Category: Tech tips

In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #59–Alt Keys Add Symbols

Category: Google Apps

Sub-category: MS Office, Webtools, Keyboarding, Problem-solving

Q: How do I create the copyright symbol (or another symbol) in Google Apps or Word?

A: It’s easier than you think. Hold down the Alt key and press 0169. ©. Use the keypad with the num lock on–don’t use the number row. I could not get this to work until someone pointed out that you must use the keypad. Duh.

Have students try out some others that would be useful for them. For example:

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #112–How to Open 2 Gmail Accounts at Once

Category: Email

Sub-category: Google Apps, Classroom management

Q: I have a home Gmail account and a school one. How do I open both at once so I can keep track of what my kids/home business/etc. is doing while at my teaching job?

A: I got this quick answer from efriend and tech guru Chris Hoffman: Open each account in a separate browser.  It has to do with each browser keeping its own cookie.

Stepping back a moment, here’s why you might need this:

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #99–Need Email Accounts for Registration? Try This

Category: Email

Sub-category: Webtools, Problem-solving, Classroom management

Q: A lot of web-based tools require email verification. Many of my students don’t have these at school or home. What do I do?

A: This is a lot easier than you’d think. Gmail ignores anything that comes after a + in a username. JonDoe is the same as JonDoe+thinglink. Use that to your advantage with student accounts. They can use your email address and append their name with the +.  You can even set up a filter to send all those + emails to a separate folder so it doesn’t annoy you.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #98–13 Tips for Email Etiquette

Category: Email

Sub-category: Assessment

Here’s a poster with 13 email etiquette tips to share with new users:

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #83–Find Outlook Follow-up Folder

Category: Email

Sub-category: Problem-solving

Q: I had to reformat my computer and lost the ‘For Follow Up’ folder in Outlook. How do I bring this back?

A: This isn’t important until it happens to you. To re-create it, choose File>New>Search Folder or use the shortkey Ctrl+Shift+P. Highlight ‘Mail flagged for follow up’ and click OK.

A note:  Search folders are collected at the bottom of the folder list.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #77–Use BCC to Hide Email Addresses

Category: Email

Sub-category: Security, Parents

Q: I want to send an email to a list of people, but want to keep their email addresses private. How do I do that?

A: Put email addresses under the BCC field. In the ‘to’ field, put no-reply@yourdomain.com. It doesn’t matter what you put. It’ll bounce back to you as undeliverable, but all of your bcc emails will go out as planned.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #69–Instead of Emailing, Share

Category: Email

Sub-category: Internet, MS Office, Google Apps, Parents

Q: I want to share a class video with parents, but the file’s too large and I don’t know how to embed it into the class blog. What can I do?

A: Share it with Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive. In fact, you can share from any cloud-based file folder including Dropbox and Box.

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #61–Email from MS Office

Category: Email

Sub-category: MS Office, Classroom management, Printing

Q: I was helping a colleague who couldn’t print a document (server problems) and wanted to email it to herself to print at home. She started going online to her web-based email account and I stopped her. There was a quicker method.

A: Click the email tool on the MS Office program toolbar. It automatically opens your email program. An email dialogue box will open. Fill it in and send.

Of course, if you’re in Google Apps, it’s already in the cloud which means you can access it from anywhere—like home

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In these 169 tech-centric situations, you get an overview of pedagogy—the tech topics most important to your teaching—as well as practical strategies to address most classroom tech situations, how to scaffold these to learning, and where they provide the subtext to daily tech-infused education.

Today’s tip: #126–7 Tips to Differentiate with Tech

Category: Differentiation

Sub-category: Teaching, Pedagogy

Here are seven ways to differentiate instruction every day:

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Here are ten of the top classroom management tips according to Ask a Tech Teacher readers:

• Is the Socratic Method Right for Your Class?
• Why Blended Learning Fits Your Class, 3 Issues to Think About, and 5 Easy Ways to Begin
• How You Can Make Homework Easier for Students
• 12 Tips on Hard-to-teach Classes
• 7 Tips to Differentiate with Tech
• What to do when Computers are Down?
• How to Use an Internet Start Page
• 17 Ways to Add Tech without Adding Time
• 10 Ways to Use Twitter in Class
• 18 Ideas for Warm-ups, Exit Tickets

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