Technology and Instruction to Engage, Empower, and Excite

 Your Macbook can do so many cool things that you probably don't know about.  Who has time for that? One of those cool features is the Spotlight tool that comes on every Apple device. You can get to the Spotlight tool in a couple of different ways: Access it from the top menu bar (or add it there from System Preferences) Type command+spacebar Both ways will get you to the Spotlight search toolbar. The Spotlight search tool can be used for a variety of different tasks: Quickly find an app or program on your Macbook.  Start typing the name of the program you want to open and it will appear in your search results.  Double click it to open the program. Start typing a keyword.  Any files, documents, emails, etc. with that keyword will be displayed in your search results.  The results are organized by file type, so you can see if the results are a PDF, email message, etc. Define a word.  Type the word in the Spotlight search and you will see the definition either pop right up or a result

More Ways to Use Kami Thank you to guest blogger Terry Byfield for this week's info on Kami. Check out these tips and Terry's videos below to see what Kami can do for you! Many of us has experimented with Kami at this point, but we might only be using it for students to fill out PDF forms.  There are more ways to use Kami! Kami’s free plan allows you to: Use a totally no ads service. Access to basic toolbar functions which includes all annotating, highlighting, and drawing functions. Easily view PDFs, documents, images, and e-books. Autosave your Kami files to Google Drive. Convert scanned files into readable PDFs using the OCR tool (Optical Character Recognition). Learn more  about OCR here . Kami can also be used as a whiteboard to demo lessons to students or as a collaboration tool. The 5-Minute Video below demonstrates how easy it is to create a document that all students can annotate to collaborate on projects. Five Minute Video: If you would like more in-depth information

 Many of you are using Screencastify to record flipped lessons for your students.  What was an already cool tool got even better with some recent updates.  This extension now has: More cursor options Stickers Blur tools And more! Before we dive into those, make sure you have the most recent Screencastify update.  To do this, click on the three dots in the upper right of Chrome.  Choose More Tools, then Extensions.  In the upper right corner, make sure that Developer mode is toggled on.  Then, click "update" in the upper left. Now that your extension is up to date, check out these cool new tools. I put them in video form because...screencasting.  Here is a link to the updates in text form.  

Have You Ever Taught Someone to Drive?  The true art of teaching lies in our ability to break down complex tasks and help students build the individual skills necessary to accomplish those tasks. A couple of years ago, I had my first experience teaching a teenager to drive a car. For my academically high-achieving daughter, this was perhaps the first time she really struggled to learn something new. This was a real life application of many individual skills, skills that needed to be automatic but were not yet automatic, skills that needed to be applied in an unpredictable environment with real consequences for error - check your mirror, check your speed, check the car ahead, don't follow too closely, watch for road signs, this lane is ending, check your speed, check your mirrors, you need to merge, check your blind spot, blinker on, don't break too fast, and so on. Let's just say it was many, many months (years?) before I could ride as a passenger and relax with my daughter