For over the last decade-plus, my roles in schools have revolved largely around using technology for teaching and learning. I have spent 8 years as a Technology Integration Specialist, 1 year as a Director of Technology, obtained my first Masters in Curriculum and Instructional Technology, am a member of the ITEC Board (including being a…
For the better part of the last two decades, we have been trying to find ways to incorporate the 4C’s of 21st-century learning into classrooms. Collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity are all skills that we need to ensure that our students possess before they leave our buildings and go into their post-K12 lives. One…
This spring I am getting the chance to teach a college course again for future teachers, this time all around educational technology for secondary education. While working over lessons and figuring out the main ideas I wanted to make sure were highlighted, there is one that I have always stated any time someone has asked…
In the last couple of years, Google has added a lot of functionality to Google Docs by incorporating tools that can be used in highly effective ways. One tool that I think many people are not fully aware of are the Smart chips. Smart chips are ways to better insert information like dates, people, places,…
As we are nearing the end of the semester for many schools, many students can get tripped up as they are experiencing a lot of tasks all due at the same time. Making sure that students have easy and quick access to a list of tasks they are supposed to be completing should be key…
As an Esports coach at our school, I like to keep track of all of our stats and scores, so of course I use a Google Sheet to do that. Now I could simply use a basic sheet but that is no fun. Instead I have a sheet that uses a combination of equations (Sum,…
I have very high hopes for how well AI can make teaching and learning more effective in the next few years but there are ways that we can start using these new tools now to make learning better. Using an AI chat tool like ChatGPT or Bard, we can start to look at ways to…
I have a series of videos that goes over the top equations that I use with Google Sheets but there are many ways you can combine those equations to do even more fun things with data. Included in those videos was one about the Filter equation which allows you to easily filter out the rows…
With the loss of Jamboard, there comes the loss of some simple ways that it was used in the classroom and now teachers have to find a new way to do what they did before. (This is also why I say to never marry technology, but to date it, it is always a shorter term…
One really nice feature in Figjam is the ability to hide sections or items so their contents are not visible until you unhide them. This helps to direct the focus on the sections you need to be focusing on and can help remove any distraction or help to just control the flow of the work.…
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