Teacher Feature Sunday: Volume 19 (Tech Tips)
It was sooooo tempting to focus on holiday activities for this week's blog post, but as the week progressed sooooooooo many tech tips came across our social media platforms that we decided this NEEDS to be our focus this week. Whether you are teaching at home or at school, in-person or virtually these tech tips will be sure to help you as move you through the rest of the school year!
Our first tech tip comes from Ashley Donahue (@thetechqueen_). We all know that YouTube is a phenomenal resource to add a little pep and spice to any lesson, BUT don't the comments and ads just drive you crazy? This was always an annoyance factor for me and of course I just muddled through. Well, Ashley has a solution for this problem and it is so SIMPLE. When sharing a link to a YouTube video, add a hyphen (-) after the T in the URL and it will create an ad free, full-screen, view-only link! GAMECHANGER! Trust me when I tell you that you will for sure want to give Ashley a follow: https://www.instagram.com/thetechqueen_/
Tech tip number two comes from Andrea (@love.learning). If you are a math teacher, you are going to LOVE this tech tip Andrea has for sharing work! Our school is fully remote right now and having students show their work to how they solve a problem is pretty tedious. However, now that we have been using this tech tip from Andrea, things have been smooth sailing! Here's how: In Google Slides, students can click on:
1. Insert
2. Image
3. Camera
4. They hold their whiteboard up to the screen and take a picture of their work and insert it directly onto their slide.
If you haven't tried this tech tip, I promise you it will change your whole approach to learning especially if you are teaching online! Andrea has this tech tip posted in her highlights under "Digital Learning". Here is the link so you can learn more amazing teacher strategies from Andrea: https://www.instagram.com/love.learning/
Finally, this tech tip comes from Darin Nakakihara (@darin_nakakihara). How many times have you been teaching on Zoom and you only want your students to see a portion of the screen, but with screen sharing they have to see everything? Well, Darin has the solution to this problem! Here's what you will need to do: 1.Instead of sharing your whole screen, click on the "Advanced" tab
2. Click share a portion of your screen 3. Adjust the green box to the text or image you would like 4. Now you can leave the slide deck in edit mode to customize your shared screen to just the slide you want which will allow you to scroll through your slide deck without distracting your students. I can't begin to tell you how helpful this tech tip has been especially with students that have trouble staying focused. By only having one central focal point, students were more engaged in the lesson because they were actually listening to what I was saying. If you are not yet following Darin, STOP what you are doing and click this link: https://www.instagram.com/darin_nakakihara/
Our goal here at Lesson Plan Toolbox is to always make the lives of teachers as easy as possible. We truly hope that you find these tech tips as useful and helpful as we did! Be sure to to reach out to us on Instagram (@lessonplantoolbox) if you have any other questions or need help finding resources. Also, our website is finally up and running! So feel free to explore and see what we're all about. We love helping teachers to build their Lesson Plan Toolboxes!
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