is different from OneNote desktop software - you might want to take a look at it too!

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OneNote features you may not be using, but should be using!

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Microsoft OneNote is an excellent tool for gathering information and collaborating with other users online. While many versions of OneNote are available in the market, OneDrive for Windows 10 app is a bit different. One major difference is that OneDrive for Windows 10 app is updated with interesting new features regularly.

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The OneNote FAQ: Answers to Your Note-Taking Questions

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Microsoft OneNote is a free but complex note-taking tool. It's also a great Evernote alternative. Do you have a question about OneNotet? We have answers!

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Further techniques

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My Fugleflick filmmakers created this effect for their upcoming movie. It was intended to look like the artist was painting The Scream, by Edvard Munch, then becoming the subject of the painting with his own body. There were a bunch of steps to making this illusion. Let's see if we can spell them out below.

This trick doesn't have to be so tricky...

Spin into the art and Jump back out

Falling Out of a Painting

You can add the "magic" if you need to...

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My Fugleflick filmmakers created this effect for their upcoming movie. It was intended to look like the artist was painting The Scream, by Edvard Munch, then becoming the subject of the painting with his own body. There were a bunch of steps to making this illusion.

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Since 2009, coders have created thousands of amazing experiments using Chrome, Android, AI, AR and more. We're showcasing projects here, along with helpful tools and resources, to inspire others to create new experiments. Here are collections of experiments to explore, with new ones added every week. Have fun.

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Since 2009, coders have created thousands of amazing experiments using Chrome, Android, AI, WebVR, AR and more. We're showcasing projects here, along with helpful tools and resources, to inspire others to create new experiments.

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Make unusual sounds

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Make unusual new sounds with machine learning.

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Create a VR environment

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Making your own VR project with CoSpaces is easy even for kids. Log into the browser/tablet app and start creating. No programming or design skills needed.

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Edtechteam - How Google keeps Data Safe

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This month's Teaching & Learning webinar was all about how Google keeps our data safe in G Suite for Education.

Here are just a few of the facts and information our panelists shared:

@TedPennell represented data and security from a Canadian view starting off with FIPPA. Ted also shared with us resources his district uses with students, parents and guardians including a link to their consent form.

@llennon started off with information and recommendations for using Google's 2-Step Verification and then the Yubico security key as an alternative. Lance also spoke about password requirements and how his district in Iowa manages the process, how important it is to train your staff and the difference between Google storing data and mining data.

Please take a look at the archive for all the amazing information shared this month.

To see the archive of all our Teaching & Learning monthly webinars visit our Youtube playlist.

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How Google Keeps Our Data Safe- Teaching and Learning Webinar - EdTechTeam

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This month's Teaching & Learning webinar was all about how Google keeps our data safe in G Suite for Education. You can view the 52 minute Youtube Live Event at https://youtu.be/96mGry2diCw and the resources from the panel at http://edtech.team/safedatawebinar. Here are just a few of the facts and information our panelists shared: @henrythiele shared his "FEAR.UNCERTAINTY.DOUBT" Presentation.

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Add for Forms to add a certificate

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Are you interested in creating custom certificates that are automatically emailed to your students? Then Certify'Em is the add-on for you! Certify'Em is an "add-on for Google Quizzes that extends the functionality of quizzes by allowing you to send a certificate when someone passes, and keep certification records." Here are some potential student uses:

Classroom Awards - A teacher could create a Google Form that awards students various awards. Examples include: Content-related, attendance, behavior, citizenship, and other awards.

Mastery/Proficiency Certificate - As students complete assessments, they could receive a certificate that states they have proven mastery of a specific concept or skill.

Student Certifications - Teachers could create a curriculum where students are awarded certificates based on tasks and/or assessments that they complete. As an example, a student could receive a certificate for "Google Apps", "Coding", or other technical certificates.

These are just a few possibilities but there are so many more ways that you could bring this tool to your classroom. Personally, I see this being a great motivational tool for students. Students appreciate receiving awards from their teachers. This little bit of recognition could encourage a student for weeks or months! In addition to this, students enjoy receiving certificates that say they have accomplished and/or mastered a particular concept, task, or skill. If a teacher could develop a curriculum where the students are working towards a certain certificate, then those students may be motivated to go above and beyond what they were already doing.

If you are interested in using Certify'Em, I have created a couple of videos to walk you through the set up:

Part 1: Setting Up & Using the Add-On

In this video, you will learn how to set up Certify'Em and use the add-on.

Part 2: Using Custom Templates

If you are interested in going further with Certify'Em, you can learn how to create custom templates for your students!

Have you used Certify'Em in your classroom? Or do you have other ideas for how this could be used for your students? Share in the comments below!

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Google Forms + Certify'Em = Custom Certificates for Students!

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Are you interested in creating custom certificates that are automatically emailed to your students? Then Certify'Em is the add-on for you! Certify'Em is an "add-on for Google Quizzes that extends the functionality of quizzes by allowing you to send a certificate when someone passes, and keep certification records."

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Good app for sport, biomechanics, positioning

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clipstro - auto strobe motion video creator

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Clipstro - auto strobe motion video creator on the App Store

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots and learn more about Clipstro - auto strobe motion video creator. Download Clipstro - auto strobe motion video creator and enjoy it on your Apple TV.

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Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs

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Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs

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Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs

Technology can be a powerful tool to assist students when learning, as it provides accessibility and accommodations to support everyone. In particular the Chrome web browser allows users to install a wide variety of web extensions that provide tools that can help all learners.

In this blog post we will take a look at dozens of Chrome web extensions and apps and other tools and features that can assist students in seven main categories:

🗣️ Text to Speech

☑️ Behavior, Focus, and Organization

Some of the tools fit into more than one topic, but each is only listed once. Certainly this list does not cover all of the useful web extensions and tools available for learners, but it is a great place to begin.

In addition to the list of extensions and tools, I have also linked in the video from a webinar I did on " Google Tools to Support All Learners" along with my ever-growing resource document and slideshow from the session.

▶️ Training Video (54 minutes)

🗣️ Text to Speech Tools

Read&Write for Google Chrome
Chrome web extension link
The "Swiss Army Knife" of extensions with tools including word prediction, dictionary, picture dictionary, text to speech, screenshot reader, speech maker, screen mask, translator, highlighters, voice note, and more. Works on webpages, PDFs, Google Docs, and Google Slides.
Note: There is a paid version with all the tools and a free version with a subset of the tools. Educators can get the paid version for a year at no cost by filling out the form at: https://www.texthelp.com/products/free-for-teachers/

The Immersive Reader extension can read aloud any text you have selected, as well as providing additional reading supports. These include Text Preferences to change the text size, increase or decrease spacing, change fonts, and colors, Grammar Options to break words into syllables, as well as color code and label the parts of speech, and Reading Preferences to turn on or off the picture dictionary option, and to select the language for translation.

Read Aloud
Chrome web extension link
This text-to-speech extension will read either the entire page or just the text that you have selected. In addition to the normal options to adjust the speed, pitch, and volume of the voice, the best feature is the wide collection of high-quality voices to choose from.

Announcify
Chrome web extension link
This is another text to speech tool that not only reads a webpage, but also removes distracting elements from the site. The only drawback is the inability to select specific text to read, as the entire page is read aloud.

ChromeOS Select-to-Speak

If you have a Chromebook, there is a built in tool for text-to-speak called " Select-to-speak". Nothing needs to be installed. It just needs to be turned on.

First click in the bottom right corner of your Chromebook screen to open the system menu.

Here click on the "Accessibility" icon.

Note: If you do not see the "Accessibility" icon you can click on the gear to go into the advanced settings to turn it on.

Now from the "Accessibility" menu click on the "Select-to-speak" option.

This will put a little speaker icon down in the bottom right corner.

