Deb Norton Tech

Welcome to May Everyone! This week has been an educational and productive week. Here are some links and loves from this week. This simple math problem has gone viral and stumps many people. The interesting thing is that in the 1980s, 90% of 21-29 year olds could solve this problem. Today, only 60% of 21-29 year olds can solve this problem. Check out the article by clicking here. 🤫 Have you ever had a class of students that were very quiet and shy about sharing and talking in front of one another? I think these ideas would be worth trying and seeing if they make a difference. A colleague shared this video with me about the college cheating scandal and Laurie Loughlin, aka, Aunt Becky. Enjoy. A week ago, I attended an Amplify Oshkosh event about blockchain. Going into this event, I had very little understanding about what a blockchain was. I had only read briefly about Bitcoins. Here is a very short 2 minute video about blockchains. I'm still consid...

Can you believe that May is just around the corner? There are just six weeks of school left! I have a son who will be graduating from high school. I'm starting to feel excited for him and his future .  Last weekend I presented a webinar called "10 Presentation Tools that Allow for Creativity and Choice". Here is the slide presentation for you to view. To showcase each of the presentation tools, I used the same pictures and script to create the same presentation with each tool.  Wevideo just announced this new feature . Oh, the podcasting possibilities! How many of these do you use to manage your Gmail account? Number 4 is really hard for me.  Check out these fake news resources .  I took the fake news quiz and got a score of 6 out of 6. Yay me! Here's what I've been reading lately. It's a real, on-the-edge-of-my-seat thriller! -----------------------------------------------------------------------------...

I was so excited for April to arrive and so far it has been a month of exciting opportunities and explorations. I hope your April is going splendidly and brings you many opportunities to try as well. Have you heard of Gimkit ? It is a game based quiz assessment tool that was created by a high school student from Seattle that wanted to create a game that he and his peers would want to play. It involves earning $$ for correct answers and then the ability to shop to gain more levels and power. It simple, yet really fun. This article, " 10 Myths about Teaching with Tech " was an interesting read. Deepart.io shows the incredible ability of algorithms. This tool lets you upload a picture and then choose an artistic style.  The results will convert your photo into the artistic style that you chose. Check out my masterpiece! Yes, that is my son cleaning a bathroom sink. It's a long story. . . ---------------------------------------------------------...

Hey everyone. How is your April going? How about those Milwaukee Brewers! I'm a huge Brewers fan! GUESS WHAT? GSuite has a new update for Google Slides that you're going to love! You can now (or will be able to very soon) add audio to Google Slides! We've been asking for this for a while now, and Google listened. I'm super excited for the educational possibilities with this new update. Music, sound effects, voiceovers. . . this is going to be amazing! On April Fool's Day I shared this clever and techy video with some students and colleagues online. I would love to put something like this together to entertain and inspire students in a classroom. I think this might be a bit challenging even for me. This week I was given an opportunity to attend a Google Conference on Design Thinking . DESIGN THINKING can be incorporated into any classroom and curriculum.  It was a fabulous day where the attendees got to go through the Design Thinking proces...

Gmail is a huge part of our professional and personal lives. Here are some new updates for Gmail that will make this service even better! #1 Write Now, Send Later with Schedule send in Gmail You can now (or will be able to soon) schedule your emails in Gmail to be sent at a later date and time.  This feature will be available on Android, iOS and Gmail on the web. #2 Smart Compose is getting smarter! The smart compose  feature, which is powered by machine learning, will offer suggestions as you type. Soon,  it will personalize suggestions for you, so if you prefer saying “Ahoy," or “Ello, mate” in your greetings, Smart Compose will suggest just that. It can also suggest a subject line based on the email you’ve written, so if you are notorious for not including a subject line, now you have no excuses.  #3 Customizable Swipe Actions for the Gmail IOS App. To help you get things done even more quickly, with the newest update you will be abl...

It's almost Spring Break and time for us to unplug, rejuvenate and catch up on some rest. Here are a few quick links and loves from my week. This week I worked with students on advanced features in WeVideo. They did some pretty amazing video edits!  I can't wait to see the final products. Also, WeVideo announced a new feature this week called Linked Resources . Students can now link a Google doc, presentation or spreadsheet. I am imagining the possibilities that this will bring! I attended the Oshkosh Community Celebration on Monday. I was so honored and appreciative of the video that was made on our behalf to say thank you for the amazing Rudoy grant that we were awarded last year! This week I listened to a podcast from "The Porch" about how phones can drain us and take us away from being present and living in the moment. Here is the video version of the podcast.   A colleague shared this amazing post from IKEA. You simply have to check out...

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! May luck be on your side and may you find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! Here are a few links and loves that have come my way this week. A student recommended the Throne of Glass series to me. It is  Young Adult Fiction and I'm planning to read the first book in the series over the Spring Break. Last week's Engineering Derby in Green Bay was a huge success! It was such a creative, innovative and collaborative day! Lately, I can't seem to live without this encyclopedia, this extension for finding colors, this site for saving links and this extension for saving tabs as I create presentations for upcoming conferences and workshops. I love technology when it helps me to create and be organized. --------------------------------------------------------- Curricular Connection Google Applied Digital Skills ! In a few weeks, I will be using the Google Applied Digital Skills Curri...

Hello friends and colleagues.   I hope you had a fabulous week! Here are a few Links and Loves for you to check out: Wakelet looks promising for saving content to use later, or to build a portfolio. It could also be useful to gather research articles and resources. Here is a collection I made on Wakelet for gif creation tools. Here is a collection that someone else made on Space Exploration. There is also an extension that you can use to quickly bookmark links. Here are your March Tech Backgrounds - Think Spring! Are you looking for student project ideas? Here is a list of 16 of them! This weekend I will be facilitating an Engineering Derby at Bayview Middle School in Green Bay. I can't wait to explore, learn, create and try out new ideas and projects with inspiring educators! --------------------------------------------------- Classroom Connection Have you tried Adobe Spark yet? With Adobe Spark you can create a graphic, a web pag...