IHMS Tech Tips

Explore is an under-used feature within Google Suite that is great for students to use when they are writing a paper, doing research, or working on a project in Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets.  The Explore feature: Pulls topics from your writing Uses those topics to curate suggestions of websites, images, and other files from your Google Drive Cites as a footnote any source that you use  To use the Explore feature, first open up a Google Doc or Slides that has text.  Open Explore by clicking the icon in the lower right corner of the window or by choosing Tools- Explore. Select which topic you'd like for Explore to...explore.  If you don't like what it pulls automatically based on your writing, you can type a different keyword. Explore will pull websites, images, and anything in your personal Google Drive that relates to your topic/keyword. To cite the source you've selected, choose the three dots and choose your citation format. Then, selec

Wakelet is a free website that can be used as a teaching resource or with your students as a presentation tool.  Signing up is easy and links to your Google account.  Students can create a collection/story and curate a variety of media based on a given topic.  Wakelet allows you to pull in videos, websites, tweets, photos, and more.  The functionality is similar to Thinglink that was previously discussed on this blog . Here is an example of a public, published collection that I have embedded here: To get started on your own, choose "create a collection/story" from the home page. Give your story a title and description.  Add tweets, photos, files, or create your own writing. When adding photos, you can either add from your own library, or choose a stock image from Unsplash.  There is a space to add credit which would be a great place for a citation. Students can create work in Google Docs, save it as a PDF, and insert it into their collection.  You can

A long while back, I posted about Pear Deck .  Pear Deck is a  a site where you can import or create interactive presentation slides and then students can join via a code.  Pear Deck syncs seamlessly with Google Drive which is a great feature for both students and teachers.   But that's not all Pear Deck can do!  There is also a feature called "Flashcard Factory" that allows students to create vocabulary flashcards that can then be shared with the class or synced with Quizlet.  #awesome "When you play Pear Deck's Flashcard Factory students pair up and work together to create dynamic and engaging flashcards. Students collaborate to illustrate and define terms, making learning vocab an active and social experience! Flashcard Factory is free to use." To get started: 1. Create a list of vocabulary words. 2.  Students are paired up and either write definitions in their own words or they use the Merriam Webster definition synced within Pear Deck. 

Writing is a large component of many of your classes, so check out this blog for some great websites that you can utilize for digital creations.  There are multiple categories mentioned on the site such as  Digital storytelling tools,  Comic strips tools,  Mind mapping tools, story starters, Writing mechanics (grammar and style), Graphic organizers,  and Tools for publishing students writing.