YAY for long weekends!  I could use a little extra sleep this weekend with the chilly weather coming in and three young boys adjusting to Daylight Savings Time, how bout you? As November is upon us, and we have disjointed weeks with Veteran’s day, Thanksgiving, and Central School Conferences, my calendar starts to slow down a bit. It seems we start to get tied down to all of the tasks that need to get done in this short month. However,  I would LOVE to see you, in your classroom, and show you how Peardeck runs (I’ll build you one), Flipgrid works (I’ll create the lesson), or any of the other great tech tools we have here in EB! Please check my calendar and book me to come in, even if it’s just to show off!

I have SO MUCH TO SHARE with you this week. Check it out below:

Nice work Science Teachers  🐸 🔬

Awesome job Megan Krugger and Kelly Hansen! These 8th-grade science teachers presented at the Massachusetts Association of Science Teachers annual conference last week on Debate in Science Education. They focused on GMOs, Fracking, and the Dakota Access Pipeline. It’s some pretty interesting stuff, with great lessons involved! I learned quite a bit just by reading through their presentation.  Take a look at the website they designed for the presentation, it’s very impressive! Click Here. 

Attitude of Gratitude HyperDoc  ❤  😊 ❤  😊

This is a great activity to modify and use with your students (click here), especially during this thankful time.  This HyperDoc asks people what they are grateful for.  Then, the answers are displayed in a word cloud or Padlet.   The creator of this HyperDoc linked Answer Gardens to each question. You could do the same, or link a Google Doc and share results with the class. The only issue I have with Answer Garden is you cannot tell who wrote what, leaving room for students to be inappropriate. If I were to modify this activity, I would link out to a Google Doc or Padlet where students can write their answers, allowing me to see who is writing what when I view the revision history.   If you’re interested in this activity, but would like assistance or the original modified into a format you can use, please book me today! I would be more than happy to put this into a format you can use!

Build a Turkey 🦃 🦃 🦃  🦃 🦃 🦃

If you want a fun activity where students use Google Slides to build a Turkey, click here! It’s very cute! This is inspired by Eric Curts “Build a Jack-o-Lantern” and created by @bethkingsley13

MORE FONTS for Google Docs 🔠    🔠

(taken from Eric Curt’s Blog post 800 Fantastic Fonts)

There are over 800 fonts you can use in Google Docs!  It’s very easy to add more fonts to your font choices. Check out this cool font below called Creepster:

You can preview all of the Google Fonts by going here: https://fonts.google.com/

Then, to add a font to your choices, in your own docs, simply choose your font menu and click add more fonts.

Enjoy this Ryan Gosselin SNL video about Fonts 🙂 HEHEHEHEHE!

Change your default font in Docs  😁  😁

WHAT?!! This is so simple, and I’ve been manually altering my font for years! Check out this great post from tech blogger Jake Miller.  You can see the whole post here, or view the GIF below to see how to change your default font in Google Docs. I’m a big fan of the Sniglet font myself 🙂

Pear Deck Add-on – EVEN MORE AMAZING (and easier) than the site!  🍐🍐

If you have been overwhelmed by Pear Deck in the past or found it cumbersome to create Decks then this post is for you! If you flat out LOVE Pear Deck, this post is also for you because it just got BETTER! Pear Deck has added an add-on for Google Slides. What this means is that now you can take ANY Slide presentation you already have, and add questions right to the slide. IT. IS. SO. GREAT. You can watch my video if you’d like, or you can read about it from Pear Deck by clicking here.  If you’d like to see what Pear Deck is all about, I will gladly create a Deck for you and come in and present it to the students so you can see how it works. Lisa Grinkis did that last week, and it worked very well! Please just book me for the time to create it, and then if needed, for the time to come in and use it with the children. Lisa felt comfortable presenting it herself since she is an avid user of Pear Deck!

Piktochart: Cool Infographic Site 🖼  🖼

Thank you, Megan Krugger for sending me this fun site to play with! If you’ve attended PD on infographics in the past, you may have seen Picktochart.  This site is free (although does have a “level up” paid option) and allows you to create some pretty cool infographics.  It has many templates, text boxes, images, “stickers,” graphics etc etc that you can use. It reminds me of sites like Shutterfly where you can REALLY get into making something. BEWARE, once you play with this, you are committed to HOURS of fun. I made an example below, which allowed for easy embedding (although large). This would be a great project for students to show their knowledge regarding a certain concept! Unlike Google Drawing (my app of choice), there are many templates that one can just insert information rather than start from scratch.

School Committee  🏫  🎒  🏫 🎒

Lastly, I had the wonderful opportunity to present and give an update regarding technology integration to the East Bridgewater School Committee on Thursday evening. You can check it out on EBCTV, if you’d like, and you can also access my presentation here.

 

I LOVE showing off the awesome things you do! Book me to come in today and see it!

Have a nice weekend everyone.

oFISHally yours,

Erin Fisher 🐟 🐟 🐟