Articles tagged "Google Chrome"

Weekly post #61 - Making videos with your Chromebook, dealing with WebP files, viewing non-printing characters, annotating text with Lucidspark and staying safe on Instagram

Using the Lenovo C13 Yoga Chromebook to make a video

Most International School of Geneva - Campus des Nations staff have a Lenovo C13 Yoga Chromebook. These devices are capable of quickly and easily capturing video. As the devices are 'Yogas, ' the hinge can be bent both ways. This is the recommended way for capturing a quick video using a Lenovo C13 Yoga Chromebook →

  1. Press the search key (the one with the magnifying glass icon).
  2. Either search for 'Camera' or press the blue camera icon if you see it.
  3. Push the screen over so the device is like a tent - with you looking at the screen and the keyboard pointing away from you.
  4. You can now change the camera mode to 'Video' and use the circular on-screen button in the bottom right-hand corner to start and stop the recording.
  5. The video file is saved to a folder called 'Camera', which you can find in the Files app. Files can be easily uploaded to your Drive and shared.

Read more here → support.google.com - Use camera features on your Chromebook

Dealing with WebP files

You may have noticed that sometimes when you right-click → 'Save image as' to download an image, you end up with a WebP file. You probably wanted a jpg or png file. What can you do about this?

Several Chrome extensions are available in the Chrome Web Store that can help. I recommend → WebP / Avif image converter, which adds a 'Convert and save image as' option to the right-click menu.

Alternatively, you can download the WebP file and then use an online converter service, such as convertio.co, to convert the file into a more friendly file format.

Viewing non-printing characters in Google Docs

You can (now) display non-printing characters to see how a document is laid out. When turned on, you will see symbols or text to represent the following →

  • Paragraph/Hard break 
  • Line/Soft break 
  • Section break 
  • Page break 
  • Column break 
  • Tab 
  • Space

To reveal the non-printing characters → View → Show non-printing characters to display.

Read more here → Google Workspace Updates - New option to view non-printing characters in Google Docs [9 January 2023]

Annotating text with Lucidspark

[17 November 2022]

Educators and students (currently) have access to Lucidspark at the International School of Geneva - Campus des Nations.

Lucidspark is an excellent whiteboarding app worth exploring if you haven't yet.

If you would like support using Lucidspark in your teaching, please get in touch with me.

Staying Safe on Instagram and other Meta Platforms

This video is worth 8 minutes and 34 seconds of your time.

[5 February 2023]

Weekly post #60 - Chromebook keyboard shortcuts, Group tabs, Mote's online voice recorder and emojis in Docs

Group Tabs in a minute

[29 January 2023]

Helpful minute-long video from Dean Stokes.

[Chromebook] Ctrl + Alt + -

To access every keyboard shortcut on your Lenovo C13 Yoga Chromebook with a Swiss french keyboard, press Ctrl + Alt + -.

The feature, once activated, is built up of several sections:

  • Popular shortcuts
  • Tabs and windows
  • Page and web browser
  • System and display settings
  • Text editing
  • Accessibility

Insert emojis inline with text in Google Docs

Type “@” followed by a descriptor, such as “@smile,” to search for a specific emoji amongst other menu items.

Read more here → workspaceupdates.googleblog.com - Insert emojis inline with text in Google Docs [29 August 2022]

mote.new

The quickest way to start recording audio is to head to mote.new.

Supporting your child getting started on social media

Childnet

Young people are always looking for the latest app or site to go on, and if they come to you talking about social media there are lots of things to consider.

Here, we will help answer the big questions that parents and carers may have when their child asks about signing up for a new social media app.

childnet.com/blog - Supporting your child getting started on social media [13 September 2022]

Read more here → childnet.com/blog - Supporting your child getting started on social media [13 September 2022]

Weekly post #57 – Managing Chrome tabs, producing Chromebook screencasts, sharing YouTube clips and producing timelines in Sheets

The following topics, ideas and themes are a summary of updates shared during the November 2022 IT themed faculty meeting at International School of Geneva - Campus des Nations Secondary.

Managing tabs in Chrome

How many open Chrome tabs is too many?

Are you making use of the Chrome bookmark bar and the feature where you can organise bookmarks in folders?

Have you explored Chrome tab groups yet?

If you ‘live you life in bookmarks’ consider using raindrop.io! It is one of my favourite apps and I use it on a daily basis.

The [Chromebook] Screencast

If you have a Chromebook you have access to the Screencast app. If you have the need to record what is happening on your screen along with your commentary, maybe to explain a process or similar, it is worth checking out the following video, produced by John R Sowash

Google Documents notifications

For a long time now it has been possible to be notified when changes were made to a Google Sheet. Google has now brought similar capabilities to Google Documents.

