How to Go Paperless at School

According to an analysis done by The Paperless Project, 68 million trees are used to make paper and paper products in the United States every year.  This analysis also finds that the global consumption of paper has increased by 400% in the past 40 years.  Additionally, The Paperless Project states that the pulp and paper industry is the fourth largest industrial user of energy.  It’s time that we embrace the many powerful and efficient digital tools to go paperless and save money, energy, time, and our environment.

Here are 10 great benefits of leaving paper and going digital:

1. Reduced paper costs
2. Reduced toner/ink and printer maintenance costs
3. Less electricity costs from running printers and copiers
4. Faster, more engaging, and more collaborative dissemination of information through digital media
5. Easier and quicker access to and searching of digital documents
6. Less physical space needed to store paper documents
7. More secure storage of digital documents
8. Less time lost to printing and copying documents
9. People learning and mastering digital tools of communication
10. More environmentally-friendly

 Also, you’ll have fewer paper cuts, and those are the worst!

Here are five free digital tools that schools can use to go paperless:

G Suite Apps & Google Classroom

If your school is a Google school, then these are a given.  Within G Suite, staff and students can create all sorts of digital documents and then share, collaborate, edit, assess, organize, and archive them.  Setting up shared folders and Team Drives is also a great way to spread information.  The Save to Google Drive Chrome Extension is a valuable tool to save almost anything you find on the Internet directly to your Google Drive in one click to make the curation of digital resources quick and easy.

Other than Google Drive and its associated apps, Google Classroom is almost a one-stop-shop in and of itself to have a paperless classroom.  Within Google Classroom, teachers can post announcements, reminders, polls, quizzes, assignments, as well as direct links to documents.  Teachers can also collect assignments submitted by students, provide feedback, and send it back to students.  Teachers can keep parents in the loop by inviting them to their Google Classroom as well.  To instantly share documents or a website to students in class on their Chromebooks, teachers can use the Share to Google Classroom Chrome Extension.

Teachers, students, and other school staff can use Blogger and/or Google Sites to share information with parents or anyone else in the school community.  Blogger and Google Sites are also good to use for displaying student work, activities, and events.

Here are excellent resources on getting the most out of the G Suite apps and Google Classroom:

Google Classroom Video Tutorial

Google Classroom Tips

How to Use the Google Classroom Extension

Google Drive Video Tutorials

Google Docs Video Tutorials

Google Slides Video Tutorials

Google Forms Video Tutorials

Google Forms Tips

Google Sheets Video Tutorials

10 Important Google Sheets Tips for Teachers

PDF Conversion

You can use a copier’s Scan to PDF feature or use a standalone scanner to convert all your paper documents into PDF files.  Using a copier to do this is the easiest and quickest way since you can load several pages into the feeder at once.  If you don’t have a copier or a scanner, you can use your smartphone.  I recommend the CamScanner app, which will let you take a photo of any document, edit it (if you want), and convert it into a PDF.

Print Friendly Chrome Extension

This useful Chrome extension lets you remove text, images, and whole pages from things you find on the Internet, which will help you save toner and paper if you really do need to print something.  Print Friendly also has features to convert a webpage or online article into a PDF and/or email it.  To learn more about how to make the most of Print Friendly, check out my article about it.  Download Print Friendly here.

Remind

Remind is an app to help improve communication between teachers, students, and parents.  With Remind, teachers can send text messages, voice clips, photos, PDFs, and more directly to students’ and parents’ smartphones.  Remind has earned the FERPA and COPPA privacy badges from iKeepSafe.

Here’s a video about Remind:

Padlet

Padlet is an online application to create, share, and collaborate on digital bulletin boards.  Users can access Padlet on a smartphone, tablet, or computer to post almost anything to a Padlet board, such as photos, documents, videos, music, Google files, and more.  Users can also comment on them to give feedback, suggest ideas, and ask questions.  Padlet is a great way to share and curate information and resources.

Here's a video about Padlet:

These tools will help schools save money, energy, and the environment all while improving productivity, communication, and collaboration.

