Author: Chris Malanga

Is your font choice harming your students?

Here is a sobering statistic: How do we address this problem? One way is in our font choices. In 1999, Bonnie Shaver-Troup, an educational therapist, observed that reading issues hid students’ true capability and intelligence. She theorized that student reading performance could be improved by: Using a sans-serif font to reduce cognitive noise; Scaling of […]

Google Meet has a new “green room” feature!

If you’ve been teaching remotely, you’ve probably done a bunch of Google Meets or Zoom calls. Have you ever wondered how you look and sound to your participants? This is now very easy, assuming you’re using Google Meet. Check out the new “green room” feature which makes it easier to check everything is working properly, and […]

Google Sites has new text formatting!

Although Google Sites is very simple to learn and use, that simplicity comes at a price – limited customization. Until very recently, you used the Themes panel to choose the look of your site. You could choose a color option and font for the entire site, but that’s it. No more! 🙌 Recall that when […]

Quickly Get to Suggesting Mode in Docs

If you’ve never used suggesting mode in Google Docs, it is a really useful tool. Docs has three modes – Editing, Suggesting and Viewing. You can change to any of the modes by clicking on the pencil icon in the toolbar. Editing mode is the standard mode that you’ll use when creating a document. It […]

Tame that wild Google Sheets data!

If you’re like me, you get some really messy data in Google Sheets. I have found some very easy ways to clean up this data and make your sheets look really nice. In this Tech Tip, I will focus on three topics – split columns, CONCAT and CONCATENATE, and removing text using the find and […]

Even PD is going virtual!

With the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers all over the country have had to teach virtually, and it looks like this might continue. To that end, Northern Buckeye has revamped some of our professional development offerings to help educators learn about technology, even when we can’t be there together. We wanted to take this opportunity to share […]

Extensions to Improve Google Meet

With students ending the school year with remote learning instead of being in the classroom, teachers are looking for ways to interact and engage with students face-to-face.  While Zoom has many more useful features for learning, it was originally created for business. Many schools that already have G Suite have adopted Google Meet as their […]

Google Meet inside Google Classroom!

As school building closures continue throughout Ohio, many teachers are using videoconferencing tools such as Zoom and Google Meet to connect virtually with their students. Google announced some new features last week, including the ability to manage Meet from within Google Classroom. From Google’s blog: Educators can create a unique Meet link for each class, […]

Helping our local restaurants

With the closure of all restaurants in Ohio except for carryout and delivery, I am concerned about our local businesses struggling during this time. Based on...

Sneaky students? There’s a keyboard shortcut for that.

We’ve got a super quick, but very helpful tip for you today. This tip comes from Linda Hummer at Patrick Henry Local Schools. Do you have issues with students being where they shouldn’t be when using their Chomebooks? Ever go over to a student and they quickly close whatever they are doing? This keyboard shortcut […]