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A Facebook Hoax

Facebook.  Most of us use it, I would even bet a large number of you found our blog through Facebook.  Well today when I logged into Facebook, there are a number of post all over my newsfeed was another privacy hoax about Facebook starting to charge for the use of the service.  FYI, if the currency is not in US dollars, dealing with a US (granted multi-national) company, it most likely is a hoax.  Now this is trying to get you to click on a fake link and by now you have people calling out the hoaxes quickly, but it got me thinking about other posts on Facebook

Tugging at your Heart Strings

Images encouraging people to like and share if they love Jesus.  An image of a premature baby, pictures of military troops cuddling puppies.  Anything that's going to kind of tug at the heartstrings: the sick kids, the animal abuse, acting like it's some kind of pet shelter.  All of these post are created to get you to like and or share.  But here is the question that you need to ask, why did someone take the time to create this post?

Many Facebook pages are created with the sole purpose of spreading viral content that will get lots of likes and shares.  Once the page creators have piled up hundreds of thousands of likes and shares, they'll strip the page and promote something else, like products that they get a commission for selling. Or, they may turn around and sell the page through black-market websites to someone who does the same.  They do this to trick Facebook's News Feed algorithm, which is designed to give more value to popular pages than the ones, like scams and spam, that pop up overnight.  Thats why your post don’t always show up in chronological order.  The more likes and shares and comments and that sort of thing you have, the more likely it is to be seen by other people ( so make sure your like The Tech Ninja Blog Facebook page and this post).  

If you see a post like this, that seems to be focused only on gaining traffic, hover over the top-right corner of the post and click the arrow to report it.

If your school uses Google Apps For Education there is include a totally free tool that will allow you to change how you offer feedback to your students,

 Google Classroom. 

 Classroom has under one roof every tool the teacher will need to create a meaningful and engaging task, without having to learn multiple interfaces or do any complex shuffling around of files that only a school’s tech enthusiast usually battles through.  Teachers are able to easily communicate with classes by using Classroom to make announcements, without the need to email groups or individual messages.  Classroom is going to have an impact beyond what it does for the assessments because of the ease of access.  This is because it’s delivered through the Chrome browser rather than an app and is thus totally device-agnostic. Students can use it on their phones, the $50 Android tablet they got for Christmas, Chromebook, anything.  One of its greatest features is its usability. Google Classrooms offers every tool teachers need to create a task. Teachers can easily add links, or attach files.  Then every task goes to a student’s Classroom folder in Drive, their Calendar, and their Gmail. Students can see what they’ve been assigned and teachers can see what’s been submitted.  Both student and teacher can comment and improve in real time.

How to get started:

Easy! Go to Classroom.google.com and click sign up using your school’s Google Apps account. Only teachers and students whose school has Google Apps can get access to the classroom. Outsiders are not welcomed! After, create your first class, and either enlist students directly or give them the class code on the left-hand side box. After that, simply distribute your first assignment and teach!

There are two ways that Google Classroom makes your classroom more efficent

1) Distributing & Collecting Assignments

There is the problem of distribution of assignments, readings, and resources. I use Google Drive for all the files I use for teaching. I have come up with a couple different ways to distribute them to students. In the end, the result was always the same. Students would have to be logged into their school Google account and click “Make A Copy”. But that lent itself to a whole new host of problems.

By the end of the year, my inbox looked like it was getting spammed by Google Drive share emails from students. Every time a student completed an assignment and shared it with me, I would receive a notification email. This was a nightmare.  By June my inbox was so cluttered that I could not even find my other emails. With Google Classroom, everything is in one centralized location. Students can view all of their assignments in a specific folder, teachers can store their  materials and activities for the school year on the cloud and all grades can be viewed within Classroom.

2) Revisions & Feedback

One of the best ways students can improve their writing is going through the process of revisions. Editing, feedback, peer editing, and revisions improves student writing. Assuming that you want to take student writing into the 21st century, there are many platforms that teachers can use to help improve student writing. In the Google Classroom, assignments are distributed to students and when they are ready, they submit them back to the teacher. Students can not revise their document further until it has been seen by the teacher. This prevents students from trying to meet the deadline by submitting incomplete assignments. Students can then submit the assignment again and again after each teacher revision. All of this is tracked with a student assignment “feed” that keeps things orderly. The assignment also has a space that teachers can message students privately and students can then respond.

