Audio books have surged in popularity in recent years, enabled by their ease of use and advancements in smart phones. Gone are the days of numbered cassettes and bulky players. Technology has created more opportunities to listen to good books. But not everyone believes listening to books is a good thing — biases in favor of reading…
During the 2015-16 school year, I visited schools across the nation to see how technology can transform teaching and learning. The changes I’ve seen have been exciting, meaningful, and more often than not, challenging to get right. The “digital divide” is still very real. In places like Eminence, Kentucky, we’ve seen how creative school leaders have found…
This is part 8 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. Desktop notifications When you open up Gmail for the very first time, Gmail will ask you if you want desktop notifications. Once enabled, you will receive notifications for new email. But what if you blocked or closed the permissions pop up? There is a way…
Currently in my district we’ve had some preliminary talks regarding if/how digital portfolios could be implemented on a wide-scale. Of course, while the focus shouldn’t necessarily be on the technology, one of the first questions asked by everyone (both in and out of district) always involves what type of platform we have in mind. While these portfolio…
At Microsoft, we’re passionate about our vision to empower everyone to achieve more. Every day our teams are striving to help educators expand their passion for teaching by using technology that can transform their classrooms and help their students achieve more. And, just as important, we’re committed to celebrating educators and schools that are raising…
This is part 7 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. Another favorite hack in Gmail, searches. Gmail has such a powerful search ability that using labels or folders to organize emails is counterproductive. This means that it takes more time to file away the messages than it does to use a search to retrieve the…
Teachers in Littleton, Colorado — like teachers in many places — are increasingly asking students to read and write online. Free tools like Google Docs have made it easy for students to work on the same piece of writing at home and at school, and have allowed teachers to explore collaborative writing assignments and synchronous…
This is part 6 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. What if you can’t use Google Groups? Is there another way? Gmail has a feature I called Contacts Groups. This is a group that you create in your address book. The disadvantage to this group is the fact that others can’t use it for things like…
13 Gmail hacks for teachers A continuation of Gmail hacks for teachers. Highlight rows in Google Sheets with conditional formatting It’s easy to highlight cells in Google Sheets, this shows how to highlight an entire row. The Best Schools In The World Do This. Why Don’t We? I would have never guessed the three items…
This is part 5 of 13 Gmail hacks for teachers. Google groups is a service offered by Google to create email listservs. While some of its functionality can be duplicated with Google Classroom, there are times when having a Google Group comes in handy. First, you will need to know if Google Groups is turned…