Bring the power of digital citizenship to a school near you

This year, I took a new position, which gave me a chance to start fresh with digital citizenship. Over the course of the year, I documented our process for easy implementation at other schools.

Check out our progress and share your success, challenges, and learnings!

Check out fennovation.org for all things digital citizenship as well as Let's Get Digital: Citizenship.

The Maker Journey

This year, I started a makerspace initiative at my new school (a private school for the first time in my career). Over the year, I decided to document it for others to use who are interested in bringing maker to their school, classroom, or district.

Check out The Maker Journey and fennovation.org for all things maker!

Let's Get Chromified this summer! Plus, new updates!

I was saddened to read last week that support for the Snagit Chrome Extension will end this summer. That was one of my top five favorite extensions.

With that in mind, I've added a few other screen capturing tools to the Let's Get Chromified list, including:

MediaCore Capture: "You can capture anything on your screen — including your web browser, applications and desktop — or record video straight from your webcam. MediaCore Capture also makes it easy to overlay video from your webcam on a screencast recording — perfect for recording presentations, assignments and demos. "
Capture Cast: "CaptureCast Chrome is a FREE video screen capture extension with no restrictions on the length of your recordings. You can use the screencast recorder to capture your desktop screen, web camera, document camera, and microphone with seamless uploading to YouTube and Vimeo."

I've also added Alice Keeler's Drive 20, which will open up the first 20 files in Drive with one click. Of course, you can also change the 20 to another number as well.

And, I also added Drive Tunes, an app that turns your Google Drive into a media player. And, with unlimited storage in your school Drive, why not put all of those chorale tunes in there and hit play?!

You can check out all things Chrome at fennovation.org. You can also check out the Let's Get Chromified full presentation or this summer's exclusive Let's Get Chromified: Productivity Edition.

Google Classroom - my favorite uses!

It's almost time for summer break and what better time to explore some uses of Google Classroom than now?! Once school starts, the year often gets too busy to check out and integrate new uses, so why not start now?

Today, I gave my Classroom presentation a major face-lift. I also added a few updates including:

• Wizer.me - I discovered this during #txgoo this past weekend. This site allows you to create and browse interactive classroom resources that share nicely on Google Classroom.
• Schedule posts - if you haven't heard, you can now do this on Google Classroom
• Guardian access - coming this fall
• Polls - in addition to the Q&A feature on Google Slides, you can get immediate feedback on Google Classroom. Hip, hip, hooray!
• Google Calendar - you get a Calendar for every class. You can share these calendars for anyone with the link to see and put them on your Website. This gives others access to view assignment due dates. 

Check out fennovation.org for more Googleness and check out Getting Automated with Google Classroom for 50 slides worth of ideas!

Happy Monday!

Google Apps Hacked: More updates for your summer! Scan & convert files with your phone!!

I love finding new uses for my favorite Google Apps. Recently, I discovered a few things I did not know that you could do:

• Provide links for direct download (instead of linking to a file in your Drive that someone will have to download, link to the download link so it automatically downloads)
• Scan documents with your phone and convert them to editable text in a Google Doc - yes, this is a real thing!
• Save YouTube videos to your Google Drive!

(My favorite is #2)

Check out fennovation.org for more Googleness as well as the Google Apps Hacked presentation where you can find many "hacks" on your favorite apps. I challenge you to try at least one in your daily use!

Happy Monday!