Google Classroom provides enhanced feedback and communication.  It allow to easily manage and speed up the feedback process for teachers and student.  This allows the feedback to have a greater impact due to the rapidity of feedback turn-around.

Now Google Classroom is far from a perfect system and it is still missing some features that other Learning Management Systems have.  It is a young product being release publicly for about 13 months as of this writing.  Google has been proactive about release updates to Classroom, recently they have released some new features.  One of these new features is an ability to reuse old posts. Teachers can choose from announcements or questions that they have previously posted and simply tweak them, rather than creating each post from scratch.

Google is also working to make Classroom even more collaborative. Teachers can now post a question, video, or article and ask students to write a response; other students can then respond to their peers’ answers, making it a more conducive forum for discussion.  Google Classroom will create a Google Calendar for each class, which can be accessed from either Classroom or Calendar. Any assignment with a due date will automatically be added to the calendar, and teachers can manually add other relevant dates.  Other updates include the ability to bump an old post to the top of the stream, post an assignment without a due date, and attach a Google Form to a post, which many teachers utilize for surveys or tests.

"Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it." Chuck Palahniuk

I am proud to be a teacher.  I think that as a teacher we need to show a respect for our profession that is often missing.  So I came upon this twitter campaign #celebratemondays that wants you to tweet out the amazing things that are happening in your schools.  Here's hoping it can change some attitudes.

Ok so this post is months (and I mean months) late, but that being said, if you do not already use Google Photos, stop reading, download it, then comeback and finish reading, you’ll be glad you did.  

I just want to know, do you take photos? Do you take a lot of photos (I know I love the burst photo feature on my phone)? Do you have a hard time finding space on your phone for all of them?  Then, when you want to show them to someone, do you spend 95% of the time scrolling for that specific one?

Google Photo’s will show you a better way.

Google Photos wants to automatically backup, organize and enable you to share your photos with who you want, when you want.  It also offers unlimited, FREE storage for life.

You can download Google Photos for your phone or tablet, or even access on a desktop browser to have every photo (and video) on every device synced and available everywhere. 

If you’re on the home screen of the mobile app, you get a reverse chronological view of your photos. The most amazing part of the app is “hidden” though, until you tap the magnifying glass in the bottom right corner. Here’s where the magic happens.

Up top, you’ll see faces of people you know; tap on one of those, and Google will show you all the pictures in your library of just that person. Choose someone who’s grown from a child to an adult, and Google picks them all out and you’ll see the transformation before your eyes.

If you go back to the main search screen and scroll past the Places section, you’ll begin to understand the real power of Google Photos as an organizer. The third section is (vaguely) named Things, but it automatically categorizes your images by everything in them besides people.

If you haven’t fully grasped the gravity of what I’ve explained so far, think about it. After a bit of processing time, Google will have combed through your thousands of photos—from the one you took of yourself in the gym yesterday to the one you took of your dog when he was a puppy 10 years ago—and neatly organized them all with tons of keywords and metadata.

Google above all else is a search company. They’ve made search so easy you don’t have to think about it anymore, and the same can be true with your own pictures. After playing with some of the categories of People and Things, you can do an actual search of your photos and the results are surprisingly accurate.  

Basically, there’s no reason not to love Google Photos.

We have spent more than a few posts talking about Google discussing how to make it work for you as well as some of the cool things that they are working on.   We thought that we might want to take a step back and look at some of the more basic features of Google.  Besides from using Google to search the Internet, (if you want to know more about using Google search you can check out our past posts Becoming a Google Ninja Search Sensei Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) Gmail is second most popular Google tool.  Gmail is a simple, easy to use, secure tool and best of all it is free, but there is  much more to Gmail than just email.  Here are ten tips that will make Gmail work even better for you.

Tip 1

Use labels to organize your email.  Most email programs use folders to organize your emails.  This is a similar system to what you use on your home computer.  You are use to it and it works alright, but Gmail want to improve the experience.  Instead of folders they will have you label your email messages.  Any message can be label with a variety of different label.  Unlike using folders where an email can only be put into one folder, you are able to put as many labels as you want on each email.  An email can be in several locations (Inbox, All Mail, Sent Mail, etc.) at once, making it easier to find later and you can search emails by label.  

To create a label that you can add to your Emails:

Click More under the label list on the left side of the page Click Create new label. Type the name of your new label and click Create. You can also create a new label for a message in your Inbox by selecting the box next to the message, clicking the Label button above your message list, and then clicking Create new. Add Labels to your Emails Select the checkbox next to those messages, click the Labels button, and click the label(s) you want. or When viewing a message, click the Labels button to add a label to the message. You can also click and drag a label from the left side, and drop it on the message. orWhen writing a new message, click  More options in the bottom right corner of the compose window, click Label, and then select one of your labels.

