You have a new iPad and you want to compose an email, but your school contacts are not showing up when you start typing a name in the To: field?
Let's sync those contacts! 1. Open the Settings application on your device. 2. Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars. 3. Select Add Account… 4. Select Microsoft Exchange 5. Enter your FULL gmail email address: email@spsdme.org 6. Enter your spsdme.org email password.
7. Description is optional. I used "Google Sync" 8. Tap the Next button. 9. Enter Server: m.google.com (see below) 10. Type your entire name@spsdme.org gmail address in the Username field. (see example right)
11. Tap the Next button. 12. Turn all sliders to the ON position. 13. Tap the Save button. Your email, contacts, and calendars will begin to sync right away.
Locking the iPad to a single application or web page can be useful if a student needs to stay focused on one thing without "wandering off" to search the web or check other things on the iPad. Additionally, Guided Access will be used to lock iPads into the NWEA Testing on the iPad.
Turning on Guided Access must be done on each iPad. As far as I know, it cannot be done remotely or for groups of iPads at one time.
Is your inbox cluttered with months and months of messages? No time to sort them all? No problem! That is what Gmail's Archive function is for. Archive will file all selected emails, removing them from your inbox. Archived emails are stored with the label All Mail so they can still be accessed if needed. Here's how...
For this example, I will archive everything older than 30 days. 1. Type the following into your email search field: in:inbox before:YYYY/MM/DD
2. Click the check box at the top of the email list to select all as shown below.
3. Click on the link that says "Select all messages that match this search" so as to include ALL documents, even ones you can't see on later pages.
4. Now simply click the Archive button as shown below.
You're done! Remember, you can locate your archived email messages by using the search feature or by browsing the label All Mail.
I recently read an article on www.educatorstechnology.com touting Twitter as a means to apply Bloom's Taxonomy. I thought it had some great ideas. Twitter plays a huge role in our culture and I am a strong believer that it is our job, as educators, to help students navigate that culture, make responsible decisions, and valuable contributions.
Why would you want to have multiple email addresses going to one inbox? At school, this can be very useful if you want your students to sign up for a site, such as a blog or Evernote, which require a unique email.
Here is the idea. Students log in with a variation of your email. Gmail will not see the variation, but your email filter will. So all the varied email addresses come to your account, yet you can use a filter to route them to a folder or otherwise handle them.
It works like this: Google does not recognize the following as different:
The dot (.)
Anything after a plus (+) sign
@googlemail.com
Example:
Suppose your email address is firstlast@gmail.com. The following unique addresses will also go to firstlast@gmail.com:
Track spam - When you sign up for something on-line, use one of these aliases. Later, when you start receiving promotional emails and you don't know why, check the To: field. If the email is addressed to the alias you used to register for something, then you know where it is coming from.
Organize your mailbox - Use alias to register for sites that you use and then set email filters to sort the mail as it comes in. Google search will recognize the unique address, but the gmail will ignore the variation.
Here are a few tools which can be used in Chrome to help with reading and writing. Here are instructions to get them and my reviews of them.
To Obtain Chrome Extensions: 1. Go to Google Chrome Store. 2. Search for the desired extension (ie. "dictation"0. 3. Click the Add to Chrome button.
4. Done! An icon for the extension will be in the upper right corner of the Chrome screen.
To Manage your extensions (turn off/on or delete): 1. Click the three bars in the upper right corner of the Chrome Screen.
2. Click the Settings option from the pull-down menu. 3. Click the Extensions link from the selections on the left. 4. A list of your extensions will show up on the screen with options to edit them.
Here are the extensions....
Simple Dictation: Covert your speech to text.
This Extension puts a microphone button in the upper right corner of the Chrome Screen. Clicking on the microphone will open a window for dictation. The dictation works pretty well. It interpreted my speech as accurately as Dragon Dictation or Apple's Speech to Text. The application interpreted my spoken punctuation and "new line" commands as well.
There is no STOP button. The application stops listening and types when there is a pause in speech. Therefore, it is not designed for essays or longer dictations. I was able to get three or four sentences in, but only with a little pre-planning. I wouldn't have been able to do this by stream of consciousness. When speaking is resumed, the new text replaces the existing. On a positive note, the applications saves previous dictations and it is possible to cut and paste them.
Once the speech is interpreted and the text is showing on the screen, there is one option: "compose email". The text can be cut and pasted into another document.
This tool could be fun to play with, but I think it would take a lot of perseverance for a student to use it for a writing accommodation.
Read & Write for Chrome Once Read and Write is Downloaded, the Read&Write tab will appear above any Google Doc. It looks like this:
Click on the Read&Write tab to see a sub-menu:
Hover over each icon to reveal its function. They are as follows:
Dictionary - Highlight a word and click the dictionary icon to get the definition. Not only does the definition pop up, but it is in a very simple, readable format; highlighting the definition and clicking on the play button will read the definition aloud.
Picture Dictionary - Highlight a word and click the picture dictionary icon to see images relating to the word. (In my test, this worked for dog, money, and plowed, but could not find an image for trudge or snowblower. ). The images can be cut and pasted directly into the google document.
Play - Highlight text and click on the play icon. The sentence being read will be highlighted yellow, while each word is highlighted blue as it is read aloud.
Pause - Pauses text being spoken aloud.
Stop - Stops text from being spoken.
Fact Finder - Select text and click fact finder icon to initiate a web search on the selected text. This feature worked consistently well in my tests.
Translate - Translates selected text. I was unable to determine how this is supposed to work. Highlighting text and clicking on translate icon did bring up a dialog box with several choices for the word in a few languages. However, I could not locate settings to change the language and the dialog box did not indicate what language each word was in. I also tried to highlight a french word (fatigue) and choose translate. It had the same effect as if it were in English. This was not particularly useful and I could not readily find on-line documentation to help.
Collect Highlights - Use this tool to highlight multiple words or phrases and extract them to another document. First, select each word or phrase and use the regular google tool bar to change the background color (or highlight). Use one or more colors depending on how the selections will be organized. Then click the Collect Highlights button. All highlighted text will appear in another window for cutting and pasting. It can also be sorted by location or color.
Vocabulary - This tool is used the same way that Collect Highlights is used. Select each word to add to the vocabulary list by changing its background color. Click the Vocabulary button to reveal a table showing each word, its definition, images of the item, and an editable field for your own notes. This was pretty neat.
Here is a detailed video tutorial demonstrating use of the Read&Write for Chrome Extension:
Here is an example of how to get a spreadsheet cell to turn RED when a due date is approaching. For this example, my spreadsheet will have red cells when the date is 7 days prior to today or today. All other dates will be white.
Today's date is : January 28, 2013.
1. Open or create Google spreadsheet. If you need help doing this, contact me and I will come help!
2. Hover the mouse over the desired date column to expose the down-arrow, then click the arrow for the pull-down menu. (see below)
3. Click on the Conditional Formatting option as shown just above to bring up the dialog box below.
4. Change Text contains to Date is. The box will change to add another option.
5. Leave the second box on today.
6. Click the box after the Background: option and choose the RED square.
7. Click the link for +Add another rule.
8. Change Text contains to Date is after.
9. In the next box, change today to in the past week.
10. Click the box after the Background: option and choose the RED square.
11. Click on the Save Rules button.
Note:
Date is BEFORE in the past week shows dates which happened more than 7 days ago.
Date is in the past week shows dates which are 7 days prior to today
