Google Forms - They can make your job easier.

Google Forms are a great way to instantly gather data from a variety of sources – parents, students and colleagues - with very little effort on your part and without requiring them to have a Google account of their own.  All they will need is the link to the live form that you create. Whether you have 20 students or 125, creating a spreadsheet from scratch and adding data yourself can be quite time-consuming.  A Google form will automatically create a spreadsheet  that is populated in real time with data that others enter into your online form.

Here’s more information on creating a Google form, sharing it with students or parents, and accessing the spreadsheet and  66 interesting ways to use Google forms in the classroom. This is a Google presentation created and shared by Tom Barrett from Nottingham, England. He has given everyone rights to add their own ideas to this presentation so more examples are sure to be included.

Just for fun - if you would like to try out a simple form, click here. You can see your response and others  in this spreadsheet.  Note: the share settings were changed so that anyone with the link can see the spreadsheet even without an account. 

Tip/s of the week:

#1 – In most browsers, you can right-click on a hyperlink to choose to open it in a new tab rather than a new window.  You can also hold down the Ctrl key while clicking a link to open it in a new tab.

#2 – If you accidentally close a tab in Internet Explorer or Firefox, you can reopen it by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T.

Web Resource – Thinkfinity is a great free source of lesson plans and educational resources for all grade levels and subject areas.

Fun with Photos

There are many websites that will allow you to have fun with your school or family photographs.  Jigzone allows you to upload a picture and create a jigsaw puzzle with 6 pieces or up to a difficult 247 pieces.  Dumpr  allows you to select effects such as “photo to sketch”, “your photo in a museum”, “peeling paint”, and many more.  Shape Collage makes picture collages.  SmileBox has a free Premium account for teachers.  Teachers can use this website to create slideshows, invitations, collages, scrapbooks, and photo albums.  Big Huge Labs allows you to create magazine covers, trading cards, and mosaics with your photos. 

Tip:  Don’t forget!!  You can turn your PowerPoint Slides into pictures (jpg). Select File, Save As and select the jpg option as your file type (drop down menu). All the slides you choose to convert become images to be used in other applications or websites like Jigzone.

Tip:  You know that annoying box (drawing canvas) that comes up when you try to insert items like autoshapes (the arrows, etc).  Well, just turn that thing off.  To prevent Word from automatically creating a drawing canvas when you insert AutoShapes, follow these steps:

1.    On the Tools menu, click Options then the General tab.

2.    Uncheck the Automatically create drawing canvas.

                          ........never to be seen again!!

Website:  For those of you who want to edit your pictures and don’t have the expensive Photoshop program there are many websites out there that can help. Here is a website with links to many free photo-editing websites.  Some of these sites will not open inside of our network so you will have to edit at home.

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are a great way to help students organize and retain information. Give your students the tools to create a framework for their learning using the following web sites.

• Bubbl.us
• Cacoo
• Create A Graph
• Exploratree
• Literary Elements Mapping
• Mind42
• Mindmeister
• Persuasion Map

Google Tips:

Search for Synonyms

If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign (~) immediately in front of your search term.

Example:   

Search for Definitions

To see a definition for a word or phrase, type the word "define" then a space, then the word you want defined.

Example:  

Web Resource: jogtheweb Jog the Web is web-based tool that allows you to guide students through web sites step-by-step. The teacher (or student) can add notes and guiding questions for each site.