Terry's Tech Tips

Current educational trends focus on developing critical thinking and problem solving skills in students, along with  promoting student voice and choice to enhance engagement. Elaine Picard & Kevin Pennucci designed a brilliant project for their AP Physics course that accomplishes both of these goals! Like all AP courses, the curriculum is focused and fast leading up to the AP test.  After the test in May,  AP courses offer a few days to plan enriching and engaging projects.  Elaine & Kevin purchased some Arduino  circuit boards for use in the project.  (Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software.) Students were placed in teams and asked to create a project of their choice.  The only stipulation was they needed to use the Arduino hardware and embedded software. Watch the video of one teams' project presentation: You can tell from the video that students were engaged and excited about the project they com

Do you want the convenience of using your cell phone to take attendance? Do you want to reserve your laptop or classroom desktop for displaying class information or the daily agenda?  This tip is for you! (Disclaimer - the Aspen Mobile interface is really just a front end for using the website with your phone.  As such, you will need to increase/decrease the page size in order to navigate to Attendance.  Once there, it is a reasonable interface!) iPhone Step 1:  Using a browser, type in the address: https://ma-concord.myfollett.com/aspen/logon.do Because this is so painful to hand type each time, you will want to bookmark this site.  To do that, tap the ‘ Share button ’, and select ‘ Add Bookmark ’.  (Note: I used Chrome on my phone, where I am logged into my Google Chrome account using my @concordcarlisle.org credentials. I automatically had access to the Aspen bookmark I had created on my laptop. A ccess to bookmarks across devices is a good reason to create a C

Moving your hands from the keyboard to your mouse or trackpad and clicking takes time.  Research done by  the Key Cuts Blog  found you can save over 10 minutes per day using keyboard shortcuts, adding up to over  40 hours per year time savings!  Personally, I am a big fan of keyboard shortcuts.  Interested in starting to use more keyboard shortcuts?  The best way to learn them is a few at a time! The Basics - Use everywhere! Everyone should know and use these next four shortcuts.  The time they save really adds up!  They are Mac shortcuts, so they work everywhere.   Command + C = Copy Command + V = Paste                   Command + X = Cut Command + A = Select All I routinely use all of the commands above.  If you don't use any keyboard shortcuts, this is where you should start!  Place a sticky note on your computer with these shortcuts, and start trying to use them.  You will be surprised how quickly they become automatic! Command + Z = Undo Command