Tip 2

Use customized filter to help you organize your inbox Using Gmail filters are a way for you to automate the handling of incoming messages.  You can set the criteria for each filter and what action you want Gmail to take with a message that meets your criteria.  If you get a ton of emails from a specific source you can tell Gmail to automatically archive any message that comes from that source so you never have to see them again if you don’t want to.

To set up a Gmail filter, follow these steps:

Click the tiny “Create a filter” link beside the large button that says “Search the Web” at the top of the Gmail window Specify the criteria that you want to use to sort your incoming messages Click “Test Search” to see the messages that meet your criteria.  If you’re satisfied, click “Next Step.”  If not, change your criteria and click “Test Search” again Choose the action that you want Gmail to take when you receive a message that matches your criteria If you want to apply this filter to messages that you’ve already received (which I generally do), be sure to check the “Also apply filter to X conversations below” Click the “Create Filter” button

Tip 3

Archive your emails to clean your inbox without deleting an email. Archiving removes messages from your inbox, but keeps them in your account so that you can always find them later. Archiving is like moving messages into a filing cabinet for safekeeping, rather than putting them in the trash can. Archiving your messages will let you clean up your inbox by getting messages out of your way.  Archived messages stay in your account in case you need to find a phone number in someone’s signature or you become famous and write a memoir.  When you delete a message (instead of archiving), it will be automatically and permanently deleted after about 30 days.

Tip 4

Use Google Labs to add cool new features to your gmail Gmail labs allow you try out some experimental new functionality to your current Gmail account.  You can add the ability to undo a sent message, move the Gchat box to the right side of the screen, and a ton of other cool features.

Here are the simple steps to enable Gmail Labs features.

Sign into your Gmail account. In the top right click “Settings” Click the “Labs” tab Click “Enable” on any feature you want Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page

We will have another post soon about our favorite Gmail Labs. Please remember though If you're going to brave the Labs world, it's important to keep the following things in mind about these features: They may break at any time.  They may disappear temporarily or permanently.  They may work so well that they graduate and become regular features.

Tip 5

Using Google Tasks you are able to keep track of the things that you need to do. You can create lists of items, set due dates and notes, and even add Gmail messages directly to Tasks. Create a task about a Gmail message using the keyboard shortcut Shift + T, or by choosing Add to Tasks from theMore menu above your Gmail conversation.

Bonus tip  

Have other emails delivered to your gmail inbox If you’re like us Tech Ninjas you’ve got more than one email address.    You don’t want to spend all day logging in and out of different email addresses.  Gmail allows you to set it up so your other email accounts show up in the From: field of your emails.  For example, you can send an email from your work email address using Gmail and have the work address shows up in the From: line.

Here are the steps you need to take to add another account:

Sign into your Gmail account. In the top right click “Settings” Click the “Accounts and Import” tab Under “Send mail as:” click “Send mail from another address” Enter your name and the email address you wish to send from Choose “Send through Gmail” if you don’t mind people occasionally knowing you are sending your email through Gmail.  Use “Send through *** SMTP servers” if people must always think you are not using Gmail For the Gmail setup, they will send you a verification email with a link to click

As I explore the possibilities of what Google apps has to offer and how using multiple programs and applications working together can achieve awesomeness, I discovered instant alpha.  Now to many of you this may not be anything new but for me and all the students I see day to day it was like gaining a super power. Basically what instant alpha does is enables you to delete backgrounds from images making the background transparent. I found the instant alpha tool on my Mac in the application called Preview.

After opening a picture in preview I can select areas of the picture that I want to make transparent. It will then convert the pic from JPG to PNG (alpha). This PNG picture can be layered in over another picture. The picture layering happens in the Google drawing application and it is an easy drag and drop. To teach this to my students I ask them, " If you could hold a moon or planet which one would you choose and why?" and then we explore the planets and moons of the solar system.  I then model the steps to produce the desired effect of the picture. (Oh and I almost forgot about Photo booth. We use this app to take pictures of ourselves holding out our hands.) Note that pictures that have solid backgrounds are easier to instant alpha than those that have multiple colors. Here are some examples of pictures I have done using this trick. 

