Google Classroom Users Can Now Assign Quizzes Through Quizizz

For anyone out there who has used Kahoot, you probably already know how much fun students have playing, I mean studying with it. I recently found a new tool that is similar in some ways to Kahoot, but offers some interesting differences - that program is called Quizizz.

Like Kahoot, Quizizz allows you to create multiple choice questions. Like Kahoo, Quizizz gives you a code that students type in to their device after going to a login screen (join.quizizz.com). And finally, like Kahoot, students gain points by answering questions correctly, and the faster they answer the questions, the more points they receive. The way that Quizizz differs from Kahoot is that students are not tied to the teacher's overhead to see the questions; students see the questions on their own devices.

Tip of the Week - May the 4th be with you!

Happy Star Wars day to everyone! Today's tip has to do more with general time savings rather than a specific tip for one of our commonly used programs. Most computer mice now a days have a scroll wheel, or some part that allows you to scroll up and down on the computer screen. I've been using mine for quite some time, but it wasn't until recently that I started using one of the functions of the scroll wheel - the double click.

Tip of the Week 4/25/16

Last week's Tip of the Week is a little late, I got all set to write it and then noticed that many of the images that I'd uploaded in previous posts had disappeared and spent the afternoon chasing down the missing images. Hopefully things will go more smoothly from now on.

I wanted talk about keyboard shortcuts this week. I've already told you about two timesaving shortcuts that I use on a daily basis, Ctrl+Tab (for moving between tabs) and Alt+Tab (for moving between open windows) you can see that post here.

Customizing Your Profile Photo for Your Google Account

Have you ever received an email from someone and saw either their picture, or a picture of something that represents them and think "How do I get MY picture to show up?" Today I'm going to show you just how easy it is to link your picture to your Google account.

Tip of the Week 4/15/16

I've decided that, in addition to blogging about educational technology in general, I'm going to start writing weekly tips for programs that we commonly use in our district, mostly centered around Illuminate, Skyward, and various Google programs that we have available to us. If you'd like to learn about something specific, feel free to send me requests and I'll add them to future Tip of the Week posts. 

Now, without further ado, here is this week's Tip of the Week...

Using the Tab Key to Quickly Enter Data

Changing a Student's Password to the Online Testing Portal in Illuminate

If you're having students test online using the Illuminate Student Portal and the student is having trouble logging in, you may need to change the student's password. First off, make sure that the student is entering in the correct username, this will be the students UIC, or state ID number, which can be found in the Illuminate roster; it will be the ID column to the left of the name.

If the username is correct, but it's still not letting the student log in, the next step would be to change the password. There are two ways to do this: the first way would be through the student search function, either through the search bar at the top of the website, or through the Students tab in the toolbar. The second way would be from the online test roster.

Using Google Doc's Voice Typing Tool

Recently I had a teacher come and ask me if I had a way of helping support a student that needed another method for getting his thoughts down on paper. I immediately thought of using Google's text to speech tool. I thought I’d do a little more research on it and discovered that it is an extremely easy tool to use, all you need is the microphone that is built into your device, or if you'd prefer something different, you can purchase an external microphone.