Tech Tips
November 2016: Volume 4- Number 31
Happy Thanksgiving!
You'll find a wide variety of apps, articles, and websites in this issue.
Science Journal App
PhotoScan
"PhotoScan gets you great looking digital copies in seconds - it detects edges, straightens the image, rotates it to the correct orientation, and removes glare. Scanned photos can be saved in one tap to Google Photos to be organized, searchable, shared, and safely backed up at high quality—for free."
Kami PDF Annotations
"View, annotate, share and collaborate your PDF and documents on Chrome. Kami is the most popular and highly rated document app in the market. Install our extension to start your complimentary evaluation period. Are you a teacher? Share documents via Google Drive or Google Classroom to your class." More Info
"a Google a day" Game
Improve Reading Comprehension with Google Docs "Black Out" : Eric Curts
Excerpt:
Improve Reading Comprehension with Google Docs "Black Out"
Recently I came across a creative technique called “Text Reduction Strategy” (see the article here by Andrea Heick at TeachThought). I really liked the idea, but also felt it could be made even better with a Google Docs technology twist.
The original idea goes like this…
- Students are given a magazine article and a black marker.
- They are instructed to read the article and decide what text is critical to the main point of the article and what text is not.
- Next they use the marker to black out any text that is not critical, leaving behind just the main ideas.
The benefit of this activity is that students do not have to come up with their own words to summarize the article. Instead all the words are already there, and they are just using their critical thinking skills to determine what is most important. This can be a helpful stepping stone to improving their reading comprehension while working toward better summarization skills.
As much as I love the idea, I thought it would be great to take it a step further and use technology rather that physical paper magazines and black markers. This activity works great in Google Docs, and even picks up a few added benefits by going digital. See below for full directions on how to do this."
Sales Tax Exemption for Teachers: Computer Purchases
Jamboard
"Jamboard merges the worlds of physical and digital creativity. It’s real time collaboration on a brilliant scale, whether your team are together in the conference room or spread all over the world."
SCS Instructional Technology Information
Contact me if you have any questions or would like help using these tools.
Email: vturner@scsmustangs.org
Website: http://www.strongnet.org/InstructionalTechnology
Phone: 440-572-7067
Twitter: @vturner8