Big Blue Technology

How to stay productive and make the best use of your time using Technology (but not email!) 1. Using Google Forms to collect data Too often you are immersed in a project and people are constantly emailing you about things that need to get done. When you create either a google form to collect data or a google sheet that people edit, you can channel all of those concerns into one file that you can check and work on daily, when you schedule time for the project. The beauty of the Google Form is that you can have people take surveys and the data is translated automatically with the click of a button to a sheet. On the other hand, the sheet allows users to edit it and see which concerns or issues have been addressed already and lends some transparency. In Google Forms you can show your respondents the results, but the spreadsheet allows you to see everything at once. You can also insert comments & tag a person so they see a response or that you asked a question. It cuts down on emai

Get More Out of Your Browser Recently I held a training and everyone said the same thing - PINNING TABS IS AWESOME! It seems like such a small feature, but because it is very popular, I wanted to share it out.  The other topic is the Omnibox, a rarely understood but very cool feature of Google Chrome.  This led me to think about how underutilized the actual Web Browser is in our life. We are so excited to get to the content online that we do not pay attention to the tool that gets us there. These two features will allow you to work smarter, not harder! Pin your tabs! The nice thing about Google Chrome is that you can customize it to do many things. My favorite feature is that if I go to the waffle to choose a new GSuite App to use, they open in a new tab. I often have 7-10 tabs open. However, that means that I sometimes close a tab by accident! 😱😬 Have no fear, Pin Tabs is here! Go up to the tab and hover over it with your mouse. Right click. A world of options opens up!

The SPS website is live now and that means we have a whole host of new features to explain. The big one is our new calendars. Our calendar links directly from Google Calendar to our website. Gone are the days of posting events on the website and on the calendar and not having them connect. Everything is related which saves us precious time that we can spend on teaching and learning. Click here to see the video that shows you how to navigate our calendar. It is important to remember that the district calendar feed is on by default for all viewers. However, you will need to click in the left hand corner to the filter menu to choose which other schools to follow. Enjoy and have a great week!