I found this to be a great way to enhance student presentations and projects. You can do instant alpha with a picture of yourself also. To make it easier for kids I have them stand in front of a solid background or green screen (if you have one). This enables students to put themselves into historical images like maybe a meeting with Einstein.

So I like savings.  I wish I could afford all the latest and greatest tech gadgets, but many if not most are out of my financial reach.  So I am always searching for a good deal, sometimes I am able to find one, sometimes not.  Now I have already shared my love for CamelCamelCamel, but you can't become too locked in to just using Amazon.  ( Yes I know all you Prime members are shaking your head in disbelieve) I have a great little tool to help you always find the best deal, without all the searching around.

Invisible Hand

Have you ever done an activity with your students where they love it so much, that they ask to do it again?  Every day?  Multiple times a day?  Meet Kahoot!  Try it once and your students will be begging for more.  Don't worry - you will happily oblige because they secret is that they are having so much fun that they don't even realize how much they are learning. What you need: Some devices, ideally one per student.  They can use tablets, laptops, cell phones, iPods - anything that has an internet connection and a web browser.  You will also need a device for yourself as the game administrator.  Again, it can be a laptop, iPad, etc.  A Smartboard is very helpful, especially one that the students can view easily.  If your laptop is connected to the Smarboard, that will also be extremely helpful!  Speakers are not required, but the music is catchy!  They change up the suspenseful tunes every so often, but it adds to the competitive mood of the game. To start the game: On your teacher device, you will go to https://getkahoot.com.  Go ahead and make a bookmark for yourself.  Click on "Get My Free Account" and follow the quick steps to set up your account.  You may want to choose a username that is easy for you to remember, especially if you want to share quizzes later.  The login screen will look like this:

On each student device, students will go to https://kahoot.it.  Again, have them bookmark the site.  If they are using an iPad, iPod or iPhone, they can click the Share icon (located next to the address bar; it looks like an envelope with an arrow coming out of it), and then select "Add to Home Screen."  If will save the Kahoot! site and appear on the home screen, similar to an app.  The icon is a purple square with a white "K!" Your observant students will quickly notice that the background to the website changes colors.  It will look like this:

As the teacher, you will login to your Kahoot! page and choose a quiz.  You may create your own quiz, which is very easy to do.  You may also choose a quiz from the thousands of publicly shared quizzes.  (Please take a moment to preview the quiz before you show it to your class!)  Once you "LAUNCH" the quiz, students should see your teacher page on the Smartboard, and they will see a Game Pin number.  Students will enter the Game pin on their Student page to join the game.  After they enter the pin and press Enter, the next screen will ask them for their Nickname.  (I usually ask my students to use their real name to avoid confusion.)  As soon as they enter their name and press Enter, their name will appear on the Smartboard to show that they have joined the game.  Once all of your students have joined, you can go ahead and begin.  I have played Kahoot! with more than 200 people, so I am not certain there is a limit - you are only limited by the number of devices you have.  

When you begin, the Smartboard will show the question first.  After a few seconds, it will show the question with some answer choices.  Each answer choice correlates to a color and shape.  These images are shown on the student devices.  (Students do not see the questions or answer choices on their device.  This is why they need to be able to see and read the Smartboard.  Or you can read the question and answer choices to the students.)  Students will select which answer they think is best on their device by touching or clicking the color/shape combo.  Then they will get a message that they are waiting for other players until everyone has answered or time runs out.  After everyone has answered (or time has run out), students will see if their answer was correct or incorrect.  As the administrator, you can advance the screen to show a bar graph or overall student performance.  It will not show which students got the answer right or wrong, but a summary of the responses.  

There are lots of features and options to check out to enhance your Kahoot! experience.  I hope you and your students will enjoy playing Kahoot! as much as my students and I enjoy it!  Please feel free to post comments if you try it out!  Thanks for reading and Happy Kahooting!  :)

Hello fellow Tech Ninjas! I have a very unique job that really gives me the opportunity to learn something new almost everyday.  Did you know that when you go to some websites that there are invisible websites that track your search and browsing history? Well I didn't.  When I learned about this my friend, Tech Jedi, Lou Plummer told me about the chrome extension Disconnect.  It boost speed, encrypts data shared with other sites, and stops tracking by third party sites.  It is an open source pay what you want software. I think the minimum is 10 dollars and as an added bonus part of your payment goes to a charity and you decide how much of your payment goes to charity.  I have been using Disconnect for several weeks now and pages do seem to load faster. So if you want a faster more secure web experience give Disconnect a try!  

