Innovation 4 Everyone

I keep what is called a "contact log". This is a Google form in which I keep track of who I have helped and what was their need. I'll be honest, I have missed many entries, especially if they happened informally in the hallways, but I can still get good data. As the first half of the school year ended, I decided to take a look at the results gathered so far. I was not surprised to see that the number one request had to do with Google Docs. Our school started using consistently GAFE this year. So, I can imagine it must be very frustrating for some teachers to be forced to use a tool they are not comfortable with. Of course, I remember the frequent comment from teachers saying, "I don't like Google Drive! Is there something I can do?" All it took was to give them a few recommendations and that was enough to make their day! Here they are, from simple to complex (or should I say, from very simple to less simple) that have changed t

This week at school we've been preparing for an upcoming professional development day taking place in January. This day will focus on the 9 H i gh Yield Instructional Strategies . We will have Jane E. Pollock, author of "Improving Student Learning One Principal at a Time" ,  visiting our school. She will follow-through on her visit from last year and the work done by all teams and how they've incorporated the GANAG schema and the instructional strategies to their lesson plans. As I was preparing for my team meeting, I thought, "How can Google Docs and Apps support this initiative?" This is what I brainstormed: 1. Identifying Similarities and Differences Use the Spreadsheet chart capabilities to prepare comparisons. Use the Drawing doc to create a mental map. Use a Form to collect data that can later be graphed. 2. Summarizing and Note Taking Student takes notes in a Document created by him or the teacher shares a pre-for

Well, I'm back from the Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View, still trying to digest all that happened. What an experience! Two days of intense learning, together with 61 more educators. Here's an overview of what happened these days: Day 1 - GTA - Arrived at 7:30am. Meet my team. Reception and breakfast. Welcome message and overview. Demo slam by the team leaders. First 2 break out rotations. Break and snacks. Get to know each other activity. Third rotation. Lunch. Google product demo. Last 2 rotations. Another break and snacks. Sharing of ideas. Google product demo. Digital literacy. Break. Action plans. Pinning ceremony. Dinner. End of day at 8:00pm. Day 2 - Unconference - Arrived at 8:00am. Breakfast. Free choice hands-on sessions. Lunch. Free choice hands-on sessions. Googleplex tour. Closing. End of day at 4:30pm. The days were packed with new information, revolving around 5 major strands:  Visualizing your World, Sharing your Wo

Hi! I'm going to tell you today about an app I've been trying out with teachers this week. I'm talking about Splashtop Whiteboard . This is an app for the iPad . With this app you'll be able to control your computer through the iPad, just like a remote, only that you actually see and touch what's on the computer screen. But that's not all, it includes functions that you would normally find with an interactive whiteboard. You'll be able to highlight, annotate, draw, spotlight, save the screen, and more! This is great if you don't have an interactive whiteboard and if you are doing a presentation, so you can stand away from your computer. Besides downloading the app to your iPad device, you will need to download the Splashtop streamer to your computer. Here's the cool part, the streamer is available for Macs, PC's and Linux computers. The connection will be done via Wifi. The instructions are pretty simple, and come along in

Just last week I was in need of separating each of the pages of a PDF file into individual JPG files. Hmm...how? My first thought was that I'd have to take a snapshot of each page. I'd probably have to resize the page view so it could fit on the screen, then take the snapshot, and hope the quality of the image wasn't that bad. But there were too many pages...there must be a better way! I searched Google and sure enough, I found the answer! Automator ! I've had the Automator application for the longest time but had never even taken a peek at it. The solution I found involved using Automator . I decided to give it a whirl. Turns out it's not complicated at all. Below you will find the steps I took to create my routine.  1 Create a new workflow 2 Ask for Finder Items 3 Render PDF Pages as Images 4 Move Finder Items   5 Hit Run...and see the magic! 6 Chec

When talking with parents about safety and security, they have had concerns regarding the privacy of individual documents. I put together this quick guide to show how to add a password to a Microsoft Office document when opening or modifying it.   Word 1. Go to Word-Preferences 2. Enter Security 3. Write passwords to Open and/or Modify (If you select “Read-Only”, the person opening it up will not be able to make modifications to the document.) Excel 1. Enter File-Passwords 2. Write the password to Open and/or Modify Powerpoint 1. Enter File-Passwords 2. Choose the option to write the password to Open and/or Modify Now, when you open up, for instance, a protected Word document, you will see something like this: If you have any comments or want to share more suggestions, feel free to add a comment. Cheers!

Teachers and parents have asked me for recommended search tools for kids. I have compiled a list of search tools designed for kids. They are all friendly options for young students. Quintura Kids KidsClick Qwiki KidRex SweetSearch Boolify Twurdy Instgrok We all know that the number one search tool is Google. Fortunately it has the option to turn on Strict Filtering (it works for images too) and as a parent, you might also want to lock these preferences. Some basic recommendations I make to kids so they can try to avoid encountering inappropriate material while searching are: Don’t make-up web sites that you type directly in the address box. For example, the child is looking for information about pandas. He types www.pandas.com. Yes, it sometimes works, but most often it’s not what you were looking for. Use correct spelling. The common typos lead you to inappropriate sites. Use keywords. Narrow down your search and make it more specific to the topi

I'm not sure when or how I first heard about something called the Google Teacher Academy . That was several years ago. I glanced through the program and didn’t consider it because I thought, “if only a few are selected, I’m not even going to come close, so I think I’ll just pass”. Last year, I was encouraged by a colleague, who was already an Apple Distinguished Educator, to apply for such recognition. I did just that, and to my surprise I was honored and selected ADE 2012. “There’s no stopping me now!”, I thought. Shortly after, the opportunity came around again but now with Google. I was looking for PD opportunities, related to my new position as tech trainer. My school was about to deploy Google Apps for Education. It seemed to me that Google was the way to go. I learned from another colleague that there were Google Certified Trainers and Google Certified Teachers. That’s what I wanted! I looked at the requirements for each of them: I had to take 6 tests regardin

I’ve been having sessions with parents regarding digital citizenship topics. One of the sessions, I call “Be Wise, Protect Yourself” , has to do with online safety and security. I can’t stress enough the importance of these measures anyone can take to ensure their own and their loved ones’ safety and security. We start by differentiating what each term stands for: • Online Safety refers to making sure you and your kids are not harmed, physically or emotionally, through inappropriate images, videos, content, and interaction with an unknown person that makes you feel uncomfortable. • Online Security refers to making sure your personal information, your files, and equipment are protected from viruses, damage, and thefts. Basic Safety Measures: Be careful when giving out personal information. Don’t post photos and don’t tag them. Don’t accept contacts you don’t recognize. Kids should tell a trusted adult of anything that seems suspicious. Adjust privacy and sec

Why would someone want to reduce the size of a pdf file? I had to do that…twice. When I asked our webmaster if she could please upload to the school’s web site the handouts I made for parents, she said they were too big. So, this is how I solved the problem. My goal was to have my presentation available to parents so they could download it at home. The presentation was made with Keynote, a software application for presentations, part of the iWorks suite, for Macs. The first thing I did was convert the keynote file to pdf format. How?  File –> Export –> PDF.   The original .key file was 111 Mb. Way to big! I knew that, that’s why I converted to pdf. Smart me! Now I had reduced the size to only 4.3 Mb. I also took away the videos, and only included links. That should do the trick. Right? Wrong! Turned out it was still too big. The web master told me it would be best to have the file size down to about 1Mb.  But how? No matter what I removed, I couldn