Anytime you need to have something read aloud, just click the icon and drag your mouse to select the text you want to hear.

Using the toolbar you can also pause, change speeds, and jump forwards and backwards through the text.

Docs Voice Typing is not an extension that needs to be installed, but instead is actually built right into Google Docs and Google Slides. With voice typing you can simply speak and anything you say will automatically be typed for you.

When we are in a Google Doc we click the "Tools" menu and then choose "Voice Typing" from the drop down menu.

This will open up a floating microphone.

To start dictating to the document, we simply click the microphone icon.

Now anything you say will automatically be typed into the document.

In addition to words, you are also able to say punctuation. For a full list of all the commands you can speak, click the question mark icon below the microphone, and this will open up a help menu with all of the details.

When done, we just click the microphone again to stop the speech to text.

VoiceIn Voice Typing
Chrome web extension link
This speech-to-text extension allows the user to dictate text for any text box or text entry portion of a web page. You can either click the extension or right-click and choose "Start recording" to use it. Be sure to click the extension again to turn off the speech-to-text function when done.

Chromebook Dictation Tool

First click in the bottom right corner of your Chromebook screen to open the system menu.

Here click on the "Accessibility" icon.

Note: If you do not see the "Accessibility" icon you can click on the gear to go into the advanced settings to turn it on.

Now from the "Accessibility" menu click on the "Dictation" option to enable speech to text.

This will put a little microphone icon down in the bottom right corner.

Anytime you need to do speech to text just click on the "Dictation" icon and start speaking.

Anything you say will automatically be typed into the computer wherever you are.

This works in websites, documents, forms, and more.

If you are using a Chromebook there is actually a speech to text tool built right in. Nothing needs to be installed. It just needs to be turned on.

Present your slideshow as normal.

Click the "3-dots" button on the navigation bar.

Choose "Captions preference" and then toggle on the captions.

As you speak your words will be live captioned and will display on the screen.

Using the same menu you can adjust the size and position of the captions.

Live captions are available in several Google products including Slides and Meet. In Google Slides you can display live captions as follows:

👓 Readability Tools

Lexend fonts are intended to reduce visual stress and so improve reading performance. Initially they were designed with dyslexia and struggling readers in mind, but Bonnie Shaver-Troup, creator of the Lexend project, soon found out that these fonts are also great for everyone else.

Mercury Reader
Chrome web extension link
Make any website easier to read by removing ads, comments, and all other distractions, so just the core content remains. Users can also adjust the font size and color scheme of the new text.

Chrome web extension link
Override all fonts on a webpage with the OpenDyslexic font, making the text more easily readable.

Dyslexia Friendly
Chrome web extension link
This extension replaces the fonts on a web page with either OpenDyslexic or Comic Sans, and provides a horizontal shaded bar to help the user stay on the correct line when reading. The only drawback is there is no easy way to toggle it on and off, so you will want to use an extension management tool to let you turn it off when not in use.

WaspLine Reader
Chrome web extension link
This tool creates a more readable version of a web page by applying color gradients that make it easier for the eyes to chain together the ending of a line with the beginning of the next.

Color Overlay is a filter which puts a tint on your browser viewport to make text more readable. This could be used by people suffering by visual distortions reading the content on the normal background (Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome). The colored overlay can improve reading abilities of such users by reducing or eliminate perceptual processing errors.

ATbar
Chrome web extension link
Similar to the Color Overlay extension, this toolbar can generate color overlays for webpages, but also has features for a dictionary, text to speech, word prediction, and more.

MagicScroll Web Reader
Chrome web extension link
Turn web pages into a flippable e-book with easy clickable or keyboard control, as well as control over font size and page color as well.

Chrome web extension link
This screen overlay tool darkens out the page except for a horizontal band you can move up and down as you read, helping the student focus.

High Contrast
Chrome web extension link
This tool can make webpages easier to read by changing the colors to increase contrast, invert the colors, or switch to gray-scale.

