Comet Tech

Check out this week's 90 Second Chromebook Tip & Trick on organizing your Google Waffle.

This week, its all about the bookmarks!

Back to back formative assessment tools in the first two posts of the App Highlight section! I guess it goes to show just how important I think formative assessment is! This week, we take a look at Quizizz. Quizizz is like a Kahoot! style formative assessment. While it does offer points for speed, it also offers points for amount correct, so that our students have the opportunity to process at their pace, not at the rapid pace of a Kahoot!. It also provides teachers with the opportunity to put fun memes in the middle of their challenges, as well as provides us, as teachers, with a good way to formatively assess our students.  In my opinion, one of the best practical uses of this is following a segment of direct instruction with the students or following a reading for comprehension activity, regardless of the subject. After student learning occurs, using a Quizizz quiz to assess what was retained and what you may need to cover is a fantastic way to review the mate...

The referenced document: bit.ly/ccsofflinecb

This past week has been #CSEdWeek! The goal of the week is to bring awareness to schools across the country and the world that Computer Science is a field of study that our students can get into, learn, and easily land in a career. There are a bunch of resources and stats that support that statement. Including the current 600,000 unoccupied Computer Science jobs that are available in the United States with an average starting salary of $75,000. Check out the infographic below to learn more about the stats. Needless to say, Tonya and I tried to get in as many classrooms as we could to talk to the students about Computer Science and allow them to try it out through Hour of Code. The discussion was that this is more than fun and games, but we are working on skills like computational thinking, problem-solving, and critical thinking. The students loved it. We hit all of CIS and parts of CES. We also had a Family Code Night for our K-5 families on Wednesday. We invited students to come in ...

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend a REMC and MDE event on Open Educational Resources (OERs). This event was the launch of a new #GoOpen push within Michigan schools. While OERs have been a part of our school and an option, little has been done to truly push these into the classrooms. The #GoOpen Summit was put on to launch a new initiative in Michigan. Michigan will be launching a database of OERs created by and used by Michigan teachers. This is incredibly powerful. The beginnings of the site can be viewed on this MDE page . The biggest part of the website, something that has been missing from so many OER databases is the fact that these resources will be evaluated before publishing to ensure their openness and their quality. Some of the biggest takeaways from the event is the reminder that there is a significant difference between an Open Educational Resource and something that is free on the internet. The difference comes in the restrictions on use. Some resources, su...

This week, I was working on a Google Classroom tutorial for teachers that are new to Google Classroom. In the process, I was adding Google Drawings into my Google Doc, something that needs one additional trick. In this week's 90 Second Chromebook Tip and Trick, I show how you can annotate a photo in Google Drawings and easily insert into Google Docs. Check it out below!

While I made this video specifically for the students in Edgenuity, I thought that it would be worthwhile to share with all students as they navigate their Chromebooks to different learning activities on the web. One of the biggest things that this encounters is Flash and Flash Objects that have been disabled. It is also useful for turning the microphone on as well.

So, if you took the advice of last week's 90 Second Chromebook Tip & Trick and abandoned your "Search" key in favor of Caps Lock on your Chromebook keyboard, this is still a quick way that you can search Google using this week's Shortcut of the Week.  When you want to quick search Google, simply press "Ctrl + e" to focus on the URL bar at the top of the page and begin your Google Search query. It is extremely easy and fast to do!

Google is heavily invested in artificial intelligence and trying to learn what we are thinking. With additions like the canned responses on the Gmail App to a new release that is coming. Google Drive on Android and iOS has had the ability to try and focus on what files you might need in an area know as "Quick Access." The machine is trying to figure out what files you might be using next. In the coming days, this technology will be added to the Google Drive web view. Now, Google will try to read what file you might be working on based on time of day, location, and other variables. This is helpful if you have to fill out a form for various items at the end of the day. This can be extremely helpful moving forward.

Google is constantly updating their services and ensuring that they are delivering a product that is more and more useful. In the past week or so, Google updated their iOS and Android GMail apps to include canned responses that you can quickly send. In this email, you can see that at the bottom I am given some choices on how to respond. These can be the start of a reply or the whole reply, it is up to you. This is meant to make it easier to respond to questions via the GMail app and help you manage your email. You should see this in your GMail app on your phone. If you don't, try updating your apps to see if it appears. Some emails will not generate the canned responses. I have found that it tends to be ones that have a large list of recipients or is part of a longer chain of emails.  If you have any questions, let me know. 

Long for the days when it was easy to type in all caps to scream your point on the internet? With this week's Tip & Trick you can change the "Search" key on your keyboard back to a "Caps Lock" key. Watch: