Learning from YouTube - My 3 Top Viewing Tips and Tricks

Learning from watching YouTube videos is an amazing way to improve your skills.  Here are my top 3 viewing tips and tricks will help get the most out of watching videos on YouTube:

1.  Drag the Red Dot

• Want to fast forward past a certain section of the video or replay a part again?  Click and drag the red dot on the play timeline as seen here:
  

2.  Keyboard Shortcuts

• I use these keys more than any other feature in YouTube (especially J and L)

3. Speed It Up!

• Short for time or just feeling impatient?  Click the gear icon in the lower right hand corner of the viewer screen and choose "Playback Speed".  The speed of the video can be increased or decreased without the pitch of the audio changing.

Google Docs: Setting Permissions to "Anyone with the link can view"

You can avoid getting emails asking permission to access your Google Doc by following these steps.

Using Quizlet Live

Chances are you've heard of Quizlet or have used it to help students study vocabulary.  It's a great way to get past traditional flashcards for learning important key terms and the best part is you can often times find pre-made lists that you can modify to fit your needs.  (Quick tip: try searching for your textbook by publisher and chapter title). 

Students really like using the 'PLAY' feature to test their skills in the Match and Gravity games either individually or in small groups. 















The Live feature is a great way to entend the practice of vocabulary as a full class as students work in teams to truly collaborate to find the correct answer.  Watch this short video to see how to set it up. 

Importing Tables and Graphs from Google Sheets to Google Slides

I recently had a teacher ask about linking data from a Google Sheet to a Google Slides presentation.  Specifically, was it possible to set up a template in Sheets, then have students enter lab data results and have the results easily graphed and show up automatically in Google Slides.  

Well, as luck would have it, this is a relatively new feature that has been added to Slides!  Now you'll be able to gather data and have it easily reflected in a presentation in graph form.  This has many applications beyond a Science classroom; anything from student surveys to teachers analyzing and presenting data to their collegues. Here's a quick summary of how to do it and a short tutorial video walking you through the process.

Step 1:  Highlight the cells of the data table and copy them.

Step 2: Paste them into the Google Slide.

Step 3:  Click 'Insert' on the Slides menu and choose Chart "From Sheets".

Step 4:  Find the Sheet with the Graph, select it and import it.

Step 5:  If you change any of the data in the Sheet, make sure to click the 'update' buttons in Slides

Here's the short video tutorial of the process:

Chromebook Shortcuts and Tips for Teachers!

While student Chromebooks have been a welcome addition to my science classroom over the past few years, I would occasionally run into a situation where a student approached me with a screen issue.  Not having ever used a Chromebook myself, I was usually left scratching my head and strangely enough this always seemed to happen at the worst time, when I didn't have a few minutes to Google search a fix. So here you go, a quick reference for you to bookmark that will help ease your future frustration! Click the following link:

https://www.computerhope.com/shortcut/chromebook.htm

Google Ominbar Searching Now Includes Drive

Ok, so what's an ominbar? It's another name for the address box at the top of the browser screen.

As you probably know you can type directly in this box to do a Google search but now you have the added ability to search your drive as well!  Here's an example.  If I want to quickly find a Google doc and I know part of the title has the word "tasks" in it, I can type the word "tasks" in the omnibar and it should show up in the drop down search results like this:

Interactive Writing with Twine

Twine is a way to write an interactive story using a graphic organizer approach.  There are many ways teachers could use this to storyboard or to plan out cause and effect relationships as part of their lessons.  Check out this video by the author of a digital interactive story called 57 North:

Here is the Twine website:  www.twinery.org