Color Enhancer
Chrome web extension link
For people who are partially color-blind, this tool can help adjust and improve webpage colors.

Additional ChromeOS Features

📗 Reading Comprehension Tools

Google Dictionary
Chrome web extension link
Don't get stuck on an unknown word. Double-click on any word to get a pop-up definition, as well as spoken pronunciation for many words.

SMMRY
Chrome bookmark link
While not technically an extension, this tool functions very much like one and is launched from your Chrome bookmarks bar. Summarize any online article with a simple click of the SMMRY bookmark link. This will generate a simplified version with fewer sentences (7 by default) and just the most important information. Settings can be adjusted for longer or shorter summaries, as well as emphasis on certain desired words..

The QuillBot Chrome extension will summarize text as a new paragraph or by key sentences, in multiple levels of length. Sign in with your Google account for free to be able to summarize texts up to 5,000 characters at a time.

Auto Highlight
Chrome web extension link
This extension takes a different approach to summarizing. Instead of removing the non-essential portions of the text, it highlights what is most important. This allows the reader to still look at the rest of the article if needed. Three levels of highlighting can be chosen.

Behaviour, Focus, and Organization Tools

Simple Blocker
Chrome web extension link
This tool helps students to stay focused on their work by blocking distracting websites. The user can choose the sites to block, how long to block them, and optional password protection.

uBlock Origin
Chrome web extension link
A simple but powerful ad-blocking extension to help remove distracting ads from websites, making pages less cluttered and easier to read.

Move It
Chrome web extension link
For students who need a break, this extension can be set to periodically have them stop working and do something physical for a moment.

Google Keep
Chrome web extension link
Keep allows users to save and retrieve any information they come across including text, links, pictures, speech, handwriting, doodles, and more. The tool works as an extension, web site, Android app, and iOS app, and integrates into Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings.

Ambient audio sites and tools can let students create their own custom mix of background sounds to help them concentrate and drown out potentially distracting noises.

Pear Deck lets you add interactive elements to your slides including multiple choice, text entry, numeric entry, drawing, and draggable activities.

You can insert pre-made template slides provided in the Add-on.

Or you can add interactive elements to slides you have already created.

When you present the slideshow through the Pear Deck Add-on, students join the presentation and can interact with it.

You can show students responses by clicking the "Show Responses" button in the bottom right corner of the screen. Responses can be shown individually or aggregated together to look for patterns.

Pear Deck Webinar (1 hour) - Blog post

Pear Deck Add-on for Slides

This extension can make it easier for students to locate their mouse cursor by allowing them to customize the size and look of the mouse cursor.

Click-free Browsing
Chrome web extension link
For users who have a difficulty clicking a mouse, this extension adds on-screen navigation buttons the user can simply hover over to use.

Vimium
Chrome web extension link
Provides keyboard shortcuts for navigation and control for someone with difficulty using a mouse.

CrxMouse
Chrome web extension link
Use mouse gestures to navigate including forward, backward, scrolling, refreshing, switching tabs, and more. The user can even program their own custom mouse gestures to open programs and perform other tasks.

Caret Browsing
Chrome web extension link
This extension gives you a movable cursor in any web page, allowing you to move through the text with your arrows keys and select text with the keyboard.

Additional ChromeOS Features

Tools to support learners are constantly being created and improved, so be sure to check back often as I continue to update my resource documents " Google Tools to Support all Learners". And be sure to let me know of any tools you would recommend for the list. I look forward to learning from you!

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Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs

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Technology can be a powerful tool to assist students when learning, as it provides accessibility and accommodations to support everyone. In...

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Teach with a game

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learning with ipad - apple rtc showcase event!

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learning with ipad - apple rtc showcase event! tickets

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learning with ipad - apple rtc showcase event! london

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learning with ipad - apple rtc showcase event! london tickets

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Learning with iPad - Apple RTC Showcase Event!

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When you bring Apple products into the classroom, listening becomes discovering, interest becomes wonder, and passive learning becomes active exploration. All of which makes those magical a-ha moments happen much more often. For everyone.

