EdTech Shorts

As a means of increasing security and safety for students on their platform, Canva will automatically begin restricting sharing capabilities for students only on October 27, 2023. Students should expect the following changes: Students will no longer be allowed to share a project outside of their school email domain. Students can no longer create a “Anyone with the Link” permission for sharing a project. Public view links or published websites will no longer be an option for student projects. Educators can request the disabling of this feature for a collection of school teams by contacting Canva at edu-experts@canva.com, if their district admin allows them to make changes to Restricted Sharing. For additional details about Restricted Sharing and this change, visit the Canva Help Center online.

EdTech Shorts is coming back! If you’re an educator looking to up your technology game in the classroom, then EdTech Shorts is the podcast for you! Join us on each episode as we work to find ways to help you work smarter, not harder.

As educators we often encounter those times when multiple students across the classroom have their hand up waiting for assistance. It is extremely hard at times to keep track of whose hand went up first or even what order they all went up over all. ClassroomQ is a product that helps to eliminate this problem from your classroom. Teachers simply signup, login, create a session, and share their class code with the class. Student head to classroomq.com/students and enter their name and the class code. Now they simply press the button on their screen when assistance is needed. There are both free and paid versions of ClassroomQ. The free version allows up to five students to be waiting in the queue at a time. The paid version ($19.99/year) ups this to unlimited and allows you to export the session data at the end to help with understanding student participation and success along with your own classroom management. There is also a school version available for purchase as well. Head over to their website and try out this tool in your classroom. Also give them a follow on Twitter @theclassroomq.

If you are looking for a simple, easy to use, free place to design, publish, and host a website then you need to check out IM Creator. IM Creator makes is really simple to design a website from one of their many free templates that are responsive and intuitive. They provide free, premium, and commercial accounts all with free hosting, unlimited bandwidth, access to their full library of templates and 100% ad free. Big shoutout to Chris Nesi and the House of #EdTech for sharing IM Creator on episode #131 of his show.

With Flipgrid’s recent addition of Guest Mode, Kristin and Joe Merrill, Flipgrid Ambassadors from Florida, shared some fantastic ideas for using Guest Mode in their classrooms that I wanted to highlight on EdTech Shorts. Speak To An Expert Family Homework Schoolwide Challenges GridPals Thank a Veteran You can check out the blog post where they share these ideas here: Welcome to Flipgrid, Guest Mode. You can find Kristin and Joe both on Twitter, and I would recommend adding them to your PLN if you have not already.

This past summer Flipgrid introduced the Grid Launchpad and it allowed users to tailor their grid security settings to be unique to their own learning community. Parents have wanted to see what their students were doing on Flipgrid, but could not do so in a way where the educator still had control. Now Flipgrid has introduced Guest Mode to help with this problem. Guest mode can be turned on within the topic settings for any topic. Guest mode is granted with a unique guest code. Educators can control whether guests can have view-only access or the ability to view and respond. Educators can share out that code however and to whoever they want and can revoke that code at anytime to remove guest access. A QR code can also be generated to allow guests to scan and have access. If an educator allows guests the ability to respond they will be prompted to enter their first and last name. They also have the option to require an email address be provided as well. Once that information is entered they will be launched into the same recording interface that students know and love.

Microsoft has now integrated their Immersive Reader into Flipgrid. The Immersive Reader is a part of Microsoft’s Learning Tools accessibility tools for the classroom. It allows you to break down a text for students with learning difficulties. Students can begin using the Immersive Reader immediately on any topics. They simply click on the Immersive Reader icon (it looks like a book with a speaker on it) and press the play button to hear any text of the topic played back for them.

Today’s EdTech Shorts features Kasey Bell ( Twitter, Website) sharing her 4 C’s Learning Menu. This is a tremendous tool for helping your students share their learning while exploring the 4 C’s (Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking). You can quickly access the 4 C’s Learning Menu at http://shakeup.link/4cmenu. Give Kasey a follow on Twitter, check out her website, and be sure to listen to her on The Google Teacher Tribe podcast with her co-host Matt Miller

Tips for Making Great Instructional Videos Recently on the House of #EdTech Episode 119, friend of the show Chris Nesi (Twitter) shared his list of tips for making great instructional videos. I wanted to quickly share those with you on this episode of EdTech Shorts. Chris’ lists is: Forget the headset Keep it short Prepare well and then wing it Position the camera above your eyes Location, location, location Move it out Look right at the camera lens Cover your screen Say “cheese” Avoid overdoing it You can hear his full commentary on each of these tips over at http://chrisnesi.com/119. Support EdTech Shorts by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/edtech-shorts This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Random Student Selection Tools Previously on EdTech Shorts we looked at Google’s student selection tool in the Classroom App on Android. On this episode we’re going to look at some other random student selection tools. Support EdTech Shorts by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/edtech-shorts This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Student Selector in Google Classroom (Android App) Google has made a new tool available in their Classroom Android App to make it easier for you to randomly select students from …

Automatic Captioning in Google Slides On October 8, 2018 Google announced a new feature that a lot of educators are going to love. Automatic, real-time captioning is now available in …

NEW Features in OneNote Online In starting off the new school year, Microsoft has announced some new features for OneNote Online to enhance creativity, productivity, and collaboration. Insert from Camera …

Creating a Grading Rubric in Microsoft Teams Are you an educator using Microsoft’s Teams to manage your course content and assignments? Did you know that you can now build grading …

Creating a Math Quiz in Microsoft Forms Are you a math teacher looking for a way to create online assessments with the tools provided to you by Microsoft as a …

Chrome Extensions for Citations Students and teachers often times struggle to remember the various formats for citations of sources they may be using for work in their classes. Today on …

Insert Learning Insert Learning (Chrome Extension) saves teachers and students time while keeping students engaged. Teachers can insert questions, discussions, and insight directly into any website. When students go to that …

Microsoft Educator Community If you are looking for a way to connect and collaborate with other educators, find trainings and lessons for your classroom, and earn badges and certificates to …

Yo! Teach featuring Chris Nesi Previously on EdTech Shorts we shared Tozzl as a replacement for the recently shut down Today’s Meet. On today’s episode we’ll be hearing about another …