Deb Norton Tech

  Happy Friday! Just like that, we are back in the swing of things for the 2022 - 2023 school year. Life is good and things feel more normal and less stressful than they have the past few years. I've been enjoying the warm temperatures in Wisconsin and I'm looking forward to fall and the change of seasons.  It's Friday night football and NFL football season and I'm loving every minute of it. My son also is entering into fall baseball season and I'm thankful to have another year of college baseball to enjoy.   I hope your school year is starting strong and that you are finding time to enjoy the weather, sports and moments that make your days better.   🙌 It's great to be back! 🙌 Click here to view the Links and Loves larger in your browser

I'm winding down from a busy few weeks and feeling very grateful for a holiday break that is right around the corner. I'm looking forward to more time with family, looser schedules and lots of down time. Here are a few links and loves from this past week. I discovered a new feature in Google Chat called "Add a status" By default, Gmail sets your status as "automatic based on activity". So most people see you as active throughout the day when you are logged into your computer. If you click on arrow next to the active tab, you will see an option to add a status. This is great to personalize your status to let others know if you are in a meeting, out sick or busy teaching.  You can customize how long the status is visible for and even customize the emoticon that goes with your status. Tab Manager Plus for Chrome is a new (to me) extension that I am finding useful. This extension lets you easily see all of the tabs you have opened in one place.  You can see mul...

Today is December 10, 2021! We are already in the double digits of December.   This week I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the SLATE Conference . SLATE stands for (School Leaders Advancing Technology in Education).  I can't even tell you how nice it was to be back in person to learn and share with educators from all over the Midwest. I feel so inspired! Here are a few quick takeaways from SLATE.  Spinnerwheel.com lets you add more than one wheel to your screen. As a matter of fact, you can add and save up to eight wheels on a page!   You can add images, text, numbers and percentages.  The  wheels can be used independently or at the same time. There are many settings to choose from for each wheel, including colors, backgrounds and sounds. This  Christmasify extension will add falling snow to any webpage.  The DF for YouTube (Distraction Free for YouTube) extension eliminates all adds for YouTube videos including the ads at th...

Oh my goodness! December snuck up on me so quickly!  Are you ready for the holidays and for all the rigmarole? Let's take a minute to check out a few "Links and Loves" from this past week. #1 Here are some December backgrounds for your phones, tablets and computers. #2 I've finished reading this book . This is one of those novels that people either really like or really dislike. Personally I enjoyed the story and characters. The themes in this book are about loyalty, betrayal, loss, sacrifice and tragedy. I kept wondering how someone could actually have seven husbands, but each marriage was believable and I found myself sympathizing with the main character. #3 I learned about the "inspect" tool for websites from Richard Byrne through this video and I feel so techy and knowledgeable now.  I think this could be a great lesson in showing students how easy it is to create fake websites and unreliable sources of information online. #4 Slidesmania has a new slid...

Hello Friday! Links and Loves are my way of sharing interesting finds from my week. 1.  Here are a few podcasts that I enjoyed on my commute 365 Inclusive Learning Strategies to Help Every Child How to Help Struggling Readers in Grades 6 - 12 Smart Thinking Podcast - Look for the Leaders 2.  Have you seen this special video message? Being an empty nester once again, this message made me tear up a bit.  3.  Something I'm not sad about is this ! Are you ready? I'm a big fan! 4.  I was reminded of this fun tool when a colleague asked me how to create rainbow text. 5.  This site lets you see what the Internet was like 10 years ago today. I find this interesting and I think students might too! Tomorrow would be a memorable day to look at this site (9/11/21) 6.  I enjoyed trying to guess these AI generated movie images . I'm impressed with how well some of the images depicted the movie. Artificial Intelligence is a topic I'm always trying to learn more abou...

Here's to the last full week of September. Time to start thinking Fall! LINKS AND LOVES We've been busy in the Innovation Lab with creative projects. Our Sources of Strength group created this display with the Cricut cutting machine and one of our students created this 3D printed terrarium with our 3D pens.  Have you heard about or downloaded the newest IOS 13 update? I did, and I'm loving all of the new features. Check out the latest features on the Verge website. The dark mode, photos app revamp and keyboard swipe are really nice! One cute update is the ability to add a Memoji (this is creating an emoji of yourself) in Messenger. Here's my Memoji! Canvas LMS Tip:  you can add announcements to your homepage! I discovered this tip while working with a colleague, Keith, who wants to add the daily learning objective and tasks for students to view each day. Click here for the step-by-step directions.  I'm looking for a new novel to read for en...

This week has flown by so fast! Here are a few things that have happened or caught my eye: LINKS AND LOVES: I've started an Instagram account for sharing all things instructional technology. I would love to have more followers and people to follow! My username is deb.norton.tech Speaking of Instagram, earlier this week I shared that CommonLit.org has 9 articles to share for National Hispanic Heritage Month .  Speaking of National Celebrations, check out this website where you can search national days, weeks, months and more! This week was National IT Professionals Day. Who knew? Speaking of Celebrations, check out this awesome display that a colleague of mine created using these free PDF posters to celebrate Women Innovators as Illustrated by Women Artists. Nice job Kristen! Speaking of free, SimpleK12 offers free webinars on most Saturdays throughout the school year. These are a great way to learn about technology uses in the classroom. QUICK TIP: ...

It has been such a terrific week despite a winter storm that brought 9.2 inches of snow to our neighborhood. This week has been filled with amazing conversations and projects that have filled my professional bucket. Check out this interactive map . Here are a few links and loves from my week: Sorted Paragraphs add-on for Google Docs Recently I had a conversation with a colleague who was wishing that she could alphabetize a list in Google Docs because that is a feature in Microsoft Word.  I did a search for “alphabetize in a Google Doc” and found out that there is an add-on called Sorted Paragraphs that can do this.  With this add-on you can quickly and easily alphabetize a list in Google Docs similar to how you would do so in Microsoft Word.  Here is a demo video . Professional Development Event My colleagues and I brought a wealth of ideas, strategies and conversations to our Professional Development event called Teachers Teaching...

Happy Friday Folks! My goodness it has been a busy week. I’m writing this post at 4:30am on this Friday morning. Nothing like sharing at the last minute! Here are a few highlights from my week: Tomorrow, Saturday, January 19th, I will be presenting a FREE SimpleK12 Webinar on Google Arts and Culture . Have you ever used this platform? In the webinar I will be showing all of the features and uses for using Google Arts and Culture in any classroom. I would love it if you joined me. Sign up here . I listened to this podcast about Emotional Labor. This really connected a lot of dots for me.  It does take quite a bit of labor to lead well and to show up for others in a leadership position.   If you use Remind101 with your students, you might want to read this update about Remind no longer working with Verizon Customers. (thank you to my colleague, Val, for sharing this with me) As you may know, I’m totally immersed in all things Google and Go...