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Turn your google slides into a gif

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Use Tall Tweets to convert your Google Slides presentation into a high-quality animated GIF image that you can download to your computer or share directly to Twitter

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Copy Paste Color Pallette from Flat UI Theme

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10 really good reasons to use video in training

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Learning Technologies UK e-Magazine - Issue 4

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Green Screen Movie FX Studio Quick Start

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A quick tutorial of how to do green screen or chroma key work on the iPad using the Green Screen app by DoInk.

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Integrating VR & AR in Education

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VirtualiTeach shares ideas for harnessing augmented and virtual reality in education. It is also the home for the innovative CPDinVR events.

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This is a free event for Jisc members from the higher education, further education and skills sector.

To ensure we give all eligible organisations a fair chance at attending, we can currently only accept a maximum of one delegate per member organisation.

To avoid disappointment, we strongly advise that you liaise with your team before registration to decide the most suitable representative to attend the conference. Additional registrants from the same organisation will be put onto a waiting list and contacted if a place becomes available.

Event supporters

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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is due to come into effect in May 2018.The implementation of GDPR will fundamentally change the relationship between how your organisation collects, processes, stores and shares its personal data of your staff and students.Our event is designed to offer our members practical advice around the impact of these changes and how to plan and implement changes across your organisation.

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Tips and Tricks for G Suite

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The best source of G Suite Tips, Tricks & Tools | G Suite Tips

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Tips Tricks and Tools to help you get the most from G Suite

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English and maths learning resources for students of Functional Skills in England, Essential Skills in Northern Ireland and Wales, and Core Skills in Scotland.

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Edtech Blog

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Ditch That Textbook is all about teaching with less reliance on the textbook with an emphasis on using technology and creative teaching ideas.

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Create jpegs/png quickly

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Google Drawings is the hidden gem in the core G Suite tools for education.

Everyone is familiar with Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Sheets. They correlate nicely with the Microsoft Office products we used for years and years.
Google Drawings doesn't fit into a nice, neat box like that.
Here it is in a nutshell:

Google Drawings is like a digital posterboard. (Or a big digital sheet of paper.) It has a few things you can add: text, images, shapes and lines. That's it, which makes the Google Drawings learning curve pretty low for students.

When you're done with Drawings, you can go to File > Download as ... to save the file as an image file (JPEG or PNG) or a PDF file.

This powerful tool has lots of potential! In this post, I'll show you:

Some of the sneaky features you might not know about

How students can create with it

How students can collaborate and think with it

What can you do with Drawings?

Plenty! Just by clicking and playing around with the main elements mentioned above gives you a pretty basic idea of what it can do. It's pretty intuitive; you and your students will get a grasp of it pretty quickly.

There are a handful of features that take Google Drawings to the next level:

Equal size: When you create text, images or shapes, it's easy to make sure they're the same size. While resizing, these blue bracket lines show you which items are the same size horizontally or vertically.

Equal spacing: Distributing everything equally makes your creations look nice and neat. The blue bracket lines also show you when spacing between items is equal.

Centering and lining up: That's what the red lines are for. As you move something around on the page, they'll show you what it's centered with or what it's lined up with on the edge.

Other sneaky features on Google Drawings:

The nudge. When you click on something and move it with your arrow keys, that moves it five pixels at a time. (Let's call that "the scoot" - scooting it over five pixels is a bit of a jump.) If you want to move something more precisely, use "the nudge". Hold in shift while you move with the arrow keys. That moves one pixel at a time. Very handy!

Resize everything. When you highlight multiple items on the screen, you can resize them all at once. Say you have nine rectangles and you want to resize all of them equally. Highlight them all and use the little squares on the corners or edges to resize them all.
If you want to resize everything proportionately, hold the shift key while you resize.

