Pinning Tabs in Chrome

This post is Day 1 of my "12 Days of Chrome-mas" series where we are learning all about the Google Chrome browser including tips, tricks, lesser known features, and helpful ideas. You can access all of the posts in the series at: bit.ly/chromemas22

Two common issues with tabs in Google Chrome are:

• Having the tabs take up too much room when you have a lot of them open and
• Accidentally closing out of a tab that you meant to keep open

There are certainly several options for addressing these issues, but one simple approach is to pin a tab. Pinning a tab makes the tab much smaller, and it makes it impossible to close the tab if you do not mean to.

See below for a short tutorial video and written directions on how this works.

What's New in Google - November 2022

Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from November 2022, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our November 2022 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda with all the awesome resources and Google updates from the last few months. This includes lots of new Google updates and Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:

• Connect Google-using educators
• Share the latest Google Workspace news and features
• Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to’s
• Share best practices of how Google Workspace is being used within schools
• Ask questions and get answers

The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the November 2022 meeting:

EdTech Links of the Week - 11-28-22

Each week I keep an eye out for the latest edtech resources through blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, user groups, and more. I then try to reshare these resources in many ways.

One way I share these is here on the blog in these "EdTech Links of the Week" posts. See below to explore the latest batch of resources, and be sure to share with others who may benefit.

If you want to make sure you don't miss new resources, you can:

📰 Sign up for my weekly email newsletter here: Newsletter link

🐦Follow me on Twitter here: Twitter link

🔗 Subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog here: RSS feed link

And as always, please let me know of any resources that you recommend. I would love to learn from you!

8 Googley Wintertime Activities for Kids

As we get closer to the holiday break, it is expected and understandable that our students start getting a little distracted. They are looking forward to lots of days off, holiday celebrations, gifts, and more. Let's be honest … we may be a little distracted as well.

 
This is a time of year when we look for some fun activities to keep our students focused and active. But we don't just want busy work. If possible it is great to find projects that are fun, tie into wintertime themes, and still provide our students with a chance to be creative, write, or improve some content area skills.

To help out with that, I have put together eight wintertime-themed activities that use free Google tools, including Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings:

⛄ Activity #1 - Build a Snowman with Google Slides

🎄 Activity #2 - Decorate a Holiday Tree with Google Slides

🧲 Activity #3 - Wintertime Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings

📬 Activity #4 - Holiday Greeting Cards with Google Drawings

🎁 Activity #5 - "12 Days of Christmas" Guided Google Sheets Math Activity

🌟 Activity #6 - Pixel Art Ornaments with Google Sheets

❄️ Activity #7 - Wintertime Emoji Rebus Stories with Google Docs

💡 Activity #8 - Holiday Lights Writing with Google Docs

Some of these are projects I have shared in the past, while others are new twists on previous posts. Hopefully some of these will be a good match for your students to keep them busy AND learning as we head into the holidays.

The 12 Days of Chrome-mas 2022

With the holiday season here, I am excited to share some of my favorite tips and tricks for the Chrome web browser!

I will be doing this in a series of blog posts throughout the month of December that I am calling "The 12 Days of Chrome-Mas".

Each blog post will provide a tip or trick or lesser known feature or helpful idea related to Google's Chrome web browser.

See below for options on how to access each entry for "The 12 Days of Chrome-Mas".

Illustrating Stories with Canva's AI Text to Image Tool

Artificial Intelligence continues to develop at an astonishing pace. What seemed like science fiction a year ago, is science fact today.

One area in particular is text-to-image tools. What I mean by that are tools where you provide a text description, and then the AI creates a new image based off of your text. It doesn't just find an image similar to what you wrote. It makes a brand new image that never existed before!

So far we have seen this done with AI tools such as Dall-E 2 or Google's Imagen.

Now this amazing technology is available right inside of Canva. If you aren't already using Canva, it is totally free for schools, and lets you and your students create images, presentations, videos, infographics, websites, and so much more.

This sounds like a wonderful way for students to bring their writing to life with original illustrations to go along with their stories, poems, and more. So I decided to use Canva's new AI-powered "Text to Image" tool to illustrate a funny poem I wrote.

See below for a video demonstration of this, detailed directions, and of course my final illustrated poem.

EdTech Links of the Week - 11-21-22

Each week I keep an eye out for the latest edtech resources through blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, user groups, and more. I then try to reshare these resources in many ways.

One way I share these is here on the blog in these "EdTech Links of the Week" posts. See below to explore the latest batch of resources, and be sure to share with others who may benefit.

If you want to make sure you don't miss new resources, you can:

📰 Sign up for my weekly email newsletter here: Newsletter link

🐦Follow me on Twitter here: Twitter link

🔗 Subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog here: RSS feed link

And as always, please let me know of any resources that you recommend. I would love to learn from you!