Tools → Notification settings →tick 'Added or removed content'

Google Documents Notification settings

I use this function to monitor a 'bulletin' document. When additions are made to the document I receive an email notification. This means that I do not need to remember to regularly check the document - but also not miss out when additional content is added.

Top tips when using YouTube

YouTube

There's a range of keyboard shortcuts that you can make use of when using YouTube to display your fluency and skills. Here are my favourites →

  • Spacebar → Play/Pause.
  • f → Activate full screen.
  • c → Activate closed captions and subtitles if available. To hide captions and subtitles, press C again.
  • Number 0 → Goes to the start of the video

Find more Keyboard shortcuts for YouTube here.

If you place the pointer over a video's progress bar a red dot will appear. If you then right click on that red dot you are presented with some options. One of these is 'Copy video URL at current time'. If you click on that and then share the copied link (URL) with somebody then if they click on the link the video will open and start playing at that time.

YouTube clips

Some content producers allow you to produce a 'clip' of their video. This would then allow you to easily share that clip (section of a video) with a student, class or team. The following video explains the process →

Read more about this here → support.google.com - Share clips

The Google Sheets Timeline feature

You can now produce timelines in Google Sheets. This is a useful and powerful feature that presents opportunities for use in the classroom as well as by educators for project management.

Check out this excellent video produced by Eric Curts

Weekly post #51 - Keyboard shortcuts, charts from Forms, moderating posts in Padlet and tags and hashtag literacy

Adding a keyboard shortcut or hotkey for a Chrome Extension

I use a range of Chrome extensions to add links/articles/resources to services such as Trello, Pocket and Raindrop.

Aiming your cursor at a tiny 16-by-16 pixel Chrome extension button amidst possibly 20 others in the extension tray can feel like trying to win a carnival game with the odds firmly stacked against you.

[Source]

It is possible to assign keyboard shortcuts to Chrome extensions.

Here are the steps for adding your own personalized shortcuts for Chrome extensions.

  • In the top right corner of Google Chrome, click the 3-dot expansion menu
  • Expand the More Tools menu
  • Click Extensions
  • Click on the 'burger' in the top left hand corner of the screen and choose 'Keyboard shortcuts'
  • Scroll to the extension of interest and choose a combination of keys with either “Ctrl” or “Ctrl + Shift” and any available key

The extension developer may have added shortcut functionality for more actions within the app. 

Read more here → obie.ai - How to add and remove custom keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys for a Chrome Extension in 5 seconds flat [20 July 2020]

Heading charts from Google Form responses into Docs, Slides and Drawings

You can now embed linked response charts from Google Forms into a Google Doc, Google Slides presentation, or a Google Drawing. When new form responses are received, anyone with the proper permissions can refresh an embedded chart by simply clicking the "Update" button. This eliminates the need to re-copy the chart from the form.

Read more here → Google Workspace Updates - Embed linked Google Forms charts into Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings [1 March 2022]

Padlet - moderating posts

Padlet allows you to moderate all posts on padlet so they must be reviewed by the owner/teacher before they can be published.

Thinking about tags and hashtag literacy

Digital curation is a topic that really engages me at the minute. The effective organisation of all the things we find online that may (or may not) be useful in the future is a challenge and the tools available to help evolve.

Tags and Hashtag Literacy [14 February 2022], by Wesley Fryer, is worth a read to get you thinking about such things and how we should be integrating hashtags and tags into the research skills we teach.

Weekly post #48 – The four apps that everybody needs

I am not sure where I came across this approach first →

You should have four apps, one from each of the following areas: calendar, task manager, notes and read it later. This approach should help you be more (digitally) productive. You could use less than four as there are some really useful apps that tick more than one of the areas.

This is what I use - as well as some ideas for following the approach using Google Workspace apps.

Calendar

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is all that is needed here! I use a handful of different calendars - school, family etc - but all scheduled lessons, meetings and my daughter's football practices are here.

I use Fantastical on my iPhone and iPad to display my Google Calendar as I prefer the layout - but the Google Calendar iOS app is also very capable.

Task manager

Todoist

I'm going to say it - your email inbox should not be your 'job list'. An app where you can 'capture' and then organise all the things that you need to do can be hugely beneficial for your well-being.

There is no shortage of task manager apps available! Within the Google Workspace sphere you have Google Tasks and Google Keep. These apps also display scheduled tasks in your Google Calendar. A recent update allows you to manage overdue tasks in Google Calendar.

