WHAT? Goo.gl Shortener is going away!

With Google no longer supporting the goo.gl extension, we needed to come up with some alternatives. “Starting March 30, 2018, we will be turning down support for goo.gl URL shortener. From April 13, 2018 only existing users will be able to create short links on the goo.gl console.”  - Via Google.  

Well, there are several out there, but the one that I have been using a lot is Yellkey.  It is an alternative to the goo.gl URL shortener. Simply, copy and paste the URL into the text box which indicates URL’s, select how long you want the link to be available…..  up to 24 hours. This is great to get items out to people quickly, but not something you want to use if you are going to keep the presentation/link available for an extended time. I really like this one because it gives real words, not just letters and numbers mixed together.

Since we are a Google For Education School, and we use Google Classroom as one of our Learning Management Systems, the Share to Classroom extension is great to share out a link to students quickly within your Google classroom.  Send the link, or create an announcement, question, or assignment and post it directly to classroom from the extension. Try it out, I bet you love it. Bit.ly is another great URL shortener.  Simply copy and paste the URL into shortener and copy the shortened like to send out or put on a presentation for access. TinyURL.com is another one that you can customize.  If the word(s), numbers, etc… are available then it makes it really easy to create a shortened URL.  If not, or you don’t care, it will generate a URL for you.

MERGE CUBE MANIA IN MIDDLE SCHOOL

Merge Cubes in middle school classrooms is hot right now and we have several teachers who are using them and having the kids explore with them.  There are many apps out there which you can review from the previous post I wrote on Augmented Reality. 

If you are new to Merge Cubes you need to take a look at this post by Cool Cat Teacher by Vicki Davis.    Karen Bosh explains why Merge Cubes are so hot right now.  You can subscribe to Vicki via iTunes as well for her 10 minute teacher segments.

@MergeVR is offering educators a special discount on their MERGE Goggles! For a limited time, they're available for $16.99 each (plus applicable taxes and shipping). Fill out the below at this link to get your discount code docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…  I bought 3 pairs and they ended up being 20.00 per pair after shipping and taxes. 

April = Poetry Month

Take a  look at the post below on Richard Byrne's blog.  He writes some amazing post, so if you haven't started to follow him, I would do so.   

This is National Poetry Month. "What is a poem?" might be the first question that students ask after, "why is it National Poetry Month?" Read the full post here. 

The Black Hole of Downloads

It seems like I have worked with a lot of teachers lately who have expressed an concern about their black hole of downloadable files.  Files which are in downloads but not part of your Google Drive.   So here is a short video on how to change those settings on a windows machine in Google Chrome. You can do this on any MAC as well as long as you have Google Sync installed.

PDF Candy

Well it is not real candy, but oh what fun it is to know you can convert a PDF to a Word doc then convert to a Google Doc. I learned about this site from Leslie Fisher, so a huge shout out to her! Using this PDF Candy you will take a PDF convert it so it is a usable within Google Docs. Once in Google Docs, you can push it out through Google Classroom and have your students highlight, insert comments, discuss the purpose of the article. Think of the possibilities.

Remember the post on extensions? Take this document one step further and publish it to the web, then use the Extension Insert Learning to make the once STATIC document into an INTERACTIVE document for students.

Now on the main page there are many tools to manipulate PDF’s, but if you click on Convert From, To, and other tools, there are way more. Take a look at the video below to see just how easy this is, then start playing with all the tools....