Aim to Be Awesome, Not Perfect

In the GSuite world of education, every app has it place: Forms to collect data, Drawings for graphic design, Sites for sharing information, and Slides for just about everything. Where does that leave Sheets? I know a lot of people use it for data collection and analysis - and that is awesome. But Sheets can be used with students too! Christine Pinto has blogged about using Sheets with her Kindergartners - you can find all of those here . Her ideas are great! Pixel Art is also really fun! Eric Curts has blogged about it here  and you can find all his Google Sheets resources here . He also has some really good ideas for using Sheets with students. I have also used Sheets for some activities for a digital breakout. You can see an example if you click on the link or picture below. I use conditionally formatting to change the cells' background color, generally for a color lock in the digital breakout.  Another option is Mystery Pictures. I was inspired by something sh...

In my role as an Instructional Technology Specialist, I try to provide professional development and helpful hints in a variety of ways. One way I reach my staff is a weekly Tech Treats newsletter. This method can take a while.  At first, very few people read it, partly because it was buried in a principal's weekly memo. But it is catching on - especially as teachers learned they could bookmark it like a website and refer back to it as needed. It isn't at 100% - I don't think it ever will be - but it is enough that I will keep doing it. Want to make one for your staff?  Here are my tips: It's a Google Slide, because  It's easy to format  I add the newest slide at the beginning  It's easy for teachers to search to find previous pages It can be bookmarked  Put "need to know" stuff in there, especially action items with deadlines Include information for a variety of technology comfort levels Include new fun things - for Thanksgiving and C...