If a picture is worth 1,000 words, than an animated gif must be worth at least 5,000! Google Slides supports animated gifs, and it’s an easy way to liven up a presentation. Sure, you could insert a Youtube video, but sometimes that is just plain overkill. Unfortunately, you have no control over the gifs, and…
When someone handed you a calculator for the first time, it meant that long division was never going to be required of you ever again. A huge savings in time, a decrease in the cognitive load of decision making. Now what? You can use that surplus to play video games and hang out. Or you…
I’ve talked about Gmail labs previously and today I want to share another Labs addition to Gmail I use all the time, Quick Links. After enabling Quick Links, a new box shows up on the left under your Gmail labels. To save a search, you need to complete the Gmail search first using the normal Gmail…
The number one paradox in higher education is that technology is both transforming and disrupting universities around the world. Institutions that adapt to the technology and become content producers will survive and flourish; those confined to being content consumers will struggle to stay in business. Many colleges and universities are in financial difficulty today: According…
American schools are teaching our kids how to code all wrong — Quartz Coding in schools isn’t about becoming computer science majors. Google Spaces is a new way to collaborate and share resources Kind of a neat competitor to Slack. My quick review of the Asus Flip Chromebook TL;DR, I like it.
Today I put my Asus Flip into Developer Mode so I could run full Linux apps alongside ChromeOS. This is good if you want to play, but I’d be hard pressed to recommend this configuration for schools. Once the device is in Developer Mode all of the protections offered by ChromeOS are gone, including the…
But if students are not properly equipped to direct their own learning, then what? “We created the profession we call ‘teaching’ largely to solve for this problem,” he dryly observes: “Students need to be guided down the path of their learning. Teachers should remain central to the activity of imparting knowledge to students.” From my…
When Google announced that Android apps were coming to Chromebooks I decided to bite the bullet and buy an Asus Flip Chromebook($). The Flip is one of the first Chromebooks to be receiving the ability to run Android apps, the other two are the Google Pixel 2 and the Acer Convertible Chromebook R11($). The Pixel 2…
By promoting “pop computing” apps to kids in schools, we aren’t doing the hard thinking that defines what the subject of computing is today, and most importantly, what it can be in the future. A new approach to learning mass computing is needed to get 55 million students in 130,000 public schools to learn to…