Terry's Tech Tips

Google has developed a new series of fonts explicitly designed to enhance reading speed and fluency for Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets. Google teamed with Education Therapist Dr. Bonnie Shaver-Troup and typographer Thomas Jockin.  Dr. Shaver-Troup found that perception-based solutions were more effective in improving reading performance and cognition than cognitive-based ones.  Together with Thomas Jockin, they developed the Lexend font series.    What benefits do the Lexend font series provide to readers? Bonnie Shaver-Troup theorized that reading issues may be a result of student's sensitivity to typographical factors like size and spacing.  The Lexend font series provide a clean Sans Serif font base with spacing options helping the reader improve both reading speed and cognition.   (Sans Serif fonts assist students with Dyslexia and other learning issues.)  Lexend is especially suitable for readers who are bothered by visual crowd...

Google Slides has just introduced the ability to close caption your classroom presentation/discussion!  When in Presentation mode, simply click the CC icon on the slide navigator toolbar  or click Command + Shift + C.  Any speech picked up by the presentation computer microphone will be closed captioned! Watch this 21-second video from the Google blog to see how easy it is! Can closed captioning your direct instruction and class discussion help learning? Students can hear/understand: Sometimes we have students in our class with a documented hearing loss.  In this case, we think about and use the Redcat microphones provided in every classroom.  (Though I would suggest the amplification of your voice really helps ALL learners!)  In a classroom where you don't choose to utilize the Redcat microphone, there may be students who are: located in a part of the room where they can't hear as well. near noise from another stude...