Personally I use todoist - and have done for a number of years now. I particularly like how the Gmail add-on allows me to quickly turn emails into tasks, the web and iOS apps and the integration with Google Calendar, Fantastical etc.

Notes

Roam Research

Notes in that nice notebook you got for your birthday, others on the back of an envelope and even some in an email you sent to yourself. One place (app) is needed where you make, organise and can quickly find your notes and thoughts.

In Google Workspace you could use a Google Doc. Utilising H1, H2 to give things structure and the document outline to quickly move around. Smart chips will also help you tie various things together.

I have tried GoodNotes on my iPad, various physical Moleskine type notebooks, Bear, Notion and Trello and more. All of them have good bits - but not the coverage that I was looking for.

I am about two weeks into using Roam Research as my note taking app of choice. It is a little geekier than some of the other options and maybe not as pretty. The speed of use and the automatic generation of connections between notes, topics, ideas is what is making it the app I keep going back to. There are 'task manager' options here too - but I am sticking with todoist for that side of things, at the minute.

Read it later

Pocket

You need somewhere to store links. That article that was shared by a colleague that you want to digest at a later date. The website you want to use next time to teach a certain topic to one of your classes. The website of that new restaurant you would like to try. All these links need to be stored and organised.

In Google Workspace you could use Chrome bookmarks and then use the Chrome Bookmark Manager to ensure links are organised into folders. Google Keep, and it's Chrome extension, can also be useful here.

I prefer a dedicated app for such things. I want an app that is 'cross platform' - I can use it on my school Chromebook, my personal iPad, my phone etc.

I use Pocket. There is a Chrome extension so that I can quickly add websites that I am viewing to Pocket - so that later on I can read them and sort them out. With tags etc you can use Pocket as an organised store of your links. I do not tend to do this. For me links get added to Pocket and then every so often I sort them out. Sites that I want to integrate into my teaching resources get added to Trello and things I want to read (in depth) are added to the iOS app Matter.

Weekly post #44 – Google Tasks, linking directly to text, Meet updates and Project Zero

New Year Resolution - Get Organised with Google Tasks

Google Tasks

The capabilities of Google Tasks are ever growing and worth a look for anybody thinking about using a digital 'to do list manager'.

There is a useful guide to Google Tasks, by Jeremy Badiner, here.

Useful tip → Link directly to text and quotes

Google Chrome

Rather than sharing a link to a whole webpage - you can now easily share a link to a certain line of text.

To create a link that opens directly to highlighted text: 

  1. On your computer, open Chrome. 
  2. Go to a page with text you want to share. 
  3. To highlight the text you want to share, click and hold, then drag your mouse.
  4. To open the context menu, right-click on the highlighted text.
  5. Select Copy link to highlight
    • If you can’t select this option, this feature may not work for the selected content.
  6. Paste the link anywhere, like an email or message thread.

Read more here.

Google Meet updates - some super interesting!

Google Meet

Live translated captions

Live translated captions are now available for our Google Workspace editions. It's not (yet) perfect but it is certainly an interesting development. Read more here.

Up to 500 participants

Users can now host meetings in Google Meet with up to 500 participants. Read more here.

New immersive backgrounds and styles for Google Meet on the web

Five new immersive backgrounds have been added for Google Meet on the web. The backgrounds feature "subtle animation that give your background life or change your lighting." Just because you can doesn't mean you should! Read more here.

Automatically move breakout room participants back to the original meeting

There is now the ability for meeting hosts and co-hosts to automatically move participants back to the main meeting room once breakout rooms end. The visual indicators have been improved for breakout room participants to indicate this movement. Read more here.

Using Jamboard with Project Zero thinking routines

If you already are using See Think Wonder, hang around. Cause Google Jamboard and STW were made for each other.

Glenn Wiebe

Super post from Glenn Wiebe at history TECH those has many applications outside of the 'history' classroom.

Weekly post #37 - Google Workspace age related changes, Todoist and managing your Chrome tabs

Google makes some age related changes

Google recently launched a new age-based access setting to make it easier for domain admins to tailor experiences for their students and educators based on age when using Google services like YouTube, Photos and Maps.

Since September 1, 2021, students who are under 18 are seeing changes in their experience across Google products.

For example, after September 1, students designated as under 18 in K-12 domains can view YouTube content assigned by teachers, but they won’t be able to post videos, comment or live stream using their school Google account.

Safer learning with Google for Education [29 June 2021]

If you used to get students to create videos and add them to YouTube you should still get students to create videos - but now they should add them to their Drive and share them with you.

Read more here → Google Workspace Admin Help - Control access to Google services by age

Are you looking for a to-do list manager?

