Noel Erskine, Technology Coordinator Norris Schools

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Free apps, great web tools, and some amazing new tools added to Google Apps - All in this weeks list!

Wednesday, December 10, 2014


Websites and web 2.0 tools:

Want to add some fun and zip to some elementary coloring pages? This site, is pretty cool.  If you have never seen any augmented reality... it's worth a look, even if you teach the older grades. 

Autodesk's Design Software is Now Free for Students and Teachers ow.ly/Fo6we 

Something for your website.... 50 Interactive Activities to Embed Into Elementary School Blogs ow.ly/Fjkzm

Did you know that Google has lesson plans to help you with improve your student's searching skills? 

Top 10 Cool Tools for 2014 - This is a great list!!! Many of these have made my postings this past year too... but there are a few new gems in this list. 

5 Web-based Audio Recording and Editing Tools Compared - Chart

Map this way—Google My Maps now in Drive Starting today (12-10-14), you can access My Maps right from Google Drive, so it’s even easier to create, access and share your custom maps.


IOS (iPhone/iPad) Apps:

6 awesome paid iPhone apps you can get for free right now (Save $22!) I like the AirScanner App! (Air Scanner: Wireless Remote HD Document Camera and Overhead Projector Replacement)

Google Apps

New feature just added to Sheets!  - Use Sparklines For Quick & Easy Data Analysis (Short 2 minute video)
The Sparkline function creates a miniature chart inside a single Google Sheet cell. You’ve been able to use the Sparkline function for a long time now, but Google recently added two new types of sparklines – columns and winloss.



The following tips come from the Gooru. CHekc out their website and subscribe to their newsletter for some great updates! 
It was a highly requested feature and now you can finally merge table cells in Google Docs. This is definitely a big time saver and offers some much-needed flexibility when working with tables in Google Docs. Check out today's post to learn more!
Another update made it's way to Google Docs yesterday, giving you the ability to adjust the color and add filters to images in Google Docs. The video above shows the process in Google Slides, but you can take the same steps inside Docs!
Sometimes sharing files in Google Drive can make people worried because they feel like they don’t have true control of the data. While that is no more true than attaching files to emails, we’ve put together a helpful trick to keep shared files from being downloaded from Google Drive
Subtitles can sometimes be expensive, or take some technical expertise, to add to your videos. There's actually a really easy way to add subtitles to videos directly inside of Google Drive...anyone can do it!
Find out about all of the new features coming out in google by subscribing to this alerts email!

A new Devices and Activity dashboard gives you additional insight over the devices accessing your Google account. The page shows a comprehensive view of all devices that have been active on an account in the last 28 days, or are currently signed in. And in case any suspicious activity is noticed, there’s a setting to immediately take steps to secure an account and change a password.

Posted: 19 Nov 2014 10:52 AM PST
To make it easier to collaborate during Hangouts video calls, we’ve enabled the sharing of links to any Drive file directly from the chat window. Shared links will show a preview of the file right in the chat message, even when other participants don’t have their chat window open. Clicking on the link will open the file in a different browser tab so you can conveniently work on it in full view.

To share a link from Drive during a Hangouts video call, click on the Chat icon and then click the Google Drive picker icon from within the chat window.

Note: this feature will replace the Google Drive Hangouts app, which will no longer be available as of December 15th, 201

How To Get More Out Of Google, Four Steps To Creating A Killer User Experience -- on Visually. This is a nice infographic to share with students too!

Merge Table Cells and Edit Images In Google Docs - 7 Minute YouTube tutorial by an educator for teachers and students. 

Google Classroom:

Now you can attach multiple Drive files to an assignment in #GoogleClassroom.

Teachers- now you can always see revision history for assignments in GoogleClassroom, even before they’re turned in: goo.gl/o0yiWB

Chrome:

Awesome Chrome Features You Probably Aren’t Using