Line everything up equally. Highlight multiple items on your screen and use the following commands:

Arrange > Align vertically to line everything up top to bottom

Arrange > Align horizontally to line everything up side to side

Arrange > Center on page to bring your items to the midline of the drawing

Arrange > Distribute to make the spacing between items equal

Add images responsibly. When you add images with a laptop or Chromebook using Insert > Image > Search, you'll find images that Google has identified that can generally be used publicly. They're labeled "for commercial reuse with modification" and include Creative Commons images, images in the public domain and others. You still may want to verify you're using the image, ethically, though. Here are some details on that in a Google support page.

How can students use it to create?

There's so much potential here. Because Google Drawings is like a blank slate, the possibilities for classroom implementation are limitless!

Idea 1: Interactive, multimedia posters.

Give the old poster project a new twist. Create them in Google Drawings instead. The benefits:

Trade in markers for cool fonts

Quit cutting pictures out of magazines and start adding digital images (see above)

No glue sticks to put things on your poster

No glitter mess all over your room!

The biggest benefit: You can add clickable links to these posters. Link to video, audio, images and interactive websites to make your poster an interactive, multimedia one.
Click here to see a post full of ideas about Google Drawings interactive posters.
Idea 2: Eye-catching infographics

Have you seen those tall infographics on Pinterest or other social media? They seem to be everywhere!

They're really easy to create with Google Drawings, and they can put a fun twist on gathering information and presenting it in your class.

Instead of doing a traditional essay or research report, consider creating an infographic instead!

Some hints for kicking them up to the next level:

Use icons. TheNounProject.com has tons of icons you can use to illustrate your ideas in an infographic. Download the icon, give appropriate attribution and place it in your graphic.

Add lines. I've started getting more and more creative with how I break up content with lines. In the button panel below (left to right), you can change the color of your line, change its size (width), change the type of line and change the start and end of the line. Sometimes, I'll add a four-pixel line next to a two-pixel line. Other times, I'll make a really big, bold, 24-pixel line. If you want to make lines bigger than that, create a rectangle shape and stretch it to the size of line you want.

Stick to a couple fonts. Many times, I'll only use two or three fonts in an infographic: a big, bold one for headlines, a simple, easy-to-read one for text, and maybe a third to spice things up.

Click here to see a post full of ideas on creating infographics with Google Drawings.
Idea 3: Timeline projects

Timelines give students a great visual understanding of how events happened over time. There's a reason they've been a staple in the classroom for a while.

But timelines can be a drag. They can lead to very one-dimensional, shallow thinking.

Unless we kick the learning up a notch!

Google Drawings can be a great medium for creating timelines. We can even increase the depth of knowledge and level of thinking in these activities.

Start with a big, long horizontal line. That's your timeline. Use lines and text to connect new ideas, and even add images, icons and other illustrations.
Click here for more ideas for creating great timeline activities that promote deeper thinking.
How can students use it to collaborate and think?

The great thing about Google Drawings - and most Google products - is the ability to share. Use the blue "Share" button in the top right corner to give other people access to your drawings. Then they can jump in and view it, comment on it and/or edit it (depending on the sharing settings you create).

Idea 4: Do brain-friendly visual notetaking

Our classes are often filled with words, but our brains do their thinking in pictures. They just have to convert words over to images before their work can begin.

Our brains also tend to remember more when we connect different types of input - and a powerful combination is verbal and visual input. That means combining words and images. It's sticky learning at its best!

Google Drawings are made for visual notetaking:

Pull in images with an image search inside Google Drawings.

Draw things out with your mouse, touchpad or a touchscreen laptop/Chromebook with the scribble tool (found in the dropdown menu for the line tool)

Bring in icons from TheNounProject.com (like we did in infographics)

Draw something on paper and take a picture of it with your webcam using Insert > Image > Take a snapshot

Students can collaborate on their visual notes as well. (Two brains are better than one!) Just have students share a Google Drawing with their classmates and they can both work in the same digital space.
Click here to see a post full of ideas on creating infographics with Google Drawings.
Idea 5: Encourage deep thinking with graphic organizers

Many times, students need a little guidance in walking through a deep thought process. They're capable of doing deep thinking if we provide some concrete steps.

