Jumping between several locations throughout my day, this was one that should have been a no-brainer (i.e. I should have figured it out years ago). When you’re generating content in Google, and you sign in to Google on all of your other machines, said content is wherever you are. There’s no rewriting an article because your original draft is trapped in a local draft on a laptop at home, unsaved. There’s no wondering where you stored the research for an article or where you jotted down notes. Buy in to the Google Suite ecosystem and you’ve got everything you need. Well, maybe “buy in” is a bit of a misnomer because…

The Original Article appeared 9/1/2017.

One of the questions that I get asked more often than just about any is, “How can I record a podcast using my Chromebook?” There are many limitations to Chromebooks when it comes to recording audio and video. This is mostly due to the fact that there is no hard drive to store and convert the large media files. Where there are a few great applications for recording audio as referenced here in a recent post from Richard Byrne and Free Tech for Teachers, I wanted to showcase how two of these can be used to create not just audio recordings, but actual podcasts that can be subscribed to by your school community.

Original Article appeared 12/31/2016

‘The Art of Learning to use a Chromebook’ Presentation is designed to be a resource guide for students. Create an assignment in Google Classroom with a topic of “Google Classroom” so a student can go to it as needed.

Original Article appeared 8/25/2017

The crisp air of a late summer evening. Pristine erasers in a package of unused pencils. The rubbery smell of new sneakers still in the box. Some sensations are powerful enough to span generations—unmistakable signals that it’s back-to-school time.

Others, meanwhile, are more likely to betray a person’s age group. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably told your kids about making schoolbook covers out of paper grocery bags. Today’s students have no such concerns, of course. What they toss in their book bags is made of Chrome—Google Chrome, that is.

For the past several years, Google’s low-cost, high-utility Chromebooks have been the dominant computers in American schools. Effectively a browser in a no-frills box, the machines can cost as little as $150, yet perform the same functions (web browsing, email, word processing) a computer 10 times as expensive can. Right now, your kids (or their school) may be asking you to buy them one. And if you grew up visiting the library to use Print Shop, you’re probably wondering why they aren’t requesting a “real” computer, instead.