Create and Book Appointments with Google Calendar

The work days of teachers and school administrators are nothing short of busy.  One of the more difficult things to coordinate amidst all the hustle and bustle is meetings.  Finding common free times, making appointments, canceling appointments, and just remembering it all is a huge task in and of itself.  Google Calendar has a hidden gem of a feature called “Appointment Slots” to make all of this simple, efficient, and easy.

Appointment Slots is exactly what you think it is.  It is a way to create a calendar with customizable time slots that people can reserve for meetings, conferences, or any other kind of appointment.  I’m thinking of using this feature to create calendars for teachers to reserve the use of iPad carts, so there are plenty of other uses for this feature besides personal appointments.  Here’s how to create your own Google appointment calendar:

1.  Sign in to your school Google account, and open Calendar.

2.  You can use your existing calendar, or you can create a new calendar just for appointments.  I recommend creating a new calendar to use only for this purpose.

3.  On the left side of the screen, click the + sign next to “Add a coworker’s calendar”.  Then, click “New calendar”.

4.  Name your calendar and add a description if you want.

5.  Once you’ve created the new calendar, click the calendar itself on the date for which you want to create appointment slots.  Then, click “Appointment slots”.  Now, you can adjust the title, date, time, and duration of slots.  You can also click “More Options” to change other things.  Click “Save” to finish creating them.

6.  To have people book appointments, click on the title of the appointments on your Calendar.  Then, click “This calendar’s appointment page”.  This will open a webpage to book the appointments.  Copy the URL of this webpage and send it to whomever you want to book appointments.  People must have a Google account to book appointments.  They can book appointments by clicking on an available slot, and then clicking “Save”.  They can return to this page to cancel or change their appointment.

This is what the appointments page looks like:

You and the people booking appointments will get notifications and reminders through Calendar.  Since teachers and school administrators do so much through Google as it is, this is an efficient way to make the scheduling and managing of meetings easier and simpler.

5 Steps to Optimize Your Email

According to research done by the Radicati Group, an estimated 11.2 billion emails were sent every hour of every day across the world in 2017.  The research also found that an average office worker received 121 emails and sent 40 emails per day.  Email was the preferred method of communication for 86% of professionals.  In light of this digital deluge, the efficient management of emails is an important way to bring clarity and calm to your work life.  Here are five steps you can take to tame the wild world of email.  I will be focusing on Gmail, but these steps can apply to any email service.

1.  Purge

If you were to take only one of these steps, this is by and far the most transformative.  Simply put, delete all the emails you truly don’t need.  Decluttering your inbox (or anything else for that matter, such as a room or a car) will make it much easier to find things, and it will make the things you still have easier to manage.  In Gmail, check the box next to the emails you want to delete.  Once you have all those selected, click the trash can icon near the top of the page to delete them.  The deleted emails will still be in your Gmail trash, and you can go there to permanently delete them.

2.  Unsubscribe

Over the years, you have probably signed up to get emails for a variety of sources.  You may also be getting emails from places where you didn’t sign up.  Spam filters are usually good at detecting and removing spam emails, but many unwanted or useless emails still get to your inbox.  There is a quick and easy way to reduce the number of emails you get by unsubscribing from them.  At the bottom of an email is usually a link that you can click to unsubscribe or update your email preferences for that sender.  Just click on that link and unsubscribe.  Here is what those links may look like:

3.  Organize

The first two steps will greatly reduce the number of emails you have in your inbox, which will make this step of organization much easier.  In this step, you will create labels for you Gmail.  These are essentially folders that you can drag and drop emails into to categorize and organize them.  This will help you manage all your emails and make it easier to find them since they’ll be in categories.  On the left side of Gmail, you will see “Inbox”.  Scroll down that left side until you see “More” with a down arrow next to it.  Click on “More”, scroll down, and then click on “Create new label”.  Now, you can name the label something like “Lesson Plans” or “Parents” or “Administration”.  Once you have created all the labels you want, you can drag and drop your emails into these labels.

4.  Use Email Groups

In a school or business, there are always certain groups of people we email on a regular basis.  Typing in each recipient in the To field (and even remembering all the people you want to include) can be tedious and time-consuming.  Having a ready-made email group makes the sending and organizing of emails faster and easier.  Email groups can be handy for teachers as they can create groups for parents, committees, courses, extracurricular activities, etc.  Below are screenshots and instructions on how to do this yourself in Gmail.