That's what makes graphic organizers great.

Google Drawings is a natural spot for creating and using graphic organizers. Use shapes, text boxes and lines to draw out your own graphic organizers.

When you're done, share them with your students! There are a couple ways:

Share them via Google Classroom. Attach them to an assignment and choose the "Make a copy for each student" option in the dropdown menu to the right of the attachment. That way, each student will have his/her own copy of the graphic organizer to write on.

Use the /copy trick. When you get a link to a Google document, slide presentation or something else, often the URL has "/edit" at the end. Try this: delete the word edit (and anything else after it) and type the word "copy" instead. It'll change from this:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/169dDturzudjUhhGfQZc8SuazlhPTJYhq6r7qs8D_vIo/edit
... to this:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/169dDturzudjUhhGfQZc8SuazlhPTJYhq6r7qs8D_vIo/copy
When students call up the second link with the word copy in it, it'll prompt them to make a copy of the file.

Share a "view" link with them. Click the "Share" button and click "Get shareable link". Choose "Anyone with the link can view." Give students that link and ask them to go to File > Make a copy. That will make a copy into their own Google Drives.

Don't want to make your own graphic organizers? I have you covered. I've created more than 15 graphic organizers in Google Drawings that you can copy and use. That way, you don't have to reinvent the wheel!
Click here to see all of those Google Drawings graphic organizers and how to make your own.
Lots more ideas!

Looking for more ways to use Google Drawings? Click here for a post called "10 engaging Google Drawings activities for classes." It includes:

Photo comic strips

Interactive white board

Digital manipulatives

Annotating images

Add and pass activity

For notifications of new Ditch That Textbook content and helpful links: Interested in having Matt present at your event or school? Contact him by e-mail! Matt is scheduled to present at the following upcoming events:

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The Google Drawings Manifesto for Teachers

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Google Drawings is the hidden gem in the core G Suite tools for education. Everyone is familiar with Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Sheets. They correlate nicely with the Microsoft Office products we used for years and years. Google Drawings doesn't fit into a nice, neat box like that.

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Upload a powerpoint to the web and add interactivity

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One-stop shop for event tech services. Your event, your way: from small to global, from multi-language to multi-day events and everything in between. Our family of products will turn even the most complex event into a great, memorable experience for everyone, from your team to your guests.

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About Eric Curts

Blog: Control Alt Achieve

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ericcurts

Eric has been in education for 26 years, and currently serves as a Technology Integration Specialist for SPARCC in Canton, Ohio where he oversees G Suite for education implementation, training, and support, as well as other technology integration initiatives for school districts in northeast Ohio. Eric is an authorized Google Education Trainer and Innovator, and provides Google training to schools, organizations, and conferences throughout Ohio and across the country. He is a co-leader of the Ohio Google Educator Group at bit.ly/gegohio and runs the award-winning blog www.ControlAltAchieve.com where all of his Google and edtech resources can be found.

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About Eric Curts Blog: Control Alt Achieve YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ericcurts Eric has been in education for 26 years, and currently serves as a Technology Integration Specialist for SPARCC in Canton, Ohio where he oversees G Suite for education implementation, training, and support, as well as other technology integration initiatives for school districts in northeast Ohio.

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Add text, links, video hotspots:

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Learning Technologies UK e-Magazine - Issue 2

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Communication, Access, Literacy, Learning

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Information on Additional Support Needs and Associated Technology.

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Screen recorder

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Direct link:http://dictate.ms/
Videos: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/dictate-email-microsoft-outlook/

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Mirra - build, share, and explore immersive experiences

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Nik Peachey scoop it

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A collection of web and mobile based tools to help teachers & learners exploit the web

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Digital Science Journal

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Check out Science Journal-- a digital science notebook to inspire kids and adults explore the world around them using sensors and data!

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Learn how to use Adobe products, take training courses or watch videos.