Leveraging ED tech

This week I thought that I would share ideas for leveraging functional ED technology. Edutopia publishes teaching ideas to help "all students apply knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to thrive in their studies, careers, and lives. This week Edutopia shared an article entitled, "Teacher Tested Tech Hacks" which I would like to summarize a few items that align with pedagogy research and may be of interest.

1. Present Google Slides With Live Captions to boost accessibility. Switch on automatic captioning, which displays the speaker's words alongside each slide. After entering presentation mode, hover your cursor in the bottom left corner to bring up the menu. Click the three dots, then select Captions preferences, and Toggle captions (courtesy of @jessicaradams).

2. Magnify Your Caption Size in Youtube. After selecting closed captions, press the (+) key to increase the text size (courtesy of @tonyvincent).

3. Teach Organization With Interactive Checklists which can help build students’ organizational skills and self-regulated learning. Click on the Checklist icon in the toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+9 (Command+Shift+9 on a Mac) (courtesy of @jessicaradams).

4. Quit Endless Scrolling. A new feature in Chrome makes it possible to send readers directly to a specific section in a text. On a PC, highlight the section you want students to read within a text, right-click and select “copy link to highlight.” On a Mac, click your trackpad and the Ctrl button on your keyboard at the same time then select “copy link to highlight.” This generates a URL ending in a # symbol, which you can then share courtesy of @mr_stitzel).

5. Liven Up Google Forms With Audio. The application Mote allows users to add audio to questions or answers. Install and tapping the Mote icon will appear when creating a new question. Tapping the icon once will begin recording audio instantly and when you’ve completed the message, click the Done button (courtesy of @edtechwithlisa).

6. Eliminate Distractions From Youtube. Adding a hyphen to the Youtube link, so that youtube appears as yout-ube allows students to view content without interruptions (courtesy of @tonyvincent).