First, click the down arrow next to “Mail”, and then click on “Contacts”.

Next, click on “New Group...”, and then name the group.

Now, you can add people to the group.  Click the button with the plus sign, and then type in the email addresses of the people you want in the group.  When you’ve included all of them, click “Add”.

On the Contacts page, you can select a group to email.  Or you can return to the Mail page (click the arrow next to Contacts), compose a new email, and type the name of the group in the To field.

5.  Undo Send

We have all experienced that sinking feeling in the moment after sending an email you wish you didn’t send.  Gmail has a way of making that wish come true.  There is an undo send feature in Gmail that gives you the ability to stop an email from being sent even if you already hit the send button.  When you’re in Gmail, click the gear icon on the right side of the screen.  Then, click “Settings”.  Click the box next to “Enable Undo Send”, and then select the amount of time you want to give yourself to undo a sent email:  5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.  Once you have undo send enabled, a narrow window will appear at the top of your Gmail inbox with the option of undoing the sent email and showing you how much time you have left to do it.

Hopefully, these steps will help you live a more manageable, organized, and efficient email life.

A Super Citation Tool

If academia had a scarlet letter, it would be P.  Those who dare to claim somebody else’s work as their own or even leave sources uncited would be branded with a gasp-inducing red P.  If you haven’t guessed it, I’m talking about plagiarism.  All kidding aside, people have lost jobs, students have been expelled, and publications have lost credibility because of plagiarism.

In my day, we had to pore over citation manuals or just memorize how to cite common sources in the most popular styles to write our research papers and works cited pages.  Only for the styles to change the next year!  Now, there are a few tools out there that will do all this work for you…and do it flawlessly.  The tool I’m going to focus on is one I think does it the best and offers additional useful features.

If you’ve heard of or used RefME before, then you should know that it has changed its name and all its services to Cite This for Me.  You can create your free account on its website.  The first neat thing about Cite This for Me is that all your references, citations, work cited pages, and notes are stored in the cloud, so you can access them from any computer, tablet, or smartphone once you sign in to your account.

Cite This for Me has a great Google Chrome extension that allows you to cite, quote, and save any reference you access online through Chrome to your account.  You can get this extension by clicking here.  Once you have the citation information, click “Add to bibliography”, and you’re done.  Here’s what that looks like:

Cite This for Me can do citations in MLA, APA, Chicago, and Harvard styles.  You can see all of its features for creating a works cited page below:

Cite This for Me provides many other great features, such as topic ideas, a plagiarism checker, and a spelling/grammar checker.  Also, it has an add-on for Microsoft Word, so you can seamlessly import citations and works cited pages from Cite This for Me directly into Word.

Now, you can go forth and live an academically sinless life!

Google Chrome Tips and Tricks

Google provides many time-saving and effective services and apps to help us get our work done faster and better.  Its browser, Chrome, is one of those tools.  Here are five neat things you can do in Chrome to make a teacher's or student's life a little easier.

1.  Set Specific Websites to Open at Startup

If there are particular websites that you always use or want right away when you open Chrome, you can make them load automatically at startup.  Click the traffic light menu button (three vertical dots) on the upper right side of Chrome.  Click Settings.  Then, configure how Chrome starts up.  Click the blue "Set pages" to choose the websites you want.

2.  Do Math

Chrome can solve simple and complex math problems, equations, and measurement conversions.  Just type in what you want solved into the ominbox (the white box where you enter website addresses), and hit enter.  You can also click on the microphone icon in the Google Search bar to do this by voice.  Here's an example:

3.  Save Webpages as a PDF

If you want to save a webpage as a PDF so you can save it electronically to your computer or flash drive, Chrome can do that.  Click Print, and then click Change under Destination.  Finally, choose Save as PDF.  This will save a PDF copy to your computer.  Now, you can keep the webpage for offline viewing, print it, or share it with others.

