Terry's Tech Tips

Students are writing across the curriculum - essays in English, papers in Social Studies, and lab reports in Science.    For any significant piece of writing, teachers usually provide students with valuable feedback to better their written assignments. Grading written work with feedback: Grading these assignments can be confusing.   It can be challenging to determine what changes the student made (if any) to improve the writing.   Many teachers like to have students turn in a 'rough draft,' give feedback with comments, and then have the students resubmit 'final' drafts.  Sometimes, teachers do this within the same document, while others have separate documents. If you face this problem, here is a solution you might want to use! If you use one document as both 'rough draft' and 'final draft.'   If you like to use one document to see the comment threads, you may already know you can click File>See Version History  to view how...

Grammarly Premium is now available to Staff! How do I get Grammarly Premium? You should have already received an email from Grammarly inviting you to the CCHS Grammarly Premium group.  Click on the link provided in the email, create your account, and add the Grammarly Chrome extension.  (Note:  You must use Google Chrome to access Grammarly in Gmail, Blogger, and Drive.) If you have never used Grammarly before, following this process should provide you premium account access. If you have used Grammarly before, follow the directions in the slides linked below: I have used the Free version of Grammarly   I have paid for Grammarly premium using my @concordcarlisle.org account. How do I use Grammarly Premium? Grammarly Spelling and Grammar checks: Once you log into the Grammarly Chrome extension using your @concordcarlisle.org account, Grammarly automatically provides necessary spelling and grammar checks for all Google products: Gramm...

Student plagiarism can be a problem.  The world we live in makes it easy for students to copy/paste,  using works not their own. Identifying plagiarism and addressing it is a big part of students learning to be good digital citizens.  My last post outlined the new Originality Reports in Google Classroom, which check student submissions for plagiarism and incorrect or missing citations.    Occasionally, you will have a situation that needs a thorough investigation.  The Google Chrome extension Draftback is your superhero in this situation!  (Shout out to the Science Department, who discovered this gem!) Can't I see a document's version history? You may be aware that you can look at the revision history for any Google Doc or Slide.  Click File>Version History>See version history.   You are provided a right sidebar.  You can click on any revision to review the document at that time.  Changes from the pr...

You may have noticed a couple of new options when adding assignments to Google Classroom.  One of the new options is Originality Reports.  This option is in Beta, which means that Google is testing Originality Reports.  Typically, after 6 to 9 months, Google releases the product fully with the desired features.  Please feel free (always!) to click the Question Mark at the bottom left of most Google Products and suggest new features. Let's take a look at Originality reports in-depth: What are Originality Reports? Originality reports are used when students are submitting Google documents to you through an assignment in Google Classroom.  The document can be an English writing assignment, a Social Studies paper, or a Science lab report.   Originality reports check the student's work against websites and books to ensure that students haven't plagiarized - on purpose or inadvertently.  Google announced choosing our own private repository...

Fall sports are in full swing, and the Activities Fair will be held soon!  Before the month is out, we will submit many of our School Sponsored International Trips for School Committee review. If you are a coach, club advisor, or trip organizer, connecting with students and parents can be time-consuming.  There are several ways to set up systems to communicate with these students and/or parents.  One option is to create a snapshot in Aspen. Why create a snapshot in Aspen for clubs, sports teams, or trips? As a teacher, you can easily communicate with students in your classes.  Communicating with students in clubs, sports teams, or trips means you need to access them under the Staff View>Student top tab with all 1300 students.  If you create a snapshot in Aspen, you can specify that snapshot as a filter and with one-click access only the students you want to communicate with.  When contacting students and/or parents, any email changes made in Aspen ...

The beginning of the year is a critical time for setting up your GradeBook.  You want to be sure your choices provide the results you expect.  Once you have a lot of grades entered, you don't want to change your average mode calculation. The four Aspen Grade Average Mode options are listed below to provide you a sanity check: Total Points   The easiest to understand, select Total points if you calculate averages by dividing the total points a student earns by the total number of points possible.   You can create categories, but their value is determined by the points available from assignments in the categories. For example, a student receives a 100, 90, and 80 for assignments where each is worth 100 points. (Assign1 + Assign2 + Assign3)/Possible Points = Score (100 + 90 + 80)/300 = 90% Category Total Points Select Category total points if you want to use total points for individual assignments within a category. The weight of the cat...

Google introduced a lot of updates over the summer.  As a Google for Education School, we work in the Google Suite all the time.  We create for our classroom or assess work students create. Below are some highlighted changes for Google Docs and Slides. Google Slides Present Mode: If you use Google Slides in your classroom, Google has added these capabilities while in Present mode : Resize speaker notes and slide thumbnails in the presenter view  Navigate to a specific slide with a keyboard shortcut   -   For example, 7 followed by Enter sends you to slide 7. Control video playback with keyboard shortcuts: View all available Present mode keyboard shortcuts by clicking the new “tips” button in the presentation control bar.  Read the full Google post here. New Customization Features for Google Docs Headers and Footers: Previously, Headers and Footers in Google Docs had to remain the same on every page except for page 1....