🙋♂️ Chromebooks for staff, document tabs in Google Docs, Scratch resources, and more – Of bits and bytes for October 14, 2024
Internet Travels
Of bits and bytes is my weekly round up of interesting links and ideas I discovered on the internet. It is published on Mondays for the previous week
I’ve been using a Chromebook for the past several weeks as my main laptop and it’s gone very well. Since I can run Linux apps along with web sites and Android, I’ve been able to do everything I meed for work. Would it work as a laptop for our staff? The jury is still out on that. For a majority of the staff it could easily be their main machine, but there are always edge cases where one staff member will need to do something that the others do not, such as graphic design or video editing, for which a Chromebook may not be equipped. However, it’s definitely worth considering for its cost effectiveness and simplicity of use.
Will I stay on the Chromebook? I will for the conceivable future, that is, until I get bored and want to try something else.
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Apps
Printfriendly is an online tool that can convert a ton of file formats like images, Excel, PowerPoint, and more, directly to PDF. Depending on your use case, this could work better for you than the built in converter in your operating system.
Google has introduced new document tabs to organize the content in a Google Docs. They allow you to break up a Google Doc into separate documents, which for me means I can break up our documentation into various document tabs instead of scrolling through a long document.
Pedagogy
Mathematician Terence Tao discusses the potential of AI models like OpenAI’s o1 series, which aim to tackle complex mathematical tasks by problem-solving “much like a person.” Tao sees AI as a valuable assistant—much like a “mediocre graduate student”—that can aid mathematicians by handling routine work, although lacking the imaginative spark of human insight.
Tips
Wes Fryer posted a whole list of resources for coding in scratch along with some bonus resources for Minecraft. If you are either a coding beginner or an experienced coder who wants to teach with Scratch, these resources are worth checking out. Alongside the Scratch resources, the Minecraft resources can open fun ways of designing and building within this popular game platform, encouraging creativity, strategic thinking, and problem-solving.
Security
Ever had a worry about whether a website is reliable? Try using urlscan.io. You can enter an address into the box on the page and find out if there is a chance that the link is malicious or not. However, before entering a link and clicking that Public Scan button, press options and switch to Private. URLs sent to you in an email may have tracking information tied to your email address. If you use the public scan, that url will be public, which means others may click on it and get access to things that you may not want others to access.
Quick Insert is a new feature on ChromeOS 129 that enables you to drop links, emojis, Drive files, and more into any text field. While the new Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus comes with a handy key for this feature, the rest of us can us the keyboard shortcut of {LAUNCHER} + {F}.
Potpourri
The world changes fast and we’ve basically have four options dealing with this rate of change, but only one that helps us. It’s when we acknowledge the chaos and work with it can we succeed.
Cracked has a list of 38 stats and math factoids that you can use to wow your stuents or to just share something interesting. I learned that lightning can heat the air five times hotter than the sun and that Melvil Dewey was ousted from the American Library Association.
Thank you!
Major props if you’ve made it this far, you are a rockstar! Feel free to contact me with questions, ideas, concerns, or your thoughts on the next Marvel movie. In fact, I love to discuss about any topic and then wonder how it intersects with education, so fire away!
“Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery, but Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” – Oogway, Kung Fu Panda
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