4.  Zoom and Full Screen

There are two ways you can quickly and easily zoom in and out of any website.  First, press the Ctrl key and the plus (zoom in) or minus (zoom out) sign key at the same time.  Second, click the traffic light menu button (three vertical dots) on the upper right side of Chrome.  You'll see the following options for zoom in, zoom out, and full screen (the box):

5.  Open Recently Closed Tabs

Sometimes you may close a tab that you want to have back.  An easy way to do that is to press Ctrl, Shift, T at the same time, which will open the last tab you closed.  You can also right-click on a new tab to open the last closed tab.

These five tips and tricks will help you and your students be more efficient and productive while doing work with Google Chrome.

How to Create and Use Gmail Groups

In a school or business, there are always certain groups of people we email on a regular basis.  Typing in each recipient in the To field (and even remembering all the people you want to include) can be tedious and time-consuming.  Having a ready-made email group makes the sending and organizing of emails faster and easier.

I created email groups for each grade level in my school, so we could have organized and targeted conversations about technology.  I also created an email group for our Technology Committee to keep those messages together.  Email groups can be handy for teachers as they can create groups for parents, committees, courses, extracurricular activities, etc.  Below are screenshots and instructions on how to do this yourself in Gmail.

First, click the down arrow next to "Mail", and then click on "Contacts".

Next, click on "New Group...", and then name the group.

Now, you can add people to the group.  Click the button with the plus sign, and then type in the email addresses of the people you want in the group.  When you've included all of them, click "Add".

On the Contacts page, you can select a group to email.  Or you can return to the Mail page (click the arrow next to Contacts), compose a new email, and type the name of the group in the To field.

Hopefully, this makes all your emailing faster, easier, and more organized!

Better Bookmarks

The Internet abounds with great resources and materials for teachers.  Thus, bookmarks have become a teacher's very close, if not best, friend.  However, teachers end up having lots and lots of these friends, and they can only fit so many on the always-visible bookmarks bar that runs under the URL bar in the browser.  Once that bookmarks bar fills up, anything you subsequently bookmark will be added to a drop-down menu at the end of the bar.  People have come to me asking where their new bookmarks went.  Here is where you need to look:

Click on that double arrow to bring up the list of bookmarks.  That's where new bookmarks will go when the bar is full.  You can drag and drop them into the bookmarks bar.  Also, you can drag and drop the ones already in your bookmarks bar to rearrange them.  Still, this doesn't solve the problem of running out of room for bookmarks in the bar.  Here is a solution.

Much like with icons on your computer desktop, smartphone, or tablet, you really don't need the text next to a bookmark to know what it is.  Almost every website uses favicons (a portmanteau of favorite and icon), which are the icons you see in the bookmarks bar.  Most are instantaneously recognizable, such as the one I'll use for an example:  IXL.  You can edit the bookmark to delete the text, so all you have is only the favicon.  This will allow you to store many more bookmarks in the readily accessible bar.  Here's how to do it.

1.  Right click on the bookmark.

2.  Click "Edit..."

3.  Delete the text in the "Name" box.

4.  Click "Save" at the bottom of that window.  This is what IXL will look like without text next to it.  QwertyTown would just have the QT favicon if you did the same for that one.

Voila!  Now, you can keep more of your bookmarks right where they're easy to see and access!

Put It in (Google) Drive

This Tech Tip is about saving what you find on the Internet to your Google Drive. First, for those that would like tutorials about using Google Drive, please click here.

Bookmarking websites and other web content is a great way to keep and organize helpful information.  Yet, what do you do when you come across documents, PDFs, images, spreadsheets, or slideshows that you want to keep and possibly modify for your own use?  You can often find these files on the Internet, and here is an easy way that you can store them in your Google Drive, so you can always have them at your fingertips.

Meet the Save to Google Drive Chrome Extension.  With this extension installed, you can save documents, images, and videos to your Google Drive with just a couple clicks.  Then, when you go to your Google Drive, what you saved will be right there.  For example, if you find a PDF on a website that you want to keep, you can right-click on the file, and an option to “Save to Google Drive” will appear.  Click on that, and that PDF will now be in your Google Drive.  Right-clicking on what you want to save is probably the easiest way to use this extension.  Here’s how to install it in Chrome:

1. Open Chrome and click this link.
2. Click the blue "Add to Chrome" button in the upper right.
3. The extension will install, and you'll be good to go!

Now, you can kick your online saving into overdrive with Save to Google Drive!