We have been asked by several followers of the The Tech Ninja Blog  to share some of our favorite tools.  We thought that we would share some of our early posts about the tools and why we like them.  You can link to the original post by clicking here.

Pic from SoundCloud.com

Hello my fellow technology ninjas and gadget Samurais, I wanted to tell you about a website I came across called SoundCloud.  It is a site where you can create, upload, share, and follow sound.  I signed up for the free account which will give you a limit to the amount of sounds you can upload.  I think it provides an easy way to make your music, podcast, or audio bites public.  It provides you with some cool statistics about your uploads like the number of plays per day and where in the world your uploads are being played. When I clicked on the explore tab a list of music genre appeared along with some other subjects like business, technology, comedy, and books just to name a few.  If you have the dollars to do so you can opt to go for the upgraded paid version SoundCloud Pro and Pro Unlimited. This of course gives you more upload space and access to some other features that I have not looked into yet, but will.  I am not sure of the price because it advertises the price in Euros (I think).  Anyway,  I just started looking into this site and as I learn more about it I will post my discoveries.  Here is a sample of one of my uploads. http://snd.sc/1258BiJ 

We have been asked by several followers of the The Tech Ninja Blog  to share some of our favorite tools.  We thought that we would share some of our early posts about the tools and why we like them.  You can link to the original post by clicking here.

Picture by Johnny Automactic

http://openclipart.org/

             So I love buying new tech gadgets and accessories.  I have more bins of wire and cable than some people have clothes.  Yet, I am a teacher, so I am always looking for a good deal.  One of my favorite places to shop, Amazon.com .  Now on many things Amazon has a great everyday price and there is no hesitation about buying what I need.  But if I have seen what I am look for on sale for a lower price in the past, I always hesitate about buying.  I’m not only a tech ninja, but a thrifty ninja as well.

            So that’s where http://ift.tt/wyIca9 comes into play.  It is an Amazon price tracker.  You just put in the URL for the Amazon product that you want, and then you can see the price history with the date of the highest price and lowest price.  The coolest part, you can set an alert to you are notified when the item you want hits your target price.  Never miss out on a good deal again. 

            Now I may not know why its called CamelCamelCamel, but then I just call it awesome.  Don’t forget that besides from just following the blog you can like us on Facebook 

We have been asked by several followers of the The Tech Ninja Blog  to share some of our favorite tools.  We thought that we would share some of our early posts about the tools and why we like them.  You can link to the original post by clicking here.

The next awesome online application I want to post about is called ThingLink.  The following description is from their website, "ThingLink interactive images help students develop 21st century skills and enrich their enthusiasm for learning. Teachers can use ThingLink images as interactive learning modules (ILMs) that activate and inspire students with creative and effective learning experiences. Our Basic (free) account provides teachers and students with the ability to store and tag 50 images at ThingLink.com." I was told about ThingLink by a friend of mine that also happens to be an awesome 2nd grade Teacher.  She did a project with her class on the life cycle of eggs and chicks.  The students created a presentation image using Google Draw and then used ThingLink to link sections of the image to informational sites about the life cycle.  If you want to find out more about her lesson using  ThingLink just visit her blog at http://ift.tt/1qK8fg0 or hear one of her students talk about it at http://ift.tt/1l2IOao.  

We have been asked by several followers of the The Tech Ninja Blog  to share some of our favorite tools.  We thought that we would share some of our early posts about the tools and why we like them.  You can link to the original post by clicking here.

Greetings fellow techno geeks!  I want to talk a little about Google Draw and how it may be one of the most under utilized features in Google Drive.  The Google Draw application is really user friendly which makes it perfect for K-2 students to use for instruction.  I have already collaborated with several teachers on projects where students use this application to illustrate stories, work math problems, create tessellations, and learn shapes.  The shape tool gives you a drop down menue of shapes that include their geometric title when you hover over them with the mouse.  Shapes can be resized and rotated within the picture plane.   I thought that this would be a great tool for teaching Geometric shapes and angles.  When shapes are rotated a display shows you the degree of the angle that it is rotated.  Another feature I thought was helpful is the scribble line.  This feature allows you simply to use the mouse or track pad to free draw lines and shapes into the picture plane.  Students used this to demonstrate to their teacher how to solve a three digit addition problem and then shared it with her via the share feature within Google Drive.  If you haven't checked out Google Draw go ahead and give it a try.  I think you will find that it can add a little creative spice to your instruction!

Quilt Project Created With Google Draw