Deb Norton Tech

🎃 👻 🦇 🕷️ Happy Friday everyone! I hope your week went well. It was dress up days for us for Halloween Spirit Week. I'm not sure who enjoys this more, the teachers or the students.  Here are a few things that have come my way this week: Top 5 Game-Based Learning Websites  posted by Meagan Kelly from "I  ♥  Edu".  I'm all in when it comes to using game-based learning in the classroom. I came across this video  I created to help a colleague on how to make a stop animation video using Google Slides. It's a pretty rough video, but still worth sharing. This reminded me of this  free webinar on making stop animation by Eric Curts.  I'm excited to begin offering STEM activities to our HS students along with my colleague, Teri, our media specialist. We're going to focus on using the Cricut cutting machine during the month of November. Encouraging students to explore STEM related activities and careers is very important to me. This week ...

I'm so excited. Today I air my first ever full episode of my new podcast!  Today on Life is But a Google we will be taking a look at seven October 2021 Google Workspace updates that will be coming your way. These updates are for Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar, Chat and Google Meet. Thank you for listening!

Yep! I'm starting a podcast. Take a listen to my trailer.  The first episode will air next week Tuesday, October 26th. The name, "Life is But a Google" comes from the idea to share updates, tips, tricks and  technologies that come from Googling my favorite topics: Google Workspaces, Educational Technology, Artificial Intelligence and many more. Listen to the trailer for my new podcast.

Greetings colleagues and friends. How was your week? This week flew by! I've been managing the hustle and bustle of work, family and enjoyment.  It has been a bit of a difficult week for me and my family with the passing of a family member, a cancer diagnosis for a family member,  an injury of a family member, a serious heart issue of a family member and as sickness of a family member. Needless to say, when family members are struggling and dealing with health issues, it is hard to be my cheerful and positive self. Every day that we wake up healthy is truly a blessing! Please remember to take care of yourselves and your family. Here are a few things that have come my way this past week. I watched two different series on Netflix recently.  One is called Squid Game which is now the #1 biggest series launch ever, with more than 111 million global viewers! Squid Game is a South Korean series about contest players that are all deeply in debt and play children's games with dead...

If the past school year has taught us anything about technology in the classroom, it's that quality trumps quantity. We live in a world with no shortage of tech teaching tools and resources. The key is sorting through to find the gems. The best tech tools and websites that actually enhance virtual or in-person learning and everything in between.  The following apps and websites make the cut because they enrich learning in a meaningful way. They are not just another bell or whistle. They actually enhance learning in ways that would not be possible without technology. Google Workspaces    Google Workspace includes all of the productivity apps we know and love - Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet and many more.  With features such as speech to text, real-time collaboration, smart compose etc., Google Workspaces helps us to be efficient and innovative in all that we do. Flipgrid Flipgrid is a video discussion tool with many innovative features and tools. ...

In the blink of an eye, the first week of October is already behind us! Are you feeling the stress of time moving too quickly? I saw this post on Twitter this week and I had to take a deep breath to consider  how quickly everything is moving. This past week I worked with several of my colleagues to find ways to help with tech integration and work flow productivity. Here are a few ideas that I suggested. Perhaps one of these ideas will help you as well. Page Marker Extension - Lets you write on top of almost any webpage and download to save the annotations. Tab Resize  - Split tabs to split your screen easily and then regroup the tabs back to one window when you're done. Sir Links A Lot  - quickly generate a URL for a Google Document (or slides, sheets, drawings etc.) to force a copy, share a preview, create a template or make a PDF. Use the notes section in Canvas for tracking virtual students or other important data.  And one of my colleagues, Michelle, shared...

This past summer, I presented many webinars online. One of the best tools I found for engaging the audience during the live webinars was Slido .  Once a person adds the Slido add-on , they can open Slido in a Google Presentation and add a poll question that the audience will be able to participate in in real time. With Slido a person can: 📊 Create word clouds and other live polls directly in the presentation 🏆 Run a competitive quiz with leaderboard 🙋‍♀️ Collect the most burning questions with live Q&A Here is a video showing how Slido works: After using Slido, a person can always go back and review a poll question and see the results again. If you are looking for a simple and effective polling tool to use with Google Slides, I highly recommend giving Slido a try.

Homecoming week is coming to an end for us at Oshkosh North High School. Having all of the fun dress up days, hall decorating, the parade, the tailgate, the game and the dance has been such a blessing after having to cancel everything last year.  I loving all of the excitement and school spirit. Here are a few Links and Loves from this week: #1 - Google Chrome had a recent update. One of the updates that Google is working on is to add more gestures to how we interact with a touch screen. So, when presenting a Google Presentation, instead of tapping on the screen to advance the slides, a person now can use a swipe to advance. Watch this video from Heartland Technology to see the swipe advance in action.   #2 Google Docs has a new update to allow the user to add a Watermark on a document. A watermark is an image or text that appears behind the main text of the document. It is used to categorize or show the purpose of a document with words such as DRAFT. #3 October Wallpapers are...