Learn Lead Grow

Digital literacy or digital citizenship has become a hot-button issue in education today; however, how do you teach the fundamentals of digital citizenship to students? Many educators are confused on what to teach and how to teach it. I believe that effective digital citizenship training for students begins with effective digital citizenship training for adults. How are we supposed to teach our students if we don't understand the fundamentals ourselves? A formal digital citizenship curriculum is nice, but teachable moments are even more effective. If you have a sound understanding of digital citizenship, you are more able to address student needs when the time comes. Here are four resources to help you get started! 1. Common Sense Media Common Sense Media is an excellent resource with a formal digital citizenship curriculum. Educators can use lesson plans and resources from the site, view interactive materials, or check out the latest issues in digital citizenship through the

Amazing presentations start with an amazing design. If you use Google Slides, then you might want to check out the Slides Toolbox Add-On , which will help you create top-notch presentations. Simply visit the Add-Ons menu, select "Get Add-Ons," and search and install Slides Toolbox. Once Slides Toolbox is installed, you can use a variety of tools to make awesome presentations, such as: Easily remove objects and text Add and edit various text formats and objects Arrange, space, and reposition objects Important and export objects such as JPEG, GIF, and PNG files Edit shapes, charts, and images  Add a table of contents In a world full of boring and mundane PowerPoints, this free tool provides users with an easy way to create engaging and powerful presentations. 

If you are like me, you spend a lot of time browsing through different articles on the Internet and want a solution for revisiting them when you have more time to read. If you are a Chrome user, you could bookmark your articles; however, I have found that I often forget about them. Reading List is a Chrome Extension that students and teachers can use to save websites to browse through for a later time. Simply visit the Chrome Store to install the Extension. Once the Extension is installed, visit the website of your choice and click on the Reading List icon. Choose the green plus sign to add to your reading list. Once the website is added to your reading list, there are a variety of tools to help you locate your articles. Use the All and Unread tabs to show all items saved or filter through unread items. You can manually revisit the website or use the search feature to quickly locate an article if you have a significant number of items in your list.

If you have student iPads, then Apple Classroom is a great tool for managing student devices! If you have never used this tool before, you will need to download Apple Classroom for your teacher iPad. Students will NOT need a special app on their iPads. Instead, they will need to visit Settings > Classroom to enter into your class. I have created the following Cheat Sheet for using Apple Classroom.

Although textbooks have been an important part of learning for decades, more and more teachers are starting to get away from a physical textbook. Online textbooks offer many different advantages, such as interactivity and having the most up-to-date information. To save costs, why not create your own online text using Google Slides? Here are 5 ways to create your own textbook in Google Slides: Want to see a sample book? Check out this sample!  1. Publish Slides If you decide to create an online text, you may want to consider publishing your Slides presentation to the web so that it will function much like an actual book. When you do this, your students will only see only content appearing on slides (not presenter notes) and have the ability to interact with content, such as embedded links and videos. This feature is a great way of sharing presentation, which can be viewed through a browser and not Slides App. Go to the File Menu > Publish to the Web 2. Embed Videos fr

If you are a Google Classroom user, then you probably know that you can change the theme and header in your classroom. Did you know that you can create your own custom header in Classroom? How Does it Work? Simply use Google Drawings to design your custom header. It is recommended that you change your canvas size to 800 x 200 pixels (File Menu > Page Setup > Custom). Download your picture as a JPEG or PNG file and upload to Google Classroom. Want to see it in action? Check out my video below:

If you are a user of Google Forms, then you might want to check out another great Add-On called Form Scheduler . The free version gives you the chance to close your Form at a maximum number of responses or a specific date. There is a paid feature to open your form during specific events. For example, let's say that you have a reoccurring event that happens from 9 am to 1 pm on your Google Calendar. You can use Form Scheduler to open during that time period.