Deb Norton Tech

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: ...

Common Lit is celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month with these 9 texts . Here is a little bit of information about Commonlit.org . Follow me on Instagram to see more tech tips and tools.

Welcome back everyone! I hope your first weeks of school have been enjoyable and impactful. I look forward to learning along side all of you again this year. (I won't mention the full moon or the fact that it is Friday the 13th)   Here's to a great 2019-2020 school year! Links and Loves: I love how this school welcomes all Freshman on the first day of school. Way to set an excellent example of #KindnessMatters Appleton East! WheelofNames.com looks like a simple way to make a spinner for choosing names or anything else you might need. Turn up the volume for the sound effects. Wakelet.com has become my new favorite way to curate a collection of links.  It's simple to share your list with others and the Wakelet extension makes saving links quick and easy. Check out my Instagram post and stories by clicking here . Did you know this week in September, 2019 is special? Have you seen this funny take on the missing snake at Fond du Lac High School? The...

Wakelet is a free, easy and useful tool to curate links and media online. Use the Wakelet extension to add to your collections right from the tab you are on. Save any item from your Google Drive straight into your Wakelet collection. Invite others to collaborate on your collections. Create sections to better organize your collections. Share your collections by creating a QR code or share a link. And save items from other collections into your own. So many amazing features. For future posts, follow me on Instagram !

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...