Read & Write for Google updates

Since the last faculty meeting, we've seen an uptick in people using Read & Write for Google, particularly for simplifying pages.  I hope your students are finding this helpful.  One thing to point out is that simplify page doesn't work on all web pages-- it works particularly well for news articles but may not work as well on content that the web designer has intentionally embedded into graphics.

Since the meeting, Read & Write has announced two new updates:

1. Read & Write now works in GMail and Google Sites! See the screenshot below.
2. There is an improved ePub reader (ePub is a standard e-book format).

Please let me know how I can help you and your students use this tool. 

Note for teachers: here are the instructions for getting your account.  

Simple tip for tidying up your browser

Do you ever get annoyed by some of the suggestions Chrome (or another browser) makes when you start to enter a URL?  Of course, it's helpful to have commonly visited sites appear, but I've found that sometimes I want to remove items from the list. 

Here's how it's done (at least in Chrome and Firefox):

• Start to type an address (URL)
• As suggestions pop up, arrow down to the one you want to remove, then hit Shift-Delete.

I made a gif to demonstrate:

Present at Dynamic Landscapes this spring

Would you like to share a successful project, teach a new skill, or lead a discussion at Dynamic Landscapes 2020? 

Applications are due this Friday.  You don't need to have the idea fully fleshed out (and I can help with filling out the form).

Here's where to submit your proposal and learn more about the conference.

Student Doodle for Google Contest 2020

Each year, Google hosts a contest for K-12 students to create a "Doodle" for their homepage. As Google describes them, "Doodles are the fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists."  Today's doodle, for example, "celebrates avant-garde Chilean poet and writer Vicente Huidobro on his 127th birthday."

One of the most famous Google Doodles was a fully functional PacMan game

The theme for this year's student contest is "I show kindness by..." Interested students can enter by March 13th. All the information is at https://doodles.google.com/d4g

Starting a new semester with Google Classroom and Moodle

If you are teaching a course this semester that you've taught in previous semesters, here's how to set that up in Google Classroom and Moodle.

In Classroom, you have the options of:

• removing all the current students from your (already existing) class, then giving your new students the "Join" link.  Note that there is not a way to hide content in a course, so all of the material will be immediately visible to the new students. 

or:

• archiving the course from last semester, creating a new class, then using "Reuse post" to bring in materials and activities from the archived course(s).

Here is a short screencast that shows the two options.

In Moodle, you will use the same course as you did last semester.  You can hide entire topics or individual items, as needed.  Students are already enrolled.  Students from fall semester will disappear on 1/10/20.