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