I find that a 'proper' to-do list manager really helps me to organise what I need to do and therefore reduces the stress associated with rushing or forgetting things.

My to-do list manager of choice is Todoist. It is great on the web and has a slick smartphone app as well. It integrates nicely with Gmail so that you can easily generate tasks from emails.

If you want to know more check out this post → An Educator’s Guide to Todoist.

Chrome tab management

I have (strong) opinions on font choice and the number of tabs a 'normal' person should have open in Chrome!

If you struggle with managing all your tabs you may want to read this blog post → The Ultimate Guide to Chrome Tab Management by Jonathan Wylie. Super useful.

Basic actions on multiple tabs in Google Sheets

Now you can select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection (such as moving the tabs together, deleting, duplicating, copying, coloring, or hiding). I just thought some of you might like to know!

Read more here → Google Workspace Updates - Select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform basic actions on the selection [22 July 2021]

Weekly post #23 - Google Meet has a green room plus the waffle, hamburger, snowman and the shish kebab

Replace your background in Google Meet

It would seem that this feature appeared for us this week.

You can now replace your background with an image of your choice. To get the best results you should sit yourself quite close to a wall behind you. The plainer the wall the better the results.

Waffle, hamburger, snowman and the shish kebab

The G Suite Waffle
The G Suite Waffle

There are no official names for the various icons that access menus in Google Chrome. Therefore we should adopt our own!

The waffle - the 3 by 3 set of 9 dots, found at the top of the screen in Gmail, Drive etc that brings up the matrix of other G Suite application.

The hamburger - the three horizontal lines like the bun and patty of a hamburger, found throughout Chrome to access settings.

The snowman - the vertical line of 3 dots, like the 'buttons' upon the chest of a snowman. Usually used to view additional configuration options - such as in Google Meet.

The shish kebab - the horizontal line of 3 dots like pieces of meat on a kebab. Not as common as the 'snowman' but also gives you access to more settings and commands.

[Credit for this idea → Chromebook Classroom - Those Crazy Chromebook Icons]

Google Meet now has a 'green room'

A Practical Guide for Teaching Summarising and Note-Taking

Not strictly a digital things - but with definite overlap with research skills and approaches to learning.

If found the Delete, Substitute and Keep: A Practical Guide for Teaching Summarising and Note-Taking post from David Rodger-Goodwin super interesting.

David is certainly worth a follow.

Weekly post #13 - accepting 'knocks', Office editing mode, the Kahoot app and linking to a text fragment

Four things to check out

Accept 'knocks' in bulk

Accept 'knocks' in bulk

You can now accept all pending 'knocks' in bulk into your Google Meet. Admitting students all at once helps limit interruptions during the video call.

Read more here → Accept knocks in bulk in Google Meet

Editing Office files from your Drive

Google have changing the default editing mode for Microsoft Office files in Google Drive on the web. Now, when you double-click on an Office file, it will open directly in Office editing mode.

Read more about 'Office editing mode' here.

New study modes in the Kahoot app

Study modes in the Kahoot app for iOS and Android a brings a new, self-paced study experience to learners with four different ways to review content, get more practice with difficult topics and prepare for tests. These modes can be used with both previously played kahoots as well as new kahoots.

Read more here → Study with Kahoot!: New modes in the Kahoot! app empower learners to self-study

Linking to a text fragment

This rather useful Chrome extension allows for easily creating a special link to the currently selected text on a page via the context (right-click) menu. When opening such a special link, the browser will scroll the selected text into view and highlight it.

Install the Chrome extension from here → Link to Text Fragment

Weekly post #7 - Blurring your background and opening what you want

Three things to check out

Blur your background in Google Meet

To help limit distractions during lessons (and meetings), you can now blur the background of your video in Google Meet. When it’s turned on, Meet will intelligently separate you from the background, blurring your surroundings while keeping you clear and in focus.

I feel that some of our students will really appreciate the feature, should we return to remote-learning, to keep a bit more of their home private.

The ability to filter out disruptive background noise in Google Meet should also be arriving soon.

Read more here → Blur your background in Google Meet

Google Chrome - On start-up...

All faculty at Campus des Nations should be logged in and syncing with Google Chrome. There are all sorts of advantages including the ability for the school to install (on your behalf) extensions.

We recently removed the controls the school has over the 'On start-up' options. This allows you to decide which webpages open when you launch Chrome.

Here are some suggested pages →

Read more about setting your homepage and startup page here → support.google.com

Google Meet help sheet

Written to reflect most of the most recent updates to Google Meet and focusing on educator use.