Educators: Staying Connected

Throughout my teaching experience so far, I've learned (without a doubt) that technology is constantly growing and becoming more necessary every single day. There are so many amazing tools for educators to use to enhance instruction and student exploration in the classroom. This week I gained a couple of new tools to add to my toolbox, and perhaps yours as well.

Using the internet to find materials such as images, videos and music can be tricky. Google helps us access a lot of materials, but we sometimes (on purpose or on accident) use someone else's work without the proper licenses. I learned about a website called Creative Commons. This is a space where creators and artists of all kinds can choose to share their work with others and decide, to what degree, those pieces of work can and should be used. While the search results (from my experience) are still very limited, there's a lot of great content available that can be browsed, and the CC community seems to be growing in size. I'm personally hoping this becomes a bigger collaboration source, for teachers and other professionals alike. You should definitely check it out!

Another area I explored this week was the everyday Google Search. I learned, from some of my colleagues, that Google Search has a lot of really cool capabilities that I've never used before! One, in particular, that I love is the Calculator feature. Did you know you can type math problems right into the search bar and Google will tell you the answer you need? It doesn't matter if it's simple addition or multiplication, square roots, percentages, or converting measurements -- Google can do it FAST! Here's a short presentation slide I made to tell others about it. Click the image to see the video about more complex equations.

I also spent even more additional time (I'm almost embarrassed) using Adobe Spark. I seriously can't get enough -- the tools are so easy to use and look nice and professional. I created a new Page to share a basic how-to for teachers who are not yet familiar with Google Forms. I've found Forms to be one of the most useful Google tools I've learned how to use so far. It's such an easy way to gather specific information from students or other educators. Check it out here and make sure to explore the list of other great websites at the bottom for more tips about using Google Forms in the classroom! (Don't forget to try Adobe Spark on your own, too -- I can't keep the magic to myself!)