PPS Instructional Technology

I’m here to tell you… you do not have to live in a mess! Break free! Find joy in cleaning out the clutter that is Google Classroom. If you have spent more than a year or two using Google Classroom you may have noticed your Classes beginning to pile up. Tripping over those classroom tiles is no fun. So, this tech tip is focused on clearing your Classroom home screen and managing your active classes. Let’s focus on two important ways to clean things up… Organizing Classrooms Archiving Classrooms And one optional way to help things run faster... Delete, if Not Using (Optional, of course) First, when teaching multiple classes, if you’re like me, they had better be listed in order and in the same place every time I want to get into one, any other way just won’t do. Good news, you can MOVE Classroom Tiles? Yep, drag-n-drop. Woot! Here’s a tip on how to Rearrange Class Tiles from one of my favorite bloggers, Alice Keeler . (If you don’t already follow her , here’s your chance ...

Logging into computers, and learning passwords can be an annoying, frustrating, but critical aspect of using technology with our students.  Setting up accounts, and deciding what passwords to use for students on outside sites can also be a challenge. We know we should be using strong password protocols , but we also need students to be able to remember the passwords and be able to get into the sites in a timely way.  Whenever you can find a site with the “Login with Google” button, that is the best bet.  However, even though we all love the "Login with Google" button for its ease and security, that isn't always an option.  So, what do we do? Use a password that is NOT their PPS password.  Why?  Students' PPS passwords should not be shared, even with other websites.  Students' passwords are the keys to all their personal data within Skyward, our PPS network, and Google.  By entering their PPS passwords on sites outside of PPS, you are giving ...

How many ugly looking presentations are you going to have to look at again at the end of this project? I mean, just look at this example at the right. His picture (although ruggedly handsome) is sitting right on top of the Eiffel Tower and it has all this horrible background clutter distracting from the tower itself. Not to mention the I “heart” Paris image with that unappealing square, white background. Ugh. So, how can we fix it? How can the student keep the images he has so carefully selected, but get rid of that white background and the image clutter? Enter... EditPhotosForFree.com has an EASY TO USE background removal tool that makes this quick and painless for teachers and students. Every time a student visits the Background Remover the set of instructions below appears to remind users of the four simple steps. Select an image Use the edge (boundary) tool to define the areas to keep and to remove Mark the areas to keep (foreground) with the green ...

Sample of search results from fonts.google.com A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in a training with a bunch of my favorite lower elementary teacher friends, and several of them were lamenting the fact that it is hard to find "good" Google fonts for the little people they work with on a daily basis.  Specifically, it is a challenge to find the single story lower case a and the open 4 .  This conversation, of course, sent me out on a mission to remedy this for these fantastic people.  So, the next day I put on my headphones, turned up the tunes on Spotify, and dived into the website fonts.google.com .  This website lists all the Google fonts available.  It also allows you to type in your own letters and numbers and see them in all the various fonts.  For my purpose, I typed in "abckgy 1234 This is the font."  From here I could see all 877 fonts, and look specifically for the a   and the 4.  It was quite an adventure, and I came across...

Sometimes you need to quickly get a list of your students names in order to add them to a spreadsheet.  Luckily there is a very simple way to do this in Skyward.  Here we go... Step 1: Login to Skyward and select the blue gradebook for the class you want to get the names from - elementary staff, you can just select any of your gradebooks. Step 2: Go to the reports menu at the top of the screen and select Class Roster. Step 3: Choose Student Name & Student Info, then select Clone Template. Step 4: Give your new template a name, such as Student Names.  Click Save. Step 5: Select how you want the Names to Display, select None for the ID Display, then UNCHECK all the boxes.   Click Export to Excel. Step 6: The report will open the Print Queue and it will look like the report is running to print.  Then the file will appear as a .csv at the bottom of the window.  Step 7: Open Excel, or Google Sheets....